Category Archives: History

America’s Plans for War Against the Soviet Union, 1945-1950, Vol. 13, Evaluating the Air Offensive

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This book 1, edited by Stephen R. Ross and David Alan Rosenberg, is an unusual book to be reviewed this web site. The book is listed as unavailable and out of print on Amazon. I obtained a copy on interlibrary loan from the “Center for Naval Analysis” in Arlington, VA. For those who might wonder why I would be interested in such an obscure book, I worked at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in Colorado, and have been researching why the nation believed we needed such a facility to be built in the early 1950s. I had motivation to obtain the book, but I’ll warn others that the book is very large. It has in excess of 400 8 ½ X 11 pages, even though it only contains the declassified information from the original top secret report. A quick summary is that the report describes an evaluation of “War Plan OFFTACKLE,” which called for a strike with atomic bombs on 220 Soviet industrial site followed by massive conventional bombing.

I’ve read much about the negative effects on military planning created by the competition between the military services in the late 1940s. There was also a lack of cooperation between the civilian Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and the military planners. The AEC felt they were prevented by the Atomic Energy Act from revealing physical characteristics of the atomic bombs (which was crucial to determining how the weapons could be carried and delivered) or even the number of weapons in the stockpile. This report discusses the stark fact that the military didn’t have the capability to carry out the full war plan and also clearly emphasizes the even more depressing reality of the nearly complete lack of effective intelligence about the Soviet Union, its military capabilities, and its intentions. The only thing that seemed a certainty to the planners was that a World War with the Soviet Union was inevitable.   Continue reading →

Pardon my French

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Phrase Finder has an article on “Pardon my French” or “Excuse my French.”

“A coy phrase used when someone who has used a swear-word attempts to pass it off as French. The coyness comes from the fact the both the speaker and listener are of course both well aware the swear-word is indeed English… This usage is mid 20th century English in origin. A version of it is found in Michael Harrison’s All Trees were Green, 1936.

“The source of the phrase is earlier and derives from a literal usage of the exclamation. In the 19th century, when English people used French expressions in conversation…For example, in The Lady’s Magazine, 1830: When a speaker says something rude about her compatriot’s appearance, then apologized for doing so in French, but not for the rudeness itself.”

Today I Found Out presents a lengthy list of conflicts between France and England that might lead to English speakers ascribing curse words to French.

The Road to Trinity

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road-to-trinityThis book, which had the subtitle, “A Personal Account of How America’s Nuclear Policies Were Made, was written by Major General Kenneth D. Nichols, (Retired). Nichols was a Lieutenant Colonel when he began an assignment as deputy district engineer of the Manhattan Engineer District. He was deputy to Leslie Groves. There have been many books written on the subject, but I would recommend this and the Groves account “Now it Can be Told,” as the best two to read if you are just beginning to want to understand what happened in the Manhattan Project and beyond. I was shocked that there hasn’t been a single review of the Nichols book on Amazon. You can buy a used copy of the book for about a dollar plus shipping. It would be worth your investment, although interlibrary loan was even less expensive.

The book begins in November 1952 when Nichols is directed to write his “…personal views on the political and military implications of the hydrogen bomb and given three hours to write it.” He wrote that the hydrogen bomb “…has equal or greater political than strictly military implications.” He warned that to achieve deterrence the U.S. must convince the Soviet Union we will utilize nuclear weapons ruthlessly. He believed we should have used tactical nuclear weapons in Korea “…proving to the world we really mean to use every potential weapon available to us to preserve peace and thereby deter war. He recognized that might or probably would  have precipitated a major war “…at a time when we have the greatest potential for winning it with minimum damage to the U.S.A.”

People who are “anti-nuclear” and favor disarmament will gasp at some of the things Nichols writes. I was comfortable with his advice and opinions, and judge that he had, because of the roles he filled, an informed understanding of the real world situation that should be carefully and respectfully considered despite which side of the argument you might stand on. Continue reading →

Dead Wake

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dead-wakeMy wife recommended this excellent book by Erik Larson, and I’m glad I read it. The Lusitania was a luxury ocean liner, and considered to be a “greyhound,” the fastest liner in service. It sailed out of New York harbor carrying a record number of children and infants despite a German warning that the seas around Britain were a war zone. (My wife wondered why there were so many families travelling to Britain in a time of war.)  Captain William Turner was said to have placed faith in “…the gentlemanly strictures of warfare that had for a century kept civilian ships safe from attack.” Germany and Walther Schwieger, the captain of the Unterseeboot-20 was determined to change the rules of the game. The book presents meticulous details of the hunted and the hunter to the point of their historical connection. Detailed descriptions are given of numerous Lusitania passengers, and I found it eerie wondering whether the people being described in very human terms survived or died. I actually found myself hoping that some of the many accidents of history that brought U-20 within torpedo range of the Lusitania would somehow magically change and cause the torpedo to not be fired or miss. I knew I was hopelessly wrong thinking such thoughts, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself from wanting history to change. Larsen in a note to readers preceding the book must have had some of the same thoughts. He wrote that in his research, “What I learned both charmed and horrified me…”

Most, or at least many, of the passengers on the Lusitania had read notices placed by the German Embassy in Washington on the shipping pages of New York newspapers that “…vessels flying the flag of Great Britain, or any of her allies, are liable to destruction and that passengers sailing on such ships ‘do so at their own risk’.” Captain Turner had told passengers that he had received warning of fresh submarine activity off the Irish coast, but “…assured the audience there was no need for alarm.” The Cunard Company that owned the ship issued an official response to the German warning. “The truth is that the Lusitania is the safest boat on the sea. She is too fast for any submarine. No German war vessel can get her or near her.” One Greek carpet merchant apparently wasn’t reassured. He put on a life jacket and spent the night in a lifeboat. Another passenger took comfort from the revolver he always carried. Continue reading →

The Fate of the Earth

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fate-of-the-earthThis book by Jonathan Schell presents a stark prediction of the nuclear apocalypse. I found the writing style to be too grandiose, but kept slugging away to consider the author’s point of view. As an example of it being grandiose, the cover tells us, “Schell has taken upon himself the task of speaking for man, and acting for man; and it can be hoped that what he has written here will lead the way for many.” More to the point of the content, “Schell describes, within the limits of what is dependably and unarguably known to science, a full-scaled nuclear holocaust.” He writes as if he needs to convince readers that nuclear war would be bad. The book was written in 1982 when multiple books were written predicting the end of civilization. I recommend this one as being a good example of that genre.

The first section of the book is titled “A Republic of Insects and Grass,” which describes what would survive a nuclear holocaust. Note there is no indication any humans would survive. The book begins with irrefutable facts about the number of nuclear weapons and megatonnage that have been built since the first nuclear detonation at Alamogordo, New Mexico on July 16, 1945. The book then gives a brief primer of the horrible effects of a nuclear exchange. President Dwight Eisenhower recognized the risks in a 1956 letter that said, “…one day both sides have to ‘meet at the conference table with the understanding that the era of armaments has ended, and the human race must conform its actions to this truth or die.” There are many examples of political figures making statements that reinforce or confirm that comment. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said in 1974, “…the accumulation of nuclear arms had to be constrained if mankind is not to destroy itself.” President Jimmy Carter said in his farewell address that after a nuclear holocaust, “…the survivors, if any, would live in despair amid the poisoned ruins of a civilization that had committed suicide.” (Those were surprising words for a President who authorized more nuclear weapons programs than any other President.) Continue reading →

Law of Holes

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Wikipedia says “the law of holes refers to a proverb which states that ‘if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging'”. This means, if you find yourself in an untenable position, you should stop and change, rather than exacerbate it. Wiki identifies the first use of a similar phrase and meaning in 1911 in the Washington Post. A version closer to the modern phrase has been attributed to humorist Will Rogers, and a modern version appeared in print in 1964 in The Bankers Magazine. The phrase has become popular in the UK thanks to British politician Denis Healey in the 1980s, who expressed the thought as “’when your opponent is in a hole and digging, for god’s sake don’t stop him’ or alternately ‘why would you want to take away his shovel?'” [ipglossary.com] If you sort out the “black hole” references in a google search, this political meaning seems most popular.