The Winning Weapon: The Atomic Bomb in the Cold War, 1945-50 [w/new preface ed.] 0691022860, 9780691022864

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THE WINNING WEAPON

THE WINNING WEAPON THE ATOMIC BOMB IN THE COLD WAR 1 9 4 5 -1 9 5 0

W ith a n ew p refa ce

GREGG HERREN

P rin c eto n U n iv e r s ity Press P rin c eto n , N e w jersey

Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 Copyright © 1981 by Gregg Herken Preface to the Princeton Edition copyright © 1988 by Gregg Herken All rights reserved First Princeton Paperback printing, 1988 Published by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Clothbound editions of Princeton University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. Paperbacks, while satisfactory for personal collections, are not usually suitable for library rebinding. Printed in the United States of America by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Herken, Gregg, 1947The winning weapon. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. World Politics— 1945-1955. 2. Atomic bomb. 3. World War, 1939-1945— Diplomatic history. 4. United States—Foreign relations— 1933-1945. 5. United States—Foreign relations— 1945-1953. 1. Title. D843.H438 1988 327\09044 88-4074 ISBN 0-691-02286-0 (pbk.)

F or Caspar, Bernard, M arguerite, a nd D o td e

than words to 1 — Bernard

A/. Baruch, fu n e 1946

Baruch’s idea of calling the bomb oar “winning weapon**—a weapon give op only when we are sme the world wil remain safe. . . . If we sore, we mast arm to the teeth with the winning weapon. — M ajor G eneral Thom as F o n d i, A u g u st 1946

C O NTENTS

Acknowledgments Preface to the Princeton Edition Prologue

xi xiii 3

BOOK ONE Hiroshima and After: The Atomic Bomb in Diplomacy, 1945-1946 1 2 3 4

Hiroshima and Potsdam: The Prelude Washington: A Direct Approach to Russia London: The Dog That Didn’t Bark Moscow: The New Atomic Diplomacy

9 11 23 43 69

BOOK TWO The Atomic Curtain: Domestic and International Consequences of Atomic Energy, 1945-1947 5 6 7 8 9

Pax Atomica: The Myth of the Atomic Secret “Atom Spies” and Politics The Atomic Curtain Descends Scientists, Soldiers, and Diplomats The W inning Weapon in the United Nations

95 97 114 137 151 171

BOOK THREE Diplomacy and Deterrence: The Military Dimension, 1945-1950

193

Contents

10 11 12 13 14 15

Strategy and the Bomb The War over the Horizon The Year of Opportunity: 1948 Beau Geste for Berlin The Monopoly Ends The Race Begins

x

195 218 235 256 281 304

Epilogue

338

Notes

343

Bibliography

402

Index

411

ACKNO W LED G M ENTS

I have become grateful to many people during the nearly seven years it has taken to write this book. Support for research or writing has come from Princeton University, the Harry S Truman Library Institute, and the Griswold Fellowship at Yale. The faculty and staff of Memll College at my undergraduate alma mater, the University of California at Santa Cruz, were always generous in giving me a place to write during my frequent visits. I feel a special gratitude to Bunny O ’Meara, John Marcum, and David Sweet at Merrill, as well as to Lil Ozuna and Pam Fusari of the Board of Studies in History at Santa Cruz. I owe an intellectual debt to two teachers, friends, and subsequent colleagues there: George Baer and Bruce Larkin. Jim Price has been a long-term friend and mentor. My thanks also to the members of the Historiska Institutionen at Lund University, Sweden— particularly its director, Goran Rystad, and a colleague, Joseph Zitomersky— for the opportunity to complete the manuscript while a visitor in 1978. For ensuring that my stay in Sweden was as enjoyable as it was productive, I am grateful to Karin Linton and her staff at the Fulbright Commission in Sweden. I am equally appreciative toward those who read the manuscript in its various stages. These include my dissertation adviser at Princeton, Richard Challener, and Barton Bernstein and Caddis Smith. Edward Reese at the National Archives was of great help in bringing documents to my attention. Jim Gormly, David Rosenberg, and Robert Messer were most helpful in providing additional research material or drafts of their own work. Professor Martin Sherwin was a friend and counselor concerning both the manu­ script and the rites of publishing, as was my editor, Ashbel Green. Mary Whitney and Betty Paine of the Yale History Department showed infinite patience in typing the manuscript. For the book’s flaws, needless to say, none of those I have mentioned here is to blame; that responsibility is mine alone. Finally, I would like to acknowledge my gratitude to close friends—including many of the above—who provided succor, bed and breakfast, and welcome encouragement. Gregg H erken

Ezra Stiles College New Haven, Connecticut

PREFACE TO THE PRINCETON EDITION

Nearly a decade has passed since this book first appeared in print. Dur­ ing that time much new information has become available concerning the role of the atomic bomb in the early cold war, resulting in a great many more scholarly books and articles on the subject. Happily for the author, this new evidence has tended to reinforce rather than under­ mine the assertions and conclusions of The Winning Weapon. We now know, for example, what was once the premier secret of the Trum an administration: the number of bombs in the nation’s atomic arsenal between 1945 and 1950. The official figures confirm the aptness of former Atomic Energy Commission Chairman David Lilienthal’s description of the early stockpile in Chapter 10 as “shock­ ingly small.” These numbers also prove that for the majority of the time that the United States alone had the bomb— from 1945 to 1949— the American atomic threat consisted much more of bluff than reality.1 Today we also know more about how this nation might have used the bombs it did have in the event of war with Russia, and about the one occasion, discussed in Chapter 15, when President Truman seri­ ously considered the use of nuclear weapons. As noted by AEC Chair­ man Gordon Dean in his recently published diary, Truman in April 1951 ordered Dean to release nine atomic bombs to the custodv of the : A full year after Hiroshima, the American nuclear monopoly consisted of a mere nine atomic bombs, two of which were unusable because they lacked initiators. B> 194“ that number had only increased by four, to thirteen, owing to a bottleneck in plutonium production. In 1948. the year American B-29s were sent overseas during the Berlin Crisis, the entire atomic arsenal—now grown to fifty weapons— remained at home. Onlv in the aftermath of the successful Sandstone tests, in the spring of 1948. did a much more efficient version of the Nagasaki plutonium-implosion bomb begin to be produced in assemblv line fashion, with some two hundred weapons being added to the stockpile bv the end of 1949. During 1950. the year the Korean war began, the arsenal nearh doubled— to approximately four hundred and fifts bombs. On the early arsenal, see David A Rosenberg. "U S. Nuclear Stockpile. 1945 to 1950." Bulletin of the Atom ic Scientists. May 1982. 25-50; and Thomas Cochran et al.