Download or read book The Origins of U S Nuclear Strategy 1945 1953 written by Samuel R. Williamson Jr and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-30 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States took almost a decade after Hiroshima and Nagasaki to develop a coherent strategy of nuclear deterrence. This comprehensive study by two careful and well-informed historians provides the best explanation we have of why this process took so long; it also suggests the inherent difficulties of relying on nuclear weapons to provide security in the first place. Required reading for anyone interested in the early history of the nuclear era.
Download or read book Nuclear Weapons and American Strategy 1945 1953 written by Mark Bernard Schneider and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 718 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Origins of U S Nuclear Strategy 1945 1953 written by Samuel R. Williamson Jr and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 1993-06-15 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States took almost a decade after Hiroshima and Nagasaki to develop a coherent strategy of nuclear deterrence. This comprehensive study by two careful and well-informed historians provides the best explanation we have of why this process took so long; it also suggests the inherent difficulties of relying on nuclear weapons to provide security in the first place. Required reading for anyone interested in the early history of the nuclear era.
Download or read book Atomic Diplomacy written by Gar Alperovitz and published by . This book was released on 1965 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Building a Strategic Air Force written by Walton S. Moody and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book American Strategic Power written by Harland Buell Moulton and published by . This book was released on 1969 with total page 630 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Origins of Overkill written by David Alan Rosenberg and published by . This book was released on 1983 with total page 69 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Nuclear Taboo written by Nina Tannenwald and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-12-20 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why have nuclear weapons not been used since Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945? Nina Tannenwald disputes the conventional answer of 'deterrence' in favour of what she calls a nuclear taboo - a widespread inhibition on using nuclear weapons - which has arisen in global politics. Drawing on newly released archival sources, Tannenwald traces the rise of the nuclear taboo, the forces that produced it, and its influence, particularly on US leaders. She analyzes four critical instances where US leaders considered using nuclear weapons (Japan 1945, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Gulf War 1991) and examines how the nuclear taboo has repeatedly dissuaded US and other world leaders from resorting to these 'ultimate weapons'. Through a systematic analysis, Tannenwald challenges conventional conceptions of deterrence and offers a compelling argument on the moral bases of nuclear restraint as well as an important insight into how nuclear war can be avoided in the future.
Download or read book The Bomb written by Beatrice Heuser and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-09-25 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This tightly argued and profoundly thought provoking book tackles a huge subject: the coming of the nuclear age with bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, and the ways in which it has changed our lives since. Dr Heuser sets these events in their historical context and tackles key issues about the effect of nuclear weapons on modern attitudes to conflict, and on the ethics of warfare. Ducking nothing, she demystifies the subject, seeing `the bomb' not as something unique and paralysing, but as an integral part of the strategic and moral context of our time. For a wide multidisciplinary and general readership.
Download or read book The Cambridge History of the Cold War written by Melvyn P. Leffler and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-03-25 with total page 663 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines the origins and early years of the Cold War in the first comprehensive historical reexamination of the period. A team of leading scholars shows how the conflict evolved from the geopolitical, ideological, economic and sociopolitical environments of the two world wars and interwar period.
Download or read book The Winning Weapon written by Gregg Herken and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-14 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book makes clear how, and why, after World War II American diplomats tried to make the atom bomb a winning weapon," an absolute advantage in negotiations with the Soviet Union. But this policy failed utterly in the 1948 Berlin crisis, and at home the State Department opposed those scientists who advocated international cooperation on nuclear matters. Originally published in 1988. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Download or read book Peace But Not at Any Price written by Sean Gregory Jones and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The research conducted here originated with the question of what caused the massive build-up of nuclear arsenals, which included ever larger and more powerful bombs and delivery systems from them, in the United States and the Soviet Union, even though the consensus beforehand was that nuclear energy should be prohibited from being used for military purposes. The results found show a parallel progression between the ever increasing sense of paranoia in United States foreign policy towards their former ally, the Soviet Union, which led the Truman administration to expend more resources into developing more advanced nuclear weapons. This eventually made nuclear deterrence the forefront of the American strategy. Several historians, including Michael D. Gordon and Morton A. Kaplan, trace the behavior of the Truman administration to a growing concern that United States military forces would be inadequate in countering a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. The origin of this was the Truman administration’s decision to demobilize American forces at a rapid pace from May of 1945 to the spring of 1946. The administration had originally put their hopes in the newly chartered United Nations to settle all international disputes and a campaign for volunteers to replace the veterans being discharged. However, the rate of new enlistees into the American military fell sharply as the country settled into peacetime. This came at a time when American policy makers began to view the Soviet Union as a new threat after an incident in Iran showed that they were willing to undermine allied post-war policy for the sake of spreading Communism. At the time, though, it was seen as being immoral and expensive to begin drafting millions of Americans back into the military for what was, at the time, only a possible threat to national security. Alternative measures were then taken to supplement American forces in case the Soviet Union became openly, and overtly, hostile towards the west; these measures were also meant to deter a Soviet attack just as much as they were meant to prepare the west for it. One of these was to utilize nuclear weapons as an alternative to maintaining the American military at 12 million, the size that it had been during the war. Included in these measures was the supporting of democratic countries against Communism, which ultimately resulted in the Marshall Plan, which Stalin and the Bolsheviks interpreted as a hostile gesture by the West towards the Soviet bloc. Thus, insecurity caused by the rapid demobilization of the United States military following the end of the Second World War caused American military planners and policy makers to enact measures that they believed would strengthen their declining military and deter Soviet aggression, but instead provoked the suspicions and contempt of the Soviet Union which caused a break down in international cooperation and culminated in four decades of heightened tensions and the build-up of massive nuclear arsenals.
Download or read book Building a Strategic Air Force written by Department of Defense and published by . This book was released on 2017-08-31 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On March 21, 1946, by order of Headquarters, Army Air Forces, Continental Air Forces received a new name, becoming the Strategic Air Command. This administrative procedure was intended to give some suggestion as to what the mission of that command was to be under the new structure of the air arm. One effect the order had was upon the American language. Very soon after that order was issued, "SAC" -pronounced as a word of one syllable - would be commonplace usage of everyone in or involved with the command. This volume recounts how the Army Air Forces and its successor organization, the U.S. Air Force, organized, trained and equipped strategic air forces for a worldwide mission. The period of history covered in this volume has been heavily studied. It is the opening era of the "Cold War" between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the western countries led by the United States. This volume presents a larger focus. It concerns the American air force's efforts to build a strategic force. The emphasis is on the leaders, the political context, programs, and forces. A significant element of the subject concerns air doctrine, but here this is seen primarily in terms of the experience the leadership of the air arm had had with air warfare. The strategic force here described was not only by 1953 the premier command of the Air Force. It was the centerpiece of national strategy. The intention here will be to connect the development of the strategy of atomic deterrence with the actual composition and nature of that force. The importance of the Air Force as an institution in American life, and the role of the strategic force in that institution, would seem to establish the importance of the subject. American air leaders believed that the consequences of the air arm's not being ready to carry out such an offensive, through failure to plan or for any other reason, could be grave. These, then, were disturbing times. In this connection, there are many in the Soviet Union today who consider the practice of falsifying the historical record for current political purposes to have been one of the most corrupting factors in the life of that country. Part I * Postwar Reorganization, 1945 - 1947 * I. Air Power and the Airmen: 1945 * Air Power and Strategy * Building a Strategic Air Force, 1917-1945 * The Postwar Challenge * II. The Case for a Postwar Air Force * A New Strategic World * Demobilization and Occupation * Planning for Strategic Air Power * III. The Beginnings of a Strategic Air Force * Air Power Deferred * The Strategic Force and Demobilization * The Strategic Force and the Fifty-five Group Program * Modernizing the Bomber Force * IV. The Uncertain Phase * Understanding the Bomb * Command of Strategic Forces * Planning for Atomic War * Part II * Austerity and Strategic Air Power, 1947 -1950 * V. Decision for a Strategic Air Force * Making the Case for Air Power: Finletter and Brewster * A Program for Atomic Readiness: JCS 1745 / 5 * Aircraft for the Strategic Offensive * VI. The Year of Crisis * Toward a Crisis Budget * Roles, Missions, and Budgets * The Berlin Crisis * Containment, Deterrence, and NSC-20 / 4 * "The Hollow Threat" and LeMay * VII. The Priority Mission * Aircraft for Deterrence * Return to Austerity * Modernization and Standardization * VIII. Challenges to Strategy * The Challenge at Home * Facing the Challenge * The External Challenge: The Soviet Bomb * The Strategic Force at the Ready: SAC in 1950 * Part III * Expansion of the Strategic Force, 1950 -1953 * IX. Limited War, Atomic Plenty, and Rearmament * Deterrence at Risk * Rearmament Begins * The Role of Nuclear Weapons * Expanding the Strategic Force * An Investment in Air Power * X. "Never Before Surpassed" * Medium Bombers in Korea * Expansion and Professionalism * Planes and Weapons, 1950-1953 * Basing for a Global Strike Force * From New Phase to New Look
Download or read book Rearming for the Cold War 1945 1960 History of Acquisition in the Department of Defense of Nuclear Weapons Missiles and Rockets the Nuclear Navy Air Force Bombers and the Atomic Army written by Department of Defense and published by . This book was released on 2017-09-24 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is a history of the acquisition of major weapon systems by the United States armed forces from 1945 to 1960, the decade and a half that spanned the Truman and Eisenhower administrations following World War II. These instruments of warfare--aircraft, armored vehicles, artillery, guided missiles, naval vessels, and supporting electronic systems--when combined with nuclear warheads, gave the postwar American military unprecedented deterrent and striking power. They were also enormously expensive. A Brookings Institution study estimated that from the end of World War II through the mid-1990s the United States spent over $5 trillion (including the cost of the wartime atomic bomb project) on the development, production, and deployment of nuclear weapons, and on the systems for delivering and defending against them. Twenty percent of that sum was expended between 1945 and 1960.Although there is a large body of published literature on specific aspects of weapons acquisition, primarily studies of individual systems, no in-depth analysis has yet appeared that combines the histories of the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and the military services into one account. Such a study is badly needed. World War II was a watershed for acquisition. The postwar defense environment was dramatically different from that existing before the war. So too were the policies, organizations, and processes that governed the acquisition of new weapons. Many of the changes that shaped the nature and course of acquisition through the end of the century were instituted between 1945 and 1960. Additionally, many of the problems that have repeatedly challenged defense policymakers and acquisition professionals since World War II first surfaced during those years. History does not repeat itself exactly; but by revealing long-term trends and the reasons for past choices, it can help illuminate the path forward for those who must grapple with the complex issues surrounding the development, production, and deployment of major weapon systems.The volume is organized chronologically, with individual chapters addressing the roles of OSD, the Army, Navy, and Air Force in two distinct periods. The first, roughly coinciding with President Truman's tenure, covers the years from the end of World War II through the end of the Korean War in 1953. The second spans the two terms of the Eisenhower presidency from 1953 through early 1961. The year 1953 marked a natural breakpoint between the two periods. The Korean War had ended. President Eisenhower and his defense team began implementing the "New Look," a policy and strategy based on nuclear weapons, which they believed would provide security and make it possible to reduce military spending. The New Look's stress on nuclear weapons, along with the deployment of the first operational guided missiles and the rapid advances subsequently made in nuclear and missile technology, profoundly influenced acquisition in the services throughout the 1950s and the remainder of the century.I. WORLD WAR II: A WATERSHED * II. ORGANIZING FOR NATIONAL SECURITY: OSD AND ACQUISITION, 1945-1949 * Coordination of Research and Development Prior to the National Security Act * The Research and Development Board * Coordination of Procurement Prior to the National Security Act * The Munitions Board * III. THE RESPONSE TO WAR: OSD AND ACQUISITION, 1950-1953 * Rearmament: Purposes and Organization * Requirements Estimates and Production Schedules * Production Difficulties * The Attack on Production Delays * Production Priorities * Research and Development
Download or read book The Atomic Bomb and American Society written by Rosemary B. Mariner and published by Univ. of Tennessee Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on the latest research on the atomic bomb and its history, the contributors to this provocative collection of eighteen essays set out to answer two key questions: First, how did the atomic bomb, a product of unprecedented technological innovation, rapid industrial-scale manufacturing, and unparalleled military deployment shape U.S. foreign policy, the communities of workers who produced it, and society as a whole? And second, how has American society's perception that the the bomb is a means of military deterrence in the Cold War era evolve under the influence of mass media, scientists, public intellectuals, and even the entertainment industry? In answering these questions, The Atomic Bomb and American Society sheds light on the collaboration of science and the military in creating the bomb; the role of women working at Los Alamos; the transformation of nuclear physicists into public intellectuals as the reality of the bomb came into widespread consciousness; the revolutionary change in military strategy following the invention of the bomb and the development of Cold War ideology; the image of the bomb that was conveyed in the popular media; and the connection of the bomb to the commemoration of World War II. As it illuminates the cultural, social, political, environmental, and historical effects of the creation of the atomic bomb, this volume contributes to our understanding of how democratic institutions can coexist with a technology that affects everyone, even if only a few are empowered to manage it. Rosemary B. Mariner is formerly Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair and Professor of Military Studies for the National War College. She is currently a lecturer in history at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. G. Kurt Piehler is associate professor of history and former director of the Center for the Study of War and Society at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, which hosted the conference that formed the basis of this volume. He is the author of Remembering War the American Way and World War II in the American Soldiers' Lives Series as well as the coeditor, with John Whiteclay Chambers II, of Major Problems in American Military History.
Download or read book The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II written by Herbert Feis and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-03-08 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book discusses the decision to use the atomic bomb. Libraries and scholars will find it a necessary adjunct to their other studies by Pulitzer-Prize author Herbert Feis on World War II. Originally published in 1966. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Download or read book Toward Armageddon written by David Alan Rosenberg and published by . This book was released on 1983 with total page 734 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
