Atomic Escalation
Without so much as hinting that tests of the H-bomb could vastly increase harmful radiation fallout, America’s
mass media applauded the President’s latest nuclear-related action. "No presidential announcement since Mr.
Truman entered the White House seemed, in the opinion of many observers, to strike such an instant or general chord
of nonpartisan congressional support," The New York Times reported.152 "Under the circumstances," Newsweek
added, "it was the only answer he could give."153
Reporting of the AEC Advisory Committee’s moral objections to the H-bomb was lacking. As for the more
general matter of scientists’ compunctions about assisting research for a weapon of such mass annihilation,
Newsweek did affirm that "many, if not most, of the nation’s atomic scientists had developed ‘a Hiroshima complex’;
they were appalled by the death and destruction which the A-bomb had wrought; and they detested the idea of
developing an even more murderous weapon." But, said the magazine, "as patriotic Americans, they were ready to
squelch any moral reservations they might have if the AEC gave the go-ahead signal."154
Dissenting voices, published in some small periodicals, were all but ignored. "One difficulty created by the cold
war is that it makes everything America does right and unquestionable for Americans and everything Russia does
wrong and indefensible," observed a lengthy analysis in The Nation.155 Much was being demanded in the name of
patriotism, including the setting aside of moral reservations.
The Nation perceived that a perverse logic had taken hold of nuclear policy-making: "The decision to proceed
with the construction of the hydrogen bomb carries the folly of present thinking about defense close to suicide. If
fear is to be man’s defense, the fear must be magnified to the greatest possible extent. That is to say that the greater
the fear the greater the safety, another way of saying that the greater the danger the greater the safety."156
As a corollary in the prevailing atomic syllogisms, horrors of the past justified more lethal atomic weaponry for
the future. Allied firebombing sieges of Dresden and Tokyo had been recalled as justifications for the later atomic
bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; these nuclear bombings, and the very existence of an atom bomb arsenal, in
turn, provided rationales for preparing the hydrogen bomb.157 In nuclear escalation today’s awesomely repugnant
spectacle became tomorrow’s diminutive old hat.
The 180 American atmospheric nuclear bomb detonations between 1950 and 1960 carried with them great
political power. Senators Millard Tydings and Glen Taylor were object lessons.
Tydings, an aristocratically mannered parliamentarian from Maryland, was chairman of the Senate Armed
Services Committee. Taylor had been elected to the Senate from Idaho after a barnstorming career as a Western
vaudevillian earned him the sobriquet "the handsome cowboy singer." Both men had become vocal foes of unbridled
nuclear weapons development and indiscriminate disloyalty charges against dissenters from the cold war.158 And, in
1950, both Tydings and Taylor were up for reelection.
At the same time Senator Joseph McCarthy was in the midst of launching to new depths his crusade to depict a
wide array of citizens and organizations as un-American and pro-Communist—a drive that was to put the word
McCarthyism into the political lexicon as a synonym for unsubstantiated, scurrilous smear tactics. Only ten days
after Truman’s directive favoring the H-bomb, McCarthy delivered a famous speech in Wheeling, West Virginia,
claiming that there were many Communists in the U.S. State Department. McCarthy’s witch-hunting star was on the
rise, with nuclear weapons enthusiasm and anti-Communist hysteria dovetailing nicely for him and his backers.159
But, in 1950, Senator Millard Tydings unrepentantly advocated comprehensive disarmament talks to halt and
reverse the nuclear arms race. He was one of McCarthy’s prime targets. That autumn, running for reelection,
Tydings went down to defeat in a campaign filled with charges that he had amiable relations with Communists and
was not in favor of vigorously combating reds.160
Glen Taylor, elected to the Senate in 1944, was given to committing serious breaches of contemporary political
etiquette. In 1948 Taylor ran as the vice-presidential candidate on the Progressive Party’s national ticket headed by
Henry Wallace. Taylor’s decision to run for vice-president came after a meeting with Truman, who expressed views
favoring military confrontation with the Soviet Union—an approach that Taylor found appalling in the atomic age.
The Progressive Party involvement clearly jeopardized Taylor’s Senate career, and even his future ability to support
his children and send them through school. "Well hell, honey, if there’s an atomic war, it won’t matter none if the
kids are educated or not," Taylor told his wife.161
During his unsuccessful campaign for reelection to the Senate in 1950 Taylor was called to account for his
staunch opposition to nuclear boosterism; he was branded disloyal and worse. The sort of conduct that had made
him a target was epitomized in a Senate debate two days after Truman’s announcement that the U.S. was going ahead
with the H-bomb.
"I feel that we have handicaps to overcome," Taylor told the Senate. "The fact that the evil influence of Dillon,
Read & Co. was largely responsible for shaping our foreign policy and creating mistrust in many areas of the world,
has placed us at a disadvantage."162 Taylor had committed a severe indiscretion.163 He had raised the issue of
corporate control over U.S. nuclear policies.
The leading Wall Street banking firm of Dillon, Read & Co. was, in fact, well represented in the top echelons of
the federal administration that brought the nuclear industry over the billion-dollar-a-year mark in 1950. Truman’s
secretary of defense, James V. Forrestal, was formerly president of Dillon, Read & Co.; William H. Draper, a highranking
executive of the same firm, became undersecretary of defense.164
Truman’s appointee as the AEC’s research director, Dr. James B. Fisk, was a former executive of Bell Telephone
Laboratories. The AEC commissioners included Sumner Pike, who had been a Republican member of the Securities
and Exchange Commission, and Lewis Strauss—a rear admiral and New York banker.165
To astute financiers the late 1940s signaled prospects for huge profits to be made from nuclear investments.166
Fairchild, General Electric, and Monsanto Chemical were taking the lead in postwar corporate nuclear
involvements.167 By the start of 1949 the list of postwar corporate investors had lengthened to include such major
companies as Du Pont, Westinghouse, Standard Oil Development Co., Union Carbide, Kellex Corp., Blaw-Knox,
and Dow Chemical.168 A cornucopia of government contracts was anticipated.
"ATOM BECOMES BIG BUSINESS AT BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR," blared a 1950 headline in US. News
& World Report. "All across the country, research installations and industrial projects are to be built or expanded as
part of the rapid growth of the atom into a big business. Hydrogen-bomb development will be fitted into this
pattern."169
There was talk, too, of developing nuclear power for electricity—a prospect that would evolve into the "Atoms
for Peace" program a few years later. More certain to investors as the 1950s began, however, was the lure of nuclear
weaponry.170
152. New York Times, February 1, 1950.
153. Newsweek, February 13, 1950, p. 20.
154. Ibid., p. 19.
155. Raymond Swing, "Prescription for Survival," Nation, February 18, 1950, p. 152. For another contemporary critique of Truman’s H-bomb decision, see
Christian Century, February 15, 1950, p. 198.
156. Swing, "Prescription for Survival," p. 151.
157. For an example of the public arguments used to justify the H-bomb on grounds of earlier forms of brutality, see the 1950 essay by Robert F. Bacher, head of
the California Institute of Technology physics department who had been a charter AEC commissioner, in The H Bomb, p. 142.
158. See Peter Collier, "Remembering Glen Taylor," Mother Jones, April 1977, pp. 43-53. For Senator Tydings’ position on disarmament and ending U.S.-
Soviet tensions, see Fleming, The Cold War, p. 527.
159. For news coverage of McCarthy and Tydings during this period, see Newsweek, July 31, 1950, pp. 25-29; also, Newsweek, March 5, 1951, p. 25.
160. Fleming, The Cold War, p 534.
161. Collier, "Remembering Glen Taylor," p. 48.
162. The H Bomb, p. 94.
163. Senator Brien McMahon, chairman of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, leapt up to chastise the errant Senator Taylor. "I cannot let go unchallenged
the Senator’s assertion that the foreign policy of the United States has been written by any banking firm be it Dillon, Read & Co. or any other firm,"
McMahon declared on the Senate floor. McMahon added: "We cannot tolerate without speaking up the attack which I feel has been made by the Senator
from Idaho on the sincerity of our position, and which does not help the cause of peace." (The H Bomb, pp 94-95.) Idaho Senator Taylor had indeed touched
a sensitive nerve.
164. Fleming, The Cold War, p. 437.
165. Business Week, March 15, 1947, pp. 38, 41.
166. In 1948 the Atomic Energy Commission sought suggestions on how to best draw in the private sector, setting up the "Industrial Advisory Group" headed by
the president of Detroit Edison and including executives in such corporations as Standard Oil of Indiana, Gulf, and Babcock & Wilcox. See Newsweek,
January 10, 1949, p. 63.
167. Business Week, March 29, 1947, p. 22.
168. Business Week, January 1, 1949.
169. U.S. News & World Report, February 10, 1950, p. 11.
170. The issue of corporate interests in perpetuating atomic development and the nuclear arms race is commonly viewed as a rather indiscreet subject—perhaps
all the more so because of its critical importance. Within the nuclear weapons and arms control establishment even those individuals who have served as
voices of moderation prefer not to talk about it publicly. Herbert F. York, director of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory from 1952 to 1958, later served in
prominent positions related to nuclear arms control under Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Carter. York became a fervent and articulate
supporter of disarmament. Yet, in a book he wrote in the mid-1970s, York blamed the momentum of technology while disregarding corporate influence:
"The possibilities that welled up out of the technological program and the ideas and proposals put forth by the technologists eventually created a set of options
that was so narrow in the scope of its alternatives and so strong in its thrust that the political decision makers had no real independent choice in the matter."
(The Advisors, p. 11.)
While stating that in his view responsibility for the cold war and arms race "is widely shared among the major powers of the world," York wrote "I do
believe that the United States has pursued policies which caused the technological arms race to advance at a substantially faster pace than was really necessary
for America’s own national security." In diagnosing why this has happened, however, York sanitized the issue so that no one on Wall Street, in nuclear
laboratories, or at government agencies need squirm: "The reasons for this are not that American leaders have been less sensitive to the dangers of the arms
race than the leaders of other countries, nor that they are less wise or more aggressive. Rather, the reason is that the United States is richer and more
powerful, and its science and technology are more dynamic and generate more ideas and inventions of all kinds, including ever more powerful and exotic
means of mass destruction. In short the root of the problem has not been maliciousness, but rather a sort of technological exuberance that has overwhelmed
the other factors that go into the making of overall national policy." (The Advisors, p. ix. )