The Doomsday Machine

by Daniel Ellsberg

  “almost maudlin” Dean Acheson, “Dean Acheson’s Version of Robert Kennedy’s Version of the Cuban Missile Affair: Homage to Plain Dumb Luck,” Esquire, February 1969, 44.

  Chapter 13: Cuba: The Real Story

  “the Saturday before the Sunday” Interview with Robert McNamara, War and Peace in the Nuclear Age: Europe Goes Nuclear, February 20, 1986, (thirty-six minutes in), openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_DF35A31CD90545FE83A077DE010DD044.

  It was not until 1975–76 James G. Hershberg, “Before ‘The Missiles of October’: Did Kennedy Plan a Military Strike Against Cuba?,” in James A. Nathan, ed., The Cuban Missile Crisis Revisited (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), 237–280. (An earlier version of this chapter was first published as an article in Diplomatic History 14 (Spring 1990): 163–198.)

  about to “lose Cuba” In his memoirs Khrushchev wrote, “While I was on an official visit to Bulgaria, for instance, one thought kept hammering away at my brain: what will happen if we lose Cuba?… It was during my visit to Bulgaria that I had the idea of installing missiles with nuclear warheads in Cuba without letting the United States find out they were there until it was too late to do anything about them.” Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, with an introduction, commentary, and notes by Edward Crankshaw, trans. and ed. Strobe Talbot (New York: Bantam Books, 1970), 546.

  The morning after the president’s speech on October 22 Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, “One Hell of a Gamble”: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958–1964 (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1997), 249–250.

  But, as the Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin See the discussion of the controversy about whether this meeting ever took place, in Sheldon M. Stern, Averting ‘The Final Failure’: John F. Kennedy and the Secret Cuban Missile Crisis Meetings (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), where he concludes “The historical jury is still out,” 289–290, 368–372.

  The initial inferences drawn were that Dean Acheson, “Dean Acheson’s Version of Robert Kennedy’s Version of the Cuban Missile Affair,” Esquire, February 1969, 144.

  A different light was shed on this seven years later Robert F. Kennedy, Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1971), 84–87.

  published in Time in 1982 Dean Rusk, et al., “Essay: The Lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis,” Time, September 27, 1982, 85–86.

  “The President was not optimistic, nor was I” Kennedy, Thirteen Days, 108–09. Ellipsis in original.

  “It was we who gave the order to fire” Tad Szulc, Fidel: A Critical Portrait (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1986), 584.

  First, that the number of Soviet troops Blight, et al., Cuba on the Brink, 250–251; Svetlana Savranskaya and Thomas Blanton, “Last Nuclear Weapons Left Cuba in December 1962,” National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book 449, December 11, 2013, nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB449/; Sergo Mikoyan, The Soviet Cuban Missile Crisis: Castro, Mikoyan, Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Missiles of November, ed. Svetlana Savranskaya (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010), 266.

  So far as we knew, Khrushchev had never sent In fact, Khrushchev had deployed twelve medium-range ballistic missiles to East Germany in December 1958, in line with his threat to turn over allied access to West Berlin to the East Germans by the end of the year. This meant he had missile warheads within range of London and Paris, which he had claimed falsely during the Suez crisis of 1956. But although his purpose was presumably to give substance to threats of nuclear war if the U.S. should maintain its rights of access by force, Khrushchev kept this deployment secret not only from the U.S. and NATO but also his own Presidium and even Walter Ulbricht, the head of the East German satellite state. This deployment, which he withdrew in 1959, remained totally unknown to the West until 2001. See Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, Khrushchev’s Cold War (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2006), 194, 208–209, 211–213, 442.

  “It would have been an absolute disaster for the world” James G. Blight, et al., Cuba on the Brink: Castro, the Missile Crisis, and the Soviet Collapse, fortieth anniversary ed. (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), 379.

  “A smell of scorching hung in the air” James G. Blight and Janet M. Lang, The Armageddon Letters: Kennedy/Khrushchev/Castro in the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012), 275.

  At that same moment, as the quarantine became effective Scott D. Sagan, The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 62–71.

  “These few minutes were the time” Kennedy, Thirteen Days, 47–48.

  “Isn’t there some way we can avoid” Ibid., 48.

  “We had come to the time of final decision” Ibid., 47–48.

  “The meeting droned on.” Ibid., 49–50.

  Shumkov wondered whether the destroyer Svetlana V. Savranskaya, “New Sources on the Role of Soviet Submarines in the Cuban Missile Crisis,” Journal of Strategic Studies, 28, no. 2 (2005) 233–259; Peter A. Huchthausen, October Fury (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2007).

  “When they blew up those grenades” Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, Khrushchev’s Cold War: The Inside Story of an American Adversary (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006), 487, citing a BBC Scotland interview with Shumkov.

  “Shumkov cut him off” Huchthausen, October Fury, 210.

  “aimed exclusively at uncovering violations” Savranskaya, “New Sources on the Role of Soviet Submarines in the Cuban Missile Crisis,” quoting Dubivko, “In the Depth of the Sargasso Sea” 321n32.

  “For some time we were able to avoid them” Document #7, Recollections of Vadim Orlov (USSR Submarine B-59), “We Will Sink Them All, But We Will Not Disgrace Our Navy,” Alexander Mozgovoi, The Cuban Samba of the Quartet of Foxtrots: Soviet Submarines in the Caribbean Crisis of 1962 (Moscow: Military Parade, 2002). Translated by Svetlana Savranskaya in The Underwater Cuban Missile Crisis: Soviet Submarines and the Risks of Nuclear War, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 339, edited by Thomas Blanton, William Burr, and Svetlana Savranskaya, October 24, 2012, nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB399/.

  “Maybe the war has already started up there” Recollections of Vadim Orlov, “We Will Sink Them All, But We Will Not Disgrace Our Navy,” in Mozgovoi, The Cuban Samba of the Quartet of Foxtrots.

  “The Man Who Saved the World” This is also the title of the PBS documentary in 2012, quoting Thomas Blanton of the National Security Archive. The film ends with Arkhipova’s statement of pride.

  “easily” been mistaken “for a nuclear bomber” Premier Khrushchev’s communiqué to President Kennedy, accepting an end to the missile crisis, October 28, 1962, in The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962: A National Security Documents Reader, eds. Laurence Chang and Peter Kornbluh (New York: New Press, 1998), 238.

  “There’s always some son-of-a-bitch” Roger Hilsman, quoted in Michael Dobbs, One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), 269–270.

  “The generals are itching for a fight.” Evan Thomas, Robert Kennedy: His Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 227.

  “The thought that disturbed him most” Kennedy, Thirteen Days, 84.

  “Mr. President, we and you ought not now to pull” Khrushchev letter to Kennedy, October 26, 1962, State Department translation, in Chang and Kornbluh, The Cuban Missile Crisis, 198.

  “When I asked the military advisors if they could assure me” Norman Cousins, “Editorial: The Cuban Missile Crisis: An Anniversary,” Saturday Review, October 15, 1977.

  Chapter 14: Bombing Cities

  Where did the road to doomsday begin? For a partial list of readings I’ve consulted on the origins of bombing in general and the Anglo-American bombing of Germany and U.S. bombing of Japan in particular, in addition to those already cited herein, see the following: Conrad C. Crane, Bombs, Cities, and Civilians: American Airpower Strategy in World War II (Lawrence: University Press
of Kansas, 1993); Richard Overy, The Bombers and the Bombed: Allied Air War Over Europe, 1940–1945 (New York: Viking, 2013); Hermann Knell, To Destroy a City: Strategic Bombing and Its Human Consequences in World War II (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2003); Randall Hansen, Fire and Fury: The Allied Bombing of Germany, 1942–1945 (New York: NAL Caliber, 2009); Alexander McKee, Dresden 1945: The Devil’s Tinderbox (New York: Dutton, 1982); Ronald Schaffer, Wings of Judgment: American Bombing in World War II (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); A. C. Grayling, Among the Dead Cities: The History and Moral Legacy of the WWII Bombing of Civilians in Germany and Japan (New York: Walker & Company, 2006); Keith Lowe, Inferno: The Fiery Destruction of Hamburg, 1943 (New York: Scribner, 2007); Jorg Friedrich, The Fire: The Bombing of Germany, 1940–1945 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006); Erik Markusen and David Kopf, The Holocaust and Strategic Bombing: Genocide and Total War in the Twentieth Century (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995); Susan Griffin, A Chorus of Stones: The Private Life of War (New York: Anchor Books, 1993); Sven Lindqvist, A History of Bombing (New York: New Press, 2001); John Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon, 1986); Charles Griffith, The Quest: Haywood Hansell and American Strategic Bombing in World War II (Alabama: Air University Press, 1999); Haywood S. Hansell, The Strategic Air War Against Germany and Japan (Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force History, United States Air Force, 1986); Tami Davis Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare: The Evolution of British and American Ideas About Strategic Bombing, 1914–1945 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002); Robert Pape, Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996); Mike Davis, “Berlin’s Skeleton in Utah’s Closet,” in Dead Cities: And Other Tales (New York: New Press, 2002), 65–84.

  “The ruthless bombing from the air of civilians” Franklin D. Roosevelt, “An Appeal to Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany, and Poland to Refrain from Air Bombing of Civilians,” September 1, 1939, www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=15797.

  “conduct hostilities with a firm desire” John Finnis, et al., Nuclear Deterrence, Morality and Realism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 39.

  Britain introduced these three principles Ibid., citing Sir John Slessor, The Central Blue: Recollections and Reflections by Marshal of the Royal Air Force (London: Cassell and Co., 1956), 213; “Protection of Civilian Populations Against Bombing From the Air in Case of War,” League of Nations Resolution, September 30, 1938, www.dannen.com/decision/int-law.html#d.

  “the first terror bombing of a civilian population” Barbara Tuchman, Stilwell and the American Experience of China, 1911–1945 (New York: Macmillan, 1971), chapter 5.

  his manuscript in English didn’t surface See Herbert Mitgang, “Article Hemingway Wrote for Pravda in ’38 Is Published in English,” New York Times, November 29, 1982. It was published in Pravda on August 1, 1938, under the title “Humanity Will Not Forgive This!” The text was published in 1982 by William Braasch Watson, who provided an introduction.

  “an absolutely devastating, exterminating attack” Finnis, et al., Nuclear Deterrence, Morality and Realism, 44. Emphasis added.

  “We will pay back a hundredfold” F. M. Sallagar, The Road to Total War: Escalation in World War II, R-465-PR (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, April 1969), 111.

  “You know, there aren’t too many bombs within that circle” Freeman Dyson, Disturbing the Universe (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), 26.

  “If there was to be any strategic bombing at all” Sallagar, The Road to Total War, 128.

  “Bomber Command, as represented by its Commander-in-Chief” Ibid.

  “to employ a high proportion of incendiaries” Ibid., 129.

  the American Jesuit John Ford and the British pacifist Vera Brittain John C. Ford, S.J., “The Morality of Obliteration Bombing,” Theological Studies 5, no. 3 (September 1944): 261–309; Vera Brittain, Seeds of Chaos (London: New Vision Publishing Co., 1944); Vera Brittain, One Voice: Pacifist Writings from the Second World War (London: Continuum, 2005). Another strong critic was the Anglican Bishop George Bell. See Andrew Chandler, “The Church of England and the Obliteration Bombing of Germany in the Second World War,” The English Historical Review 108, no. 429 (1993): 920–946.

  “The primary object of your operations” Ibid., 155–56.

  The primary targets listed were four important cities Ibid., 156. On this directive, Sallagar comments: “There could be little question but that the intent was to launch a concentrated air offensive against German cities.”

  “Ref. the new bombing directive” Ibid., 157.

  “a pregnant date in air history” Ibid.

  “a bombing directive had singled out the parts of cities” Ibid.

  Chapter 15: Burning Cities

  “Bodies were frequently found” Robert N. Neer, Napalm: An American Biography (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2013), 63.

  “Nobody understands to this day” Freeman Dyson, Weapons and Hope (New York: HarperCollins, 1984), 117.

  “The Dresden fire storm was the worst” Freeman Dyson, Disturbing the Universe (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), 28.

  a surrealistic account of the Dresden attack Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (New York: Delacorte Press, 1969).

  “long-awaited decision to adopt deliberate” John W. Dower, Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor/Hiroshima/9-11/Iraq (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010), 175.

  On February 3, 1945, General Spaatz Michael S. Sherry, The Rise of American Airpower: The Creation of Armageddon (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), 260–264. Sherry’s book is particularly perceptive on the downslide toward area bombing and firebombing.

  “Our policy never has been to inflict terror” Neer, Napalm, 65.

  “It seems to me” Frederick Taylor, Dresden: Tuesday 13 February, 1945 (London: Bloomsbury, 2005), 432. Emphasis added.

  “assume that the view under consideration” Ibid., 432. Emphasis added.

  American bombardiers weren’t hitting See Malcolm Gladwell, “The Strange Tale of the Norden Bombsight,” TED talk, July 2011, www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell?language=en.

  “Incendiary projectiles would burn the cities” Michael S. Sherry, The Rise of American Air Power: The Creation of Armageddon (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), 31, 58. See also Neer, Napalm, 66 (with references).

  “There won’t be any hesitation about bombing civilians” Dower, Cultures of War, 168. See also Sherry, The Rise of American Air Power, 109.

  “no evasive action” became the rule Curtis LeMay, World War II Database, ww2db.com/person_bio.php?person_id=509.

  His memoir, Mission with LeMay General Curtis E. LeMay, Mission with LeMay: My Story. With MacKinlay Kantor (New York: Doubleday and Company, 1965).

  “Plenty of strategic targets right in the primary area” LeMay, Mission with LeMay, 349–352. Some thought paragraphs have been omitted.

  “Drafts from the Tokyo fires” Ibid., 352.

  “Contrary to supposition” Ibid., 253.

  the New York Times was reporting Warren Moscow, “51 Square Miles Burned Out In Six B-29 Attacks on Tokyo,” New York Times, May 30, 1945, A1, 4.

  “only in the eleventh paragraph” Dower, Cultures of War, 183. See also Sherry, The Rise of American Air Power, 109.

  or a night’s troubled sleep Peter J. Kuznick, “The Decision to Risk the Future: Harry Truman, the Atomic Bomb and the Apocalyptic Narrative” Asia-Pacific Journal 5, no. 7 (July 2007), apjjf.org/-Peter-J.-Kuznick/2479/article.html (and see footnote 6).

  “It is probable that more persons were killed in one six-hour period” United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Effects of the Incendiary Bomb Attacks on Japan: A Report on Eight Cities, Report 90, Dates of Survey: October 3, 1945–December 1, 1945. Washington, D.C.: Physical Damage Division, April 1947.

  written for Stimson by McGeorge Bundy See James Hershberg’s account of the genesis of this propaganda piece in his outstanding biography of Conant (who pr
essed Stimson to publish it and supervised Bundy in drafting it), James B. Conant: Harvard to Hiroshima and the Making of the Nuclear Age (New York: Knopf, 1993), 289–394.

  “It is my opinion” William D. Leahy, I Was There: The Personal Story of the Chief of Staff to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman Based on His Notes and Diaries Made at the Time (New York: Whittlesey House, 1950), 441.

  “we scorched and boiled and baked” LeMay, Mission with LeMay, 387.

  The judgment that the bomb had not been necessary For references, see Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, The Untold History of the United States (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012), 176–177.

  “Based on a detailed investigation” United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Pacific War, July 1, 1946, 26, www.anesi.com/ussbs01.htm#hindsigh.

  “There are no innocent civilians” Sherry, The Rise of American Air Power, 287. Interview June 29, 1981 (cf. 392).

  Chapter 16: Killing a Nation

  attack fifteen “key Soviet cities” Richard Rhodes, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 23–24. See also Gregg Herken, Brotherhood of the Bomb (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2002), 142.

  President Harry Truman himself wasn’t formally briefed David Alan Rosenberg, “U.S. Nuclear Stockpile, 1945 to 1950,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 38, no. 5 (1982): 26. Rosenberg got these numbers declassified for the first time in 1982.