E-Book Overview
Confronting the Bomb tells the dramatic, inspiring story of how citizen activism helped curb the nuclear arms race and prevent nuclear war. This abbreviated version of Lawrence Wittner's award-winning trilogy, The Struggle Against the Bomb, shows how a worldwide, grassroots campaign—the largest social movement of modern times—challenged the nuclear priorities of the great powers and, ultimately, thwarted their nuclear ambitions. Based on massive research in the files of peace and disarmament organizations and in formerly top secret government records, extensive interviews with antinuclear activists and government officials, and memoirs and other published materials, Confronting the Bomb opens a unique window on one of the most important issues of the modern era: survival in the nuclear age. It covers the entire period of significant opposition to the bomb, from the final stages of the Second World War up to the present. Along the way, it provides fascinating glimpses of the interaction of key nuclear disarmament activists and policymakers, including Albert Einstein, Harry Truman, Albert Schweitzer, Norman Cousins, Nikita Khrushchev, Bertrand Russell, Andrei Sakharov, Linus Pauling, Dwight Eisenhower, Harold Macmillan, John F. Kennedy, Randy Forsberg, Mikhail Gorbachev, Helen Caldicott, E.P. Thompson, and Ronald Reagan. Overall, however, it is a story of popular mobilization and its effectiveness.
E-Book Content
Confronting the Bomb Stanford Nuclear Age Series General Editor, Martin Sherwin adv isory board Barton J. Bernstein and David Holloway Confronting the Bomb A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement Lawrence S. Wit tner stanford universit y press Stanford, California 2009 Stanford University Press Stanford, California © 2009 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wittner, Lawrence S. Confronting the bomb : a short history of the world nuclear disarmament movement / Lawrence S. Wittner. p. cm. — (Stanford nuclear age series) Includes index. isbn 978-0-8047-5631-0 (cloth : alk. paper) — isbn 978-0-8047-5632-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Antinuclear movement—History. 2. Nuclear disarmament— History. I. Title. II. Series: Stanford nuclear age series. jz5574.w58 2009 327.1'74706—dc22 2008055822 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Typeset at Stanford University Press in 10/14 Minion To merle curti, who launched me on this journey long ago The Stanford Nuclear Age Series Conceived by scientists, delivered by the military, and adopted by policymakers, nuclear weapons emerged from the ashes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to dominate our time. The politics, diplomacy, economy, and culture of the Cold War nurtured the nuclear arms race and, in turn have been altered by it. “We have had the bomb on our minds since 1945,” E. L. Doctorow observes. “It was first our weaponry and then our diplomacy, and now it’s our economy. How can we suppose that something so monstrously powerful would not, after forty years, compose our identity? The great golem we have made against our enemies is our culture, our bomb culture—its logic, its faith, its vision.” The pervasive, transformative potential of nuclear weapons was foreseen by their creators. When Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson assembled a committee in May 1945 to discuss postwar atomic energy planning, he spoke of the atomic bomb as a “revolutionary change in the relati