Cold War Nuclear Target Lists Declassified For First Time (gwu.edu)

HughPickens.com writes: Scott Shane writes in the NY Times that the National Archives and Records Administration has released a detailed list of the United States' potential targets for atomic bombers in the event of war with the Soviet Union, showing the number and the variety of targets on its territory, as well as in Eastern Europe and China. The Strategic Air Command study includes chilling details. According to its authors, their target priorities and nuclear bombing tactics would expose nearby civilians and "friendly forces and people" to high levels of deadly radioactive fallout. Moreover, the authors developed a plan for the "systematic destruction" of Soviet bloc urban-industrial targets that specifically and explicitly targeted "population" in all cities, including Beijing, Moscow, Leningrad, East Berlin, and Warsaw.

The target list was produced at a time before intercontinental or submarine-launched missiles, when piloted bombers were essentially the only means of delivering nuclear weapons. The United States then had a huge advantage over the Soviet Union, with a nuclear arsenal about 10 times as big. "We've known the general contours of nuclear war planning for a few decades," says Stephen I. Schwartz. "But it's great that the details are coming out. These are extraordinary weapons, capable of incredible destruction. And this document may be history, but unfortunately the weapons are not yet history."

Comments

Re:They are not history

[cold fjord]

Which is precisely why Iran getting nuclear weapons would be a good thing. It would deter Israel from its constant aggression and would bring some semblance of stability to the Middle East since neither would want to do anything stupid to tick the other off.

Excuse me, but that is a load of libelous crap. Israel and Iran were allies before the Islamic revolution. It was the Islamic revolutionary government of Iran that declared Israel to be their mortal enemy, that they were at war, and proceeded to back terrorism and war against Israel. Israel did nothing to deserve that. The Iranian leadership continues to make thinly veiled genocidal threats against Israel for which the Secretary General of the UN has rebuked them. Their attempt to get nuclear weapons* has only made the situation more ominous. This "constant aggression" by Israel you refer to is at most Israel trying to defend itself before yet another genocide is imposed on its people. The Germans attempted genocide and nearly accomplished it, the Arabs intended it (see below), and the Iranian leadership aspires to it. Now they want nuclear weapons and you think it is a good thing if they get them? It isn't.

War of Extermination

An October 11, 1947 report on the pan-Arab summit in the Lebanese town of Aley,[9] by Akhbar al-Yom's editor Mustafa Amin, contained an interview he held with Arab League secretary-general Azzam. Titled, "A War of Extermination," the interview read as follows (translated by Efraim Karsh; all ellipses are in the original text):

Abdul Rahman Azzam Pasha spoke to me about the horrific war that was in the offing saying:

        "I personally wish that the Jews do not drive us to this war, as this will be a war of extermination and momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Tartar massacre[10] or the Crusader wars. I believe that the number of volunteers from outside Palestine will be larger than Palestine's Arab population, for I know that volunteers will be arriving to us from [as far as] India, Afghanistan, and China to win the honor of martyrdom for the sake of Palestine You might be surprised to learn that hundreds of Englishmen expressed their wish to volunteer in the Arab armies to fight the Jews.

* Yes, they did have an active nuclear weapons program. Their plans for a nuclear warhead to fit on their missiles was found. At best that program is on hold.