Red, Dead, or Neither

In April 1945, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson briefed the new President, Harry Truman, about a secret program: “Within four months we shall in all probability have completed the most terrible weapon ever known in human history, one bomb of which could destroy a whole city.” Stimson’s account of the decision to drop the atomic bomb appeared in the February 1947 issue of Harper’s. The article is reprinted in the current issue of the SAIS Review (Summer/Fall 1985), along with several original articles on the aftermath of Hiroshima.

The SAIS Review is hardly alone in its commemoration of the dawn of nuclear weaponry. Recent issues of prestige quarterlies have been chock full of such articles. For example, Daedalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, devoted both its Spring and Summer issues to discussions of the Strategic Defense Initiative (a/k/a “Star Wars”). Similarly, the four-hundred-page April issue of the University of Chicago’s quarterly journal Ethics was filled with articles on nuclear deterrence. (Robert W. Tucker’s essay, “Morality and Deterrence,” deserves special mention.)

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Michael A. Scully

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In April 1945, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson briefed the new President, Harry Truman, about a secret program: “Within four months we shall in all probability have completed the most terrible weapon ever known in human history, one bomb of which could destroy a whole city.” Stimson’s account of the decision to drop the atomic bomb appeared in the February 1947 issue of Harper’s. The article is reprinted in the current issue of the SAIS Review (Summer/Fall 1985), along with several original articles on the aftermath of Hiroshima.

The SAIS Review is hardly alone in its commemoration of the dawn of nuclear weaponry. Recent issues of prestige quarterlies have been chock full of such articles. For example, Daedalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, devoted both its Spring and Summer issues to discussions of the Strategic Defense Initiative (a/k/a “Star Wars”). Similarly, the four-hundred-page April issue of the University of Chicago’s quarterly journal Ethics was filled with articles on nuclear deterrence. (Robert W. Tucker’s essay, “Morality and Deterrence,” deserves special mention.)