Imagining a Nuclear World War Two in Europe: Preparing US Troops for the Battlefield Use of Nuclear Weapons

Abstract

During the Cold War, it was widely acknowledged that the advent of nuclear weaponry had fundamentally altered the nature of war between nuclear armed nations. However, while strategic nuclear war planning was being carried out and implemented in deployed weaponry and personnel by the United States, parallel to this was the continued embrace of military strategies that had been elemental to the conduct and victory in Europe during World War Two. This article argues that at the same time while nuclear weapons dramatically altered the war planning of the United States during the Cold War, for Army battlefield commanders there was little departure from pre-existing doctrines regarding the defence of Central Europe. For these battlefield commanders, the manufacture of tactical nuclear weapons was largely overlaid upon existing strategies to repel an imagined Soviet incursion. Focusing on discussions of battlefield nuclear tactics by Army strategists, the paper demonstrates that such planning persisted and was even embedded into training throughout the first half of the Cold War, and far beyond the entry of thermonuclear weaponry into the U.S. arsenal. The paper specifically looks at the training and participation of ground forces in nuclear weapon testing to acclimate them to the “atomic battlefield.” Through an examination of the indoctrination that these forces received about nuclear weapon effects, and specifically around the dangers posed by radiation, it becomes clear that the realities of nuclear weaponry had little effect on the preparation, training and strategies of American military leaders tasked with the military defence of Central Europe against Soviet incursion.