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WAR AND PEACE IN THE NUCLEAR AGE - TAPES C03060-C03061 GEORGE RATHJENS
Eisenhower Investigation into SAC Nuclear Strategy
Interviewer:
SO COULD YOU FIRST OF ALL DESCRIBE THIS EPISODE WHEN YOU WERE BRIEFED
BY SAC AND GENERAL POWER ABOUT SOVIET MISSILE CAPABILITIES?
Rathjens:
Well, I was serving on the committee that was charged with looking at
all of the country's strategic programs at the time. And the big issue
at that time was the fate of the B-70 program. The B-70 bomber. And we
visited SAC headquarters. And General Power wanted to make the case
that there were or would be a lot of targets in the Soviet Union that
could best be dealt with with the B-70 bomber. Now at that time we were
beginning to get photography from reconnaissance satellites, but the
clearances in connection with that were very tightly held. Very few
people knew about that or had access to the photography. There were
only two of us on that committee who did. And to clear other people to
see the photography was a pretty cumbersome procedure and required
approval in Washington. But General Power decided that on his own
initiative he would clear this committee while we were in Omaha so we
could so he could show us the nature of the evidence about the emerging
threat. He did this. I understand later he had his wrist slapped for
doing so. But in any case we looked at the photography and there was no
evidence there at all that really proved that there were Soviet
missiles in the numbers that he suggested. Or that they were being
built. What he was showing us were railroad spurs and roads in remote
areas. And he would point to one of these and say, well, you see that.
That's going to be a missile site. Or, that's the beginning of a
missile complex. And and so he made his case.
Interviewer:
AND DID YOU SAY, WELL HOW DO YOU KNOW?
Rathjens:
Well, we asked him. We said, you know, "How do you know that?" Sure. Of
course we asked. How do you know that's going to be a missile site?
Maybe something else. Maybe but well he just believed that was the way
it was going to be and that he had to be prepared for that. And the
country therefore needed the B-70 bomber to deal with those kinds of
targets. At that time, the B-70 was in competition with our missiles in
a way and so... they were... the Air Force was arguing at that the
bomber... actually they began to call it the RS-70 at the time. The
Reconnaissance Strike aircraft because they claimed that with it you
could go after time-urgent targets and you could pick up new targets
using it as a reconnaissance vehicle.
Interviewer:
MOVING ALONG TO YOUR PREVIOUS VISIT TO OMAHA IN THE FALL OF 1960. HOW
DID THAT ARISE AS FAR AS YOU RECALL?
Rathjens:
Well, it's hard for me to separate what I knew at the time, and what
I've read about it since. As I understand it, the it was a
Navy-instigated visit. That somehow the Navy was very suspicious of
what was going on in Omaha in the development of the first Single
Integrated Operations Plan for our nuclear forces. They feared that
that show would be used to strengthen the Air Force position in the
competition that was going on between the Navy and the Air Force at the
time. And so apparently Admiral Burke -- Arleigh Burke was the Chief of
Naval Operations at the time -- in one way and another managed to get
this trip underway. He talked with George Kistiakowsky who was
President Eisenhower's science adviser, and who was my superior. And
through Burke and through the President's naval aid, Peter Rand, the
trip was laid on. Eisenhower gave George Kistiakowsky instructions,
written instructions to go out and take a look at the nature of the
SIOP. And so George undertook this task. He claims to have done it with
some reluctance. Actually, I think he secretly relished it. But for
political reasons he had to claim he was reticent about doing it. And
he sent me out there on the first instance to do sort of
reconnaissance. And I went out and spent a couple of days looking at
this planning operation which had to do with how we would allocate our
weapons -- both the Navy's weapons and the Air Force's to targets. And
then I went back and reported to him. And then Kistiakowsky, myself,
and Pete Scoville who was at the time Deputy Director of CIA went out.
And and spent another two or three days reviewing those plans. And then
we went back and reported to Kistiakowsky and I reported to the
President on the nature of that planning operation.
Interviewer:
AND WHAT WERE YOUR CONCLUSIONS, AND HOW WERE THEY ARRIVED AT?
Rathjens:
Well, it was a it was an open ended kind of a an inquiry. The I didn't
find anything terribly surprising in my own way at least initially as
we went through this operation. The the target complex that they talked
about striking included missile sites in the Soviet Union, airbases
other military targets. Steel mills, oil refineries. And a number of
other targets that were air defense targets. The plan was to strike
those targets with missiles of various kinds to facilitate bomber
penetration into the Soviet Union. And the... and the name of the game
was to try to figure out exactly which kinds of weapons and how many
should be allocated to each of these targets so that it would be a
coordinated plan. And... and they did this. And there were -- Oh, I
suppose there must have been a couple of thousand targets and you know,
several thousand weapons involved. In a sense it was a rational
operation. They specified the levels of damage that had to be inflicted
on each target to the extent they could. And then the would through a
computer code allocate weapons to these targets to achieve a desired
expectation of destruction. Now the thing that has struck in my mind --
two things struck in my mind most readily about that whole... that
whole exercise. When I was through, and I forget whether it was the
first trip or the second trip I made, I had some time left over. And so
I decided just for, well just to use the time and to satisfy my own
curiosity, it had seemed to me that they were attacking these targets
very heavily. And so I asked for an atlas. And I looked through the
atlas and I picked a city in the Soviet Union that I thought most
resembled Hiroshima. Just to see how heavily they would attack that
target compared with what we had done in 1945. And I must say, I was a
bit taken a back. I had discovered that particular city had four
weapons allocated to it. One of them, as I recollect was four and a
half megatons. Three hundred times the size of the Hiroshima weapon.
And and the I believe it had three back up weapons, each of over a
megaton. So that gives I you some scale... some idea of the... of the
of the intensity of destruction that we had in mind at the time. And of
our capabilities. The other thing that struck me was when we reported
back to the President. Now he had been concerned, apparently, about the
way the planning was going and about the Air Force's desires to build
up its capabilities to acquire more weapons, to strike the Soviet Union
more heavily. And it was that concern on his part, and I guess,
enforced by the Navy's concerns, that had led to this whole enterprise.
And we came back to the White House and reported to him. And we
essentially confirmed his worst fears. That indeed the level of
destruction, the level of damage that would be envisaged would be
enormous. That there was a lot of overkill. And he listened to all of
this, and my recollection is that he was visibly upset about it.
Indicated that he was concerned in his conversation with us. And
expressed at least reservations or concern about General Power. About
General Power having this position as commander of the Strategic Air
Command. And the astonishing thing to me was that he didn't do anything
about it. I would have expected that had he expressed the kinds of
reservations he had, that there would be a new commander of SAC within
a week.
Interviewer:
THEY MUST HAVE BEEN PRETTY STRONG RESERVATIONS THEN?
Rathjens:
I think he was very upset about this. And I couldn't understand it.
Just couldn't understand why he didn't take action.
Expected Levels of Destruction
Interviewer:
YOU HAVEN'T QUITE CONVEYED TO ME WHY, IN ANYTHING THAT YOU SAID OF WHAT
YOU SAID THAT WOULD HAVE UPSET HIM. WHAT WAS UPSETTING HIM SO MUCH?
Rathjens:
Well, the level of damage. I don't... the number of weapons that were
allocated to various target complexes in the Soviet Union was
extraordinary. I mean this one example I've given you this one small
city the size of Hiroshima is just one. I mean we also, I'm sure I
don't remember the numbers anymore, told him about how many weapons had
been laid on Moscow and about the level of damage that would be
inflicted there. As I recall it, the guidance that the people in Omaha
were using internally generated guidance as far as I know is that they
wanted to achieve a 97 percent expected destruction of many of the
targets. Well, to do that, you know, any given weapon maybe has a 50,
60, 70 percent chance of getting through to its endpoint. If you want
to have 97 percent expected level of destruction you just... you attack
with a lot of weapons.
Interviewer:
MEMBERS OF THE PLANNING STAFF HAVE ARGUED TO US THAT THE GUIDANCE THEY
WERE WORKING ON WAS NOT INTERNALLY GENERATED. IT WAS GIVEN TO THEM BY
THE JCS AND THEY WERE SAYING IF YOU HAVE CRITICISMS OF THE SIOP, THEN
GO CHANGE THE GUIDANCE. SO IT'S NOT OUR FAULT.
Rathjens:
Well, that may be. I'm sure there is some truth in that. There... was a
guidance generated in the Pentagon for...
Interviewer:
SO WE WERE TALKING ABOUT WHETHER THIS WAS INTERNALLY GENERATED GUIDANCE
OR THE JCS GUIDANCE.
Rathjens:
Well, the guidance was provided to the people in Omaha from the
Pentagon, from the joint staff. And I don't remember what levels of
destruction were suggested. I have a vague recollection that they
talked about 90 percent levels of destruction. And the people in Omaha
interpreted that to be a minimum level. And and wrote their programs to
achieve higher levels of destruction. It's probably important to
understand a little bit of the background here. If you were interested
in deterring Soviet attack, you know, it hardly matters whether any
given target would be destroyed with 50 percent or 80 percent or 90
percent level of destruction. But if you want to generate force
requirements for a very large number of weapons and delivery vehicles,
then you can drive those force requirements through the ceiling by
specifying very high levels of destruction. And that kind of a
competition, that kind of, those kinds of issues were floating around
at the time as the Air Force was striving to build up its capabilities
and to expand the target list. It was those kinds of issues that were
troubling the Navy. Troubling the President. And that we found somewhat
troublesome when we went out to Omaha.
Interviewer:
IN A SENSE IT WAS LOOKING FOR SOMEONE TO BLAME. IS IT FAR TO BLAME THE
COMMANDER IN CHIEF OF SAC OR SAC AT ALL IF ESSENTIALLY THIS GUIDANCE
AND THESE HIGH LEVELS OF PROBABILITY AND THESE HIGH LEVELS OF
DESTRUCTION WOULD BEING HANDED DOWN FROM THE JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF.
COULDN'T THE PRESIDENT SIMPLY HAVE INSISTED THAT THE GUIDANCE BE
CHANGED...
Rathjens:
Sure, the President could have changed it. Could have insisted on
changing it. But I think it's a little ambiguous. Maybe somebody else
can clarify this for you. My feeling was that the guidance that these
people were getting from the Pentagon was unwise in that it specified a
much higher level of destruction than was necessary and a much broader
range of target than would have been necessary. But then, the people in
Omaha were embellishing on that by interpreting the guidance they got
from the joint staff as being minimum levels of destruction and
striving for even higher levels. So it was a combination of..., I want
to say, well it was a combination of decisions made both in Omaha and
in the Pentagon. Could have been changed by the Secretary of Defense or
the President.
Interviewer:
SO YOUR OVERALL IMPRESSION AFTER THIS VISIT TO OMAHA -- WHAT DID YOU
FEEL YOURSELF ABOUT THE AMERICAN STRATEGIC ARSENAL?
Rathjens:
Well, I couldn't separate this really from my other involvement in
these matters. I'd been involved for quite some time in issues relating
to all of our strategic weapons programs. That my job in the White
House was to worry about all of those programs that were... that were
entrained the Minuteman program, the Polaris program. And I had the
feeling that we were building... we were going to build up forces that
were going to be grossly excessive to any rational purpose. The Navy
and the Air Force had been at logger heads for quite some time on the
question of the role of the Polaris force and on what our strategy
should be for dealing with the Soviet Union. The navy view had been one
of minimum deterrence. Let's maintain a capability sufficient to
destroy the Soviet Union as a going society and that's enough. And the
Air Force view had been very much, well, we're going to fight a war
very much as we fought World War II. Or we would destroy industrial
facilities, ball bearing plants, steel mills, oil refineries, the whole
works. In the Air Force view you could generate almost infinite force
requirements. Now I happened to be more persuaded of the wisdom of
minimum deterrence. That that was sufficient. So I was troubled, aside
from that visit to Omaha, by the whole trend at the time in building up
capabilities that would involve the kind of destruction the Air Force
had in mind. And the guidance that people were getting in Omaha, to get
back to the SIOP, really involved incorporating elements of both the
Navy's view and the Air Force's view so that the target list that
people in Omaha were considering did involve a lot of military targets,
but a lot of urban industrial targets as well.
[END OF TAPE C03060]
Interviewer:
...AND ALSO IF THIS TIME YOU CAN GENERATE AS MUCH WITHOUT WANTING TO
OVERDO IT, AS MUCH FORCEFULNESS AS YOU CAN ABOUT YOUR CONCLUSIONS SO
THAT WE CAN UNDERSTAND WHY EISENHOWER WAS SO UPSET. SO HOW DID THAT
MISSION COME ABOUT AND IN PARTICULAR, WHAT HAPPENED WHEN YOU CAME BACK?
Rathjens:
Well George Kistiakowsky, the President's science adviser, was asked by
the President to go out and look into the... to the development of the
single integrated operations plan. And we had sort of an open ended
charter. He sent me out on the first instance to take a quick look at
it. And I did. Came back, reported to him, and then he and I and Pete
Scoville Director of Deputy Director of CIA went out and spent some
more time on it. The key points I suppose were these: that we found
that the levels of destruction that were going to be inflicted on
Soviet targets were extraordinarily high. The... the guidance these
people had in which they were operating required that the levels of
destruction of many targets be high, but I think they were interpreting
those instructions as minimal. So that they specified levels of damage
that virtually insured the destruction of the target. And in many
instances that involved allocating a number of weapons to the same
target complex. That happened in the case, of course, the larger cities
like Leningrad and Moscow. A city that really the particular incidence
that really sticks in my mind was one that occurred when at the end
when at the end of the meeting I decided I would pick a city that
looked like Hiroshima to compare the level of destruction that they had
envisaged for that city with what had occurred in 1945. And when I did,
I found that city in the Soviet Union had a one weapon of 4 megatons on
it. About 300 times the yield of the Hiroshima weapon. And then in
addition it had 3 other weapons each of over a megaton. Well that's an
appalling level of destruction to compare it to what we, you know,
considering what was... what was accomplished in Japan. We came back
and we reported to the President. And he had been fearful that the
whole exercise would be used, or was being used, to generate
requirements for additional numbers of nuclear weapons and delivery
systems. And I think our story confirmed his worst fears. He was
appalled at the levels of destruction that we reported that would be
achieved in this. I don't remember that I reported the Hiroshima
example, but the President clearly expressed concern about all of this.
And he had reservations about General Power who was the Commander of
SAC about his role in all of this and the way he was interpreting his
guidance. I was astonished that the President didn't do anything about
that. I would have thought that considering the level of his concern
that we would have had a new commander of the Strategic Air Command
within about a week. But nothing happened.
Interviewer:
DO YOU THINK PERHAPS EISENHOWER WAS JUST FEELING TIRED AND RESIGNED BY
THIS TIME?
Rathjens:
Well, I don't know. You know, this was very near the end of his term.
But he was he was troubled by the... by the direction in which all of
our military programs were going at the time. And I think that was
reflected later on in his... in his farewell address. No I think, but I
think it was more a matter of temperament that he expressed these
concerns, but he just wasn't willing to relieve General Power.
Inflexibility of SIOP
Interviewer:
DO YOU THINK THAT REALLY THAT WOULD HAVE DONE ANY GOOD? WAS THE PROBLEM
JUST IN SAC OR THE PARTICULAR INDIVIDUAL IN CHARGE OF SAC?
Rathjens:
No, of course it wasn't. It was in the guidance people v/ere getting
from the Pentagon as well. The whole plan the basis for the... for the
work that people out in Omaha were doing envisaged a attacking an
extraordinary range of targets. And attacking them very heavily. One
could have thought in terms of just having a deterrent capability...
ability to destroy a number of Soviet cities. And that had been an
earlier view of what should be done with our strategic forces. But as
we were getting more and more weapons it became possible to do more and
so the plans of what to do were expanded. And what really would have
been required would be a change in planning specifying a different
range of kinds of targets and probably more flexibility. The plan that
was being generated at that time was a very inflexible plan leaving the
President virtually no options. He could either say, "Yes, let's
attack," or "let's not."
Interviewer:
I WAS GOING TO COME TO THAT. IT'S BEEN ALLEGED THAT SO INFLEXIBLE WAS
THE PLAN THAT FOR EXAMPLE EVEN IF A GENERAL WAR BETWEEN THE SOVIET
UNION AND THE UNITED STATES HAD BROKEN OUT AND CHINA HAD SPECIFICALLY
REMAINED NEUTRAL THAT IT WAS NOT IN FACT POSSIBLE UNDER THE FIRST SIOP
TO WITHHOLD AN ATTACK ON CHINA OR ONLY WITH GREAT DIFFICULTY.
Rathjens:
I'm not sure that's true. I have a vague recollection that there was
that much flexibility and there were a few targets, as I recollect,
where the burst height of the weapons could be varied depending on the
way the wind was blowing. I remember we were concerned about weapons
landing on Leningrad and producing heavy fallout over Helsinki. And
there may have been a little flexibility to accommodated those kinds of
problems. But an idea, if anybody had an idea, well we will... let's...
let's go after the oil refineries and the air bases, but skip the steel
mills, no possibility of anything like that.
Interviewer:
WHAT WAS THE ATTITUDE TO A FIRST OR SECOND STRIKE? IT'S BEEN ARGUED
THEY NEEDED THIS NUMBER OF WEAPONS, BUT THEY KNEW THEY WEREN'T GOING TO
BE ABLE TO USE THEM, BECAUSE AFTER ALL THIS WAS GOING TO BE A SECOND
STRIKE, THEY HAD TO ASSUME THAT A GOOD PROPORTION OF THE FORCE WOULD
HAVE BEEN ALREADY DESTROYED BY A SOVIET FIRST STRIKE.
Rathjens:
Well, I don't think that was assumed. You see, the planning in SAC had
been
Interviewer:
[REPEATS QUESTION]
Rathjens:
Well, the question of whether or not we would be able to use all of our
weapons was of course a real one. The possibility of surprise attack
against us could destroy a large fraction of our forces. But by and
large, I think SAC had been accustomed to thinking that one way or
another they would have enough warning so that they would be able to
execute their plan without very much interruption until they hit Soviet
air defenses That they would be able to get their aircraft into the
air. They had been...they weren't very accustomed to thinking of having
missiles on our side. But that was a very curious thing about the whole
business. That it... that there was one plan: a Single Integrated
Operations Plan. Not two plans. You might have thought there would be
two. One for the contingency of our going first, and the other for the
contingency of their striking first. But we had this single plan. And
the presumption was well, if they... if they do destroy some of our
forces, we'll do the best we can. And with the level of the redundancy
in targeting that was involved, we would have done pretty well. There
were such things done as cross targeting. They would arrange for
example that in attacking a single weapon...a single complex in the
Soviet Union they would use weapons... use one weapon from a Polaris
ship and another one from a Minuteman and another one from a bomber. So
that if one of those... one of those vehicles were destroyed the other
two weapons would presumably get through. So they did take account of
that kind of a contingency. But to really think in terms of this being
a second strike, no. This was a single plan which they expected to
execute as best they could.
Interviewer:
DID YOU GET THE IMPRESSION THAT THEY WERE EXPECTING WHEN THE CRUNCH
CAME THAT THEY WOULD HAVE REALLY GOT IN FIRST?
Rathjens:
I didn't get that so much from that particular planning operation, but
in talking with SAC people on other occasions, and I guess perhaps on
that occasion as well. Yeah, I think that just generally was the
feeling that the possibility of the Soviet Union destroying a
significant part of our capability for preemptive attack was downplayed
very heavily.
Interviewer:
WELL THEN IT WAS VERY MUCH PLAYED UP IN PUBLIC. ENORMOUSLY SO.
Rathjens:
Well it... perhaps so. Certainly in later years it became a major
issue, but going back to the... back to the mid-'50s...
Interviewer:
WELL, I MEAN GENERAL POWER IN 1960 WAS GIVING EVIDENCE THAT THE WHOLE
OF HIS FORCE COULD BE DESTROYED BY AS FEW AS 300 SOVIET MISSILES AND
WAS GENERATING A GREAT DEAL OF ALARM AS A RESULT.
Rathjens:
Well, it was a matter of concern, yes. In fact, I remember in '59 and
in '60 we talked about putting aircraft on airborne alert to deal with
that problem. And we had contingency plans developed. And I believe we
even did a few experiments of that kind. But the planning that went on
in SAC, it seemed to me and certainly in the Single Integrated
Operations Plan, really didn't reflect that.
Effects of SIOP
Interviewer:
LASTLY, DID YOU GET THE FEELING THAT, I'VE SEEN THAT FIRST SIOP
DESCRIBED ROUGHLY IN THE FOLLOWING TERMS: THAT IN ONE SINGLE ATTACK
WITH NOTHING HELD IN RESERVE AS NEAR AS POSSIBLE WITH EVERYTHING
HITTING THE SOVIET RADAR NETS AT THE SAME TIME, EVERY MAJOR CITY NOT
ONLY IN THE SOVIET UNION, BUT IN EASTERN EUROPE AND CHINA WOULD HAVE
BEEN DESTROYED AND THE CASUALTY LEVELS WOULD HAVE BEEN PERHAPS WITH
MINIMUM OF SAY 350, 400 MILLION PEOPLE. WOULD YOU QUARREL WITH THAT?
Rathjens:
Oh not at all. I think that... certainly every city would have been
destroyed. And the great bulk of the population in the whole of what we
used to call the Sino-Soviet block would have been destroyed.
Interviewer:
COULD YOU DESCRIBE IN YOUR WORDS A SIMILAR KIND OF SUMMARY OF THE
EFFECTS IF THE SIOP HAD BEEN PUT INTO EFFECT?
Rathjens:
Well, I think all the cities would have been destroyed in the Soviet
Union. I'm not sure about China. I don't remember looking at Chinese
cities as carefully as the Soviet Union. The amount of fallout would
have been enormous, because the weapons at that time averaged about
maybe 3 megatons which is about eight times, what they do now. Weapons
were very much larger in those days. And if they were used for surface
bursts, they would have produced fallout all over Eurasia. And would
have caused an enormous amount of destruction in not only in the
countries attacked, but those around their periphery as well.
Interviewer:
WOULD YOU LIKE OT HAZARD ANY IDEA AS TO THE NUMBER OF CASUALTIES THAT
MIGHT HAVE BEEN CAUSED BY THE IMPLEMENTATION OF SUCH A PLAN?
Rathjens:
Well, I'm not so sure about China. But I suppose that the population of
the Soviet Union must have been about 200 million at the time. And I
would have guessed 75 percent somewhere in that range. It would have
been very, it was a very heavy attack. It really would have been the
end of the whole... the whole show for the... for the Soviet Union.
Total devastation.
US National Security
Interviewer:
HOW DID IT STRIKE YOU AT THIS VERY TIME WHEN YOU WERE MAKING THIS VISIT
TO OMAHA, SENATOR KENNEDY CAMPAIGNING PARTLY ON THE GROUND THAT AMERICA
WAS WEAK STRATEGICALLY?
Rathjens:
Well that was... you're referring to the missile gap, or course. And
Interviewer:
NOT ONLY THE MISSILE GAP, BUT THE GENERAL FEELING...
Rathjens:
Well, I know, but my concern was with the missiles, I was concerned
about strategic weapons and don't have recollections of the other
areas. And I knew what... I knew what we had and what we had coming
down the line. And I was privy to the U-2 photography and such
satellite intelligence as we had and I must say until the middle of '59
I suppose I was persuaded he might have been right. And then as we
began to get more photography, I guess I realized that there wasn't
going to be any missile gap. And the real issue was simply going to be
which of our programs, which of our missile programs we would...we
should be turning off, because we need not, felt that we need not
implement all of them. To tighten the Atlas in several versions.
Minuteman, Polaris, B-70. We were going to build more than we needed
and it was a question of which programs to cut back on. Well, while he
was arguing, of course, just the reverse, that we needed more.
Interviewer:
I JUST WONDERED WHETHER IT STRUCK YOU AS IRONIC THAT YOU WERE REPORTING
TO THE PRESIDENT AND ESSENTIALLY SAYING, "WE'VE GOT FAR TOO MUCH," AT A
TIME WHEN HE WAS UNDER CRITICISM FROM MOST OF THE REST OF THE DEFENSE
ESTABLISHMENT AND THE POLITICAL ESTABLISHMENT FOR ALLEGEDLY
UNDERPLAYING AMERICA'S SECURITY?
Rathjens:
But they were all... but these critics were all talking about the
future. You know, I don't think there was anybody that would have
argued very much at the time with the amount of damage that we could
have inflicted on the Soviet Union. The concern was with what they
could do to us five or six years hence after their... after their
missile program had produced the kinds of numbers that we were
projecting. Which they were not going to do and of course, did not do
until the '70s.
[END OF TAPE C03061 AND TRANSCRIPT]
Series
War and Peace in the Nuclear Age
Raw Footage
Interview with George Rathjens, 1986
Contributing Organization
WGBH (Boston, Massachusetts)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/15-kk94747074
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Description
Episode Description
George Rathjens was a member of President Eisenhower's scientific staff under Science Adviser George Kistiakowsky. In the interview he discusses the U.S. Air Force Strategic Air Command (SAC) and the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) for nuclear war in the late 1950s, touching on the inter-service rivalries in the weapons arena that existed at the time. He describes the Eisenhower White House's investigation into SAC's nuclear strategy, including SAC's thinking about a first strike capability and the expected levels of destruction from a U.S. attack on Soviet targets. In one instance, using a Hiroshima-sized target city in the USSR for comparison, Dr. Rathjens discovered that the plan called for weapons wielding several hundred times the power of the Hiroshima bomb. He notes that the guidance for the level of destruction was set at around 90 percent, which SAC took as a minimum, and set its own levels at 97 percent. He adds that SAC maintained both military and urban industrial targets. He explains the inflexibility of SAC's targeting, and therefore of the SIOP as a whole, and describes the hypothetical effects of the SIOP, which could destroy at least 75 percent of the Soviet Union, and would have major fallout affecting China and Eastern Europe. He recalls reporting to the president on his findings about SAC's plans, and further remembers that Eisenhower was visibly upset and voiced specific reservations about SAC commander Powell. Yet, to Dr. Rathjens' surprise, the president apparently did nothing to address the situation. He does acknowledge that SAC's guidance came from the Joint Staff.
Date
1986-05-30
Date
1986-05-30
Asset type
Raw Footage
Topics
Global Affairs
Military Forces and Armaments
Subjects
Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969; Power, Thomas S. (Thomas Sarsfield), 1905-1970; Kistiakowsky, George B. (George Bogdan), 1900-1982; Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963; Scoville, Herbert; United States. Air Force. Strategic Air Command; Burke, Arleigh A., 1901-1996; nuclear weapons; nuclear warfare; Hiroshima-shi (Japan) -- History -- Bombardment, 1945; Photographic reconnaissance systems; United States; Soviet Union; China; United States. Air Force; United States. Navy; United States. Joint Chiefs of Staff; United States. Central Intelligence Agency
Rights
Rights Note:,Rights:,Rights Credit:WGBH Educational Foundation,Rights Type:All,Rights Coverage:,Rights Holder:WGBH Educational Foundation
Media type
Moving Image
Duration
00:32:24
Embed Code
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Credits
Interviewee2: Rathjens, George W.
Publisher: WGBH Educational Foundation
AAPB Contributor Holdings
WGBH
Identifier: 3f4abc3531d85cad19d7cc41e36bf5020cdc15a2 (ArtesiaDAM UOI_ID)
Format: video/quicktime
Color: Color
Duration: 00:00:00
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Citations
Chicago: “War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with George Rathjens, 1986,” 1986-05-30, WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed October 18, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-kk94747074.
MLA: “War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with George Rathjens, 1986.” 1986-05-30. WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. October 18, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-kk94747074>.
APA: War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with George Rathjens, 1986. Boston, MA: WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-kk94747074