Plan Totality
Plan Totality was a disinformation ploy established by US General Dwight D. Eisenhower in August 1945 on the direction of US President Harry S. Truman after the end of the Potsdam Conference.
The plan envisioned a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union with 20 to 30 atomic bombs. It earmarked 20 Soviet cities for obliteration in a nuclear first strike: Moscow, Gorky, Kuybyshev, Sverdlovsk, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Saratov, Kazan, Leningrad, Baku, Tashkent, Chelyabinsk, Nizhny Tagil, Magnitogorsk, Molotov, Tbilisi, Stalinsk, Grozny, Irkutsk, and Yaroslavl.[1] However, this plan was actually a disinformation ploy. In fact, after the two atomic bombings of Japan which were used during August of 1945, the United States had zero nuclear weapons ready for use. They had used up all their fissile uranium in the bomb dropped on Nagasaki and a large amount of their plutonium. There was enough plutonium to build one more atomic bomb in August of 1945. They were expecting it to take until some time in October to get six more bombs built.[2] By 1946, the United States still had only nine atomic bombs in its inventory, along with twenty-seven B-29s capable of delivering them.[3] Plan Totality was part of Truman's "giant atomic bluff" aimed primarily at the Soviet Union.[3][4][5]
See also[]
- Operation Dropshot
- Operation Unthinkable
- Truman Doctrine
- Seven Days to the River Rhine
- Feint
- 509th Composite Group
- Fat Man (Post-war development)
- Little Boy (Post-war development)
- Mark 4 nuclear bomb
- SAC (Establishment and Transfer to USAF)
- RDS-1
References[]
- ^ Michio Kaku and Daniel Axelrod, "To Win a Nuclear War: The Pentagon's Secret War Plans", Boston, South End Press, 1987, pp. 30–31.
- ^ "The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II, A Collection of Primary Sources" http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/72.pdf (PDF). National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 162. George Washington University. 13 August 1945.
- ^ a b Rosenberg, David A (June 1979). "American Atomic Strategy and the Hydrogen Bomb Decision". The Journal of American History (66.1): 62–87. JSTOR 1894674.
- ^ Clensy, David (1999). "America's Atomic Monopoly". American Resources on the Net (online presence of the American Studies Resource Centre (ASRC), John Moores University). John Moores University. Retrieved 27 March 2017.
- ^ Rhodes, Richard (1 August 1995). Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-68-480400-2. LCCN 95011070. OCLC 456652278. OL 7720934M. Wikidata Q105755363 – via Internet Archive.
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