Embracing the bomb: Ethics, morality, and nuclear deterrence in the US air force, 1945–1955

Abstract

For many years the US Air Force was the only institution on the planet responsible for planning nuclear strikes and capable of delivering such a blow. This article addresses how leading early Cold War US Air Force officers viewed nuclear weapons in ethical terms and why they believed themselves to be traveling the road of higher morality. The work draws extensively from the manuscript collections and printed primary sources of Air Force generals to show why, in a moral sense, the Air Force planned, threatened, and trained to kill millions upon millions of human beings, many of them civilian, with nuclear strategic bombing.