The end of victory: prevailing in the nuclear age

Abstract

America’s use of atomic weapons against Japan in 1945 helped to facilitate a quick end to World War II. But the split between former allies the United States and the Soviet Union led to a Cold War which featured a relentless competition for military superiority. Although it took Russia four years to catch the U.S. in atomic weapons, the gap was shortened to two years when it came to nuclear. The dangerous military environment in the early 1950s required the U.S. to be able to predict the Soviet Union’s response in nuclear terms. This task largely fell to a secret group with the National Security Council referred to as the Net Evaluation Subcommittee (NESC). Over the dozen years of its existence from 1953 to 1965 which the present book traces, the NESC’s annual reports furnished American officials with invaluable information and contributed significantly to nuclear weapons strategy during parts of three presidential administrations.