Plan Totality

Plan Totality was a nuclear plan established by U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower on the direction of 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 first strike: Moscow, Gorki, 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; it was only in 1946 the United States could even boast nine atomic bombs in its inventory, along with twenty-seven B-29s capable at any one time of delivering them.[2] Plan Totality was part of Truman's 'giant atomic bluff' aimed primarily (and unsuccessfully[lower-alpha 1]) at the Soviet Union.

See also

References

  1. Michio Kaku and Daniel Axelrod, "To Win a Nuclear War: The Pentagon's Secret War Plans", Boston, South End Press, 1987, pp. 30-31.
  2. Rosenberg, David A (June 1979). "American Atomic Strategy and the Hydrogen Bomb Decision". The Journal of American History (66.1): 62–87.


Notes

  1. Thanks to highly placed Soviet agents within both the Manhattan Project and the U.S. Government itself.