1953. American Civil Defense and the Threat of Thermonuclear War

An Interview with Val Peterson, Director of the Federal Civil Defense Administration

In 1953, CBS journalists Bill Downs and Edward P. Morgan sat down with Val Peterson, director of the Federal Civil Defense Administration. They discuss the growing possibility of nuclear war, the country's readiness, and the American civil defense program. Late in the interview Morgan learns live on air that the Soviet Union just announced its successful detonation of a hydrogen bomb.

August 19, 1953

FRANK KNIGHT: Good evening, this is Frank Knight. May I introduce our co-editors for this edition of the Longines Chronoscope: Edward P. Morgan and Bill Downs, both from the CBS television news staff. Our distinguished guest for this evening is the honorable Val Peterson, administrator of the Federal Civil Defense agency.

EDWARD P. MORGAN: Governor Peterson, on Chronoscope as a matter of fact a few months ago, you yourself made a very alarming statement. You said, as I remember it, that Russia was capable now of mounting an atomic attack which could cripple all of the important industrial centers of the United States in one blow. Since then, Mr. Malenkov says that the Russians have the H-bomb. Now, it would be helpful, I think, if you could sort of tell us what has transpired in your shop since then. Is the situation better or worse?

VAL PETERSON: Well, I think we're making progress in civil defense across the United States all of the time. So far as the announcement made by Mr. Malenkov, I personally have assumed—as have the people in my agency—that anything that we can do the Russians eventually would be able to do. You would not dare to make any other assumption in a matter that involves the safety of the United States.

I used to coach football years ago as a young fellow, and I found that whenever you underestimated the fellow or the opponent you were playing you were in trouble. And of course that's one of the first rules in military activity, too.

So I would say that nothing has changed. There's no positive evidence that the Russians have an H-bomb. You would not have positive evidence until they explode an H-bomb. On the other hand, there's every reason to believe that their scientists would be able to create some type of a thermonuclear device as time goes on.

BILL DOWNS: Well, Governor Peterson, isn't it true that, if they do have an H-bomb, which is they say twenty times more powerful than an A-bomb, that our problem is much more acute? In other words it would take twenty less airplanes, for example, to do the job you say that they are capable of doing.

PETERSON: Well, if it were only twenty times—any bomb of that type that they had were only twenty times more destructive than an H-bomb—our problem wouldn't be quite so bad as it probably is. The fact of the matter is that if and when the Russians have devices of that type, and have enough of them to mount an attack against the United States, certainly it makes our problem much more difficult.

As a matter of degree, however, that type of a bomb will destroy a greater area; damage a greater area; kill more people if they happen to be in the area. But the A-bomb is bad enough.

MORGAN: Governor, is it correct to assume that one of your biggest problems is a sort of a psychological one? I mean this: it's the problem of awakening people to the danger without crying wolf. Assuming that is true, how do you do it?

PETERSON: Well, I think the only way in the world to arouse the American people is to give the American people the facts just as closely as it's possible to do so. Now, no one would propose that you give military secrets away; certainly I wouldn't do that. But the people must know all that there is to be that they can know about enemy capabilities, about enemy weapons and the effects of those weapons. And knowing that truth I think you can believe that the people will take the action that's necessary to protect themselves.

DOWNS: Well, Governor, you said that between eight and twenty million people would be killed in event of an all out attack—atomic or nuclear attack on our country. Don't you believe that this concept is hard for the people to grasp? And isn't that one of your—

MORGAN: Overawes them, sort of thing.

DOWNS: Yeah, overawes them. I mean myself, for example. I have no feeling. What could I do about it? Maybe I'm one of those.

PETERSON: There are many things that they individual can do, and of course there are many things that we can do as a nation to protect—to minimize the effects of an atomic attack upon the United States.

Now, the fact of the matter is we are dealing with a new problem because the atomic weapon is only eight years old and the idea of intercontinental bombers that can fly from country to country dropping bombs has completely revolutionized military strategy, and the figures that are involved are stupendous.

However, the fact that the problem is tough does not mean that we do not have to meet it. And as far as I am able to figure in my own mind, as I understand Americans we'll be equal to the occasion when it arises.

MORGAN: Governor, I want to go back if I may to something you said just a moment ago, which was that you thought that the American people could arise to the situation given the information. President Eisenhower said not so very long ago, rather urgently, that he thought that "the people by all means should have more information about the atomic situation."

And I want to interrupt myself just a little to dig into my notes if you'll permit me, and read something that I jotted down from the New York Herald Tribune which says—this was printed a few weeks ago—"It is actually impossible to plan proper shelters against atomic attack in this country because the relevant information has not been released to the Civil Defense Administration by the Atomic Energy Commission or the military."

Now, the question is after that rather cumbersome buildup, has anything perceptibly been loosened up?

PETERSON: Well now, as a matter of fact, with due respects for that great newspaper for which I have a personal liking, the fact of the matter is that my agency is well-briefed by the Atomic Energy Commission all of the time and by the Department of Defense. We do have the information.

However, we haven't done as much research as we should do. As a matter of fact we've done very little research with respect to the effects of bombing upon civilian type of structures. The research that we have done has been largely in connection with the effects of atomic explosions upon military installations and military instruments; upon battleships and upon airplanes. And we need to do a great deal more research, as that editorial or article suggests.

DOWNS: Well, who's fallen on their face then, Governor? Because this is not a strictly military weapon. This is a weapon that strikes at the civilian population. That is the chief value. Why aren't you getting this information?

PETERSON: That's simply a shift in military strategy. The attacks now are made upon civilians and upon instruments of productivity rather than upon armies. We are getting that information. We have not done as much research as we should've done, primarily because we have not had the funds. Some of the information that the military has is valuable to us, and we're in the process of transcribing it. But bear in mind that becomes a very detailed and intricate engineering and technical procedure, and we haven't done as much of it as we should do.

However, I want to say this about shelters. It's entirely possible to build shelters that would protect people against any kind of an explosion, atomic or any other type of an explosion. If we wanted to take America into the ground, we could protect ourselves against these attacks. However, we would do it at a cost of billions of dollars—a fantastic amount of money—and so far there has been no (?) upon the part of the American people or upon its representatives in the American Congress to take Americans under the ground.

DOWNS: Well, don't you feel Governor that since we happen to be the major targets of this new weapon, H- and A-bomb, that we should have more information about it, and the reason some of the apathy is that we don't realize what's going on?

PETERSON: Well, I think—generally I believe that whatever is the public's business is best handled by the public and by the public directly based upon sound information. And my agency has attempted to give the public all of the information they possible could. And I know that the prevailing sentiment in Washington is to give the people all of the information that is possible—short always of course of giving the enemy the information, which nobody would want to do.

MORGAN: Governor, that brings up another point: the actual organization of Civil Defense on the part of volunteer workers. I have had the impression—in talking to some friends of mine who have done some volunteer work in Civil Defense here in New York City and other cities—that an awful lot of people, if you'll pardon the expression, go into it out of boredom. They're tired of bridge or Scrabble or whatever, and they go into it just to see what can be done. Now, what about this public apathy?

PETERSON: Well, I think that there is a failure on the part of the public to realize the danger in which America lives. And I think there are several reasons for that and if you permit me I will try to outline them very rapidly.

First, most of us do not like to do today what we should do in order to prepare for tomorrow. We procrastinate, we're a little bit lazy; that's true in our private lives.

Secondly, anyone of intelligence and information is hoping and praying that we won't have a third world war, because in this age of the atomic weapon a third world war would be a catastrophe for all mankind. And some people in that connection—and I offer this as another reason—are wishing that there will not be a third world war and they're wishing so hard that they have wished it into a reality.

And then in addition to that there are two other things that are quite important. Some people say, "Well, the destructiveness of modern atomic bombs and of these thermonuclear devices that may come into play will be so great that there isn't anything you can do about it."

And then finally—and this is quite significant—about sixty percent of the American people revealed in a study which we made through the University of Michigan a year ago that they believed that the military could stop the atomic bombs from falling upon the United States.

Well, I'm sorry to have to tell you that the military will tell you that as of today they cannot stop a successful Russian attack.

MORGAN: That can be corroborated rather dramatically. And we didn't plan it this way Governor, but the floor manager has just handed me a bulletin saying—quoting Pravda as saying that the Russians have just exploded a hydrogen bomb.

Now, as a final question—and this, we might say, a loaded one—very quickly, with that information could you tell us in about three words what we should do with that in mind?

PETERSON: I should say that we should step up our Civil Defense Program and we should of course step up our military defense program.

MORGAN: Thank you very much indeed, Governor Val Peterson.

KNIGHT: The opinions that you've heard our speakers express tonight have been entirely their own. The editorial board for this edition of the Longines Chronoscope was Edward P. Morgan and Bill Downs, both of the CBS television news staff. Our distinguished guest was the honorable Val Peterson, administrator of the Federal Civil Defense agency.

How World War III Was Fought

The Military History of World War III

"From a ring of bases surrounding the U.S.S.R, UN aircraft, mostly American and British, staged three-month, round-the-clock bombing offensive. Some of the major industrial, strategic targets are shown above. In addition. planes sowed mines at Kuriles (right) and in Baltic (upper left)" (Map by Al Tarter)

In 1951, Collier's magazine speculated about a hypothetical World War III and what it might look like. The war, as told by the magazine, begins in 1952 and ends with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1955, followed by a UN occupation of Russia. A number of notable figures contributed fictional articles about the war and its history.

War correspondent and New York Times military editor Hanson W. Baldwin wrote a summary of the military history of this war, which included the use of atomic bombs by both sides.

From Collier's magazine, October 27, 1951, pp. 22-23:

HOW THE WAR WAS FOUGHT

by Hanson W. Baldwin

"Soviet air force, using TU-4 bombers copied from the U.S. B-29, struck at prime American targets. Except for Hanford raid, these were suicide missions, with planes unable to return to home bases. Meanwhile, enemy subs slipped through coastal defenses and launched guided-missile atomic attacks" (Map by Al Tarter)

New York City, 1960

The definitive history of the Great War with the Soviet Union cannot, even now, in 1960, be written; an army of historians will require many decades to collate, sort and interpret the voluminous records of the twentieth century's third, and largest, World War. Some important details will, indeed, be forever lost. The exact fate, for instance, of many of the men in "Task Force Victory" which air-landed in the heart of the Urals in 1953 in a heroic suicide attack against the Communist A-bomb storage depots is still veiled in mystery; the complete picture of the operation died with the leaders of the mission.

But the general outline of the war and the strategic concepts that governed it are long since clear. The United States and its Allies, including the overwhelming majority of the United Nations, due in large part to the strength and political and military wisdom of their leaders, chose deliberately to fight a limited war for limited objectives. Public opinion forced some deviations from this policy; sometimes—as in the bombing of Moscow—restraint was abandoned, but the fate of Napoleon and of Hitler and the lost peace of World War II were persuasive arguments for caution.

The atomic bomb was used extensively by both sides but our war was primarily against Communism and the Soviet rulers rather than the Russian people, and the unlimited atomic holocaust did not occur.

The Balkans once again were the tinderbox of war. The satellite-Soviet attacks upon Yugoslavia in the spring of 1952 were the preface to far greater battles.

Red Army hordes drove westward in their principal offensive across the north German plain, assisted by secondary drives from Czechoslovakia and the Balkans toward south Germany and the French frontier, Trieste, Italy, Greece and Turkey. Communist airborne and ground troops moved toward the Persian Gulf, and in northern Europe, Red Army troops, despite strong guerrilla opposition, took over Finland, and other enemy forces in combined land-sea operations moved into extreme northern and southern Norway.

In the Far East, our occupation forces in Korea were forced out of Pusan under a hail of bombs, and the puppet "Japanese People's Army"—composed of thoroughly indoctrinated Japanese prisoners who had been held since World War II—backed by Red forces, ferried La Perouse Strait and invaded Hokkaido, northernmost of the Japanese Islands. Soviet submarines quickly appeared off our coasts and magnetic, pressure and acoustic mines sank many tons of shipping and closed some of our Eastern ports—until emergency countermeasures, woefully inadequate at the war's beginning, could be hastily devised.

The first year of war was a tragic period of defeat and retreat. Yet the fledgling "NATO" (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) forces did better than anticipated in stemming the tide of aggression; in the Far East, the "Junipers" (Japanese National Police Reserve, established by General MacArthur in 1950), quickly provided the framework for a strong Japanese army.

The U.S.S.R. suffered heavily under attack by A-bombs and conventional bombs, and some of her A-bomb works, many of the bases for her long-range air forces, and transportation and oil targets were destroyed or badly damaged. Yet the enemy was able to A-bomb London and other Allied targets, and atomic bombs dropped on our atomic energy plant at Hanford, Washington, and on Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, New York and Washington, D.C.

Despite our defeats and heavy losses in this first phase of the war, our strategic objective was accomplished. The Allies managed: to contain the enemy attack; to hold absolutely vital air bases in Eurasia, North Africa and the Middle East; to halt the enemy in western Europe and northern Japan; to stopper up many of the Soviet submarines by extensive aerial mine laying of the narrow seas and by carrier-based A-bomb attacks on submarine pens and base facilities; and to hurt severely the Reds' offensive capabilities and warmaking potential by exacting high casualties on the surface and by heavy attacks upon the "heartland" from the air.

The second phase of the Great War with the Soviet Union lasted for about 15 months, and could be termed the "defensive-offensive" phase. During this phase we had achieved clear-cut ail superiority; new weapons, including the atomic artillery shell, were used at the front, and we launched our first "holding offensives" and limited operations to cut down enemy strength and to improve our positions for the decisive offensive still to come. Soviet strength—and the strength of her satellites—was being reduced steadily by our strategic air campaign and by the reckless tactics of the Communist commanders, who hurled assault after assault against our forces in Europe only to have them repulsed with frightful slaughter.

Despite our defensive victories on the ground and the reduction of the Soviet submarine and mine menace at sea, vital enemy targets within. The U.S.S.R. proved to be so well dispersed, hidden or protected as to escape destruction. After a second series of enemy atomic attacks against the United States (included among the targets was Washington, D.C.), "Task Force Victory" carried out its desperate but successful assault against the enemy's underground Ural A-bomb pens.

The third and final phase of the war—the period of great Allied offensives and decisive victories—was tailored to the concept of peripheral attacks against the "heartland" by land, air and sea (utilizing to the full the transport capacity and mobility of air and sea power) and heavy bombing attacks against the enemy's interior.

No deep land penetration of Russia was ever attempted—or indeed, ever seriously contemplated—though there was early in 1954 a sizable group (chiefly among the older Army generals) that favored it.

In Europe, the Baltic, the Mediterranean and Black Seas were used not only as flank protection for overland drives through the satellite states to the old Russian frontiers, but as highways across which amphibious "hops" aided the land operations. In the north, Allied armies moved through east Germany and Poland, halting their main drive at the Pripet Marshes with the disorganized remnants of what was once the powerful 8th Guards Army fleeing before them.

Spearheads moved by sea and air into the Baltic States and Finland, and advanced air bases were established which dominated all of western Russia.

A similar southern drive through the Mediterranean, Turkey and the Black Sea (with secondary land drives to clean up the Balkans) ended in a lodgment in the Crimea, where the last formal battles of the Great War were fought.

In the meantime, as the Red Armies fell apart in the West, Siberia and Red China—their communications with European Russia cut in a thousand places—descended into chaos. Limited amphibious operations, many of them made against little opposition, put U.S. and Allied troops ashore in Korea, Manchuria and China, and from these points we controlled land and sea communications of the Orient.

To World War III—the Great Soviet War—there was no formal end; indeed, there could not have been, under our concepts of strategy. For our basic aim of separating the rulers from the ruled, of encouraging the dissident and downtrodden minorities of Russia to revolt, of "fissioning" the Red Army (psychologically as well as in battle), of freeing the satellite peoples and aligning them on our side against their oppressor had, with the aid of overwhelming military force, succeeded.

The Red Army ended its 38 years of history and died as it was born, in revolt and rapine, with brother fighting brother, in civil war and bloody feud, with the oppressed becoming the oppressors and, at long last, terrible justice done to those tyrants who had subverted justice. — THE END

World War III: "Free Men at Work" by Walter Reuther

Free Men at Work

Illustration by Harry Devlin, p. 37

In 1951, Collier's magazine speculated about a hypothetical World War III and what it might look like. The war, as told by the magazine, begins in 1952 and ends with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1955, followed by a UN occupation of Russia. A number of notable figures contributed fictional articles about the war and its history.

Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers and an influential labor leader, submitted a story set in 1960 about his visit to Russia after the fall of the USSR.

From Collier's magazine, October 27, 1951, pp. 37, 102:

FREE MEN AT WORK

By Walter Reuther

Moscow, 1960

As our train rounded a curve, the old city of Nizhni Novgorod, surrounded by its stone wall, stood high above the palisades overlooking the river where the Oka slips into the arms of the Volga.

In czarist times Nizhni Novgorod had been a bustling outlet for trade in the Hanseatic League. Under the Soviet regime, Nizhni Novgorod came to be called Gorki, in keeping with the modest practice of the Politburo of renaming ancient cities after its dubious heroes.

A trade-union committee from the big Gorki Aftozavod (auto plant) was waiting for us at the station. Their dress was not much different from that I had seen when, in 1933, as a member of a group of American technicians, I had arrived at Gorki to help tool the plant to make Model-A Fords. I presented my credentials and introduced the other members of the Free Trade-Union Aid Committee, of which I was the chairman. I remembered the head of the Russian committee, Dmitri Malchin, as one of the more advanced technicians with whom I had worked in 1933. He greeted us, his deep voice reflecting sorrow over the past and hope for the future, saying, "When you were here before, the fever was to build. Now it is to rebuild—not only our cities, our factories, but more important, to rebuild our lives so that once again they belong to us and not to the state."

As we walked past the old hot-water tank that stood in the corner of the station, he remarked, "Three wars and three revolutions have not changed the Russian love for tchai (tea)."

On our way to the plant, which was built 10 miles from Nizhni Novgorod, on the banks of the Oka River, with machines and tools purchased from American automobile manufacturers, I outlined the purpose of our mission.

Our committee was one of a number of teams which had been dispatched to all parts of the new Provisional Russian Republic by the International Confederation of Free Trade-Unions, to assist in the building of free trade-unions and aid in the general work of economic rehabilitation. As president of the Automotive Division of the International Metalworkers Federation, I had been designated to head the team that was to work with the newly formed free trade-union group in the auto industry.

Gorki Aftozavod was to have been the Soviet version of the Ford River Rouge plant, but it gained its distinction building tanks rather than automobiles. A near miss by an atomic bomb severely damaged the plant and measurably hastened the collapse of the Soviet military machine.

Unthinkingly, I asked Malchin how the world had treated him since we had last seen each other. His face tense, he replied, "Let's not talk about the dark past. We who have managed to survive live and work for the new tomorrow. Eleven years in a Soviet slave labor camp broke my body; but, thank God, they could not break my spirit."

•      •      •

Later I learned how it had happened.

It was during the Stalin-Hitler pact. The Communist party secretary and trade-union officials were driving the workers for more and more tanks. At a meeting, a leader of the Stakhanovite movement from the central trade-union headquarters in Moscow had proposed that all workers speed up their already killing production pace and work additional overtime hours, without pay for the additional hours, as a token of esteem for Comrade Stalin, their beloved leader and defender of the working class.

The party and the trade-union, both, called upon key workers to pledge themselves to outproduce their fellow workers under a system of "Socialist competition" in which each worker, under the lash of propaganda and the threat of terrorism, was driven to outwork and outsweat the other.

Everything went well until they called up Dmitri Malchin. His sense of fairness and decency was in open revolt against this inhuman speed-up. He attacked the Stakhanovite movement as a vicious sweatshop system that pitted worker against worker and which inhumanly attempted to drive workers for greater production under the guise of patriotism. His speech was cut short. He arrived bruised and beaten at the Siberian labor camp to undergo "political re-education."

Malchin, like millions of other Russian workers, had hoped that the Bolshevik Revolution which destroyed the tyranny of the czar would also end the exploitation of man by man. But they now learned that a new and more terrible system of tyranny and exploitation had been created—the exploitation of man by the totalitarian police state.

Following his liberation at the end of the war, Malchin returned to Gorki, and the workers, remembering his courage, elected him chairman of the Auto Workers' Council of the All-Russian Democratic Labor Federation.

Our committee spent the day going around the plant and discussing technical problems and new machine-tool requirements; surveying housing needs; and reviewing with the medical personnel the supplies they most needed. We wound up the afternoon by meeting with the Educational Committee of the trade-union group, who outlined their adult education program and pleaded with us for a motion picture projector and educational films on how a free democratic labor movement functions.

In the evening we met with the local union executive board, plant committee and shop stewards to discuss grievance procedure; how a free trade-union participates in the determination of the speed of the assembly line; methods for working out proper wage scales by job classifications; the economics of the auto industry. We reviewed the progress which the American workers and other free trade-union groups had made in the field of pensions, hospital-medical care programs, vacation pay, overtime provisions and other collective bargaining matters.

In introducing me to the meeting, Malchin said, "As the head of the Russian Automobile Trade-Union group, I have the pleasure of presenting the head of the American Automobile Workers' group.

"In a sense," he said, "we are opposite numbers. But," he added quickly, "we are not on opposite sides."

There was a burst of applause.

This idea of no opposite sides, no opposing power blocs in the world, no inhuman dedication to the production of more and more weapons of destruction was understood by the men from the machines and assembly lines. They had got the idea of one world, of one side, of people everywhere working together to build a good life, of striving together to fashion the future in the image of peace and freedom.

I assured them that there never had been opposite sides so far as the common people of the rest of the world and the people of Russia were concerned, and that they had been the first victims of the madmen of the Politburo who had brought upon the world the war that no one wanted. There was a flash of pride in their eyes when I told them that people everywhere were grateful for the wave of strikes and demonstrations by Russian workers which had helped bring the Stalin regime to its knees and the war to an end without the mass bloodletting of a full-scale land invasion. I welcomed them into the International Confederation of Free Trade-Unions and into the family of free nations.

In his closing remarks, Dmitri said, "You used to tell us of your troubles in America with company unions. Before Stalin was through with us, he had coerced the entire working class into a system of huge political company unions. In America you had to fight with the boss to win bargaining rights, but you got them. With us, the factory manager wasn't the boss; it was the MVD in various disguises, including that of the political commissar assigned to police every local organization. Either you said 'yes' to him—or 'good-by' to your family. The whole structure of trade-unionism was an elaborate fraud, designed to impose the will of the Communist party on a mass level

"Now with free trade-unions," he continued, "we can bargain on wages, working conditions, the speed of the assembly line; knowing that our demands can be backed up with the right to strike which free labor enjoys in other countries throughout the world."

That evening's conference produced plans for International Confederation оf Free Trade-Unions assistance which are newsworthy only as part of the far greater reconstruction program in Russia now being advanced under United Nations direction. More important than its details is the spirit which pervaded both these discussions and all other forms of planning activity with which I came in contact. The Iron Curtain has been torn down—not only between the West and the people of Russia, but between the minds of men within Russia. The thirst for freedom, for self expression and self-government has been sharpened, not quenched, by the long night of denial.

While the outlines of the new commonwealth now rising from the rubble of dictatorship may be long in taking final form it is already clear that the free Russia labor movement, now building a firm foundation in liberty, will be among its strongest bastions.

Already, down an improvised assembly line, one can see truck bodies taking shape. Already there is talk that in five years—perhaps even three—cars for ordinary folks will be coming off the same line. Nothing is beyond belief in the encompassing miracle of freedom.

It was in idle afterthought, as Dmitri walked me through the station on the day I left, that I asked him what had really happened to that fellow Stakhanov. He grinned broadly and scratched his head in mock effort at recollection. "I must have been away at the time, being 're-educated,' but the соal miners tell me he gave his life to Stalin—he drowned in his own sweat." — THE END