experiment he said has been an overwhelming success three days later the destruction of nagasaki was officially described as having achieved good results these announcements and especially the words used experiment success good results to describe the unique and horrific carnage of nuclear war were the first public examples of a new kind of propaganda by using reassuring even soothing language language which allowed both the politicians and us to distance ourselves from the horror of nuclear war this new kind of propaganda created acceptable images of war and the illusion that we could live securely with nuclear weapons even those first two bombs on japan had nice comic book names little boy and fat man and soon bombs were no longer bombs at all but devices and hardware with names like mule and cell and little band the bigger and more lethal weapons were called modernized systems above all we were conditioned to accept a so called strategy for visiting nuclear weapons called the terence which no one could explain rationally and which blurred the fact that a massive nuclear arms race was well on the way for fifteen years of this arms race up to nine hundred eighty the british parliament did not once debate nuclear weapons guys of the west and the other side where the back at guys are dark threat seldom betrayed in human terms surely what has been overlooked is that we are a democracy unlike the soviet union and that in a democracy secrecy and propaganda or not to control how we think especially in matters of national led across the threshold today we are guided by new reassuring words like theater nuclear war and limited nuclear war that is a nuclear war limited to europe a nuclear war in which victory is possible a victory for the good guys all the bad guy leslie grows was obsessed by one consuming fear that the wall would be a before his bomb was ready even after germany surrendered droege said we must not lose a single day for they were still distortion of language thought and culture was now well on the way the word bomb was not used officially it was a gadget and the first explosion must be called a trinity and if this bomb was successful it will be called a boy and if it fails i go partly to cover up the growing descent from einstein's villain and others which might have stopped the atomic age oppenheimer and he's in a circle on the manhattan project we're off to become propagand not to be interested in what actually happened to the victims so the question of atomic radiation radiation sickness was absolutely suppressed as had the concept of a forward based system we want to with special air filters to protect their american personnel from radioactive dust hardly any of these american bases are directly committed to the defense instead they are buying american from  three more bases including as it happens the largest american underwater spy base in the world so that makes fifty six but that wasn't ole the journalist duncan campbell  statesman found enlisted another forty seven bases making a grand total of one hundred three that's a long way from this is the ministry of defense in london where we have sought cooperation in making this documentary we did get permission to film at three british installations and a ministry of public relations man offered us government film some of it fourteen fylingdales early warning major new york where they're trying to give us an early warning of a nuclear attack three times a week they play a game which seems to be called  five minutes to impact they can do is wait and in all probability we would know nothing about it before i knew it then we went under a bridge there were many people there dying from burns when i came back that he was dead a few days later mummy died my sister and i cried  this diagram inspired by the book london after the bomb shoshu second by second how london would be destroyed i made it a up the detonation the flash of light will blind anyone looking at it within three seconds blinded and receive second degree burns and this is the effect of only one megaton bomb and such a small bomb it has been calculated will make a crater large enough to swallow ten w impossible to tell whether they these flats is a nuclear bunker in south london typical of cosy bunkers throughout britain it is not for the use of people living in the flats which will collapse in a nuclear attack because the bunker is designed not to collapse and is only for  police military and public servants the government's published civil defense plans called protect and survive tell you to take off the handles of your toilets and getting lots of tinned soup and put your head in a bag like being snowed in a christmas nuclear war sounds almost fun however there are no evacuation plans and this means that most of the population is to be sacrificed  the most widespread danger from nuclear explosions is for now all of his dust that is sucked up from the ground by the explosion miraculously on touched and of course nothing looks like hiroshima its main aim is to pacify us and to keep us literally in our place stay where you are if you leave your home your local authority may take it over the homeless families and if you will the authorities in the new place will not help you with food accommodations or other essential tools you are better off in your own manual of home defense or a strict document priority is given before an attack to detention or restriction of movement arbs of vs all potentially subversive people lowest on the list as advice to the rest of the population on how to survive this is the land battle tactics manual of the british armed forces of the year nine hundred sixty on page twelve it says this nuclear weapons are varying hales will be used in  but not unlimited numbers in other words the planning for a limited nuclear war in europe began at least twenty two years ago but haven't we been led to believe that nuclear war as a practical military option is only a recent development and was there any debate at the time in parliament and the press no there was not it says here restricted the information given in this document is not to be communicated either directly or indirectly to the press or to any person not authorized to receive it and that meant almost everybody except of course the generals who russians and there was all packed allies including the bad german these are known in this war as the orange or outside of the americans and they nato allies including the british and the good germans and these are known as the blue forces now in this limited nuclear war nost the old fashioned terms of death and destruction have been done away with and not before time horrible bombs an with collateral damage that old favorite from vietnam all a game and they will game but such new big games are being played regularly in europe as the humanized rehearsal for the kind of limited nuclear war endorsed by nato in december nine hundred seventy nine when the decision was taken to accept american control crews and pershing missile the unthinkable is now the plan and the practice one of the means of conditioning you the public to accept the nuclear arms race is secrecy and you play city that is you're told one thing by government and the very opposite happens in secret when the labor party was returned to power in nineteen seventy four it's manifesto was clear on one issue we have announced it said any intention of moving to a new generation of strategic nuclear weapons and they had mr callahan on becoming prime minister promised a full and informed debate on nuclear weapons during nine hundred seventy eight a series of extraordinary meetings took place in the cabinet office in w these meetings were convened by mr callahan and were attended by foreign secretary david owen chancellor of the exchequer denis healey defense secretary fred mali and senior civil servants from the foreign office and the ministry of defense parliament knew nothing about these meetings nor did all the members of the cabinet so secret was this committee that it didn't have a name or a number it took the decision to spend a thousand million pounds to massively increase the british nuclear arsenal in what was called the ship building program this thousand million pounds was buried without trace in civil service accounts and no one questioned it and of course you knew nothing about it frightened powerful new three stage missile range of four thousand miles capable of delivering multiple warheads to widely scattered targets britain's new so called independent attacker and grew out of the chevalier program and is to be based on the american front misao trident is not a defensive nuclear weapon it's designed to attack first the troughton will cost around eight thousand million pounds the ministry of defense official who briefed me said with in the nineteen eighties the soviet union cannot feed itself and concealed the growing poverty in hock ship of its people in the united states unemployment in cities like detroit and in the black ghettos is more than half the at population with manual tradition now officially recognized as a disease in britain many of this generation may never work on the closure of hospitals and schools is no longer news in the  here of our total no clear capability in the united states or there are contingency plans in the nato doctrine to fire a nuclear weapon for demonstrative purposes strike only a dry run of course i can never figure out from a military point of view or an economic point of view of why the russians would want to make an attack in europe or on the united states the russians are very late imperialists they're lousy imperialist they come in with a heavy hand and they blunder all over the place i don't think they're going to be successful but dumb they are not and they have to be dumb to make a frontal attack in europe is it this suicide for them and they know that ogust the seventeenth nineteen eighty two the guardian newspaper reported that the pentagon had completed the strategic mof the plan to give the united states the capability of credibility or accuracy of the press i was concerned that the impression was being given that we had a large unit in the pentagon that was assigned to fighting for track to declare wars and that is totally wrong we have not changed the american policy strategic or otherwise basically at all but the soviet capability has changed and our policy has always been the same that is to maintain an effective deterrent an effective deterrent against nuclear war has to be one that is correctly perceived by the soviets as being strong enough to discourage share and totally deter any kind of a nuclear attack as their capability increases we have to strengthen and modernize our capability and that is the only policy in which we're engaged in it's exactly the same policy on which every american government has been engaged since the end of world war two it ought to be kept in proportion we shall allocate something under fifteen percent of our budget to strategic weapons and nuclear capabilities which he did with the unanimous agreement at the bond summit we are spending the balance of our budget on strengthening and increasing our conventional capability again not with the preventing a war through deterrence if i'm completely successful and everything i'm trying to do will never use any of the things we're trying to persuade the congress we should need all of us really because the fear is in europe  hypothetical question by a midwest editor at a group of of editors meeting at the white house and the president as always trying to be very helpful in responding to all of the questions and he gave a perfectly honest opinion which i don't think anyone had any particular for oh it's the raising of the subject that seems to cause so much a problem and i noticed one article recently that was critical of my letter because it said i shouldn't be discussing th subject at all well there's a great temptation not to discuss the subject but sadly others aren't quite as self restraint the subject is being discussed but it's being discussed frankly as i said in the letter inaccurately the policy of nuclear deterrence mr weinberger has been approved through the political processes of the democratic nations it protects since at least nine hundred fifty that is a fine example of official truth it implies that the west's nuclear policy evolved through the normal democratic checks and balances when in fact the policy was conceived in off most secrecy typical of this secrecy is the directive for plans to find a  war which says the guardian report is part of a top secret national security decision document that was drawn up in the autumn of nineteen eighty one president reagan strategic doctrine goes further towards accepting nuclear war as a practical option in that it specifically states the goal of winning i tracked nuclear war the decision to numerous nuclear weapons in europe is purely a u s decision one of the great news that's been perpetrated in europe is that somehow all the nato countries chancellor smith their prime minister thatcher will have something to say about whether or not the us uses nuclear weapons they will  not we may consult with them and we may take their advice and we may not but if we decide to use nuclear weapons there's nobody in europe that could stop us is the west our way of life the nine hundred seventy nine decision to deploy cruise missiles was to count missiles that was the official reason given what is seldom mentioned is that on the integrated battlefield of western europe there is already nuclear artillery and nuclear mines and all manner of small convenient nuclear weapons the purpose of having a war i mean the phrase that the purpose about whether we like it or not is to destroy the enemy and keep yourself from being destroyed now you want to have a suspicion of weapons you can in order to accomplish your mission you keep pressing the technological and scientific community of your country you see find  to close the gap which we had in the spectrum of forces which we need in order to implement our strategy of flexible response and secondly to deny to the soviet union a sanctuary from which you could launch these kinds of weapons against western europe without fear of having to carry retaliation upon her own soil from western europe first of all these are american weapons under american control that are coming but number two they are bringing a direct breach of the cuba christians kind of the agreement where as has been said there should be no such weapons stationed on the side of allies and these weapons pressing to include missiles have a completely new quality and cannot be compared to the s s twenty in our feeling and will reach deep into the soviet union so in fact they are for first strike capacity capability and the feel that we have enough already overkill in europe enough land not base systems to convert any threat even conventional forces we said this is completely an excess on nuclear weapons and we also feel it's a whole new weapons generation which we as germans and as europeans reject because it will mean limited nuclear war in europe and we will be the first victims general want one do you think increasing numbers of europeans are frightened by the yes and solve nato nuclear weapons in europe well that's very difficult for me to explain you see because i happen to believe that if we're going to deter we have to deter at all levels as i've said and it seems to me that they tend to be more frightened of our stationing weapons or modernizing our weapons system in order to accomplish that mission of keeping them from being used by the soviet union more frightened of that then they are frightened of those weapons which cause us to young man don't talk to me about fear of war i've been there and let me tell you as i've told you before this group it's a stupid way to do business it's a folly it's a waste nobody wants to go back to war none of so one of us have that concern but because we fear that there might be a war doesn't mean we shouldn't take the steps necessary to keep her from being on all that which is came to defend us is going to destroy us because those weapons which are now being placed in europe will in fact perhaps that's nice you call for preemptive war preventive strikes by the soviet union because they are threat outside of their own borders very much and i believe the americans may get a little bit too easy because they can very much shop the pro problem away and say we can make surgical strikes these weapons are made for small strikes the surgical strikes and t of soviet troops over nato troops but when the soviet union developed the capability to provide nuclear weapons in europe it no good the capability of our nuclear weapons to deter a damage in the soviet union twenty million people have died there because the germans have started their war has marched in so we feel the mission must come from the people to start having another picture of these people because every time we are confronted by the soviet union we see women any threat is total overkill a capacity is totally insane and we must start somewhere to stop it truth is revealed in this letter by lord norman broke then chairman of the b b c governors who wrote that the war game on television might have a significant effect on public attitudes towards the policy of nuclear deterrence for many years new york seventy two percent of all americans sent home wanted to halt all nuclear arms building those who accuse european campaign is a being the americans would now have to level the same charge millions of americans who said one newspaper are reclaiming our american democracy pulm casey was a senior negotiator in the strategic arms limitation talks known as salt you're one of those who have sat down over a long period of time with the russians negotiating could you give us a glimpse of how the russian leadership thinks i would say that i see them as being very interested in controlling nuclear it's not because of any thought of philanthropies or anything of that sort but because they are genuinely afraid of nuclear war it's a matter of fact nuclear water of them is perhaps a more real threat and a more real danger than it is to us why is that all one thing because of the fact that the last time it was military action on american territory was one hundred twenty years ago and then it was americans against americans with muskets  believed or are they most of them propaganda how do you see well in my own opinion what we have to do is to find out whether they're serious and not if it's a bluff we ought to call the bluff it might very well turn out not to be a bluff but if they make this kind of an overture and we do nothing in response except to say that it's propaganda it seems from what we do is just so division within the western alliance how c launches salt two was designed to put an actual numerical ceiling to begin reductions and to begin the process of qualitative restrictions as well as quantitative district and say ratify and then move on because once you've got that framework in place then the opportunities are really back you could have for example undergo c h in a theater nuclear force reduction that could go on concurrently with negotiations on a bilateral basis between the united states and the soviet union to have further reductions to extend the term of the treaty by the end of one hundred eighty one the limit was supposed to be twenty two hundred fifty of the treaty for another five years you can have a negotiation of a ban on the flight testing of new missiles we could proceed at the same time to complete the comprehensive test ban that would prevent any explosions of nuclear devices at the present time that just involves the united states the soviet union and england but it could be expanded to bring in the french and the chinese and just in terms of proliferation if the major nuclear powers total stop of any nuclear explosion that would in my opinion be the most powerful inhibitions against anybody else getting into the nuclear weapons so that it's an entirely rational agenda all we have is the question as to whether we have the political will to go ahead with it and does this us administration genuinely want to negotiate i'm sure that there are some in the president's ministration that would genuine like to see serious and effective control negotiations there are regrettably others that think that it's a waste of time and the only thing we can do with the soviets is to outcompete them and what they favor is what i've referred to  the arms race theory of arms control of what we do is just go ahead as fast as we can with as much as we can in the expectation that they won't be able to keep up and that we're going to control by default an has been a serious student of the soviet union or of russian history who believes that would take place they would do whatever is necessary in order to match it so that the race for strategic superiority  a recipe for disaster will be bankrupt if we had obliterate when we set out to make this film almost two years ago opponents of the nuclear arms race was still being dismissed as outside the popular consensus as extreme or naive or even price of it today opinion polls show that a clear majority of the people of britain are against cruise missiles on our soil these out to be deployed throughout western europe this year and we may have no control over them and they may well undermine our last chance of avoiding a new and final stage in the nuclear arms race but our government's listening to the common sense of their own people or are they merely concerned with spreading new propaganda as if wanting peace now is somehow unpatriotic we were told we went to war in the falklands over the issue of sovereignty in not surrendering control of missiles on our own soil also surrendering sovereignty even the so called  control is a propaganda term designed to make the missiles more acceptable but no safer certainly more and more people are asking patiently and rationally why over the years we have allowed this country to become a prime target and more and more people regardless of their political beliefs are understanding that the russians like us have every reason not to fight a nuclear war you heard paul war in america recently and the star of a motion to freeze a nuclear arms race was only narrowly defeated in the congress in spite of our own insidious propaganda and secrecy we live in a democracy and the russian people do not surely then it is we who can and should take the initiative nuclear weapons whenever an act of god nothing is inevitable