TRUMAN'S DECISION TO BUILD THE HYDROGEN BOMB TRUMAN'S DECISION TO BUILD THE HYDROGEN BOMB The decision as to whether the U.S. should make a hydrogen bomb, said Harry Truman, is mine and nobody else's. But there were a lot of people looking over his shoulder, and they seemed remarkably in agreement on how he should play his hand: they wanted the H-bomb-built."I am very unhappy," said Dr. Harold Clayton Urey, the Nobel Prizewinning atomic chemist, "to conclude that the hydrogen bomb should be developed and built. I do not think we should intentionally lose the armaments race; to do this will be to lose our liberties, and with Patrick Henry, I value my liberties more than I do my life."Should the Russians win the race and build the first H-bomb, he added, they might decide that they did not even have to use it.

They might say: " 'We will build these bombs and issue ultimata to the western countries, and the millenium of Communism will be with us immediately...' " Harold Urey, standing before the Roosevelt Day dinner of the Americans for Democratic Action in New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, had a right to be heard. His Nobel Prize had been won in 1934 for the discovery of heavy hydrogen, a basic step toward the development both of the first atomic bomb and any hydrogen bomb that may come. He had predicted the date of the Russian atomic bomb explosion far more accurately than had U.S. military or political leaders. "I personally hope very much," he said, "that the [hydrogen] bombs will not explode . . . However, nature does not behave in the way I should like at times, and so there is no use in engaging in wishful thinking. I think we should assume that the bomb can be built." His estimate of the cost of development: $100 million. Others joined in, urging the building of the H-bomb: Elder Statesman Bernard Baruch, Republican Senator John Bricker, Eleanor Roosevelt, Senator Tom Connally.

What, then or who was holding up the President's decision? If there were voices inside the Administration counseling against the H-bomb, they did not make their arguments public. Many a Washington correspondent pointed the finger at retiring Atom Boss David Lilienthal, who last week characterized all such stories about him as "inaccurate," but was careful on security grounds not to say just where he did stand. This week the President made his decision. He ordered work on the H-bomb to go ahead. Harry Truman's announcement had in it no sabre-rattling swagger, only the reluctant awareness of a duty that had to be done. He knew that he was authorizing construction of the deadliest weapon ever known to man. White House aides on Tuesday afternoon summoned a dozen reporters, handed them this statement from the President: "It is part of my responsibility as commander-in-chief of the armed forces to see to it that our country is able to defend itself against any possible aggressor. "Accordingly, I have directed the Atomic Energy Commission to continue its work on all forms of atomic weapons, including the so-called hydrogen or superbomb.

Like all other work in the field of atomic weapons, it is being and will be carried forward on a basis consistent with the over-all objectives of our program for peace and security. "This we shall continue to do until a satisfactory plan for International control of atomic energy is achieved we shall also continue to examine all those factors that effect our program for peace and this country's security". MacARTHUR RECEIVES DISTINGUISHED SERVICE MEDAL FROM PRESIDENT TRUMAN. The Democratic candidate for President of the U.S., campaigning in California, looked out at his Oakland audience, drew a deep breath, and struck hard again last week for his proposal that the U.S. end its hydrogen-bomb tests. To Adlai Stevenson the reaction was a heady surprise: his words triggered a burst of applause and cheers in the crowd of 5,000. In a week when the Eisenhower tide was rising (see below) and Stevenson was searching determinedly for a big issue, the H-bomb argument seemed to be striking fire far more so than his proposal to end the draft. Result: a high-level Stevenson campaign decision to play the hydrogen-bomb proposal for all it was worth beginning with a national television speech this week.

Adlai had been toying with his H-bomb notions since last April when, in the midst of his campaign for the Democratic nomination, he said: "I believe we should give prompt and earnest consideration to stopping further tests of the hydrogen bomb." In subsequent speeches and statements he declared his hope that, once the U.S. set the example, the Russians might follow suit. If they refused, the U.S. could detect the violation (by-air samplings) and then "reconsider its policy." In the Wagon. After Stevenson's first proposal, Harry S. Truman, who gave the order in 1950 for the U.S. to start H-bomb development, commented that "our power to guard the peace would be weakened" if tests were halted. Last week, in the political wilds of northwestern Pennsylvania, Truman was asked if he had come to agree with Stevenson. The old Democrat swallowed hard. "I'm in the same wagon," he said. "I can't be anywhere else." The U.S., as both Presidents Truman and Eisenhower have made clear, cannot safely end H-bomb tests until the entire system of atomic-weapons production is placed under a workable mutual-inspection system.

And although he has a few scientists in his corner, Stevenson is boldly down-facing the experts when he questions the "sense" of further hydrogen development. Even now, the U.S. and Russia are engaged in a desperate race for an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of carrying a hydrogen payload. For the U.S. to test the missile package without continuing work on its thermonuclear warhead would give the Soviets a disastrous advantage. Moreover, said Atomic Energy Commissioner Willard Libby last week, the latest U.S. H-bomb tests have helped to develop a weapon with a lower rate of fallout contamination. Under the Wire. The question of further thermonuclear development is new only in the sense that this is the first time it has been bandied about as a political issue in a national campaign. After World War II, left-wing viewers-with-alarm begged Harry Truman to stow the A-bomb away in the national attic. The Russians, they said, could not possibly develop the bomb for at least a decade. Truman refused and the Soviet Union, depending heavily on Joseph Stalin's army of scientists and his very effective spies, came forth with the atomic bomb in 1949.

Again, the hand-wringers pleaded with Truman not to go ahead with the H-bomb. Truman did go ahead and because he did, the U.S. got under the wire by a few short months and escaped the earth-shaking fact of a Russian H-bomb monopoly. In both these cases, the decisions were made deliberately, quietly and completely by the man who held final responsibility for the nations strength, and indeed. Its continued existence.: the President of the U.S. The careful decisions could be undone if in Election Year 1956, the matter were to be decided by nothing more than the appeal of a political candidate in search of an issue. Source: National Archives and New &York Times Why did President Truman decide to develop the hydrogen bomb?Answer Choices: A) to prevent the Soviets from gaining a military advantage. B) to... | eNotes March 10, 2011 at 4:51 PM There are a number of proposed reasons for Truman's decision; but I should first point out that the Bomb had already been developed. Truman's decision was to use it. The correct answer would appear to be A; to prevent the Soviets from gaining a military advantage.

There was ample evidence that the Soviet's intentions were quite aggressive; and that President Roosevelt had made a serious mistake at Yalta by giving Stalin a free hand. Even the Japanese historians now say that the decision was made to bring the war to a very quick end and not allow a Soviet invasion of Japan, which could have tipped the scales in favor of the Soviets in the upcoming Cold War. like 0 dislike 0 March 10, 2011 at 4:09 PM Of the choices that you have given us here, the best choice is A. The point of the development of the bomb was to ensure that the Russians did not gain an advantage. However, it is also possible to argue that C is a good answer. The hydrogen bomb was developed by the US because the US was worried that the Soviet Union would catch up to it in the arms race. The US wanted to stay ahead of the USSR. But the reason for this was that the US wanted to be able to defend itself and its allies around the world. Therefore, you could argue that both of these answers are correct.

I would pick A, though, because it seems more correct to say that the US was trying to keep the USSR from getting an advantage since the H-Bomb is not really a defensive weapon. like 0 dislike 0 President Truman orders the development of the hydrogen bomb | History Today President Truman orders the development of the hydrogen bomb Cold War Science & Technology Harry S. Truman On January 31st, 1950, Truman announced that he had directed the Atomic Agency Commission 'to continue with its work on all forms of atomic energy weapons, including the so-called hydrogen or super-bomb'. In September 1949 the American, British and Canadian governments announced that an atomic explosion had recently occurred in the Soviet Union. The Soviet news agency Tass responded, laughably blaming the blast on large-scale construction work, while reminding everyone that Soviet foreign minister Molotov had announced in 1947 that the USSR knew how to make an atomic bomb, but had no intention of using one. In the United States there had been urgent secret discussion of a new and vastly powerful 'super-bomb', but apparently the first President Truman heard of it was early in October 1949.

Some of the Los Alamos scientists feared that the USSR might already be working on a hydrogen bomb and one of them, the arch-hawk, Edward Teller, urged the rapid development of a weapon with an explosive force equivalent to 16 million tons of TNT, 800 times as much as the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945. Senator Brien McMahon, chairman of the joint Congressional Atomic Energy Committee, began pressing the president for a crash programme. Truman complained that he was 'being blitzed into the thing by the military establishment', but he seems to have had little real doubt about what his decision would have to be. On January 18th a long article about the new weapon appeared in the New York Times. On January 29th Senator Tom Connally, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he thought the US should proceed with the hydrogen bomb, to help to keep peace in the world like the atomic bomb before it. Senator McMahon issued a statement next day that the matter of the hydrogen bomb was 'under continuous investigation and consideration'.

On January 31st Truman announced that, in accordance with his responsibility to see that the country was able to defend itself against any possible aggressor, he had directed the Atomic Energy Commission 'to continue with its work on all forms of atomic energy weapons, including the so-called hydrogen or super-bomb'. A new stage had opened in the arms race and progress was swift. The American bomb was successfully tested at Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific in 1952 and the USSR tested its first hydrogen bomb a year later. By 1961 the Soviet Union had a weapon which yielded an explosive force equivalent to 60 million tons of TNT, and by the end of the 1980s the world's nuclear powers had some 40,000 thermo-nuclear devices in their arsenals. Nobelprize.org The Development and Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons The 20th century saw revolutionary breakthroughs in many fields of science and technology. Besides the many discoveries and inventions in the fields of electronics and telecommunications, few of the leaps forward had more direct impact on people's lives and society at large than the advances in nuclear science.

Below you can learn more about one particular aspect of the nuclear revolution: the development and spread of nuclear weapons. The Birth of the Atomic Age In October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II in Europe, the President of the United States Franklin D. Roosevelt received a letter from physicist Albert Einstein and his Hungarian colleague Leo Szilard, calling to his attention the prospect that a bomb of unprecedented power could be made by tapping the forces of nuclear fission. The two scientists, who had fled from Europe in order to escape Nazism, feared that Hitler-Germany was already working on the problem. Should the Germans be the first to develop the envisaged "atomic bomb," Hitler would have a weapon at his disposal that would make it possible for him to destroy his enemies and rule the world. Photo of "mushroom cloud" over Nagasaki, August 9, 1945. Photo: Children of the Manhattan Project The atomic bombs "Little Boy" (left) dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and "Fat Man" (right) dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.

Photo: Children of the Manhattan Project To avoid this nightmare, Einstein and Szilard urged the government of the United States to join the race for the atomic bomb. Roosevelt agreed, and for the next four and half years a vast, utterly secret effort was launched in cooperation with the United Kingdom. Code-named "The Manhattan Project," the effort eventually employed more than 200,000 workers and several thousands scientists and engineers, many of European background. Finally, on July 16, 1945, the first atomic bomb was tested in the midst of the Alamogordo desert in New Mexico. Its power astonished even the men and women who had constructed it. As he witnessed the spectacular explosion, Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who had directed the scientific work on the bomb, remembered a line from the Vedic religious text Bhagavad-Gita: "I am become death, the shatterer of worlds." By the time of the Alamogordo test, Germany had already surrendered. This meant that the potential threat of a Nazi atomic bomb no longer existed. But the war in the Pacific was still raging, and the President of the United States Harry S.

Truman decided to use the atomic bomb in order to force the Japanese leadership to surrender as quickly as possible. Thus, on August 6 an atomic bomb with an explosive yield equivalent to 12.5 kilotons of the explosives TNT (trinitrotoluene) was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, instantly killing some 70,000 of its inhabitants, with another 70,000 deaths registered by the end of 1945. Meanwhile, on August 9, a second bomb was used against the city of Nagasaki. This explosion had a higher yield (equivalent to 22 kilotons of TNT) but caused fewer instant deaths. However, many of the survivors suffered from heavy burns, radiation sickness, etc., and the death toll continued to rise. By the end of the year more than 70,000 of Nagasaki's citizens had lost their lives. Five years later, as many as 340,000 people, or 54 percent of the original population, had died from the two explosions.

The Spread of Nuclear Weapons 1945-1968 After the Japanese surrender on August 15, 1945, many people called for a ban on nuclear weapons in order to avoid a nuclear arms race and the risk of future catastrophes like the ones in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Both the United States and the Soviet Union declared that they were in favor of putting the atomic bomb under foolproof international control. In spite of these declarations, the big powers were, in fact, never ready to give up their own nuclear weapons programs. By the end of 1946 it was clear to everybody that the effort to prevent a nuclear arms race had failed. Indeed, the Soviet Union had already launched a full-speed secret nuclear weapons program in an attempt to catch up with the United States. Thanks in part to espionage, the Soviet scientists were able to build a blueprint of the American fission bomb that was used against Nagasaki and to conduct a successful testing of it on August 29, 1949. Robert Oppenheimer (left) and General Leslie Groves at the Trinity Site, Alamogordo, soon after the first atomic bomb was tested in July 16, 1945.

Photo: Children of the Manhattan Project In its turn, the fact that the Soviet Union had become a nuclear power figured heavily when President Truman in early 1950 decided to launch a crash program in order to develop a more advanced type of nuclear weapons, the so-called hydrogen bomb. In contrast to the first atomic bombs, which destructive power came from the process of nuclear fission, the "H-bomb" would use a small fission bomb to trigger a tremendously powerful process of nuclear fusion. Today eight countries are possessing nuclear weapons. The five nuclear weapons states United States, Russia (former Soviet Union), United Kingdom, France and China, are the only countries allowed to have nuclear weapons according to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) from 1970. All members of the United Nations except Israel, India and Pakistan have signed the NPT. By 1954, both the United States and the Soviet Union had successfully tested their first generation of H-bombs. The tests proved that fusion bombs could easily be made to produce explosions more than 1,000 times as powerful as the fission bombs used in the Second World War.

The most powerful explosion ever took place at Novaya Zemlya on October 30, 1961, when the Soviet Union tested a "monster bomb" with a yield equivalent to 50 megatons of TNT. It has been estimated that this explosion alone released more destructive power than all bombs and explosives used in the Second World War added together, including the three nuclear explosions of July and August 1945. By 1961, two more countries had developed and successfully tested nuclear weapons. United Kingdom had started its program during the Second World War in close co-operation with the United States, and the first British bomb was tested on October 3, 1952. On February 13, 1960, France followed suit. The French program received very little technological and scientific support from other countries. Four and a half years later, on October 16, 1964, China became the fifth nuclear power after having received only reluctant assistance from the Soviet Union.

Preventing the Spread of Nuclear Weapons In the early 1960s, many military experts and political leaders feared that the proliferation of nuclear weapons was bound to continue, and that within a decade or two a dozen additional countries were likely to cross the nuclear threshold. In an attempt to forestall such a development, the United States and the Soviet Union took the lead in negotiating an international agreement that would prohibit the further spread of nuclear weapons without banning the utilization of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. The result was the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, also referred to as the Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT, which opened for signature on July 1, 1968. By then, 21 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean had already established the world's first nuclear weapons-free zone by signing on to the Treaty of Tlatelolco. When it came into force on March 5, 1970, the NPT separated between two categories of states: On the one hand, nuclear weapons states – that is, the five countries that were known to possess nuclear weapons at the time when the Treaty was signed (United States, Soviet Union, United Kingdom, France and China).

On the other hand, non-nuclear weapons states – that is, all other signatories of the Treaty. According to its provisions, the nuclear weapons states on signing the NPT agree not to release nuclear weapons or in any other way help other states to acquire or build nuclear weapons. At the same time, the non-nuclear weapons states signatories agree not to acquire or develop "nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices." In exchange for this self-denial, the nuclear weapons states promise to move toward a gradual reduction of their arsenals of nuclear weapons with the ultimate goal of complete nuclear disarmament. The NPT was first signed by the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union together with 59 other countries. China and France acceded to the Treaty in 1992. In 1996, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan gave up their nuclear weapons, left over from the Soviet Union when it fell apart in 1991-92, and signed the NPT as non-nuclear weapons states parties. The NPT is now the most widely accepted arms control agreement. As of June 2003, all members of the United Nations except Israel, India, and Pakistan had signed the NPT.

However, one signatory, North Korea, had recently threatened to withdraw from the Treaty. Other Non-Proliferation Agreements Green areas show nuclear weapons-free zones. Different treaties made it possible to create several nuclear weapons-free zones in the world: Latin America, the Caribbea (except for Cuba), South East Asia, Central Asia and Africa. More than 50% of the land on Earth is free of nuclear weapons (99% of all land south of the equator). 1,8 billion people live within these zones. Other international treaties prohibit stationing and testing of any kind of nuclear explosives in the Antarctic, at the sea-bed, in outer space and on the moon. The very first major nuclear arms control agreement was the Limited Test-Ban Treaty of 1963. The LTBT prohibited nuclear explosions in the atmosphere, in outer space, and under water. This treaty was motivated first of all by a desire to reduce and contain the health hazards caused by radioactive fall-out from nuclear explosions in the atmosphere.

Due to the fact that many of the radioactive isotopes that were spread around the globe in the wake of such explosions have a lifetime of many tens or hundreds or even thousands of years, the continuation of atmospheric testing was likely to cause additional cancer deaths and other serious health problems on a large scale for many generations to come. That being said, many countries supported the treaty for yet another reason: non-proliferation. Since it was considered very difficult to develop a reliable nuclear weapons capability without conducting at least one real-life test, a universal ban on testing would also serve as an effective measure against nuclear proliferation. It was probably for the very same reason that most of the threshold states – that is, countries under suspicion of pursuing secret nuclear ambitions – for a long time refused to sign the LTBT. Also France and China withheld their signature, arguing that the LTBT was unfair since it allowed the technologically more advanced nuclear weapons states to continue testing underground. Eventually, on October 24, 1996, a Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) was signed that banned all nuclear explosions, including underground tests, for military as well as peaceful purposes. Both France and China were now ready to sign up.

By June 2003, the CTBT had been signed by 167 and ratified by 100 out of altogether 197 countries. Among the countries that had still to sign and/or ratify the treaty were Afghanistan, Cuba, India, Iraq, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and the United States (United States ratification has so far been stopped by the Senate). The Illegal Nuclear Weapons States As mentioned, the NPT distinguished between nuclear weapons states and non-nuclear weapons states as parties of the Treaty. However, from the very beginning there was in fact a third category of countries as well, namely, non-nuclear weapons states that for one reason or another had decided not to become parties of the NPT. Some countries, like Cuba, dismissed the NPT as an instrument that served to maintain the existing and, in their opinion, thoroughly unjust world order. Others simply wanted to reserve the option of developing their own nuclear arsenal: either to enhance their regional or international status, to deter military aggression or to underpin their political independence. Not surprisingly, most of the threshold states belonged to this group.

The first country outside the NPT to cross the nuclear threshold was India, which exploded a nuclear device in an atmospheric test in 1974. In 1998, both India and Pakistan conducted several nuclear underground tests, inviting a storm of international protests and some short-lived economic and political sanctions as well. Meanwhile, the ending of white minority rule in South Africa in 1993 had led to the sensational disclosure that, in the mid-1980s, South Africa had developed and stockpiled a small number of nuclear weapons. The weapons had been dismantled and destroyed in the last years of apartheid because the white government feared that they might some day fall into the hands of militant black opposition groups and be used against the government. Subsequently, South Africa signed both the NPT (1991) and the CTBT (1996) as a non-nuclear weapons state. Allegations about a secret Israeli nuclear weapons program were frequently heard in the 1960s and 70s. It was not until the mid-1980s, however, that the allegations were backed up with firm proof.

In the fall of 1986, a former Israeli nuclear technician, Mordechai Vanunu, disclosed illegally possessed evidence proving that Israel, by all meaningful definitions of the term, was indeed a nuclear weapons state, and a powerful one as well. Drawing on Vanunu's photographs from the bomb factory underneath the small Dimona nuclear reactor, Western experts concluded that Israel at the time probably had acquired enough fissile material to produce more than 100 nuclear bombs and warheads. Today, Israel may possess as much as 150-200 nuclear weapons. Thus, by June 2003 there were at least three countries – India, Israel, and Pakistan – that were both in possession of nuclear weapons and non-parties to the NPT. In addition, North Korea had announced its intention to withdraw from the NPT. The announcement came after repeated hints by North Korean representatives that their country already possessed a few nuclear weapons. Nuclear Weapons and the Nobel Peace Prize Joseph Rotblat at the 1995 Peace Prize Ceremony, Oslo, Norway. Photo: The Norwegian Nobel Institute Alfred Nobel died long before the scientific discoveries took place that would pave the way for the use of nuclear energy for military purposes.

In his will, however, he stated that one of the achievements that might qualify someone for being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize is outstanding work "for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses". In the nuclear age, the Norwegian Nobel Committee, on several occasions, picked as the most deserving candidate within this category a person or an organization fighting against the spread and build-up of nuclear weapons. Among the Nobel Peace Prize Laureates who received the award, fully or partly, in recognition of their efforts in favor of nuclear disarmament were Philip Noel-Baker (1959), Linus Pauling (1962), Eisaku Sato (1974), Alfonso García Robles and Alva Myrdal (1982), International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (1985), Mikhail Gorbachev (1990), Joseph Rotblat and the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs (1995). As long as the risks of nuclear proliferation and nuclear war continue to exist, new Nobel Peace Prizes may well be awarded in this field in the years ahead.

The 1959 Nobel Peace Prize The British professor, politician and diplomat, Philip Noel-Baker, was awarded the 1959 Nobel Peace Prize in acknowledgment of his lifelong endeavor to help refugees of war and to promote arms control and disarmament. Although the award was not given to him primarily for his call for nuclear disarmament, the Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Mr. Gunnar Jahn, made several references to this particular aspect of Noel-Baker's work in his presentation speech at the award ceremony. In a recent book, The Arms Race: A Program for World Disarmament from 1958, Noel-Baker had indeed called for an international agreement that could stop the spread and build-up of nuclear weapons. His main conclusion was that even if there were risks involved in every proposed scheme for nuclear disarmament, these risks were not as grave as the risk of doing nothing, pending the establishment of a foolproof control system. Philip Noel-Baker received the 1959 Nobel Peace Prize.

The 1962 Nobel Peace Prize Linus Pauling, a professor and 1954 Nobel Prize Laureate in Chemistry, received the 1962 Nobel Peace Prize for his leading role in the struggle against nuclear testing in the atmosphere. Pauling was not personally involved in the negotiations leading up to the Limited Test-Ban Treaty (LTBT) of 1963 but the Norwegian Nobel Committee argued that the work of Pauling and other scientists had been instrumental in bringing the three main nuclear powers (United States, Soviet Union, and United Kingdom) to the negotiation table. Symbolically, the Committee announced its decision on October 12, 1963, the very day that the LTBT went into effect. Linus Pauling received the 1962 Nobel Peace Prize. The 1974 Nobel Peace Prize Eisaku Sato, former prime minister of Japan, received the 1974 Nobel Peace Prize mainly in recognition of his opposition to any plans for a Japanese nuclear weapons program and his crucial role in ensuring Japan's signature to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

In her presentation speech at the award ceremony, Committee chairperson, Aase Lionæs, said that the award to Sato should be seen as "an encouragement to all who work to ensure that the non-proliferation agreement will receive the widest possible support." Eisaku Sato received the 1974 Nobel Peace Prize. The 1982 Nobel Peace Prize In 1982 the Norwegian Nobel Committee decided to give the Peace Prize to Alva Myrdal and Alfonso García Robles, for their important contributions in favor of nuclear arms control and disarmament. In the case of Mrs. Myrdal, a Swedish diplomat, the Committee wanted to celebrate her long and tireless effort in favor of nuclear disarmament in general, and her hard-hitting criticism of the nuclear weapons powers for failing to live up to their commitments under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Also Mr. Robles, a Mexican diplomat, had a long and distinguished diplomatic career in the field of arms control and disarmament. He was particularly hailed for his crucial contribution to the process that led to the signing of the Treaty of Tlatelolco, which established the world's first self-declared nuclear weapons-free zone in Latin America.

Alva Myrdal and Alfonso García Robles received the 1982 Nobel Peace Prize. Read More » The 1985 Nobel Peace Prize The early 1980s was a period of increasing political and military tensions between the United States, the Soviet Union and their respective allies. By giving the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize to the organization International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), the Norwegian Nobel Committee wanted to praise an international group of medical doctors that, for many years, had worked hard to spread authoritative information about the catastrophic consequences of nuclear war. The Committee believed that this in turn would help strengthen the growing public opposition to the nuclear arms race that had become so visible in Western countries at the time. In order to demonstrate that the IPPNW's campaign against nuclear weapons was directed against both sides in the Cold War, the Committee asked the organization's two founders and co-presidents, Professor Bernard Lown from the United States and Professor Yevgeny Chazov from the Soviet union, to receive the Prize on behalf of their organization. International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) received the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize.

The 1990 Nobel Peace Prize In 1990 Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize "for his leading role in the peace process which today characterizes important parts of the international community". One important aspect of that contribution was the numerous initiatives he had taken in order to stop and reverse the nuclear arms race of the 1980s. As Committee chairperson Gidske Andersson pointed out in her presentation speech at the award ceremony, Gorbachev had been instrumental in bringing about disarmament agreements that were "without parallel in our part of the world, in this or indeed in previous centuries." The most obvious examples were the INF Treaty of 1987, which banned all United States and Soviet intermediate nuclear forces, the CEF Treaty of 1990 on conventional European forces, and the START I Treaty, which committed the United States and the Soviet Union to a 30 percent cut in their overall strategic arsenals. Mikhail Gorbachev received the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize.

The 1995 Nobel Peace Prize In 1995, the Norwegian Nobel Committee decided to give that year's Nobel Peace Prize, in two equal parts, to Joseph Rotblat and to the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, for their efforts to diminish the part played by nuclear arms in international politics and, in the longer run, to eliminate such arms. Coinciding with the 50-year memorial of the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the 1995 award also served as an appeal to the political leaders of the world to collaborate across national and political divides on constructive proposals for reducing the nuclear threat. Founded in 1955, the Pugwash Conferences have brought together scientists and decision-makers with a common desire to see all nuclear weapons destroyed. Joseph Rotblat, a Polish-born nuclear physicist who had worked on the Anglo-American atomic bomb project during the Second World War up until the German surrender, has since then been the most important figure in the Pugwash network. Joseph Rotblat and the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs received the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize.

The 2005 Nobel Peace Prize On October 7, 2005, The Norwegian Nobel Committee announced that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and its Director General, Mohamed ElBaradei, were awarded the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize for efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes and to ensure that nuclear energy for peaceful purposes is used in the safest possible way. At a time when the threat of nuclear arms is again increasing, the Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes to underline that this threat must be met through the broadest possible international cooperation. IAEA controls that nuclear energy is not misused for military purposes, and the Director General has stood out as an unafraid advocate of new measures to strengthen that regime. At a time when disarmament efforts appear deadlocked, when there is a danger that nuclear arms will spread both to states and to terrorist groups, and when nuclear power again appears to be playing an increasingly significant role, IAEA's work is of incalculable importance. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and its Director General, Mohamed ElBaradei were awarded the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize. By Olav Njølstad, The Norwegian Nobel Institute.

First published 19 June 2003 Bibliography Much of the technical and scientific information in this article draws upon Dietrich Schroeer, Science, Technology and the Arms Race (New York, 1984: John Wiley & Sons). Two instructive historical accounts of the first fifty years of the nuclear age are: McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival: Choices About the Bomb in the First Fifty Years (New York, 1990: Vintage Books), and John Newhouse, War and Peace in the Nuclear Age (New York, 1990: Vintage Books). For a more thorough account of the Nobel Peace Prize and the nuclear arms race, see Olav Njølstad "The Norwegian Nobel Committee and the Bomb, 1945-1999", Peace & Change, vol. 24, no. 4 (2001), pp. 488-509. Peter Goodchild, J. Robert Oppenheimer: "Shatterer of Worlds" (London, BBC: 1980). Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York, 1986: Simon & Schuster).

David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb: the Soviet Union and Atomic Energy 1939-1956 (New Haven, 1994: Yale University Press). John Wilson Lewis and Xue Litai, China Builds the Bomb (Stanford, CA, 1988: Stanford University Press). David Fischer, "Reversing nuclear proliferation: South Africa", Security Dialogue, vol. 24, no. 3 (London, 1993: Sage), pp. 273-286. The best account of the Israeli program is Avner Cohen, Israel and the Bomb (New York, 1998: Columbia University Press). The Atomic Bombs and the End of World War II: Tracking an Elusive Decision The Atomic Bombs and the End of World War II: Tracking an Elusive Decision by Bruce Hunt In what amounted to the last act of World War II, US forces dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and another on Nagasaki three days later. Ever since, controversy has swirled around the decision to drop those bombs and annihilate those two cities.

But exactly who made that decision, and how did it come about? Conventionally, of course, the decision is ascribed to President Harry Truman, but there is in fact very little documentary evidence that he ever made an affirmative decision to drop the bombs. Instead, the most that can be said with certainty is that he did not intervene to stop a process that had already acquired enormous momentum even before he became president on Franklin Roosevelt’s death in April 1945. Remarkable collections of primary documents, now readily available online, shed substantial light on the story of the development and use of the first atomic bombs. Two of the best collections are those maintained by the National Security Archive and by the Truman Library . On the NSA website, for instance, we find a long report General Leslie Groves, the head of the Manhattan Project, prepared for Secretary of War Stimson. The meeting on April 25, 1945, at which Groves and Secretary of War Henry Stimson delivered the gist of this report to Truman was the first time the new president was given more than the barest hint about the new weapons that had been in development, at enormous expense, for the past three and a half years.

Groves’s memo gives a fairly full account of how atomic bombs would work and of the prospects that they would be ready to in less than four months. How much of all this, or of the shorter memo Stimson prepared, Truman really absorbed is not clear, but by the time the first plutonium implosion bomb was detonated in the New Mexico desert on July 16, 1945, Truman had certainly grasped that such bombs might play a pivotal role in ending the war with Japan, as well as in postwar relations with the Soviet Union. In their effort to find the moment when Truman made “the great decision” to use atomic bombs against Japan, several historians have latched onto a memo (posted on the Truman Library website) that Stimson sent to Truman on July 30, 1945, and have focused in particular on the reply Truman scrawled on its back. “Suggestions approved,” he wrote.”Release when ready but not sooner than August 2. [signed] HST.” In his well known biography Truman (1992), David McCullough declared that “The time had come for Truman to give the final go-ahead for the bomb.

This was the moment, the decision only he could make.” But examination of Stimson’s memo shows clearly that it was not about getting approval to release the bombs over Japan, but only about releasing a carefully crafted public statement to the press once the first bomb had been dropped. Approving a press release appears to be the closest President Truman ever came, at least in writing, to making a positive decision concerning the first use of nuclear weapons.

Photo Credits: At the time this photo was made, smoke billowed 20,000 feet above Hiroshima while smoke from the burst of the first atomic bomb had spread over 10,000 feet on the target at the base of the rising column.Two planes of the 509th Composite Group, part of the 313th Wing of the 20th Air Force, participated in this mission, one to carry the bomb, the other to act as escort, 08/06/1945, Author Unknown, National Archives and Records Administration President Roosevelt, Vice-President-elect Truman, Vice-President Wallace, by Abbie Rowe, Truman Library Nagasaki, Japan, before and after the atomic bombing of August 9, 1945, U.S National Archives All via Wikimedia Commons

Question: Which President gave the go-ahead to build an H Bomb?
Answer: Truman