The Centrality of the Bomb
by Gar Alperovitz and Kai Bird
Foreign Policy (Spring 1994) No. 94: 3 -20.

Those constraints produced the main requirements of Roosevelt's postwar security policy: He needed a rough agreement with the other dominant military power-the Soviet Union-to control Germany directly, and he needed a concrete way (beyond rhetoric) to weaken Germany's underlying military potential. Exaggerated discussions of "pastoralization" apart, Roosevelt's strategy centered on the notion of "industrial disarmament" to weaken Germany's military-industrial complex-and simultaneously to cement American-Soviet cooperation. Reductions in German industry could also provide the short-term preparations Joseph Stalin desperately sought to help rebuild the war-torn Soviet Union.

Related to that strategy, of course, were implications for Roosevelt's de facto acceptance of a Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. To the extent Stalin was certain that Germany would not rise again, at least in theory Soviet policy could be more relaxed in Eastern Europe. The Yalta agreement embodied big-power control of Germany, large-scale reparations, and an extremely vague declaration on the status of Eastern Europe.

Often overlooked is that from the American point of view, the advent of nuclear weapons gave Washington an alternative to constructing a European peace in cooperation with the Soviet Union. At Yalta, Washington had essentially agreed to a neutralized Germany, but with the bomb U.S. policymakers realized they could afford the risks of acting unilaterally.

The western portion of Germany could safely be reconstructed econotffically and, later, integrated into a West European military alliance. Only the atomic monopoly permitted that with little fear of German resurgence and without regard to Soviet security interests.

At Potsdam, American leaders explicitly understood that the atomic test the United States had conducted at Alamogordo, New Mexico, had upended the assumptions of policy. Compare, for instance, the views of President Harry Truman's closest adviser, James Byrnes, before and after Alamogordo. On June 6, 1945, six weeks before the blast, the diary of Ambassador Joseph Davies records that Byrnes, about to become secretary of state, "discussed the entire Russian situation at great length":

"It was clear that without Russian cooperation, without a primary objective for Peace, another disastrous war would be inevitable . . . . Nor did he think that our people on sober second thought would undertake fighting the Red Army and Russia for a hopeless cause of attempting to control the ideology or way of life which these various rival groups wished to establish in the various countries."

Although Russian cooperation was needed before the bomb, many scholars now recognize that the successful atomic test gave Truman "an entirely new feeling of confidence," as he put it. It provided Secretary of State Byrnes in particular with what he called "a gun behind the door" that he believed could make Russia more manageable." One of many similar conversations from the period was recorded by Secretary of War Stimson in his diary shortly after Hiroshima: "Byrnes was very much against any attempt to cooperate with Russia. His mind is full of his problems with the coming meeting of foreign ministers and he looks to having the presence of the bomb in his pocket, so to speak, as a great weapon to get through the thing."

In connection with the U.S. approach to Germany, the atomic bomb altered policy in two quite specific ways that went to the heart of Rooseveltian strategy. Shortly after the atomic test Byrnes simply abandoned the Yalta understanding that had set German reparations at roughly $ 20 billion (half of which would go to the Soviet Union). Another Davies diary entry on July 28, 1945, shows that he did so explicitly relying on the atomic bomb: " Byrnes was having a hard time with reparations. . . , but the details as to the success of the atomic bomb, which he had just received, gave him confidence that the Soviets would agree as to these difficulties."

Moreover, according to Davies, the secretary of state was also quite clear about the shift in fundamental power relations in Europe: "Because of the New Mexico development Byrnes felt secure anyway." Byrnes suggested that "the New Mexico situation had given us great power, and that in the last analysis it would control." Several American policymakers (notably Benjamin Cohen, an assistant to Byrnes) had believed that international control of the Ruhr industrial heartland might be the key to a compromise approach. In principle, it could achieve security without necessarily weakening the German economic reconstruction effort. But-again, shordy after the report of the successful nuclear test-Byrnes rejected that proposal as well.

Many scholars now understand that the atomic bomb altered the Truman administration's general postwar approach to the USSR. What needs to be grasped is the specific implications the weapon had for the continuing U.S. approach to Germany. That there was a close link between the bomb and the German problem in the minds of U.S. policymakers was made quite explicit again, for instance, in two August 22, 1945, meetings with General Charles de Gaulle. Here Truman and Byrnes together urged that "the German danger should not be exaggerated." De Gaulle, however, continued to emphasize French fears-and, like Roosevelt's advisers and the Russians, urged direct security measures to manage the longer-term German threat (including international control of the Ruhr and severing the west bank of the Rhine from Germany). Finally, Truman and Byrnes-responding explicitly to de Gaulle's concem about German" -- became blunt: "The atomic bomb will give pause to countries which might be tempted to commit aggressions."

Although U.S. policymakers still worried about the potential power of a united German state, very early in the postwar period they clearly understood that Germany no longer presented a fundamental military threat. The new nuclear monopoly substantially relieved the Truman administration of the central foreignpolicy and military concern of Roosevelt and his advisers. "In the last analysis it would control" as Byrnes said -- even if the American people forced the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Continent, even if American-Soviet cooperation failed, and even if Germany were not disarmed industrially. Put another way, the bomb made it possible to pursue a policy described by scholars in recent years as "double containment"-that is, the division of Germany could be used to contain both the Germans and the Soviets.

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