From
History of World War II: Operation Barbarossa, the Allied Firebombing of German Cities and Japan’s Early Conquests by Shane Quinn
https://www.globalresearch.ca/history-world-war-ii-operation-barbarossa-allied-firebombing-german-cities-japan-early-conquests/5763433
Chapter XVII
Fallacy of Terror-bombing Urban Areas
Though remaining
unmentioned in official texts, the origins of the dubiously titled Cold War can
be traced to policies pursued by American leaders during World War II itself.
Following Nazi Germany’s calamitous defeat at Stalingrad in early 1943,
Washington’s ongoing construction of the atomic bomb was implemented with the
Soviets in mind.
Three months before even
the D-Day landings US General Leslie Groves, a
virulent anti-communist, confirmed in March 1944 that the atomic bomb was being
produced in order to “subdue the Soviets”, then an irreplaceable ally of the
West.
Aged 46, Groves assumed
charge of the US nuclear program in September 1942, and he proved a ruthless,
crafty figure who possessed huge power in his new position. Groves in fact held
control over every facet of America’s nuclear project, from the technical and
scientific aspects, to areas of production and security, along with
implementing plans as to where the bombs would be deployed.
Less than six weeks
after the atomic attacks over Japan, on 15 September 1945 the Pentagon
finalized a list: Through which it expounded strategies to
annihilate 66 Soviet cities with 204 atomic bombs, to be
executed through synchronized aerial assaults. This ratio averages at slightly
more than three bombs discharged upon each city.
However, six atomic
weapons apiece were categorized to obliterate 10 of the Soviets’ biggest urban
centres, that is 60 bombs combined would be dropped over the following: Moscow
(Russian capital), Leningrad, Novosibirsk, Kiev (Ukrainian capital), Kharkov,
Koenigsberg, Riga (Latvian capital), Odessa, Ulan-Ude and Tashkent (Uzbekistan
capital). This alone would have gone a long way towards destroying the Soviet
Union.
Yet it was the mere
beginning. Five atomic weapons each (35 altogether) were identified to
liquidate another seven large cities in the USSR: Stalingrad, Sverdlovsk,
Vilnius (Lithuanian capital), Lvov, Kazan, Voronezh and Nizhni Tagil.
Continuing, four bombs
apiece (28 in total) were earmarked to desolate seven more significant urban
areas: Gorki, Alma Ata, Tallinn (Estonian capital), Rostov-on-Don, Yaroslavl,
Ivanovo, and Chimkent.
In addition, three
atomic bombs each (36 combined) were marked down to eliminate 12 other notable
cities, ranging from Tbilisi (Georgian capital) and Stalinsk to Vladivostok,
Archangel and Dnepropetrovsk.
Of these 36 Soviet
cities outlined to be blown up – requiring between three to six atomic bombs
per city – 25 of them belong to Russia, while the remaining 11 cities stretch
across the Ukraine, Georgia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Uzbekistan and
Kazakhstan. The process of annihilation was to be directed not simply against
eastern Europe and Russia, but extending to Central Asia too.
All of the USSR’s
remaining 30 cities were highlighted as needing either one or two atomic
weapons each, split down the middle: 15 cities necessitating two bombs apiece
and the other 15 designated for one bomb each. Among these are yet more
countries and well known places such as Minsk (Belarusian capital), Brest
Litovsk, Baku (Azerbaijan capital) and Murmansk. The devastation was once more
to spread past eastern Europe, and beyond Russia itself as far as Turkmenistan,
where oil and gas rich Neftedag was to be hit with one atomic weapon.
A few of the above
cities that the Pentagon was aiming to destroy are located in nations that have
since joined NATO, a US-led military organization – like those in Estonia,
Latvia and Lithuania, whose capital cities were listed as requiring 15 atomic
bombs combined. The city of Belostok, in now NATO state Poland, was to be
struck with two atomic weapons. These programs, if followed through, would have
resulted in many tens of millions of deaths, far exceeding the loss of life
during the Second World War.
Moreover, in 1945 some
of the aforementioned Soviet urban regions were already lying in ruins
following years of Nazi occupation, such as Kharkov, Vilnius, Tallinn and
Rostov-on-Don. US atomic attacks over these places would largely have been
hitting wrecked buildings. The Soviet Union lost more than 25 million people to
Hitler’s armies, and was still reeling internally at war’s end.
Three weeks before
Groves was completing his atomic plans, a late August 1945 Gallup poll found
that nearly 70% of Americans believed
the atomic bomb’s creation was “a good thing”, with just
17% feeling it to be “a bad thing”. It can be surmised these opinions would
have altered somewhat, had the public been aware of what was occurring in the
corridors of power.
One can but look on
aghast at the sheer devious and audacious nature pertaining to the proposed
demolition of 66 cities, across land areas spanning thousands of miles. In an
age before the Internet and convenient handheld technology, these in depth
stratagems would have required months of toil. The schemes may well have begun
formulation around the time of Groves’ March 1944 confession to nuclear
physicist Joseph Rotblat.
Groves was a driving
force behind the plan to eviscerate all Soviet industrial and military
capacity, with key assistance coming from Major General Lauris Norstad. Yet high ranking
soldiers cannot undertake operations at this level without approval emanating
from elite political circles.
As a consequence of
America’s nuclear programs dating to World War II, it is grossly and
historically inaccurate to suggest that the self-styled Cold War began in 1947
– as likewise are the claims that the Russians were to blame for resumption of
hostile attitudes and policies. The masses have been sorely misled on these
issues for more than seven decades.
Despite its importance,
virtually the entire Western mainstream press (and most alternative media) have
continued ignoring the Pentagon’s 1945 plan to incinerate dozens of Soviet
cities. In isolation amid commercial media the British Daily Star newspaper, on
8 January 2018, issued
a report regarding US proposals “to completely wipe Russia off
the map” with “a stockpile of 466 bombs”.
Nonetheless the 466
total was then not a realistic one, and such high bomb estimates were dismissed
by Groves himself as “excessive”, in his top secret memorandum to Norstad on 26
September 1945. Groves also
outlined in the same letter that, “It is not essential to get
total destruction of a city in order to destroy its effectiveness. Hiroshima no
longer exists as a city, even though the area of total destruction is
considerably less than total”.
Relating to their
nuclear designs, Groves and Norstad had a most serious problem before their
eyes, and one that would infuriate them both; along with, as we shall see,
president Harry Truman. In
late 1945, the US military held just two atomic bombs, and thoughts of
decimating the USSR at this point were that of a pipe dream.
Accumulation of the
necessary weapons was painstakingly slow, even for the world’s wealthiest
nation. By 30 June 1946, the stockpile of US atomic bombs had increased to
nine. Come November 1947 the arsenal had risen to 13 bombs, still remarkably
small.
Seven months previously
on 3 April 1947, president Truman, who was privy to proposals in wiping out the
USSR, was himself
informed of just how diminutive the US nuclear stash was.
Truman “was shocked” to learn they had just a dozen atomic weapons, as he
presumed the Pentagon had amassed a far greater number. Such was the secrecy of
America’s nuclear program, few enjoyed intimate knowledge of the facts.
That same year, 1947, Winston Churchill implored Styles Bridges, a Republican senator visiting London, that an atomic bomb
be dropped on the Kremlin “wiping it out”, thereby rendering Russia “without
direction” and “a very easy problem to handle”. Churchill was hoping that
Bridges would
persuade Truman to effectuate this action. During the recent
past, Churchill had received a royal welcome at the Kremlin and enjoyed a feast
with Stalin there in August 1942, before he returned to Moscow for further
meetings in late 1944. Three years later Churchill wished for the Kremlin to be
turned into dust.
Meanwhile by 30 June
1948, the US nuclear cache climbed to 50 atomic bombs, and from therein the
figures rocketed – come summer 1949, the US military finally held ownership of
over 200 atomic bombs, heralding the era of “nuclear plenty”. Groves was since
removed from his post, and even more dangerous individuals like General Curtis LeMay became prominent in American
nuclear war planning.
In October 1949, LeMay
expanded the plans so as to include 104 Soviet urban zones to be destroyed with
220 bombs “in a single massive attack”, and another 72 held back for “a
re-attack reserve”. The 292 bombs allocated were available by June 1950.
However, the preceding
year in August 1949, the global balance had irrevocably shifted, as Soviet
Russia successfully detonated an atomic weapon over a testing ground in
north-eastern Kazakhstan. Soviet acquisition of the bomb before 1950 came as a
nasty shock to Washington. It would prove a vital deterrent to American nuclear
designs, with the Russians having little choice but to follow suit and earmark
urban areas in the West, relating to their own nuclear war schemes.
America’s invention of
the hydrogen bomb in late 1952, quickly followed by the Soviets, dramatically
altered the scope and killing estimates of nuclear war. The humble atomic bomb
it seems was no longer of sufficient yield and underwent an “upgrading” as
humanity took a leap towards self-destruction.
The new hydrogen weapon,
or H-bomb, was hundreds of times more powerful than its atomic cousin, and by
the late 1950s H-bombs were being produced en masse by the Pentagon. Come
December 1960 – with the American arsenal now at a staggering 18,000 nuclear
weapons – it was calculated that practically every citizen in the Soviet Union
would be killed, either from the hydrogen bombs’ blast radius or through
resulting fallout. As was known, much of the radioactive poisoning would likely
be blown on the wind across Europe, further affecting Warsaw Pact states and
NATO allies.
Since 1950, the People’s
Republic of China was added to the US nuclear hit list, a country which then
consisted of over half a billion people; more than twice that of the USSR’s
populace; while the Chinese themselves did not obtain nuclear weapons until the
mid-1960s. Communist China and her cities were categorized to be levelled in
tandem with Soviet metropolises, bringing an overall predicted death toll to
hundreds of millions.
Due to a combination of
deterrence, mutually assured destruction (MAD), and hefty portions of luck, no
such terrible programs were executed, during what has been described for over
70 years as the “Cold War”. Rather than a cold conflict, the post-1945 years
were organized for humanity to witness the hottest war in human history.
Because of Soviet intelligence
reports, Stalin knew as early as four years prior to Hiroshima that America was
developing “a uranium bomb”. By confirming to the Russians they held a new
weapon of unparalleled destructive might Washington would furthermore, as
envisaged, hold greater influence in boardroom negotiations with the Soviets.
From
History
of World War II: Operation Barbarossa, the Allied Firebombing of German Cities
and Japan’s Early Conquests
Global Research
E-Book, Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)
By Shane Quinn
Global Research, June 17, 2023
