US Intended
to Destroy Civilian Populations With Nuclear
Strikes: Declassified Document
The document was prepared in the summer of 1956 and
made available this week
By Andrew Buncombe
December 24, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" - "The
Independent"
-
First
came Moscow and Leningrad, with more than 300
targeted sites or Designated Ground Zeros (DGZs), in
those two cities alone.
Then there was
Warsaw and Beijing, and an astonishing 1,200 other
cities.
This was the
list of targets drawn up “systematic destruction” by
US nuclear strikes at the height of the Cold War for
nuclear strikes, and
declassified more than fifty years later.
The
targets included civilian populations and
airfields
The list
reveals that the priority for any operation launched
by the US was airfields and installations, as they
wanted to be able to destroy any chance the Soviet
Union had of itself attacking America.
But included
in each city are specific areas - a detail that to
this day remains classified - that the US intended
to target because of their dense human populations.
This tactic was apparently at odds with
international rules of war that prohibit specific
targeting of civilians.
The 700-page
document, Strategic Air Command (SAC) Atomic Weapons
Requirements Study for 1959, was produced in the
summer of 1956 and made available this week by the
National Security Archive, located at George
Washington University in Washington DC.
At the time
the document was prepared, General Curtis LeMay was
Commander-in-chief of the Strategic Air Command.
General
Curtis LeMay was Commander-in-chief of the
Strategic Air Command when the target list was
prepared
Scholars who
published the document said they believed it was the
most comprehensive Cold War nuclear target list ever
to be made public.
“One of the
most interesting things is the amount of minute
detail,” senior analyst William Burr told The
Independent.
“The priority
was installations. But there were also target areas
of human population. We still don’t know precisely
where….But it is chilling.”
The document
says that the nuclear bombing operations would
expose nearby civilians and “friendly forces and
people” to high levels of deadly radioactive
fallout.
Moreover, the
authors developed a plan for the “systematic
destruction” of Soviet bloc urban-industrial targets
that specifically and explicitly targeted
“population” in all cities, including Beijing,
Moscow, Leningrad, East Berlin, and Warsaw.
Mr Burr wrote
in a press release that the prioritisation of Soviet
air power was based on the apparent immediate threat
that Soviet bombers posed to the continental United
States and to US forces in Europe and East Asia”
“The report’s
detailed introduction explained that the priority
given to air power targets dictated the surface
bursting of high-yield thermonuclear weapons to
destroy priority targets, including airbases in
Eastern Europe,” he said.
“That tactic
would produce large amounts of radioactive fallout
compared to bursting weapons in the air. According
to the study, “the requirement to win the Air Battle
is paramount to all other considerations”.” |