Bracing for Armageddon: Why Civil Defense Never Worked

257 Pages·2006·2.15 MB·English

by  Dee Garrison

Bracing for Armageddon:
Why Civil Defense
Never Worked
DEE GARRISON
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
BRACING FOR
ARMAGEDDON
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BRACING
F OR
ARMAGEDDON
Why Civil Defense Never Worked
DEE GARRISON
1
2006
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Garrison, Dee.
Bracing for Armageddon : why civil defense never worked /
Dee Garrison.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13 978-0-19-518319-1
ISBN 0-19-518319-3
1. Civil defense—United States. 2. Nuclear warfare.
3. United States—Military policy. I. Title.
UA947.G35 2006
363.35'0973—dc22 2005051559
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
For Jeanne, and for Travis, David Paul, and Marie
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Acknowledgments
Over the years I have been writing about nuclear war and reason, many people
have generously supported my work. For careful discussions, readings, and cri-
tiques of earlier and later versions of sections of this book, I am profoundly
grateful to Harriet Alonso, Scott Bennett, Michelle Brattain, John Chambers,
Dorothy Sue Cobble, David Fogelsong, Judith Gerson, Phyllis Mack, Art Miller,
David Oshinsky, James Reed, Sue Schrepfer, Bonnie Smith, and Deborah
White. I also gratefully acknowledge Britt Leggett, Lynn Miller, Carol Petillo
and Wayne Cooper, David Swee, Virginia Yans, and my neighbors Barbara
Turpin, David Younge, Joy Gianolio, and David Falk for their caring attention
to the completion of this work. I am especially grateful to Paul Boyer, Mari Jo
Buhle, Lawrence Wittner, and Amy Swerdlow, who believed in the value of this
study in its earliest stages.
For providing the supportive atmosphere to follow the truth as each of us
sees it, I am grateful to my colleagues in the History Department at Rutgers
University, who so generously supported me through several months of a seri-
ous illness. Suzanne Lebsock and Mary Hartman ensured that I had copies of
the manuscript even in the rehabilitation center and printed versions whenever
I asked. Kathleen Casey again and again solved computer problems, both large
and small, with great skill and love.
viii Acknowledgments
Generous fi nancial support from a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur
Foundation fellowship grant from its Program on Peace and International Co-
operation allowed me to travel to important archives and gave me time to write.
Rutgers University also supported my research with several sabbatical semesters
and research grants during the past six years. My editor at Oxford University
Press, Susan Ferber, has provided insightful, critical, and sympathetic editorial
assistance throughout.
I am indebted to many archivists and librarians for their kind and enthu-
siastic help with research problems and questions. I am especially grateful
to Wendy Chmielewski at the Swarthmore College Peace Collection, whose
knowledge of peace history is as educational as the many peace collections over
which she presides. I also give my sincere thanks to the librarians who guided
me to key documents in the Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Richard
Nixon, and Ronald Reagan presidential collections, in the National Archives,
and in the university and state libraries I visited.
My family members — my sister, Jeanne; my sons, Tray and Marty; and my
husband’s youngest daughter, Shannon — were always there to talk, praise my
progress, and urge me on. And as always, John Leggett has listened, responded,
and sometimes criticized my thoughts, read and reread my prose, and in so
many ways made this book possible through his constant encouragement and
his enabling me to fi nd the time and energy to complete the research and writ-
ing. I have benefi ted enormously from his analytic insights, his impatience with
formulaic versions of mainstream wisdom, and his inspiring vision of how we
might all learn to live together in a sane and just society.
Contents
Abbreviations xi
Interviews xiii
Introduction: Civil Defense and the Nuclear Dilemma:
Th e Cold War Tragicomedy 3
Prologue: Th e H-Bomb Changes Everything 19
One: “Alert, Not Alarm”: Th e First Ten Years, 1945 – 1955 31
Two: Th e Battle to Inform the Public, 1952 – 1957 55
Th ree: Holding the Lid On, 1957 – 1960 83
Four: Kennedy’s Civil Defense Gap, 1960 – 1964 105
Five: MAD, NUTS, and Civil Defense, 1963 – 1980 133
Six: Th e Fantasy Dies: Th e Reagan Years 153
Epilogue: From Bush to Bush: Final Gasp to Phoenix Rising 183
Notes 197
Index 233