When Winston Churchill asked America to nuke Moscow

75 years ago this month, the Soviet Union successfully tested an atomic bomb. This was the beginning of an international arms race where today 9 countries possess enough nuclear firepower to wipe out humanity. But what if there was only one country with this power? Would he seize the opportunity to destroy a defenseless enemy or even rule the world?

When the US was still the only country with the Bomb, Winston Churchill’s advice was “PUSH THE BUTTON!” The former British prime minister urged American leaders to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the Kremlin to eliminate communism in one fell swoop. You can find details in the book When Lions Roar: The Churchills and the Kennedys by Thomas Maier. What would have happened if the US had acted on this shocking advice?

24/7 Wall St. Perspectives

• Churchill, a long-time anti-communist, felt that a future war with the Soviet Union was inevitable.
• He wanted the United States to use a nuclear weapon to decapitate the country’s leadership.
• This could have resulted in the United States being permanently at war and even becoming a dictatorship in itself.

History with a point

The use of nuclear weapons seems unthinkable, but national leaders do think about when and how they might be used. Today we are trying to stop Russian expansion into Ukraine. Russia made nuclear threats and the United States made counter-threats. Citizens need to be aware of the range of options that leaders might consider and take this into account when casting their votes. If the unthinkable remains so. . . or is it worth thinking about?

Long-time anti-communist

Churchill was 43 when the Russian Revolution brought the Communists to power. At the time, he was helping to lead Britain’s World War I operations. He resented the fact that Russia’s new leaders had made a separate peace with Germany and despised communist ideology that rejected basic Western values ​​and civil liberties.

The Enemy of My Enemy

Josef Stalin, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill at their first World War II meeting in Tehran, Iran, 1943.

In the 1930s, Churchill witnessed the resurgence of Germany under the Nazis and was frustrated by European appeasement that allowed the threat to grow. As prime minister for most of World War II, he had to reluctantly ally with the Soviet Union to defeat the Nazi mastermind. After the war, however, he was deeply disturbed when the USSR took control of Eastern Europe. In fact, Churchill himself coined the term “Iron Curtain” to describe the division he created on the continent. He believed that a third world war was on the horizon.

Never again

Winston Churchill was Prime Minister from 1940-45 to 1951-55.

Instead of waiting for the USSR to rebuild, rearm, and acquire its own atomic arsenal, Churchill believed that the US should use its monopoly on the ultimate weapon to negotiate from a position of strength. And if that negotiation failed to get the communists back from the countries they were occupying? Then, as he told US Senator Styles Bridges, “If you could drop an atomic bomb on the Kremlin, wiping it out, it would be a very easy matter to manage the balance of Russia, which would be directionless.”

Managing Russia: ‘A Very Easy Problem?’

German soldiers retreating from the Eastern Front by horse and cart in 1944, defeated by both the weather and fierce Russian resistance.

Churchill greatly exaggerated the ease of foreign intervention in Russia. From 1917 to 1925, over a dozen nations, including Britain and the US, sent thousands of troops into Russia to remove the “reds” from power. That effort failed.

Historically, Russia has been an autocratic, centralized society, with people at all levels waiting for direction from those above them. But there are also long-suffering people who love their Motherland and can make astonishing sacrifices in its defense. No foreign invader has ever succeeded in conquering the whole of this vast country with its harsh climate and determined population.

Options for removing Russian leaders

The Kremlin is a medieval walled fortress in the heart of Moscow, which is the political, economic and spiritual center of Russia.

How could Churchill’s plan have played out? The aim of an attack on the capital would be to remove the country’s leadership. That means it would have to be a surprise, so that the communist leaders wouldn’t pay in safer places, and the bomb would have to be big enough to take out all or most of them.

A nuclear weapon the size of Hiroshima could destroy the Kremlin in the heart of the city and kill several hundred thousand people. However, some leaders, even the notoriously paranoid Stalin himself, may be in other parts of the city at the time of the attack. To truly disrupt the country by eliminating administrative offices, factories, research centers, and the skilled personnel who run them city-wide, the US could use one or more larger weapons. If the entire city had been destroyed, 3-4 million people would have perished in an unprecedented human tragedy.

World War III

Russia is the largest country in the world, stretching 5,600 miles from east to west and including nearly 200 different ethnic groups.

Liberation of Eastern Europe

The destruction of Moscow would be only the beginning of a conflict that could last decades and encompass Eurasia. In the first stage, the US and its allies should remobilize troops to expel the remaining Russian units from Eastern Europe. The effort would require managing large numbers of prisoners of war and refugees and maintaining order in the newly liberated countries.

Reorganization of Russia

What would we do with Russia itself? Would it be left in chaos, with warring military factions and ethnic regions declaring independence? Would the US, UK and others occupy strategic cities and infrastructure and try to set up one or more friendly governments? Partisan warfare could last many decades between Russian factions and against foreign occupiers. Having already bombed a Russian city, would the US do it again if faced with significant resistance from Leningrad, Stalingrad or Sverdlovsk?

A land war in Asia

Mao Zedong brought the Communists to power in China in 1949 after a decades-long brutal civil war. By the late 1940s, the Communists controlled North Korea and were fighting for power in North Vietnam. Even if the US were to destroy one or more cities in Asia, to completely extinguish communism would require extensive guerrilla warfare, which would be extremely unpopular with the American people.

Home Front

An unprovoked US nuclear attack on Russia would likely have produced massive social unrest at home, perhaps even ending our democracy.

A moral dilemma

Fed up with war, Americans donned their uniforms with respect again to defeat an unprovoked war waged by North Korea between 1950 and 1953. But they would do so if the United States were the aggressor, launching an equally infamous unprovoked attack like Pearl Harbor and the Holocaust?

Convincing the public

Much would depend on the ability of the President and Congressional leadership to convince the American people that the Soviet Union was an imminent threat that needed to be stopped. If the public didn’t buy it, the moral horror of the attack, as well as the sacrifice of remobilizing troops, could create massive resistance.

The end of democracy?

Faced with overwhelming opposition, the president could be impeached or impeached; that is, if democratic institutions would survive. Because if the military leadership were as convinced as the president—and his friend Winston Churchill—that this war was necessary for our survival, then they might think they deserved martial law, just for the duration of the state of emergency. And when this emergency will end is anyone’s guess.

Pax Atomica

Paradoxically, Churchill believed that the way to save the world from World War III was essentially to start World War III. But an even more amazing paradox is that several countries building nuclear weapons have helped ensure that no country has used them in war since 1945.

Just as the American political system balances branches of government competing for power, a multipolar nuclear world has created an uneasy confrontation that, over the past 8 decades, has produced (with some notable exceptions) one of the most peaceful periods in world history. . So far, this is the best I’ve been able to do. But maybe our globally connected children and grandchildren will be able to come up with solutions we haven’t thought of yet. Solutions that would make even our friend Winston Churchill withdraw his finger from pressing the red button.

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