Emergency War Plan

Sean M. Maloney is a professor of history at the Royal Military College of Canada and served as the Canadian Army's historian for the war in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2014. He is the author of several books, including The Cool War: Nuclear Forces, Crisis Signaling, and the Russo-Ukraine War, 2014-2022 (U.S. Naval Institute, 2025) and Deconstructing Dr. Strangelove: The Secret History of Nuclear War Films (Potomac Books, 2020). He was awarded the 2023 Air Power History Book Prize from the Air Force Historical Foundation for Emergency War Plan: The American Doomsday Machine, 1945-1960 (Potomac Books, 2021).

"Emergency War Plan is an important and much-needed book. . . . The author has done yeoman service with the book, and it deserves a place on the scholar's shelf next to Richard Rhodes's outstanding works on the development of nuclear weapons."-John M. Curatola, Journal of Military History “This is an outstanding book. Sean Maloney has written an extremely detailed, prodigiously researched, and highly readable account of the U.S. nuclear war plans of the 1950s. . . . [Maloney] offers the term ‘massive deterrence’ to describe the effect of these [nuclear] forces, their demonstrated ability to deliver their weapons on target, and the iron will of American leaders to respond to a Soviet or Chinese attack if necessary. Deterrence worked. This is a definitive work on a complicated and arcane subject.”-Phillip S. Meilinger, former dean of the School of Advanced Airpower Studies at Air University “[This] is the Rosetta Stone compendium and most comprehensive body of work I have ever read on the development of the United States’ nuclear war plan. In exacting detail this book unravels the mystery behind the planning and operations of America’s nascent nuclear capability during the early years of the Cold War.”-Lt. Gen. Jack Weinstein, USAF (Ret.), former commander of the Twentieth Air Force and former deputy chief of staff for strategic deterrence and nuclear integration at the Pentagon “It might seem quaint today, but that distant ‘air atomic age’ of Truman and Eisenhower’s day planted and sprouted the seeds of the nuclear reign of terror. Sean Maloney renders an exhaustive account of how atomic penury morphed into nuclear plenty, and how war plans-including British offensive and Soviet defensive ones-changed in response. Along the way, Emergency War Plan presents a fresh picture of bombs, bombers, and groups matched to prospective targets, in a much more sophisticated fashion than in our received history of ‘massive retaliation.’ This book helps us understand Cold War history in a new way.”-John Prados, author of The Soviet Estimate

• List of IllustrationsList of TablesAcknowledgmentsAbbreviationsIntroduction1. Kami no itte: Nuclear Targeting and Japan, 19452. Per Ardua ad Atomica: Ur-Nuclear Targeting, 1946–493. Imminence of War I: Targeting the Soviet Union, 1950–534. Imminence of War II: Targeting Europe and the Far East, 1950–535. Four Horsemen I: Targeting the Soviet Union, 1954–566. Four Horsemen II: Targeting Europe and the Far East, 1954–567. Increasing the Deterrent Margin: Strategic Air Command and the Soviet Union, 1956–588. Prosteishiy Sputnik: Midcourse Corrections, 1957–599. Coming Together: The Basic War Plan, 1958–6010. Megadeath Musings: Alternative Undertaking and Deterrence, 1958–6011. The Acme of Skill: The Basic War Plan, the General Emergency Operations Plan, and the Far East, 1957–60ConclusionAppendix A: SAC Emergency War Plan 1-49 and 1-51 TargetsAppendix B: Soviet Cities and Population, 1960 EstimatesNotesBibliographyIndex