NATO Strategy and Nuclear Plannung: Oral History Interview Transcripts
In 1989 and 1990, David A. Rosenberg and Robert A. Wampler, working under the auspices of the Nuclear History Program, organized two joint oral history sessions with political and military officials who were closely involved with NATO strategic planning and nuclear weapons policies during the Eisenhower administrations. The officials who took part were:
- R. Gordon Arneson - former Advisor for Atomic Energy Affairs to Secretary of State John Foster Dulles
- Robert Bowie - former advisor to Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and director of the Policy Planning Staff
- General Andrew J. Goodpaster - former SHAPE Planning Staff, Aide to President Dwight D. Eisenhower and NATO SACEUR
- Douglas MacArthur II: Former State Department Counselor under Secretary of State John Foster Dulles
- General Robert Richardson - former member of SHAPE Planning Staff
The purpose of these oral history roundtables was to discuss the political and military factors which influenced the integration of nuclear weapons into U.S. and NATO military planning and strategy during the 1950s. As the transcripts reveal, assumptions about Soviet military capabilities and the nature of a future war in Europe, both of which were surrounded by substantial uncertainties, played a key role in this process, which resulted in the adoption in 1957 of MC 14/2, which contained aspects both of massive retaliation and flexible response in setting forth the strategic doctrine of the NATO alliance.
