Description
During the postwar era, the Soviet Union emerged as America's sole threat, rendering the U.S. Army and Navy impotent against its vast military power. The anticipation of war stemmed from a potential Soviet invasion of Western Europe, supported by the Soviet Union's substantial military capabilities. Acknowledging the impossibility of stopping the Soviet Union in a conventional war, the U.S. developed a series of war plans outlining scenarios of massive nuclear retaliation. The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff released the war plan Pincher in June 1946, calling for land and sea forces to retreat before a Soviet offensive. Simultaneously, the Army Air Forces would drop atomic bombs on twenty Soviet industrial, government, and military centers from bases mainly in England. After strategic bombing damaged the Soviet Union, U.S. forces would be mobilized for a counteroffensive. In August 1947, the war plan Broiler reflected an increasing reliance on the atomic bomb, hoping the nuclear air offe
