Plan Totality was a
disinformation ploy established by US General
Dwight D. Eisenhower in August 1945 by order of US President
Harry S. Truman after the
Potsdam Conference.
The plan was for a nuclear attack on the
USSR with 20 to 30 atomic bombs. It named 20 Soviet cities for obliteration by a nuclear first strike:
Moscow,
Gorky,
Kuybyshev,
Sverdlovsk,
Novosibirsk
Novosibirsk (, also ; rus, Новосиби́рск, p=nəvəsʲɪˈbʲirsk, a=ru-Новосибирск.ogg) is the largest city and administrative centre of Novosibirsk Oblast and Siberian Federal District in Russia. As of the Russian Census ...
,
Omsk
Omsk (; rus, Омск, p=omsk) is the administrative center and largest city of Omsk Oblast, Russia. It is situated in southwestern Siberia, and has a population of over 1.1 million. Omsk is the third largest city in Siberia after Novosibirsk ...
,
Saratov
Saratov (, ; rus, Сара́тов, a=Ru-Saratov.ogg, p=sɐˈratəf) is the largest city and administrative center of Saratov Oblast, Russia, and a major port on the Volga River upstream (north) of Volgograd. Saratov had a population of 901,36 ...
,
Kazan,
Leningrad,
Baku
Baku (, ; az, Bakı ) is the capital and largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and of the Caucasus region. Baku is located below sea level, which makes it the lowest lying national capital in the world a ...
,
Tashkent,
Chelyabinsk,
Nizhny Tagil,
Magnitogorsk,
Molotov,
Tbilisi,
Stalinsk
Novokuznetsk ( rus, Новокузнецк, p=nəvəkʊzˈnʲɛt͡sk; literally: "new smith's", cjs, Аба-тура, ''Aba-tura'') is a city in Kemerovo Oblast (Kuzbass) in south-western Siberia, Russia. It is the second largest city in the ob ...
,
Grozny,
Irkutsk
Irkutsk ( ; rus, Иркутск, p=ɪrˈkutsk; Buryat language, Buryat and mn, Эрхүү, ''Erhüü'', ) is the largest city and administrative center of Irkutsk Oblast, Russia. With a population of 617,473 as of the 2010 Census, Irkutsk is ...
, and
Yaroslavl.
[Michio Kaku and Daniel Axelrod, "To Win a Nuclear War: The Pentagon's Secret War Plans", Boston, South End Press, 1987, pp. 30–31.] However, this plan was actually a disinformation ploy. After the two atomic bombings of Japan during August of 1945, the United States government did not have any nuclear weapons ready for use. It had depleted all its fissile uranium in the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and a large amount of its plutonium. There was enough plutonium to build one more atomic bomb in August of 1945. They were expecting it to take until some time in October to get six more bombs built.
["The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II, A Collection of Primary Sources" http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/72.pdf (PDF). National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 162. George Washington University. 13 August 1945.]
By 1946, the
United States still had only nine atomic bombs in its inventory, along with twenty-seven
B-29s airplanes capable of delivering them.
Plan Totality was part of Truman's "giant atomic bluff" intended primarily to misinform the government of the USSR.
See also
* Operation Dropshot
* Operation Unthinkable
* Truman Doctrine
* Seven Days to the River Rhine
* Feint
*509th Composite Group
The 509th Composite Group (509 CG) was a unit of the United States Army Air Forces created during World War II and tasked with the operational deployment of nuclear weapons. It conducted the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in ...
* Fat Man (Post-war development)
* Little Boy (Post-war development)
* Mark 4 nuclear bomb
* SAC (Establishment and Transfer to USAF)
* RDS-1
References
Cold War history of the United States
Nuclear strategy
Military plans
Military deception
Deception operations
Soviet Union–United States relations
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