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War and Peace in the Nuclear Age (1986-03-02)
About this film
Gordon Arneson was Secretary of the Interim Committee on Atomic Energy under the Secretary of War, (1945), a member of the United States delegation to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission, (1946-1948), and a special assistant to the undersecretary (1948-1950) and then the secretary of state (1950-1954). He was sometimes called the State Department's "Mr. Atom." In the interview he discusses the United States' development and deployment of nuclear weapons. He starts by describing the War Department and the Interim Committee on Atomic Energy during World War II, including personal recollections of Henry Stimson. He explains their attempts to work cooperatively with the Soviet Union, despite many people's reservations, and their discussions on how best to demonstrate America's nuclear capabilities, which ended with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He describes international collaboration in the development of nuclear weapons, particularly with the British, and how those relationships fell apart in the post-war years. He touches on a number of other topics, including the U.S. policy of containment after World War II, followed by the hurried development of a hydrogen bomb…
Directors & creators
WGBH
Subjects
public broadcasting, AAPB, Gordon Arneson, Henry Stimson, George Marshall, Harvey Bundy, Winston Churchill, Ralph Bard, Harry S. Truman, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Joe Alsop, Manhattan Project, Interim Committee on Atomic Energy, United Nations Atomic Energy Commission, U.S. Department of State, U.S. War Department, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Berlin Crisis of 1948, McMahon Act of 1946, Franck Report, nuclear weapons, hydrogen bomb, containment policy, Cold War
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