![\"Stephen](\"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-118pinsker\/files\/2015\/03\/barracks.png\")
<\/a>Stephen Meier in 1953<\/p><\/div>\n
Basic training occurred that year at Fort Knox, after which Meier was assigned to Aberdeen, Maryland.\u00a0 From there he was transferred to Edwards Air Force Base, and transferred yet again a few months later to Kirkland Air Force Base.\u00a0 In the span of only a few months Meier went from basic training in Kentucky, to the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, to the Aberdeen Bombing Mission outside of Los Angeles, and finally to Kirkland AFB in Albuquerque, New Mexico as part of the Aberdeen Bombing Mission Special Weapons Liaison Group.<\/p>\n
Being a physics major, Meier\u2019s main role was creating bombing tables for the new hydrogen bombs.\u00a0 In layman\u2019s terms, he conducted tests to determine how the fallout from bombs would\u00a0disperse\u00a0in the air.\u00a0 In his own words, \u201cdepending on the way the bomb acted when it was released we would put numbers into the bombing system to make the sure the bombs went toward the target.\u00a0 Of course if you\u2019ve got 8 and half megatons it doesn\u2019t make a whole lot of difference!\u201d [1]<\/p>\n
Meier\u2019s involvement with the hydrogen bomb began in 1953, an entire year after the United States\u2019 first detonation of a fusion device, and months after the Soviet Union\u2019s creation of a weaponized hydrogen bomb [2].\u00a0 At the time of his involvement, the Soviet Union had already successfully created a hydrogen bomb that could be dropped from a plane.\u00a0 The Cherokee test (which Meier had worked on), according to nuclearweaponarchive.org, \u201cwas the first U.S. air drop of a thermonuclear weapon. This\u2026 was intended to gather weapon effects data for high yield air bursts, but also was a political demonstration of the United States capability to deliver H-bombs by air to pressure the Soviet Union.\u201d [3].<\/p>\n
<\/a>Cherokee test<\/p><\/div>\n
His work then ended in 1955, so while important and interesting work, his story itself says little about the political concerns that factored into President Truman\u2019s decision to go ahead with development of thermonuclear weaponry.\u00a0 When asked about what he thought of his project at the time, Meier\u00a0said, \u201cPolitics didn\u2019t enter into it as far as we were concerned.\u00a0 It might have somewhere else but not for us.\u201d [4]<\/p>\n
That somewhere else was Washington, where debate over whether or not to even create fusion weapons had raged for years previously.\u00a0 The General Advisory Committee to the Atomic Energy Commission was a panel made up of scientists tasked with helping to decide what course of action the United States should take in terms of nuclear weapons.\u00a0 The panel published the Acheson-Lilienthal Report on October 30, 1949.\u00a0 Their report was split into two sections, signed by two different groups within the committee, as each side could not agree unanimously on certain issues.\u00a0 One thing, however, was clear.\u00a0 \u201cAlthough the members of the Advisory Committee are not unanimous in their proposals as to what should be done with regard to the super bomb,” explains the report, “there are certain elements of unanimity among us. We all hope that by one means or another, the development of these weapons can be avoided.\u201d [5]<\/p>\n
In this report, they condemned the creation of the hydrogen bomb, on the basis that current weapons were sufficient for destroying military targets.\u00a0 The hydrogen bomb, on the other hand, seemed too\u00a0dangerous for civilians. They wrote:<\/p>\n
“It is clear that the use of this weapon would bring about the destruction of innumerable human lives; it is not a weapon which can be used exclusively for the destruction of material installations of military or semi-military purposes. Its use therefore carries much further than the atomic bomb itself the policy of exterminating civilian populations.”\u00a0[6]<\/p>\n
The project was meant to be a secret.\u00a0 Meier says, \u201csecurity wise I was top secret and q-clearance, which was atomic energy clearance.\u00a0 Actually I think the q-clearance was higher than top secret.\u00a0 And really it was pretty well contained right on the base.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t talk about it.\u201d [7] Brands says little on the actual development of the hydrogen bomb, choosing instead to focus on the debate surrounding its creation and the impact its construction had on the relations between the United States and the Soviet Union.\u00a0 Brands states that although the debate over the hydrogen bomb was meant to be secret, it didn\u2019t stay that way for long. \u00a0Details were soon leaked to the press and public opinion was not one-sided. \u00a0One expert, Ralph Lapp, even claimed that \u201cfor America to build the bomb would be like \u2018the man who lives in a tar paper shack and develops a flame thrower to defend himself\u2019.” [8]<\/p>\n
Meier\u2019s stance, then and now, is that creating the hydrogen bomb was the right thing to do at the time.\u00a0 However, he is not without his qualms.\u00a0 He says, “it was such a dramatic increase in destructive capability.\u00a0 And you know you had to be thinking long and hard, I don\u2019t care what kind of madman you were, to even unleash such a thing.\u00a0 It was terrible.” [9]<\/p>\n
We can see hints of this uneasiness in this\u00a0letter<\/a>\u00a0written by Chief Herman Miller, Meier’s supervisor at the Aberdeen Bombing Mission Special Weapons Branch. \u00a0This letter was sent to RCA notifying them of the end of Meier’s military service and return to work at RCA. \u00a0He says in the letter that “Cpl Meier has proven himself to be an outstanding individual who has placed duty far above his own personal feelings and comforts.” [10] \u00a0In hindsight however, during my interview with him, Meier decided that “I think we should have [created the hydrogen bomb] to be honest about it.\u00a0 It kept us safe.” \u00a0[11]<\/p>\n He was not the only one with that opinion.\u00a0 Lewis Strauss believed that \u201cthe United States must be as completely armed as any possible enemy.\u201d [12]\u00a0 Essentially, the United States was obligated to create fusion weapons just in case the Soviets were creating them too. \u00a0This eventually motivated President Truman to go ahead with development of the hydrogen bomb. \u00a0Additionally, the fear of the Soviets being able to make a hydrogen bomb turned out to be justified. \u00a0The Trinity Test at Alamogordo in July 1945 predated the Soviet’s first atomic bomb by almost four years. \u00a0[13] America’s first hydrogen bomb, however, beat the Soviet’s first hydrogen bomb by only one year. \u00a0The gap was closing. \u00a0However, The United States had one more card to play yet in the race for thermonuclear superiority: Turkey.<\/p>\n The eventual incorporation of Turkey into NATO lent the United States a distinct advantage at this stage of the war.\u00a0 Turkey\u2019s airfields and America\u2019s new, powerful, deliverable thermonuclear bombs kept pressure on Soviet borders. [14]\u00a0The Cold War, however, was only beginning.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n [1] Stephen Meier, phone interview, March 21, 2015.<\/p>\n [2] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States since 1945<\/em> (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 66.<\/p>\n [3] “Operation Redwing.” Operation Redwing. Accessed March 25, 2015. http:\/\/nuclearweaponarchive.org\/Usa\/Tests\/Redwing.html<\/a>.<\/p>\n [4] Phone interview with Stephen Meier.<\/p>\n