The truth about nuclear weapons

Many years ago, I watched a television documentary about pacifism.  It covered conscientious objectors in the First World War, which was fine, and then moved on to conscientious objectors in the Second World War, which was also fine.  It then interviewed a couple of CND supporters who lived in a caravan outside RAF Greenham Common.

I was annoyed that anyone should be so dishonest as to classify CND supporters as pacifists.  There is a difference between pacifism (objecting to war) and wanting to scrap a particular kind of weapon.  Furthermore, the difference ought to be obvious to anyone, so why should the programme makers want to attempt such a deception?

Then again it was not a deception originally of their making.  So far as I can recall, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament has always tried to pass itself off as a pacifist organisation.  I have just looked at their website, and a photo of a recent conference shows a banner with the word peace on it in large letters.

Of course a CND supporter may be a pacifist in the same sense that he or she might be a vegetarian, but I have begun to wonder recently if CND might not be part of a sinister plot to undermine opposition to war.  The answer is probably no, but if someone who supports scrapping nuclear weapons can be brainwashed into believing that he or she is a pacifist, then the evil politicians who take Britain into illegal wars are unlikely to complain.

CND may in fact have nothing to worry about.  I have recently watched a video which argues that nuclear weapons never existed.  [Update: this video appears to have been withdrawn, but please feel free to seach on Youtube using the words nuclear weapons do not exist.]

To sum up its arguments, it claims that Little Boy, the nuclear bomb supposedly dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, may have been a daisy cutter, and that there was more than one bomb. The explosion was followed by fire storm, which helped reinforce the myth that the nuclear bomb was a devastating new weapon.

Fat Man, the nuclear bomb supposedly dropped on Nagasaki on 9 August 1945, may have been a thermobaric device.  As at Hiroshima three days earlier, there may well have been more than one bomb.

Nuclear bomb tests at such places as Bikini Atoll and Enewetak Atoll were fakes using either thermobaric devices or large quantities of TNT, with witnesses ordered to cover their eyes and plug their ears.  This is similar to the deception techniques used by magicians.

Any government can claim to have nuclear weapons, because those countries which already claim to own nuclear weapons are unlikely to admit to their non-existence.

The supposed existence of nuclear weapons allows governments to lie to the public.  Governments can pretend that they need to be secretive because their nuclear weapons require a veil of secrecy. 

So that is the basic premise of the film, and I will now add my own observations.  It has been pointed out to me that many people who witnessed nuclear tests over the years have suffered from cancer as a result of exposure to radioactive materials.  My first answer to that is that the evidence for this is disputed.  My second answer is that even if there is a link between cancer and nuclear tests, then all this proves was that some form of radioactivity was present at the tests.  This is not the same as saying that the tests were not faked.

The nuclear weapons deception has been perpetrated by governments which have abundant resources of money and manpower - which helps.  When Harry Houdini made an elephant disappear, he was not the greatest magician in the world, but he was one of the few magicians in the world who could afford to employ the services of an elephant in a large venue.

Another point to make is that governments can conceal the truth using what I call the Mondrian principle.

 

In his 1978 novel The Human Factor by Graham Greene, one of the characters refers to the paintings of Piet Mondrian.  Mondrian painted patterns of rectangles, and in the novel a man who works for the secret services is advised to stay on his rectangle and try not to look at the big picture.

It would be very easy for a government to have large numbers of people supposedly working on nuclear weapons development and testing, but with each one having very little idea what other people are doing.

Let us consider the situation at the beginning of 1945.  The USA and the Soviet Union are at war – not with each other, but with Germany and Japan.  This is however a temporary arrangement.  The USA and the Soviet Union hate and fear each other, but the USA has a plan.

It claims to have developed a devastating new weapon, which it allegedly uses against two Japanese cities.  It thereby creates a psychological shield to protect itself against the Soviet Union.  It has often been pointed out that the USA would not have used nuclear weapons against Japan if Japan had also had nuclear weapons.  The Soviet Union does not have nuclear weapons, and so has to stand in awe of the USA - at least for a while.

The Soviet Union has spies in the USA, and allegedly learns from them the secrets of nuclear weapons.  It is then able to produce its own nuclear weapons – or rather it does not.  Analysis of information obtained from espionage leads them to conclude that the USA has no nuclear weapons. It is just a big hoax.

The Soviet Union then has a choice.  It could argue that nuclear weapons do not exist, and that the USA therefore has none, but this would return both countries to square one – the pre-1945 situation.

Instead the Soviet Union claims that it too has nuclear weapons, thereby creating a situation whereby neither superpower dares attack the other.

The USA has the option of claiming that nuclear weapons do not exist, and that the Soviet Union therefore has none.  However this would inevitably lead people to conclude that the USA also has no nuclear weapons, and so both countries would be back to square one.

The Soviet Union allegedly received most of their nuclear secrets from Julius Rosenberg and his wife Ethel, who were executed in 1953.  Julius Rosenberg was an expert in communication technology, and his wife was a secretary.  Would either of them have understood technical documents relating to nuclear weapons? If the documents they were passing to the Russians proved the non-existence of nuclear weapons, would they have realised it?

Other people who assisted in the process of passing nuclear secrets were jailed rather than executed.  Is it possible that these people knew the true intent of the documents they were passing to the Russians? Is it possible also that they were jailed rather than executed as part of a deal to secure their silence?

The Soviet Union also received British military intelligence from a woman called Melita Norwood.  She was a secretary whose boss supposedly worked in industrial research, but who actually worked in military research.  Mrs Norwood had access to military secrets which she passed to the Russians, but she was never prosecuted.

Why was Melita Norwood, who made no secret of her communist leanings, given access to military secrets?  I can think of two possible answers.  The first, which is apparently what we are expected to believe, is that this was just one huge blunder on the part of the security services.  The other is that she was given access to military secrets in the expectation that she would pass them on to the Soviet Union. In other words, maybe the British government wanted to share certain information with the Soviet Union.

Another important point is that Mrs Norwood was a secretary, not a scientist, and so I wonder if she really understood any of the secrets she was passing on.  It is possible for example that she was passing documents which she thought were important but which were actually fraudulent documents aimed at wasting the time of the Russian scientists who would be called upon to examine them.

The only objection I can think of to this is that if all the information she had passed to the Russians had been bogus, then they would at some point have told her that they no longer valued her services.  Then again, she may occasionally have been given some genuine information to pass on so as to lend credibility to her activities.

Another question is why Mrs Norwood was never prosecuted for treason.  While explanations have been offered, which may or may not be true, I think it is fair to point out the possibility that she was not prosecuted as part of a deal to buy her silence.

And so I find myself once again pondering the CND question.  Did any of the founding fathers of CND know that nuclear weapons were a hoax?  On balance I suspect that they did not.  Nevertheless, I could be wrong.

Update: a national newspaper has commented on the rebuilding of Hiroshima.