{"id":94,"date":"2009-10-24T07:23:45","date_gmt":"2009-10-24T12:23:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnstrawn.com\/?p=94"},"modified":"2009-10-24T07:25:09","modified_gmt":"2009-10-24T12:25:09","slug":"a-fiery-peace-in-a-cold-war-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/reviews\/94\/a-fiery-peace-in-a-cold-war-review","title":{"rendered":"‘A Fiery Peace in a Cold War’–Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"sheecovr.JPG\"<\/span><\/span><\/h1>\n

Patriotism helped drive them, but it was mixture of chicanery, jealousy and suspicion\u2014laced with heavy doses of manipulation, dissimulation and despair\u2014that fueled the secret government program during the Eisenhower administration to build a reliable Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) capable of delivering nuclear weapons launched from the USA \u00a0into the USSR in a matter of minutes.\u00a0 The bureaucratic battles and inter-service rivalries at the heart of this achievement were both hidden from public view and trumped in the end, according to Neil Sheehan\u2019s absorbing narrative, A Fiery Peace in a Cold War<\/em>, by the dedication and skill of the weapon\u2019s creators, led by the handsome, battle-tested pilot who hand-picked his ICMB development team, Gen. Bernard Schriever.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a note on sources, Sheehan, whose acquisition of the Pentagon papers for the NY Times<\/em> was perhaps the most politically significant achievement ever by an American journalist, says that \u201cuntil I decided to write a book on the Cold War and the Soviet-American arms race, I had never heard of Gen. Bernard Adolph Schriever.\u201d\u00a0 Sheehan discovered that \u201cSchriever was living in retirement about six blocks from my own home in Washington.\u201d\u00a0 Sheehan and Schriever had \u201cfifty-two interviews that lasted until, in the final few years of his life, he became too feeble for searching examination of the past.\u201d\u00a0 Sheehan\u2019s admiration for Schriever permeates this long and engaging book.<\/p>\n

Just as John Paul Vann\u2019s personal history provided the \u201chuman narrative,\u201d as Sheehan calls it, in his prize-winning study of Vietnam, A Bright Shining Lie<\/em>, \u201cBennie\u201d Schriever\u2019s biography is the scaffolding upon which Sheehan stands to construct the story of the arms race.\u00a0 And once again it\u2019s an effective device, because Sheehan is a terrific reporter and an excellent writer, capable of weaving multiple story-lines into a seamless narrative.\u00a0\u00a0 Though not without faults, in Sheehan\u2019s account Schriever\u2019s tenacity, integrity and intelligence combined to make him a singular figure, summed up by the simple inscription on his tombstone in Arlington: \u201cFather of The Air Forces Ballistic Missile & Space Programs.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

A Fiery Peace in a Cold War<\/em> is replete with profiles, vignettes and subplots.\u00a0 Among the rich cast of characters involved in the creation of America\u2019s nuclear arsenal and the policy of deterrence that would culminate in the stalemate known as Mutually Assured Destruction, with its singularly appropriate acronym, MAD, were two brilliant brothers from New York, Ted and Edward Hall.<\/p>\n

Lt. Col Ed Hall, \u201cthe U.S. Air Force\u2019s guru on rocketry,\u201d was \u201cthe first name on the list Bennie had been compiling\u201d to form his \u201cmissile-building task force.\u201d\u00a0 Born in New York, Hall had changed his name from Holtzberg during the Depression in hopes of overcoming the ubiquitous anti-Semitism that he felt certain was keeping him from finding a job as a chemical engineer.\u00a0 The legal maneuver led nowhere, but the onset of WW II provided an opportunity for Hall to show what he was capable of in the Army.<\/p>\n

Hall was indispensible to Schriever, solving multiple problems in fuel-design and ultimately devising a solid-fuel engine that made the whole enterprise of rocketry safer and the design of the silo-based Minuteman missile possible.\u00a0 But Hall was also difficult, defiant of the chain of command, and in the end Schriever \u201cbroke Ed Hall\u2019s heart by taking Minuteman away from him.\u201d\u00a0 Why? Because \u201che would alienate too many people and make a hash of things.\u201d<\/p>\n

But what really makes Hall\u2019s story compelling, and such a rich component of Sheehan\u2019s narrative, is the shadowy trajectory of his younger brother\u2019s life. Theodore Hall was a \u201cprodigy,\u201d graduating from Harvard in physics as a teenager and joining the Manhattan Project soon after.\u00a0 Hall had security clearance to \u201cread all of the laboratory\u2019s secret technical reports,\u201d a privilege that would have gloomy consequences.\u00a0 Ted Hall was the \u201csecond most important\u201d nuclear spy, but he \u201cescaped prosecution and even the embarrassment of disclosure until 1995,\u201d when Soviet archives were made public.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ted never recanted his disloyalty, and managed to have a long and distinguished career as an academic in England.\u00a0 His fierce and intractable cold warrior brother, who was oblivious of Ted\u2019s treason until 1996, forgave him.\u00a0 \u201cThere was something exquisitely ironic,\u201d Sheehan writes, in this fraternal drama.<\/p>\n

While Schriever\u2019s role drives the narrative, Sheehan\u2019s profiles of his disparate cast of characters, ranging from the autocratic leader of the Strategic Air Command, Gen. Curtis LeMay, who would have preferred a preemptive war with the Soviets even if it resulted in a nuclear winter, to\u00a0 Werner Von Braun, the German rocket scientist whose Nazi past was forgiven when he helped the US put the first man on the moon, are unforgettable.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sheehan\u2019s historical analysis is also deft.\u00a0 President John Kennedy\u2019s stare-down during the Cuban missile crisis was not simply with the ham-fisted Soviet Premier, Nikita Khrushchev, but also with his own military advisors.\u00a0 \u201cGenerals and admirals,\u201d Sheehan writes, \u201ceven those as bullying as LeMay, did not intimidate John Kennedy\u2026.Had he displayed less strength of character and wisdom in this crisis and given in to the military, the world might well be a different place.\u201d<\/p>\n

The irony of this show-down was that while Kennedy had run for president on a campaign emphasizing America\u2019s \u201cmissile gap\u201d with Russia, the evidence was clear by 1962 that the US arsenal was vastly superior in every way.\u00a0 The Russians had scored a PR coup with Sputnik, but neither their research programs nor their command economy were even remotely competitive with what the US could do.\u00a0 The arms race a myth.\u00a0 Its perpetuation served the purposes of the \u201cmilitary-industrial establishment\u201d that Eisenhower had warned about more than the civil society it was designed to protect.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A Fiery Peace in a Cold War<\/em> is a more than worthy successor to A Bright Shining Lie<\/em>.\u00a0 Experts will surely find places to quarrel in so comprehensive an account, but for lay readers it it hard to imagine a more accomplished and informative expos\u00e9 of the deep gears grinding in the engine room of the Cold War.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Patriotism helped drive them, but it was mixture of chicanery, jealousy and suspicion\u2014laced with heavy doses of manipulation, dissimulation and… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions\/100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}