The escalating nuclear arms race between the United States and the
Soviet Union brought Eisenhower to the United Nations on December 8,
1953. In his "Atoms for Peace" speech before the United Nations,
Eisenhower sought to solve "the fearful atomic dilemma" by finding
some way by which "the miraculous inventiveness of man would not be
dedicated to his death, but consecrated to his life." Since Hiroshima, the
destructive power of nuclear weapons had increased dramatically. He
also realized that nuclear weapons technology, thus far a product of
American expertise, would eventually enter the arsenals of the Soviet
Union. Eisenhower felt a moral imperative to warn the American
people and the world of this new reality. In 1945 the two atomic bombs
dropped on Japan had killed an estimated 106,000 people and had
injured approximately 110,000 others. The larger of the two, the
Nagasaki bomb, had released the explosive equivalent of 23,000 tons of
TNT. In 1948 the United States had tested even larger atomic bombs in
the Pacific, and by 1949 the Soviet Union had achieved its own
successful detonation of a nuclear device. In response to the Soviet
atomic bomb program, the United States embarked upon a crash
program to develop an even larger weapon, the hydrogen bomb, which
promised explosive power in the range of millions of tons of TNT. The
United States successfully detonated a hydrogen device in November
1952. The awesome 10-megaton blast had destroyed the test island of
Elugelab, creating an underwater crater 1,500 yards in diameter. With it
the United States and the world entered the thermonuclear age and
Eisenhower understood that a "nuclear holocaust" was now a possibility.
Driven by the specter of the hydrogen bomb, he began to search for
some means of halting or slowing the arms race. Eisenhower's Atoms
for Peace speech embodied his most important nuclear initiative as
President. From it sprang a panoply of peaceful atomic programs.
