Mass-Observers at the ‘atomic crossroads’

ABSTRACT

In February 1947, a Directive issued by the social investigative organisation, Mass Observation, asked its panel of volunteer writers to record their responses to the question: ‘What are your feelings about the atom-bomb?’. As was common practice for Directive Questionnaires, this was a repeat question that had first been asked in the immediate aftermath of the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. This article examines how changes to the contextual underpinnings of nuclearity in the 18 months since Mass-Observers first recorded their feelings about the atom bomb influenced perceptions of nuclear danger, and whether the accumulation of greater knowledge about the atom bomb affected the types of feelings that were registered in Directive replies. It argues that the changing international environment was a source of acute nuclear anxiety for Mass-Observers, and that exposure to official and unofficial narratives of the atom bomb was received subjectively as more anxiety provoking. It concludes that the writings of many Mass-Observers displayed signs of ‘psychic numbing’ as a conscious or unconscious psychological defence mechanism against feelings of nuclear anxiety.

KEYWORDS:

• Mass Observation
• nuclearity
• emotion
• Britain 1947

In February 1947, a Directive issued by the social investigative organisation, Mass Observation, asked its panel of volunteer writers to record their responses to the question: ‘What are your feelings about the atom-bomb?’.¹ As was common practice for Directive Questionnaires,² this was a repeat question that had first been asked in the immediate aftermath of the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.³ An examination of the responses to this earlier Directive by Claire Langhamer revealed a complex web of emotions about the past, present, and future, which shaped an emerging sense of ‘nuclearity’—a contextually bound set of assumptions about the danger of nuclear technology informed by national discourse—amongst the Mass-Observers.⁴ Respondents felt that they had entered a new, uncertain age, and that knowledge of the destructive power of the atom bomb ushered in an emotional shift characterised by the type of anxiety that would come to define British nuclear culture in later decades.⁵ This article develops this analysis further by considering how changes to the contextual underpinnings of nuclearity in the 18 months since Mass-Observers first recorded their feelings about the atom bomb influenced perceptions of nuclear danger, and whether the accumulation of greater knowledge about the atom bomb affected the types of feelings that were registered in Directive replies.

In the same vein as Langhamer, I view the Directive responses as a ‘slice of feeling’ that can be used to explore emotional responses to the atom bomb at a specific moment in time.⁶ Within the historiography on British nuclear culture, February-March 1947 was a moment in time before the maturation of the official and unofficial narratives that would come to define cultural responses to nuclear weapons in subsequent decades. The pervasive sense of nuclear anxiety that overshadowed the lived experience of nuclear culture in the later twentieth century was only beginning to take hold,⁷ not least because the arrival of the hydrogen bomb, which heralded a paradigm shift in perceptions of nuclear danger, was yet to come.⁸ The panel of 1947 were writing firmly within the atomic age, and the prevailing motif in popular discourse at this time was the ‘atomic crossroads’ metaphor, which was employed as a rhetorical device to convey the idea that humanity could choose whether to use or abuse atomic energy for the advancement or destruction of civilisation.⁹

The ‘atomic crossroads’ metaphor was most commonly invoked in relation to the high politics of international arms control, which was an important frame of reference for the panel of 1947 within which a sense of nuclearity evolved.¹⁰ Already in August 1945, Mass-Observers ‘were beginning to weigh international relations … increasingly unsure as to whom Britain’s future allies and enemies would be’.¹¹ By February 1947, many of these uncertainties had received greater clarification as the fault lines of the burgeoning Cold War began to be drawn, and perceptions about the stability of the international system, and Britain’s place within it, dominated panel responses. At this time it was still unclear whether the Soviet Union would accept the new American-led liberal world order or if the fledgling United Nations (UN) possessed the legitimacy and credibility to abolish power-politics.¹² The formative sessions of the UN General Assembly were not reassuring, however, and were stymied by an inability of the permanent members of the Security Council to agree on the basic principles of international order, not least the creation of a mutually acceptable regime for the control of atomic energy. Mass-Observers had already condemned as a barrier to world peace the refusal of the United States to share the secrets of the atom bomb in their replies to the August 1945 Directive.¹³ The deterioration of the bi-lateral relationship between the superpowers in the months that followed, coupled with the break-down of arms control negotiations and the commencement in June 1946 of a series of nuclear weapon tests at Bikini Atoll by the United States, suggested that any hope of taming atomic energy, and thus outlawing the atom bomb, appeared to be slipping away.

Compounding these pessimistic appraisals of the international situation was the perception in Britain by the beginning of 1947 that the post-war consensus and establishment of the welfare state had failed to live up to popular expectations. Any sense of national unity that appeared to have existed in 1945 cracked under the strain of a seemingly endless series of crises during what the erstwhile Chancellor of the Exchequer, Hugh Dalton, would later describe as the annus horrendus of the Labour Party.¹⁴ The start of the year was beset by severe weather which exacerbated a significant fuel crisis that resulted in power cuts, short term unemployment, and the restriction of leisure activities (‘atom bomb on Wembley stadium could hardly have had more repercussions on the sporting world’ according to the Sunday Graphic).¹⁵ Subsequent months witnessed a sterling convertibility crisis that brought the nation to the brink of bankruptcy and the outbreak of anti-Jewish riots in London, Liverpool, Manchester, and Glasgow in response to the kidnap and murder of two British Army sergeants by Irgun paramilitaries in Palestine.¹⁶ All of this was set against a backdrop of continuing austerity measures and a growing sense of disenchantment with the Labour government, whose lacklustre central planning was regarded as a mere continuation of wartime controls. For perhaps the first time in its history, Britain’s status as a major world power was called into question and the future, according to Kenneth O. Morgan, ‘lacked its pristine certainty’.¹⁷

The result was that many post-war Britons became dispirited, unfocused, and inward-looking.¹⁸ A jaded and apathetic electorate preoccupied with continued food shortages and rationing at home, for example, could muster little concern or sympathy for starving Germans ‘over there’ beyond the Channel moat.¹⁹ The absence of a collective British Holocaust consciousness at this time can also be attributed in part to widespread apathy. David Cesarani has argued that the lack of interest shown towards Jewish victims of Nazism was because the general public developed ‘compassion fatigue’ in response to the vast proliferation of survivor testimonies that emerged after 1945, and which peaked in 1946–47.²⁰ Importantly, this syndrome was not a result of indifference, but a consequence of exposure to literature which, by its very nature, proved difficult to engage over a sustained period of time.²¹

This compassion fatigue also shrouded emotional engagement with the atom bomb, for much the same reasons. As Paul Boyer demonstrated in his landmark study on American nuclear culture, there was a decline by 1947 in overt concern about the bomb because of a ‘sensory fatigue’ that sapped the public’s capacity to maintain interest in it.²² Thus, while Mass-Observers responding to the August 1945 Directive were evidently consumed by the initial shock and awe of gaining first knowledge of the atom bomb, many of their counterparts 18 months later had succumbed to the type of ‘dulled acquiescence’ that became increasingly prevalent through the ‘corrosion of familiarity’.²³ Such apathetic attitudes towards nuclear annihilation led Thomas C. Wear to coin the term ‘nuclear denial disorder’ in the 1980s to describe a maladaptive reaction characterised by ‘‘psychic numbing’, the excessive use of the denial defence mechanism, and an apathetic, business-as-usual attitude towards the threat of nuclear destruction’.²⁴ Wary of acting as psychologist to the dead which, as James Hinton rightly observes, would be ‘pointless and not a little macabre’,²⁵ it is nonetheless clear that a number of replies to the February 1947 Directive betrayed the ‘vague feelings of futurelessness and hopelessness; a feeling of generalized, free floating anxiety [and] a dulled sense of morality’ that is symptomatic of nuclear denial disorder.²⁶

It was such feelings of anxiety, coupled with a fatalistic resignation of life in the atomic age, that pervaded replies to the February 1947 Directive. Anxiety is defined here as ‘the anticipation of future threat’,²⁷ whilst ‘nuclear anxiety’ is understood as the ‘expectation of a world/nuclear war and evaluation of the general and personal consequences of a world/nuclear war’.²⁸ Importantly, none of the Mass-Observers featured in this article used the words ‘anxiety’ or ‘anxious’ anywhere in their Directive responses to describe their feelings, except for one respondent who wrote in relation to perceived apathetic attitudes in others that ‘My greatest anxiety about the atom-bomb is the fact that scarcely anyone displays any anxiety about the atom-bomb’.²⁹ Consequently, the presence of anxious ideations about the bomb has been inferred from the content of the Directive responses. The ‘slice of feeling’ contained within them have therefore been used to reconstruct a small fragment of the cultural world in which Mass-Observers and the wider public moved to facilitate understanding about affective experiences about the atom bomb in Britain in 1947.³⁰

The Mass-Observers themselves were typical of previous cohorts: young, unmarried, lower-middle class, and with the time, resources, and inclination to engage with a process of active citizenship.³¹ Mass-Observers were not, therefore, representative of the wider population. Indeed, Mass-Observers were not even representative of the social class from which they were predominately drawn. Mike Savage has shown how multiple generations of Mass-Observers constructed a new ‘intellectual’ identity for themselves ‘which sought out an active role as thinker, intellectual, scientist or technician, in contrast to the staid suburbanite or ‘thick’ upper class’.³² This self-constructed identity as ‘informed layman’ (and the majority of Mass-Observers were men) affected how individuals engaged with the Directive. Although respondents knew that their Directive replies would be read and analysed, there was a performative aspect to these writings that were used by many Mass-Observers as a vehicle to demonstrate superior knowledge about international politics at the expense of felt reactions to the bomb.³³ The tendency to write replies informed by reason rather than emotion reflects the politics of feelings that govern ‘the range of expressions deemed acceptable in a given context’ which,³⁴ in 1940s Britain, dictated that ‘emotion’ was an ‘inferior and implicitly feminine way of knowing’.³⁵ This distancing could also be interpreted as a psychological defence mechanism protecting the writer from emotional involvement with nuclear weapons. For these reasons, the feelings expressed in the Directive responses were not necessarily representative of the general population, but they do provide evidence of a nascent popular nuclear anxiety of the type that would come to shape the politics of détente in the 1960s and 1970s.³⁶

In total, 193 panel members responded to the February 1947 Directive, which was a slight increase in returns from the 178 members who replied to the August 1945 Directive.³⁷ The sample itself is closer to the pre-war gender distribution of the panel, which had been dominated by younger men.³⁸ While responses to the August 1945 Directive represented a balanced mix of men and women (93 and 85 respectively), male respondents were over-represented in the February 1947 Directive, with just 28 women answering the specific question about the atom bomb compared to 105 men. Most of these members had been recruited in early 1947 after an appeal in the New Statesman had tried to rebuild the panel, which had languished during the war.³⁹ For many respondents, therefore, the February 1947 Directive was the first time they had engaged with a Mass Observation Directive. Consequently, only nine panel members who responded to the question about the atom bomb in August 1945 would go on to answer the same question when it was asked again in 1947, thereby precluding the possibility of a true longitudinal study of the shifting feelings of the 1945 panel as a cohort. A cursory look, however, at responses by individual panel members featured in the Langhamer article to subsequent Directive questions on subjects as diverse as the weather, fears, dreams, the Korean War, and world government revealed both expected and unexpected references to nuclear weapons that could be used to map individual attitudes across time.⁴⁰ Furthermore, many of the Mass-Observers featured in this article maintained diaries, and so it is likely that more revealing, emotive responses to life in the atomic age can be located there. Collating these fragmented writings falls outside of the scope of this article but could prove to be a fruitful avenue for further research.

This article is concerned with changes to the contextual underpinnings of nuclearity during the 18 months since Mass-Observers first recorded their feelings about the atom bomb. It is organised into three sections. The first section demonstrates that the new international context in which the atom bomb existed was a source of acute nuclear anxiety for Mass-Observers writing in February-March 1947, particularly with regards to the continued United States atomic monopoly. The second section assesses how exposure to the proliferation of official and unofficial narratives of the atom bomb shaped individual perceptions about the dangers posed by nuclear technology and shows that the accumulation of greater nuclear knowledge was received subjectively as more anxiety provoking. The final section considers how this changed context affected how the panel of 1947 wrote about their feelings. It reveals that the writings of many Mass-Observers displayed signs of psychic numbing as a conscious or unconscious psychological defence mechanism against feelings of nuclear anxiety.

The changing context of nuclearity

High political importance was placed on finding a suitable mechanism for the international control of atomic energy during what Glenda Sluga has described as ‘that curiously utopian moment bracketed by the end of World War II and the onset of the Cold War’.⁴¹ Apocalyptic visions of future nuclear use made international cooperation on the issue a global priority that found strong support in Britain amongst both political elites and the general public.⁴² As Spencer Weart exclaimed: ‘It was as if nuclear energy were such a cosmic force that it would sweep away history, instantly replacing the web of international tensions with a millennial age of peace!’⁴³ Hope soon turned to despair, however, with the rejection of the American-proposed Baruch Plan by the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission on 31 December 1946, thereby dashing any prospect of agreement on a mutually acceptable arms control regime, and with it, what optimism was left about the likelihood of a future war. The terms of the proposal were such that the Truman administration fully expected it to be rejected by the Soviet Union and has therefore been regarded by Campbell Craig and Sergey Radchenko as ‘America’s first acts of Cold War’.⁴⁴

The break-down of negotiations on the control of atomic energy, which saw the United States maintain its monopoly over the atom bomb, was a source of great anxiety for respondents to the February 1947 Directive. A 23-year-old clerk lamented how:

… it is more than eighteen months since the first one was dropped, and still no plan has been accepted to its control … The Atomic Energy Commission has come slap up against Russo-America hostility in an apparently insoluble form: to me the Russians have a strong case, and the Baruch plan is quite unacceptable.⁴⁵

In a similar vein, a 24-year-old lab assistant complained that:

Another war as we all know must be stopped, but the ‘Big Five’ don’t seem to be much interested in getting on with formulating a plan. If only America had the nerve & generosity to share the secret & gamble on the outlawing of atomic weapons by the security council – such a gesture would have a remarkable effect in bringing cooperation and friendliness between countries and peoples.⁴⁶

Mass-Observers were anxious about what American stewardship of the bomb might mean for the stability of international relations, and these negative attitudes were reflected in the opinions of the left-wing periodicals of the time.⁴⁷ Speaking to the Janus-faced nature of atomic energy, a 39-year-old sales manager from Ilford warned that: ‘like all great discoveries it can be used for good or for evil, and at the moment while in the hands of the USA the position is very delicate to say the least’.⁴⁸ For many panel members, the danger lay in how the United States was perceived to be exploiting its nuclear monopoly to gain political leverage over the Soviet Union. ‘The atom bomb is being used as a game in power politics between the USA & Russia’ wrote one undergraduate student, and ‘So long as this continues, Russo-American relations are bound to be bad’.⁴⁹ Another respondent felt that ‘At present the Atom Bomb is used as a power political weapon and the possession of what must be several hundreds by the USA alone must be accounted the greatest menace to world peace today’.⁵⁰ Mass-Observers worried that the inability of the major powers to agree on a mutually acceptable regime for the control of atomic energy would sow the seeds of later discord:

As long as the USA clings to the secret there is bound to be tension and suspicion among the nations … So far from making war less likely, I think the atom bomb has made it more likely, as international fear and suspicion are a good breeding ground for war.⁵¹

A 27-year-old buyer in the engineering trade invoked the ‘atomic crossroads’ metaphor in his realisation that:

… what Wells & Stapledon & all the rest have been saying for so long is today’s dominating truth – mankind is at the final crossroads. If, as looks dangerously likely, the nations of the world slip back into the old habits of power-politics, of considering local interests before world-interests – then another world war is inevitable … (for obviously it is in US-Russian relations that the danger lies).⁵²

The prevailing fear amongst the Mass-Observers was that they would be dragged into another global war for the third time in 35 years. One civil servant confided that ‘the situation USA vis-à-vis USSR looks ominously comparable to other developments in history which led to war’, while a young Royal Air Force apprentice argued that ‘It may be a gamble to make the secrets of the atom bomb known to all the world, but its certainly a far greater gamble to go on as we are at present, with Russia and America drifting every hour nearer to a third world war’.⁵³ A university lecturer regarded that World War Three had already begun as a result of the foreign policy of the United States and warned that if ‘one group of countries holds the secret of the atom bomb, without revealing it to her allies, then we are booked for trouble’.⁵⁴ Some Mass-Observers implied that the United States was acting in bad faith in its negotiations with the Soviet Union. For example, a 24-year-old toolmaker from Kilmarnock described how:

The absurd posturing and puerile vindictiveness of the North Americans, as sole possessors of the Atomic Bomb, have quite spoiled the appeal of what otherwise must be regarded as a victory for international science. America’s leaders are, with one or two exceptions ([Henry] Wallace) bomb happy. This attitude extends from the White House, through Capitol Hill, and by newspapers to the political infants who comprise the electorate of U.S.A.⁵⁵

The perception that the United States was ‘bomb happy’ was shared by a 26-year-old civil servant, who argued forcefully that:

The Atom Bomb mentality of America is forcing on us a race to destruction that is going to make the ravages of the dark ages pale by comparison – all accompanied by glib talk on Democracy by the most hypocritical belittlers of the word that exist.⁵⁶

A notable feature of these replies is the taint of anti-American prejudice. Mass-Observers were writing at a time when British attitudes towards the United States were at an all-time low. According to a Mass Observation file report on anti-Americanism, favourable attitudes towards Americans had sunk from a war-time high of 58% to a mere 21% by March 1946.⁵⁷ The termination of Lend-Lease, the perceived unfavourable terms of the Anglo-American loan, and disagreements between London and Washington on a variety of post-war issues, not least the nature of the nuclear partnership, soured relations between political elites which filtered down to the level of public opinion.⁵⁸ Anti-American sentiments were also reflected in the popular press, which validated the belief that the United States was more likely to cause an outbreak of war than the Soviet Union.⁵⁹ Furthermore, cultural elites on both sides of the political spectrum worried about the perceived debasing effects of American ‘mass culture’ on British life, especially with regards to the young working class, who were perceived to be particularly susceptible to cultural exports from across the Atlantic.⁶⁰ In 1948, Newsweek’s Fred Vanderschmidt wrote that ‘one out of three Englishmen were more or less antagonistic to anything that came from America, from Buicks to businessmen’,⁶¹ while the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Hugh Dalton, quipped that the British people wanted ‘bacon not Bogart’ in relation to attempts by the Attlee ministry to impose protectionist measures on the British film industry.⁶² Based on the returns to the February 1947 Directive, the atom bomb could be added to the list of unwelcome American exports.

An important notion in how Britons have traditionally related to Americans is the parent-child relationship, which underpinned the conviction in post-war Britain that the United States was politically immature and in need of guidance in foreign affairs by the more experienced and responsible elder statesman of the international community.⁶³ The parent-child dynamic was transposed by Mass-Observers onto metaphors about the bomb that equated American atomic diplomacy with children and their toys. A young student recorded that ‘I don’t like living in a world where children have power over the life and death of humanity’.⁶⁴ ‘It should be quite obvious’ asserted a 32-year-old schoolmaster from Liverpool ‘that the kind of people who exist today are not to be trusted with such a toy’.⁶⁵ Another Mass-Observer held the fatalistic belief that ‘one day it will be used—working on the assumption “give a child a toy, he will want to play with it”’,⁶⁶ while a 32-year-old secretary felt that more should be done to encourage the peaceful applications of atomic energy since if Britain were to ‘show a naughty boy how to build a bridge & a house with his bricks—he will cease to pelt the cat with them—I have found by experience!’.⁶⁷ The coding of Americans as naughty children in possession of potentially dangerous toys can be contrasted with the leitmotif of innocent children as a device to highlight the ‘atomic choice’ facing humanity in wider nuclear culture.⁶⁸ The lack of faith shown by Mass-Observers in the ability of the United States to behave as a responsible guardian of weapons of mass destruction was rooted in a popular sense of cultural superiority over Americans and sustained by the ‘informed layman’ identity of individual respondents.

The perception that the United States was eager to ‘play’ with its new ‘toy’ was vindicated when it conducted two atomic weapons tests at Bikini Atoll at the height of the deliberations on the Baruch Plan in July 1946, thereby sending a strong message to the Soviet Union and the world that it was intent on retaining its atomic monopoly for as long as possible.⁶⁹ Appropriately named Operation Crossroads, the tests were the first atomic explosions since Nagasaki, the second of which (Test Baker) was broadcast live over the radio by the BBC.⁷⁰ After the event, public opinion surveys demonstrated that the damage caused by the explosions fell short of popular expectations, which might have encouraged a false sense of complacency about the dangers of nuclear technology.⁷¹ This was not the case for the young clerk quoted above, however, who was characteristically articulate when recording her feeling that:

The Bikini experiments were a nine-days wonder which didn’t fool anyone and astute journalists and cartoonists quickly saw in the pigs and sheep used for experiment a symbol of humanity today. On the positive side, the only gain is a growing consciousness of the implication of atomic warfare, and this particularly on the part of scientists of all countries.⁷²

Indeed, Michael Yavenditti observed how ‘a minority of legitimate scientists (and a few doomsday crackpots)’ in the United States feared that the tests might cause violent weather changes.⁷³ A cursory look at replies to a question posed by Mass Observation in its April 1947 Directive, which asked panel members whether they had heard anybody talking about the extreme weather that was then gripping the country, places many ordinary Britons firmly within the ‘doomsday crackpot’ camp as a significant number of respondents recorded speaking to people who claimed that the unusually harsh winter had indeed been caused by atom bomb explosions.⁷⁴ For example, a 58-year-old housewife wrote that several people ‘including my husband, are firmly convinced we owe our bad weather to the atom bombs—those dropped on Japan & the ‘practice’ ones at Bikini’.⁷⁵ An Army sergeant concurred that ‘the most popular notion’ he had encountered about the causes of the bad weather ‘has been that the Bikini atom-bomb tests had produced the stuff’.⁷⁶ Meanwhile, a teacher recorded that her sister, who was living in Canada, believed that the reason for the cold stream was because ‘the Americans had been releasing atom bombs over the N. Pole’,⁷⁷ while another Mass-Observer recalled receiving a letter from a friend who revealed that she had been asked on two separate occasions ‘whether she thought the End of the World was approaching!!’.⁷⁸ The prevalence of these views was confirmed by a Mass Observation street survey of March 1947, which recorded that of the one out of four people who believed that the bad weather was due to reasons other than natural causes, the majority mentioned the atom bomb.⁷⁹

That this conspiracy theory gained some traction in Britain reflects the cloak of secrecy and rumour that shrouded the British nuclear state and the wider international context in which nuclear weapons existed.⁸⁰ Suspicion was equated with rising international tensions for many Mass-Observers since, according to one panel member, ‘international mistrust and an abiding fear throughout the civilised world … may lead very easily to mistakes and still more devastating wars’.⁸¹ A young housewife articulated what International Relations theorists term the ‘security dilemma’ in her feeling that:

if one country makes bombs then others mistrust that country or they make bombs too, to ‘protect’ themselves & so it will go on until the whole world will be in such a nervous state that someone will “let one off” in sheer terror which will be the beginning of the end.⁸²

Suspicion and mistrust caused deep scepticism about the aims and intentions of American foreign policy, which was no doubt exacerbated by popular concerns about Britain’s waning power and its increasing dependence on the United States for its military and economic security.⁸³ For example, one Mass-Observer argued that ‘it is fairly obvious that [the United States] means to use this monopoly for her own ends, just as she uses her food supplies’.⁸⁴ The civil servant quoted above set himself apart from what he regarded as the gullible ‘masses’ when recording his feeling that:

we in this country are so blind … that most of the people seem to rely on the idea of being tied to America to keep us from destruction – instead of realising that America is not interested in preserving Democracy, or even helping Britain, but is looking forward to the foundation of a Dollar Imperialism that will result in long range bases that are intended to preserve itself from harm.⁸⁵

Some respondents believed that the United States was particularly militant because of its unique political culture. A 19-year-old miner felt that ‘America’s capitalism necessitates her domination economically of vast territories and when her slump comes the only way out, as before, will be war or revolution … The danger of A-bomb solely in the hands of the USA is therefore very great’.⁸⁶ A 51-year-old woman, who revealed some insider knowledge of the nuclear state through her occupation as an aerodynamic researcher (‘Atom Bomb is a “job” people I know “do”’), wrote that one of her strongest feelings was ‘mainly about Americans: who seem dangerous folk’.⁸⁷ A typist even worried about the prospect of the United States launching a preventive war ‘to get in before Russia can meet up on them in atomic work’,⁸⁸ which was a fully justified concern considering that many senior American military officers were calling for the adoption of such a strategy at this time in order to deal with the ‘Soviet Problem’.⁸⁹

It would not be until 1948 that the atom bombers of Strategic Air Command would be granted basing rights in the United Kingdom, earning the country the unenviable moniker of ‘America’s unsinkable aircraft carrier’.⁹⁰ Even before the release of official information that sought to educate the public on the level of damage that would be inflicted by atom bombs on British cities, Britons were acutely aware of the unique vulnerability of the country to attack with nuclear weapons, both in absolute terms and relative to larger continental nations such as the Soviet Union and the United States.⁹¹ As a small, densely populated island nation that relied on shipping to import its vital strategic resources, it did not take a giant cognitive leap for ordinary people to imagine the consequences of an aerial atomic bombardment on British towns and cities, not least because of the recent wartime experience.⁹² Perceptions of physical vulnerability to nuclear attack therefore coincided with feelings of political and cultural vulnerability in relation to growing American power. As one Mass-Observer described it:

We in our small island can no longer think of the channel as a barrier, for what use is a barrier to a wilderness, for if we were treated to an atomic bomb raid on a large scale that is exactly what Britain would be. I do not trust the U.S. with the secret of this terrible weapon. In fact I would rather see it in the hands of almost any other power (ours for preference) than in the hands of the bobby-sox mentalities beyond the Atlantic.⁹³

The human and physical geography of the United Kingdom also made it a suitable target for other weapons of mass destruction, namely chemical and biological weapons. Respondents to the August 1945 Directive often invoked poison gas as a foil against which to comprehend the threat posed by nuclear weapons.⁹⁴ In 1947, it was the non-use of mass gas attacks in the Second World War that provided some optimism for Mass-Observers about the likelihood of a future nuclear conflagration. A 25-year-old warehouseman wondered: ‘Will the atomic bomb prevent another war, or will it be, like poison gas, a bogey which both sides in a future war hold in readiness but neither dare use for fear of reprisals?’.⁹⁵ A university lecturer took solace in the hope that ‘what happened in 1939–45 with respect to poison gas may happen again in a future war with respect to the atom bomb. In other words, the after-effects of atomic warfare may be almost as tiresome for the victors as for the victims’.⁹⁶ The emphasis placed here on the mutually deterring qualities of poison gas provides further evidence of the ‘common-sense form of deterrence theory’ that Jonathan Hogg observed was beginning to emerge after 1945.⁹⁷

A prospect even more terrifying than the use of chemical, or even atomic, weapons was bacteriological warfare. The enactment of the Atomic Energy Act by the United States Congress in 1946 restricted foreign access to nuclear information, and so biological weapons assumed greater importance in British strategic concepts and became more closely integrated within the overarching deterrent posture that was beginning to take shape by 1947.⁹⁸ For many Mass-Observers writing in February 1947, biological weapons were beginning to supplant the atom bomb as the most appalling development to emerge from the ‘dark side of scientific creativity’.⁹⁹ There was an inherently sinister nature to the weaponisation of disease that led some Mass-Observers to regard biological weapons as ‘even worse than the atom bomb’.¹⁰⁰ Even if the aspiration for international control of atomic energy could be realised, some panel members remained anxious about the latent threat posed by biological weapons since:

The role of the A-bomb as a medicine that will kill or cure the world is no longer of great importance because America at least possesses several far more devastating bacteriological and other weapons that would play the role of the A-bomb if it were successfully outlawed.¹⁰¹

Biological weapons did not overshadow completely the atom bomb in panel responses, but greater awareness of the dangers posed by germ warfare contributed to an overall sense of anxiety about the future course of international relations in February-March 1947.

Much had changed in the international context in which nuclear weapons existed during the 18 months since Mass-Observers first recorded their feelings about the atom bomb. The failure of the permanent members of the UN Security Council to establish international control over the atom bomb, symbolised by the rejection of the Baruch Plan just weeks before Mass Observation issued its February 1947 Directive, was central to an emerging sense of nuclearity that was defined by feelings of pessimism and anxiety about the future course of international relations. The rapidly deteriorating relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union, in which the atom bomb played a key role, was an ominous portend of the Cold War that would come to define world politics in the coming decades. Nuclear anxiety was exacerbated by the hostile attitudes that were beginning to be formed towards Americans and the United States after 1945 which manifest in pessimistic appraisals about its ability to perform its new role as leader of the liberal international order and custodian of the atom bomb.

Nuclear narratives

Mass-Observers who responded to the August 1945 Directive had few cultural scripts on which to draw when articulating their feelings about the atom bomb, and so past experience of warfare and science fiction writing was invoked to help fill the imaginative void.¹⁰² It would not be until the late 1950s that knowledge about the inherent dangers of nuclear weapons was widespread in Britain.¹⁰³ In 1947, Mass-Observers had access to new epistemological resources as official and unofficial narratives of the atomic bombings began to emerge in various mediums. Official narratives dominated this period as the Attlee ministry, that had secretly made the decision to develop a British bomb in January 1947, sought to tightly control public discourse against a backdrop of secrecy, rumour, and censorship.¹⁰⁴ As Jonathan Hogg observes, during this period ‘nuclearity was shaped by the control of knowledge and the government-manufactured ‘public face’ of nuclear policy’.¹⁰⁵ Even then, there were significant knowledge gaps, for both elites and ordinary people, about the human impact of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, chief amongst which was the short and long-term effects of radiation poisoning. By the time Mass-Observers were crafting their replies to the February 1947 Directive, however, some of the more uncomfortable realities of nuclear use were becoming known, and this shaped feelings about the atom bomb and subjective perceptions of nuclearity.

Representations of the atom bomb were generally pessimistic and apocalyptic in tone in the 18 months between the two Directives, and the primary leitmotif in mass media coverage was that humanity stood at an ‘atomic crossroads’.¹⁰⁶ For example, the popular illustrated magazine, Picture Post, presented its readers with a wide array of perspectives on the civil and military applications of atomic energy from which ambiguous conclusions about the dangers and opportunities of nuclear technology could be drawn.¹⁰⁷ This paradox also featured heavily in newspaper coverage. While the popular press tended to perpetuate official narratives of the atom bomb, its penchant for controversial opinions and human interest stories resulted in articles that actively sought to stoke public anxieties about the dangers posed by nuclear technology.¹⁰⁸ Mass-Observers were cognisant of the ways in which the mass media sought to sensationalise its coverage of the bomb, with one technical drawing artist stating that ‘I understand why people make such a fuss about the atom-bomb (or rather why the press & certain authors do) and I suppose we shall always have this ballyhoo’.¹⁰⁹ Some respondents were sceptical of the press coverage they had been exposed to: ‘I am not sure how much to believe of what newspapers say’,¹¹⁰ while others viewed it in neutral terms: ‘An attempt is being made through the press and radio, to make us Atom conscious’.¹¹¹

Official narratives of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had a vested interest in minimising the human impact of nuclear use, not least the effects of radiation. American authorities had long sought to suppress or obscure information on radiation poisoning, not least because General Leslie Groves, director of the atom bomb project at Los Alamos, worried that unhelpful comparisons would be made by the public about the similarities between death by radiation poisoning and death caused by chemical and biological weapons.¹¹² Groves even went as far as to testify before a Senate Committee that death from radiation sickness was ‘a very pleasant way to die’, which was a claim not challenged by the mass media.¹¹³ In Britain, detailed information about radiation casualties at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not well known, even by the Army, which was anticipating having to fight with nuclear weapons in a future land war against the Soviet Union.¹¹⁴ The public were even more ignorant. In the aftermath of the dropping of the second atom bomb on Nagasaki, the War Office sought to assuage public anxieties by releasing a statement, which was reported in The Times, that radioactive fallout ‘dispersed harmlessly over a wide area’.¹¹⁵ While it is true that Fat Man was shot as an airburst, thereby reducing the prevalence of radioactive fallout, radiation causalities were still significant.

It would not be until June 1946 that official information about the use of nuclear weapons against the two Japanese cities was released into the public domain in Britain with the publication of The Effects of the Atomic Bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The report was a result of a month-long survey conducted by British officials and was written by Jacob Bronowski, who would become a well-known public intellectual beloved of the BBC for his ability to meet ‘certain demands for a soothing ideology which could allay public anxieties engendered by the bomb’s appearance and by its symbolic association with early Cold War tensions’.¹¹⁶ The report itself was preoccupied with explaining to the public the effects that the explosions had on buildings and structures, rather than people, and used this data to illustrate the effects that an atomic blast might have on a typical British city. There was recognition, however, of the immediate effects of gamma radiation on the human body, and the report painted a gruesome picture of how causalities of acute radiation poisoning developed nausea, vomiting and fever, bloody diarrhoea, and hair loss before succumbing to their injuries weeks later.¹¹⁷ It is unclear whether the pamphlet was known to Mass-Observers, as it was not mentioned in any Directive replies. Its impact may have been overshadowed by the mushroom clouds of the atomic weapons tests at Bikini Atoll that were conducted shortly after its publication.

Other resources that sought to inform the public about atomic energy and the atom bomb were two exhibitions which ran during the period between the two Directives. The general climate of secrecy that characterised the British nuclear state permeated these exhibitions, however, which obscured public understanding about the potential civil and military applications of atomic energy.¹¹⁸ This ‘cultivation of ignorance’, according to Alison Boyle, created exhibitions that ‘were balanced by banalizing techniques masking military applications and providing reassurances about safety’.¹¹⁹ For example, the Science Museum in London avoided any reference to the atom bomb in its popular 1946 ‘Atomic Energy and Uranium’ exhibition, which was visited by 30,000 people in its opening week, and chose instead to couch the subject in purely scientific terms.¹²⁰ Conversely, the ‘Atomic Age’ exhibition organised by Chapman Pincher for the Daily Express in 1947 did not shy away from representing the dark side of atomic power through photographic displays of hibakusha (literally ‘bomb-affected-people’) alongside charts, informed presumedly from the data contained in The Effects of the Atomic Bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, demonstrating the effects that an atom bomb might have if dropped on a British city.¹²¹ This exhibition, however, was ‘deserted’ most of the time because the unusually harsh weather deterred attendance. Pincher described it as ‘a disheartening experience and a financial flop’.¹²² At least one Mass-Observer visited the exhibition, however, and was suitably affected: ‘The atom bomb awes and impresses me (even more so after seeing the atomic-age exhibition). I feel that unless we have world unity and dispense with this stupid nationalistic foolishness we are doomed to near extinction’.¹²³

These exhibitions were designed with the ‘informed layman’ in mind, which was a well-known (usually male) caricature in mid-century Britain described by Sophie Forgan as:

an involved citizen; educated in the grammar or public schools; was open minded and interested in science; listened to the Home Service on the radio; enjoyed the Brains Trust, and read Penguin Specials on serious topics; took an intelligent interest in the comment of a broadsheet newspaper; knew all about the laws of cricket; probably belonged to a society or two (such as the Council for the Protection of Rural England or the Royal Society of Arts); went rambling in the countryside; and thought that modern town planning was the right approach to solving problems of urban poverty.

Forgan could well have been describing the typical Mass-Observer here. Indeed, it is remarkable the extent to which panel members reflected the qualities and interests of the ‘informed layman’, which were characteristics entirely consistent with the new type of middle class technocratic identity embodied by Mass-Observers.¹²⁴ The popularity of Penguin paperbacks at this time, many of which dealt with the type of popular social science topics beloved of the ‘informed layman’, is testament to the emergence of this new social body ‘which saw the act of writing, research and reflection as central to its self-identity’.¹²⁵ It is no surprise, therefore, that a November 1946 Directive question asking the panel to provide a list of all paperback books that they owned revealed an insatiable appetite for Penguin Specials amongst the Mass-Observers, who appeared to be extremely proud of their substantial collections.¹²⁶

Two Penguin Specials were mentioned explicitly in responses to the February 1947 Directive. The first was Science News 2 (1947), which perpetuated the idea that mankind was at an ‘atomic crossroads’ with its editorial note warning that: ‘The chances of survival of civilised life as we know it now may well depend on finding a way to ensure that this new force will never again be used for destructive purposes … ’.¹²⁷ What followed was a collection of essays on various aspects of atomic energy written by scientists who had worked on the Manhattan Project, and which embodied the dry and detached representations of atomic energy that were characteristic of official narratives. As a result, Science News 2 did not elicit any kind of emotional response in the three Mass-Observers who cited it in their Directive responses, who stated only that they had read it. Forgan suggested that the seriousness of material aimed at the ‘informed layman’ acted as ‘an antidote to alarmist press stories, especially when hampered by official habits of secrecy’ but that ‘atomic science put enormous strains upon the ability of both language and the available imagery to communicate at more than a superficial level’.¹²⁸

It would not be until the publication of John Hersey’s Hiroshima as a Penguin Special in November 1946 that the superficial level of understanding about the dangers of nuclear technology was penetrated in its disturbing account of the human impact of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The book was based on interviews Hersey had conducted with Hiroshima survivors in order to document ‘what they had seen and felt and thought, what the destruction of their city, their lives and homes and hopes and friends, had meant to them—in short, the cost of the bomb in terms of human suffering and reaction to suffering’.¹²⁹ In his desire ‘to write about what happened not to buildings but to human beings’,¹³⁰ Hersey intended to undermine official narratives of the attack in order to ‘help readers to find their own deepest feelings about this new instrument of killing’.¹³¹ To achieve this goal, Hersey employed the popular ‘wasteland’ trope of literary modernism as a framework to convey the horror of atomic warfare from the perspective of six ordinary people with whom readers could identify.¹³²

Hiroshima was the most cited piece of literature within the Directive responses and would have constituted the first exposure for Mass-Observers to representations of the atomic bombings told from the point-of-view of the casualties. Its popularity saw the BBC Light Programme clear its whole evening schedule to rebroadcast a two-hour version of the story, it first having appeared on the Third Programme. Although one Mass-Observer was left with the impression that ‘So very few people seemed to listen to the Hiroshima broadcasts’,¹³³ the BBC estimated that three million listeners tuned-in. The BBC Year Book 1947 claimed that such numbers demonstrated ‘that it was at least as interesting and entertaining—if that is not too frivolous-sounding a word for so grim an experience—as the Variety, Drama, Talk, and Music which were offered as alternatives on the other two wavelengths’.¹³⁴ Mass-Observers were clearly interested in Hiroshima, but none felt ‘entertained’ by the broadcast or the book.

Unsurprisingly, considering that the book was the first real challenge to the official narrative of the atomic bombings that had hitherto dominated national discourse, the most common reactions to the nuclear violence depicted in Hiroshima in the February 1947 Directive were feelings of horror, revulsion, and anxiety. For example, an insurance broker replied to the Directive with a single solitary line: ‘Have listened to Hiroshima & the BBC series & hope I shall die before the next war’,¹³⁵ while another Mass-Observer was convinced after having read Hiroshima ‘that the atom bomb is the most devilish instrument that science has devised’.¹³⁶ An 18-year-old respondent transposed the death and destruction described by the hibakusha onto a British context, admitting that he had ‘read it and felt rather ill at parts of it. England would be a very unhealthy sport if there were any atom bombs being used against us’.¹³⁷ Hersey’s account was used as shorthand by some Mass-Observers for an event of unparalleled human suffering: ‘I have read John Hersey’s Hiroshima. That, I think, is really a sufficient answer to this question’ wrote one respondent.¹³⁸ Another panel member described how they became consumed by an ‘overwhelming horror’ when they thought about the atom bomb for ‘I’ve read Hiroshima and know of its effects’.¹³⁹ These responses reflected the wider community of feeling as documented by the psychologists Joesph Luft and W. M. Wheeler, who recorded from a sample of reader responses to the publication of Hiroshima in the United States that 21% of respondents expressed ‘anxiety regarding future use of atom bomb’.¹⁴⁰

Other Mass-Observers hoped that the atomic trauma depicted in Hiroshima might somehow convince world leaders of the futility of nuclear war, which was an aspiration no doubt encouraged by the unproductive arms control negotiations then taking place. For example, A 44-year-old teacher from Watford wrote that:

One recoils in horror from the description of the effects of its use in Hersey’s Hiroshima. One would imagine that as a result all nations would recoil from war but the possibility of war is still accepted & the nations are jockeying too [sic] position. One hopes that saner ideas will prevail in time.¹⁴¹

A young, unemployed Mass-Observer was more optimistic and hoped that unofficial narratives of the atomic bombings might satiate the appetite for war through fear, further demonstrating an emerging ‘common sense’ deterrence habit of mind:

In my opinion the atom bomb has checkmated warfare for some considerable time. The fear of this weapon has been realistically imparted into people, in this country at least, by mass propaganda, and such books and radio programmes as John Hersey’s Hiroshima … As a result of this I can visual [sic] a situation in which nations will be just as antagonistic as ever, all armed to the teeth with atomic weapons, yet not one daring to start a conflict for fear of beginning wholesale annihilation.¹⁴²

Another respondent spoke to the power of unofficial narratives to undermine official assurances about the future potential of atomic energy:

I am much more impressed by Hiroshima than by all these attempts by politicians and scientists to persuade me how useful atomic energy is going to be to the world. I don’t trust the politicians, or the scientists … I am quite happy to do without all the promised benefits from atomic energy for the sake of getting rid of the bomb.¹⁴³

The other source of nuclear knowledge cited explicitly by Mass-Observers in their replies to the February 1947 Directive was the BBC’s ‘Atomic Energy Week’. The event was broadcast by the Home Service, and reproduced in The Listener, in the first week of March 1947. It proved to be an important resource for Mass-Observers, not least because the event took place as panel members were crafting their replies to the Directive and could therefore be readily recalled. The talks were curated, according to J. B. Priestley in his contribution to the series, ‘not simply to give us a lot of hair-raising dramatic stuff about atom bombing, but instead to offer us frank talks by the leading authorities in the country, on the facts, theories and problems of atomic energy’.¹⁴⁴ The broadcast was nearly cancelled because of the fuel crisis since, according to The Listener, ‘How could anyone expect listeners to attend to sober, grim discussions … in conditions such as these?’.¹⁴⁵ It was decided, however, to maintain the schedule for ‘a discussion of the power-house of tomorrow was made even more apposite by the failure of the power-house of today’.¹⁴⁶ In the event, the series proved extremely popular with an estimated average audience for each programme of six million listeners,¹⁴⁷ which was twice the number of people who had tuned-in to the Hiroshima broadcast.

‘Atomic Energy Week’ perpetuated the ‘atomic crossroads’ metaphor and was described by one Mass-Observer as a ‘cleverly reassuring kind of propaganda … which balanced the horror with the possibilities for good’.¹⁴⁸ The programmes contained a variety of talks covering both the civil and military applications of atomic energy which oscillated between optimism and pessimism. As the editorial to the accompanying special edition of The Listener informed its readers: ‘Science has presented mankind with the need to choose between finding some peaceable way of settling international differences and throwing itself upon its own funeral pyre’.¹⁴⁹ In spite of Priestley’s comments, there was some ‘hair-raising dramatic stuff’ about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Of particular note was Bronowski’s appropriately titled lecture on ‘Mankind at a Crossroads’, in which he described in lurid detail ‘as well as a layman in medical science can’ how the effects of gamma radiation at Hiroshima destroyed its victims bone marrow, leading to prolonged deaths, miscarriages, and infertility in both men and women.¹⁵⁰ The highly decorated wartime bomber pilot, Group-Captain Leonard Cheshire, who was one of the British observers during the Nagasaki raid, also adopted the role of an ‘informed layman’ in his contribution about ‘Dropping the Bomb’: ‘I am a layman; I cannot understand atomic energy … I can only talk to you as an ordinary being confronted with a most unordinary experience’.¹⁵¹ What followed was a remarkably honest, yet chilling, admission of the lack of compassion shown towards the casualties by the attackers, which echoed the scientific detachment characteristic of official narratives:

[we] became transformed temporarily into kings, as it were, of a new realm … We were not soldiers waging war, for there was no opposition to stop us, but rather a research team conducting an experiment, and like all researchers we were cold and detached. As we lay on the beach sunbathing … we gave, I am afraid, little thought to the human life that we were to cut so abruptly short.¹⁵²

Remaining on the military theme, the Chichele Professor of Military History, Cyril Falls, provided one of the first public forays into the strategic implications of the atom bomb. He reaffirmed what was now common knowledge that the United Kingdom constituted ‘a comparatively easy target for the atomic bomb’ before advancing some ideas on its deterrent effects.¹⁵³ Falls’ use of language to argue how the best defence against the atom bomb was the ‘ability to retaliate in kind’¹⁵⁴ was a term of art lifted directly from Bernard Brodie’s 1946 edited collection The Absolute Weapon, in which the basic formulations of nuclear deterrence theory were first promulgated.¹⁵⁵ Exposure to this lecture might have influenced the common-sense notion of deterrence that was evident in some of the panel responses.

When Mass-Observers referenced specific talks from ‘Atomic Energy Week’ in their Directive replies, it was Bertrand Russell’s contribution entitled ‘The Outlook for Mankind’ which appeared to capture the zeitgeist. Russell had published several controversial articles at this time calling for the launch of a preventive war against the Soviet Union in order to usher in a Pax-Americana that could impose international order before the Soviets developed a bomb of their own.¹⁵⁶ Although the more bellicose elements of this argument were omitted from his ‘Atomic Energy Week’ lecture, Russell maintained his advocacy for the establishment of a world government that could override the ‘ancient loyalties, ancient prejudices and deep-rooted suspicions’ that he regarded to be the cause of so many wars.¹⁵⁷ Russell concluded the lecture with the exhortation that ‘The human race has to choose between utter disaster and unexampled well-being—no middle course is any longer possible’.¹⁵⁸ The use of the ‘atomic crossroads’ metaphor here appeared to speak to Mass-Observers. For example, a young housewife confided that:

Listening to Bertrand Russell talk on atomic power, I can only agree with him that atomic power can either make or break mankind, & that if the world cannot make complete peace, then I think atomic power will be used not only for industry but by some for atom bombs, & then God help us!¹⁵⁹

The ‘Atomic Energy Week’ broadcast appears to have served its purpose in educating the audience about the complex and contradictory nature of atomic energy, at least amongst the Mass-Observers, who registered great interest. The accumulation of greater knowledge changed how individuals felt about the bomb, and atomic enlightenment had the potential to stoke anxieties that were not previously acknowledged. A former Royal Navy Volunteer Reservist who claimed to have had few feelings about the atom bomb in his reply to the August 1945 Directive other than that he was relieved that it ended the war,¹⁶⁰ now reported feeling fearful about the path that lay beyond the ‘atomic crossroads’:

I have studied very carefully the physics of it and its potentialities for peace and war, read the white paper, listened to Hiroshima complete (3rd programme BBC), and all the recent talks, and read much other literature on it. Result – I fear it in war, and can only pray that man will be wiser than ever before and use uranium only for benefit of man.¹⁶¹

A teacher responded similarly, and recorded feeling that ‘The recent series of radio talks on this subject have interested, and disturbed, me. I feel more inclined to retreat into my ivory tower of literature than ever, though I recognise the uselessness of this solution’.¹⁶² Meanwhile, a civil servant, whose identity as an ‘informed layman’ was evident in his value judgment of the ignorant ‘masses’ who preferred to listen to popular entertainment on the Light Programme over the more highbrow offerings on the Third Programme, worried that time was running out for humanity to choose the right path at the ‘atomic crossroads’:

A great chance is being given to mankind to outlaw war forever but so far we don’t seem to be taking it. Generally people are not taking any interest in it and I’ve met few people who listened to the ‘Atomic’ broadcasts last week. They would rather have heard ‘Merry-Go-Round’ etc in the light programme. How can we expect world statesmen to really do something about control when most of the world has not enough interest to rouse public opinion.¹⁶³

Mass-Observers were exposed to new epistemological resources in the 18 months between the two Directives. While official narratives dominated national discourse, assurances about the dangers posed by nuclear technology began to be undermined by unofficial narratives that exposed the uncomfortable realities of the human suffering that was inflicted at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The ‘atomic crossroads’ metaphor was a recurring motif popularised by the mass media. In this context, the press not only reflected and shaped public attitudes to the bomb but gave ‘social sanction’ to views that might otherwise had gone unexpressed. Social sanctioning could only work, however, if there were already latent feelings within individuals waiting to be expressed.¹⁶⁴ Thus, it should be expected that Mass-Observers’ feelings about the atom bomb as recorded in the Directive responses were shaped in large part by exposure to the socially sanctioned views that appeared in the mass media. For those Mass-Observers who chose to become emotionally involved with the atom bomb through engagement with new epistemological resources, cultural reference points changed as a result. In August 1945, it was the work of H. G. Wells that was most commonly cited by Mass-Observers in their Directive responses,¹⁶⁵ whereas in 1947, panel members were much more likely to reference Bertrand Russell or John Hersey’s Hiroshima. This shift is symbolic of the fact that the atom bomb was no longer a product of science fiction, but a cold hard reality.

Nuclear anxiety manifest

Responses to the August 1945 Directive were characterised by a ‘messiness’ of feelings as Mass-Observers cycled through various emotional responses to the new atomic age into which they had been thrust.¹⁶⁶ As has been shown, panel members writing in February 1947 displayed a similarly diverse array of feelings about the deteriorating international environment and the nuclear narratives to which they had been exposed. Many of these responses can be regarded as emotional cognition about the atom bomb rather than emotional responses to the atom bomb, which is an important distinction that Joseph de Rivera regards as a psychological defence against involvement with nuclear weapons ‘by using ideas without feeling’.¹⁶⁷ Some Mass-Observers did indeed make a conscious decision to distinguish between emotion and reason: ‘It is better to have ideas about the atomic bomb, than feelings, which are irrational and unproductive’ according to one 69-year-old chemist.¹⁶⁸ When respondents to the February 1947 Directive attempted to write explicitly about their feelings, rather than views, about the atom bomb, there was an overriding sense of mental exhaustion in many of the replies that appeared to rob them of feeling. For those panel members who had not resigned themselves completely to the dangers posed by nuclear technology, others succumbed to psychic numbing in a conscious or unconscious attempt to defend against nuclear anxiety.

A notable feature of the replies to the February 1947 Directive was a sense of resignation about a nuclear future that was both unknown and unknowable. The American psychiatrist, Robert Jay Lifton, recorded encountering such feelings of resignation amongst large numbers of hibakusha, which he regarded as a form of psychological passivity that performed an important denial function for the survivors: ‘I am helpless before the great forces of destiny, so why try to influence them?’.¹⁶⁹ Individual Mass-Observers recorded similar feelings of helplessness. For example, a secretary from Leeds confided that ‘I was appalled at the Hiroshima broadcasts’ but felt nonetheless ‘that since the bomb has been invented there is little that can be done about it’.¹⁷⁰ A 55-year-old social worker stated bluntly that ‘I feel helpless where the atom-bomb is concerned. What can I do to prevent nations going to war & using it again? I feel resigned to being exterminated by it, as we all probably shall be’.¹⁷¹ An agricultural worker simply wrote that ‘I have no strong feelings about the atom bomb. I’m resigned to an atomic age’.¹⁷²

This was not the first time that Mass Observation had recorded the grim resignation with which its panel members regarded the inevitability of major war. During the Munich Crisis of 1938, panel members registered feelings which oscillated between deep pessimism and blind optimism about the effectiveness of a policy of appeasement for preventing the outbreak of war. For James Hinton, these two positions represent ‘ways of accepting the powerlessness of ordinary people to do anything to influence events’.¹⁷³ Indeed, one respondent to the February 1947 Directive invoked Munich directly: ‘The price of war has now become greater than its prize; in an atomic age the gangster who thinks life not worth living unless he gets what he wants is at a premium; all roads now lead to Munich’.¹⁷⁴ This felt lack of agency in the face of international developments reached its apogee in the immediate post-war years when Mass Observation discovered during the course of its research for its 1947 study on Peace and the Public that seven out of ten Hammersmith residents believed that war would break-out within the next 25 years.¹⁷⁵ Optimistic Mass-Observers replying to the February 1947 Directive predicted a nuclear war might begin in ‘10, 20 or 30 years’¹⁷⁶; pessimists believed that ‘Perhaps we can hold out for another 5 years or so’.¹⁷⁷

The imminence and inevitability of nuclear war would become a defining motif of the cultural Cold War,¹⁷⁸ and few Mass-Observers felt it could be survived in personal or civilisational terms. One panel member had completely written-off his future: ‘My (in fact ‘our’) chances of living to a ripe old age are just about negligible at the present moment’.¹⁷⁹ Another respondent, who was a youth officer working for the Control Commission for Germany, wrote that ‘The Atom Bomb’s worst effect, I think, is the fact that it hamstrings planning. I have met many individuals who have told me over and over again “what’s the use of making special efforts or of raising children, if in 30 years civilisation will be destroyed?”’.¹⁸⁰ Some individuals were actively developing plans for how they would attempt to save themselves and their loved ones in the event that the bombs did begin to fall. A 31-year-old housewife confided that:

… what I really want to do is to buy a little cottage somewhere right in the wilds of Wales or Scotland, to have a retreat. I have already the fixed intention if the first one drops on London and we are not killed to take the children and keep on walking, so if we had this cottage we would at least know where we are going.¹⁸¹

This sense of resignation and fatalism reflects the powerlessness of ordinary people to control the atomic present or future. Jonathan Hogg argued that nuclearity itself ‘can be viewed as a set of understandings defined by the limits of democracy and the fragility of the modern project’.¹⁸² Indeed, the housewife above continued her response to the Directive with some musings on her felt lack of agency:

I do not think an atom bomb war will mean the end of civilization on this world, unless nature steps in and really terrific chain-reactions start because they have made some miscalculation in producing and throwing the bombs. Which sets me wondering again about this strange little word ‘they’ and how it is possible that one can feel so helpless to prevent what ‘they’ are doing, to prevent ‘them’ from starting another war if they feel like it.¹⁸³

The ‘they’ to which she referred was left undisclosed but is implied to mean the national governments and institutions that gave birth to the bomb and now wielded it for power-political purposes. A 22-year-old freelance journalist also spoke to the concept of ‘they’ as shorthand for an anarchic international system that threatened to destroy the world:

They (the governments and ruling classes) want to control the bomb so that it will not upset the way the world works. But it is the way the world works which has produced the atomic bomb. It is not the bomb in itself we should concern ourselves about, but rather why – why the bomb is such a threat to humanity. The atomic bomb is but another sign of the crisis through which the world is passing. It is not the bomb itself which threatens us. Humanity threatens humanity. The conditions of human society threaten to destroy that society.¹⁸⁴

While some panel members accepted what they regarded as the inevitability of a future nuclear conflagration, others found it difficult to even think about the unthinkable. Lifton identified and described the phenomenon of psychic numbing amongst hibakusha, which functioned as a defence mechanism against death: ‘If I feel nothing, then death is not taking place’.¹⁸⁵ This state of suspended emotion was evident within a significant number of Directive replies. For example, one Mass-Observer stated frankly that ‘My feelings as regards the atom-bomb are practically nil’,¹⁸⁶ while another admitted that ‘I have difficulty in thinking what are my precise feelings on the subject’.¹⁸⁷ A Norwich-based schoolteacher reported in his reply to the August 1945 Directive that ‘My first reaction to news of the atomic bomb was indifference. I looked on it as newspaper exaggeration, but when more detailed reports came in I was stunned, then horrified, then very interested’.¹⁸⁸ By February 1947, however, he confided that:

I find that for months now I have not thought about the atom bomb. I believe this is due to two courses. More immediate problems have crowded it out, and I don’t want to think about it because to do so is unpleasant. I am appalled at the thought of what will happen if we ever have an atomic war and feel helpless to prevent it.¹⁸⁹

The psychological pain of trying to imagine nuclear war, coupled with a sense of powerlessness to do anything about it, led one Army sergeant to actively ‘put all thoughts of an atomic war right out of my mind’ adding that ‘The less said about the atom bomb the better for mankind’.¹⁹⁰ Unwanted ideations about the atom bomb nonetheless bubbled away under the surface. For example, one schoolmaster complained that ‘I feel quite hysterical about the atom bomb. I don’t think about it all the time, but it is like one of those faint headaches which you don’t notice when you are doing something interesting, but which are there all the time’.¹⁹¹ Another Mass-Observer stated bluntly that ‘I can’t do much about it, so don’t much think of it’,¹⁹² while another reported that ‘I no longer have any feelings about it. I have accepted it as a fact. The shocked horror has given way to acceptance’.¹⁹³ These testimonies support Peter Schwenger’s observation that even if persons can overcome the reluctance to think about nuclear war, this does not necessarily mean they are able because ‘What images we can come up with are so painful, so unacceptable, that they, or the emotions associated with them are blocked’.¹⁹⁴ A technical engineer even expressed some guilt about his apparent ability to ward off anxious thoughts: ‘I feel that I am like an ostrich with head in sand as although I know I ought to feel something, I actually feel unaffected’.¹⁹⁵ Such feelings of guilt and shame were not uncommon amongst Hiroshima survivors who worried that they were not experiencing the ‘correct’ emotions strongly enough.¹⁹⁶

Other Mass-Observers appeared to have grown weary, or even bored,¹⁹⁷ with the popular discourse about the atom bomb in the intervening months between the two Directives. Just as many Britons had become ‘sick and tired of hearing about Jews fighting and dying’ by the end of the 1940s,¹⁹⁸ so too did compassion fatigue begin to affect feelings about the bomb. An engineer’s draughtsman who believed he had entered a ‘new age’ in August 1945 and that ‘Life on this planet cannot be quite the same as it was, from the day the first bomb went down on Hiroshima’,¹⁹⁹ confessed 18 months later that:

Candidly I am getting a bit “cheesed off” with talk of the atom bomb. I know of course that it is largely a matter of life and death but I believe that in the next war it will certainly be used all the same and in spite of all the pious clap-trap said about it.²⁰⁰

Excessive exposure to the various tropes that had emerged in official and unofficial narratives since the atomic bombings led some respondents to reflect critically on the originality of their own writing. For example, a young Forestry Commission trainee who recorded feelings of ‘sorrow’, ‘revulsion’, and ‘fear’ in his lengthy reply to the August 1945 Directive²⁰¹ adopted a much more terse and critical tone 18 months later: ‘I don’t like the atom bomb. It should be outlawed. I think it’s terrible. What further hackneyed phrases to write?’.²⁰² Similarly, a civil servant demonstrated self-awareness of his own melancholy prose, which could have been lifted straight from Picture Post: ‘Our every action today is shadowed under the pall that arose when the atom bomb burst over Hiroshima. That doesn’t sound original. It probably isn’t, for every sane person, every person who believes life is worth living, must think and say the same’.²⁰³

As Hiroshima and Nagasaki began to recede from memory, more immediate, tangible anxieties about quality of life in post-war Britain appeared to occupy the minds of the Mass-Observers. Rationing, housing, employment, inflation, and the fuel crisis all vied for attention in a war-weary nation.²⁰⁴ Such distractions served to distance some Mass-Observers from the events of August 1945, which was further exacerbated by the geographic remoteness of Japan. One of the founders of Mass Observation, Tom Harrison, witnessed during the early stages of the Second World War that working class people, who were subjected to the worst of the Luftwaffe’s bombing, were less likely to demand reprisal attacks on German cities than their middle class compatriots because ‘foreigners and ‘abroad’ seemed too remote for what happened there to connect significantly with their own feelings’.²⁰⁵ Likewise, it was the splendid isolation of the British Isles from the Nazi death camps in Continental Europe that allowed Britons to evade emotional involvement with the Holocaust.²⁰⁶ This sense of numbed detachment was experienced by one Mass-Observer writing in February 1947, who admitted that:

The initial shock of horror that the bomb created seems largely to have vanished. It seems too distant a thing and it is an effort for me to let my mind dwell on Japanese. Quite honestly there is, at this moment, little sympathy for the Hiroshima victims, for the starving Germans, for the flood victims. I feel no more for them than for the victims of the Black Death.²⁰⁷

Lifton reminds us that this type of cognition also constitutes a form of psychic numbing that interrupts the identification process (‘I see you dying, but I am not related to you or your death’) which may have provided comfort for the Mass-Observer.²⁰⁸ A young man serving in the Royal Naval Air Service encountered similar feelings in the people he had met, and complained that while they appeared initially shocked by the events of August 1945, ‘now people seem to try and forget about it’.²⁰⁹ A student encapsulated this feeling with their seven-word answer to the Directive question: ‘out of sight and out of mind’.²¹⁰ This deflective attitude was particularly worrying for one 22-year-old women who wrote that:

My feelings about the atom bomb are that I do not think it is being treated by the world at large in a sufficiently urgent manner. I realise it is difficult for people to be constantly thinking of it, but it is all too easy to forget all about it while it is not in the immediate news.²¹¹

One Mass-Observer living in Sheffield challenged the authenticity of the feelings and opinions individuals shared in public, and was convinced that ‘None believe, whatever their spoken words, that civilisation is doomed … We read & believe, but continue our lives as before’.²¹² He did concede, however, to know of one person, ‘a West Indian, who returned to his country for fear of the atom-bomb’.²¹³ A particularly cognisant and articulate young woman who warned about a nuclear ‘Sword of Damocles hanging over civilisation’ in her reply to the August 1945 Directive,²¹⁴ felt concerned about a perceived lack of interest shown towards the atom bomb in the months that followed:

This is a subject which has been completely pushed to the background of our minds during the recent crisis, except for the BBC’s excellent series of talks … But the fact is that the atom bomb still hangs over our heads: it is more than eighteen months since the first one was dropped, and still no plan has been accepted to its control … Is this fatalism or a mere shutting of our eyes to the consequences of an action eighteen months ago in which we played a full part?²¹⁵

That some Mass-Observers sought to position themselves as more conscientious citizens in contrast to the apathetic ‘masses’ is consistent with the ‘informed layman’ identity.²¹⁶ Yet, those respondents who claimed that few people were sufficiently cognisant of the ongoing danger posed by the existence of nuclear weapons—i.e. subjective perceptions of nuclearity—would only have been privy to public, rather than private, thoughts and feelings. Public attitudes are tempered by the desire of individuals to conform to group norms, and therefore, are unlikely to reveal opinions which are deemed to be unconventional. As Tom Harrison suggested: ‘A man’s public conversation is confined in the same sort of conventional boundaries as his bowler hat or the rigid routine of standing rounds when drinking beer with his friends’.²¹⁷ Capturing the personal level of feeling—‘the level of wife, self and dream’²¹⁸—was precisely what the Mass Observation panel project sought to achieve. Arriving at such intimate levels of insight is particularly important in the context of revealing personal feelings about nuclear weapons. Joseph de Rivera observed in the data taken from a 1982 study on the general public’s thinking about nuclear weapons that most persons ‘do not think about nuclear war in the sense of working through the possibility in public conversation’ and concluded that ‘for the majority of persons the possibility of nuclear war tends to be a private image rather than a shared reality’.²¹⁹

There was, however, a burgeoning public discourse over the morality of atomic weapons in Britain in 1947.²²⁰ Mass-Observers were already considering the moral equivalences of the use of force in their replies to the August 1945 Directive,²²¹ and this became even more pronounced 18 months later. For many respondents to the February 1947 Directive, the atom bomb represented a more humane way of killing enemy combatants compared to the use of conventional weapons. For example, a technical drawing artist invoked rather archaic imagery when articulating his view that ‘The atom bomb seems more merciful in some respects than waiting in the middle of a screaming mob to be cut to pieces by obscene swordsmen’.²²² Similarly, a university lecturer felt that:

… if men must die prematurely, it is important that they die as painlessly as possible; actual facts as to the relative painfulness of death by swords and clubs on the one hand, atom bombs on the other, being hard to come by, I can do little more than guess, and the effect of my guess is that death by atom bomb is on the average more immediate and painless.²²³

The judgment here was that the use of the atom bomb in war was more ethical because it was perceived to kill more quickly, thereby reducing suffering for the victim: ‘After all’ noted one respondent ‘sudden death is not suffering’.²²⁴ Greater knowledge about the kill mechanisms of the atom bomb led one Mass-Observer, who had been working as a journalist in Burma when the first bomb was dropped, to qualify his original view that ‘there was no difference morally between an ultra-high explosive and the normal kind like TNT’ upon learning about ‘the nightmare after effects of radiation’.²²⁵ For others, the only meaningful difference between nuclear and conventional armaments was one of scale. An RAF sergeant recorded that:

I do not feel that it is any more immoral than any other of the modern weapons of frightfulness. I can see no moral difference between killing a hundred people with a block-buster and killing a thousand with an atom bomb. The only difference is in numbers.²²⁶

In a similar vein, a 21-year-old man who had been recently demobilised and was waiting to return to his studies at the University of Cambridge reasoned that:

I can see no logical difference between killing 100,000 men over the course of a year and killing 100,000 men, women & children over the course of a minute. The enemy is an organism whose efficiency you wish to destroy, & it does not matter whether you do this by hitting him in the belly or in the face. ‘All’s fair in war’.²²⁷

He did, however, feel that this rather detached way of conceptualising the use of the bomb placed him outside of the community of acceptable feeling:

I am ashamed of this attitude of mine because it obviously disagrees with the opinions of the most admirable people, & makes me think there must be some flaw in my moral nature which prevents me from feeling the horror & indignation that other people felt about the use of the atom bomb. I feel horror certainly, but only as I would if I saw thousands of people destroyed by an earthquake, but I do not feel moral disgust. This may be because the formative years of my life took place from 1938 to 1944, when the moral conscience of the world was blunted by continual new horrors.²²⁸

That the conscience of this erstwhile citizen soldier had, by his own admission, been somewhat numbed by the formative experience of war is not surprising. It has been well documented by Joanna Bourke that the ‘acute disillusionment of men who had enlisted with ‘profound emotionalism’ … destroyed their capacity to feel sympathy upon returning to civilian life’.²²⁹ The ruthless manner in which the respondent regarded the extinguishing of 100,000 civilian lives as a matter of military expediency lays bare the brutalising effects of war. This numbed brutality can be witnessed by the depersonalising of the victims of the atomic bombings as akin to faceless masses engulfed in an earthquake. For combatants in the wars of the twentieth century it was the very process of personalising the foe that enabled them to kill, and which provided a buffer against brutalisation.²³⁰ The numbed conscience, conversely, was an affliction of the distant citizen who ‘dispassionately observed the war taking place and regarded it as irrelevant to their lives’.²³¹ Perhaps it was the uneasy tension in the status of this young Mass-Observer as a short-service conscript, neither professional soldier nor untainted civilian, that contributed to his feelings of guilt and shame about his own callousness. The student undoubtedly paid a high moral and psychic cost for their participation in war but, as previous responses in this section have shown, he was not alone in his feelings of apathy towards the Japanese victims of the atom bombs.

Conclusion

If Mass-Observers felt that they had entered a new ‘atomic age’ in August 1945, it was clear by February 1947 that they had now arrived at an ‘atomic crossroads’. The cooling of relations between the superpowers and the inability of the UN Atomic Energy Commission to broker a mutually agreeable regime for the control of atomic energy brought to the fore difficult questions about humanities atomic future—would the boundless potential of atomic energy be democratised and controlled as a global public good? Or would the atom bomb remain a jealously guarded secret exploited for the ends of military planning and power politics? As was befitting the ‘informed layman’ identity, Mass-Observers took a keen interest in these questions and wrote at length on subjects as diverse as global governance, arms control, international relations, foreign and defence policy, nuclear physics, ethics, and morality. The depth and breadth of knowledge on display was at times genuinely impressive, as was probably intended. As a cohort, Mass-Observers were generally suspicious of the aims and intentions of the United States as the world’s sole atomic power and were sceptical of its ability to act as a responsible custodian of atomic energy. These views were shaped by the distinct anti-American prejudice of the panel and compounded by the culture of secrecy and rumour that surrounded the atom bomb in both domestic and international politics.

Although feelings were often overtaken by cognition about the atom bomb in the Directive replies, Mass-Observers did not reject the emotional response completely. People choose to become emotionally involved with nuclear weapons by learning about them, and Mass-Observers evidently wanted to learn about the dangers and opportunities of atomic energy through their engagement with the variety of epistemological resources that became available after August 1945. They learnt about the bomb by reading specialised and popular literature, listening to public intellectuals on the radio, visiting exhibitions, and by keeping well informed of international developments through the press. Emotional engagement could not be sustained indefinitely, however, and many responses belied the existence of a sensory fatigue with public discourse about the bomb as it had developed during the 18 months between the two Directives. This sense of mental fatigue can not be explained solely by overexposure to nuclear narratives, however, and should account for the general collapse of compassion in the collective British conscience by 1947 that was consistent with an inward-looking society jaded about the post-war settlement and uninterested in wider events.

By virtue of their engagement with the Mass-Observation project, panel members can not reasonably be described as apathetic individuals, and Mass-Observers were more likely to assume the role of the conscientious citizen in their Directive replies to set them apart from the perceived apathetic attitudes of the general public. This was a position that required greater engagement with nuclear knowledge, and with it, a closer emotional connection to the bomb. Yet, the excitement of gaining first knowledge of the atom bomb in August 1945 had given way to a dulled acceptance of the inevitability of a future nuclear war by February 1947. The fatalistic resignation with which many Mass-Observers faced the ‘atomic crossroads’ reflects the lack of agency that ordinary people felt over the real or imagined ‘choice’ about humanities atomic future. This sense of powerlessness is a basal quality of nuclearity from which nuclear anxiety flows. To ward off anxious ideations, some panel members displayed the characteristic signs of psychic numbing as a psychological defence mechanism in response to the existential absurdity of mass observing the atom bomb.

Acknowledgements

I would like to extend my gratitude to the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful observations and constructive criticisms on an earlier draft of this article. I would also like to thank the Trustees of the Mass Observation Archive, University of Sussex, for permitting me to quote from material for which they hold the copyright.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Simon J. Moody

Dr Simon J. Moody is a Senior Lecturer in Defence Studies and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He is the author of Imagining Nuclear War in the British Army, 1945-1989, which was published by Oxford University Press in 2020. Dr Moody is currently working on a project examining the intersection between propaganda and Cold War military recruitment advertising.

Notes

1. Mass Observation Archive [MOA] Directive, February, 1947.

2. Hinton, The Mass Observers, 275.

3. MOA Directive, August 1945. The question was constructed slightly differently in the August 1945 Directive, which read: ‘Describe in detail your own feelings and views about the atom bomb, and those of the people you meet’. The distinction between ‘feelings’ and ‘views’ was therefore significant for some panel members writing in August 1945 but less so in February 1947.

4. This concept, which is a reformulation of Gabrielle Hecht’s original use of the term ‘nuclearity’, was introduced and defined as an analytical lens by Jonathan Hogg in “The Family that Feared Tomorrow”.

5. Langhamer, “Mass Observing the Atom Bomb,” 219–20.

6. Ibid., 212.

7. Hogg, British Nuclear Culture, 16.

8. For an analysis of the effects that this newfound sense of vulnerability had on British defence policy see Grant, After the Bomb, 77–98.

9. Hogg, British Nuclear Culture, 56–65.

10. Hogg, “The Family that Feared Tomorrow, ” 540–1.

11. Langhamer, “Mass Observing the Atom Bomb”, 217.

12. Craig and Radchenko, The Atomic Bomb, 111.

13. Langhamer, “Mass Observing the Atom Bomb”, 217.

14. Farmer, “All Work and No Play,” 26.

15. Ibid., 34.

16. Hennessy, Never Again, 241.

17. Morgan, The People’s Peace, 83.

18. Moss, Clarke, Jennings, and Stoker, “Democratic engagement in Britain,” 444.

19. See, for example, the personal testimonies in Kynaston, Austerity Britain, 106–7.

20. Cesarani, ‘Challenging the ‘Myth of Silence,’’ 29.

21. Ibid., 29–30.

22. Boyer, By the Bomb’s Early Light, 293.

23. Ibid., 291.

24. Wear, “Nuclear Denial Disorder,” 215.

25. Hinton, Nine Wartime Lives, 18.

26. See note 24. Wear, ‘Nuclear Denial Disorder’ 217.

27. Crocq, “A History of Anxiety,” 319.

28. Smith, “Nuclear Anxiety,” 558.

29. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 3844, male, born 1904.

30. Much intellectual debt must be paid to the work of Rob Boddice for helping me order my own thinking about how to historicise feelings. See, in particular, his discussion in Boddice, A History of Feelings, 7–9.

31. Jeffery, Mass-Observation: A Short History, 29.

32. Savage, “Affluence and Social Change,” 465.

33. I thank the anonymous reviewer for this insight.

34. Boddice, A History of Feelings, 17.

35. Langhammer, “Mass Observing the Atom Bomb,” 214.

36. See, for example, Endy, “Power and Culture in the West,” 334–5.

37. Only 133 respondents provided an answer to the specific question on feelings about the atom bomb.

38. Hinton, The Mass Observers, 268.

39. Ibid., 345.

40. The answers to these questions can be found in the respective Directive Questionnaires: MOA Directive, April 1947; MOA Directive, October 1947; MOA Directive, January 1949; MOA Directive, January 1951; MOA Directive, March 1951.

41. Sluga, “UNESCO and the (One) World of Julian Huxley,” 393.

42. Grant, “The Imaginative Landscape,” 96.

43. Cited in Hecht, ‘Imagining the Bomb,” 78.

44. See note 12 Craig and Radchenko, The Atomic Bomb 113.

45. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 3119, female, born 1924.

46. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 4402, male, born 1923.

47. Callaghan and Phythian, “Intellectuals of the Left,” 442.

48. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 3858, male, born 1908.

49. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 4049, male, born 1920.

50. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 3978, male, born 1922.

51. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 4082, male, born 1907.

52. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 4106, male, born 1920.

53. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 4040, male, born 1926.

54. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 2694, male, born 1914.

55. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 4370, male, born 1923.

56. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 3524, male, born 1921.

57. Webb, “Observing America,” 303.

58. Ibid., 303.

59. Shaw, “The British Popular Press,” 77.

60. Wilford, “Britain: In Between,” 23.

61. Cited in Webb, “Observing America,” 304.

62. Cited in Wilford, “Britain: In Between,” 36.

63. See, Dumbrell, A Special Relationship, 28–31.

64. See note 53 above. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 4040, male, born 1926.

65. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 3945, male, born 1915.

66. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 4187, female, born 1914.

67. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 3401, female, born 1915.

68. Hogg, British Nuclear Culture, 74.

69. Rotter, The World’s Bomb, 251.

70. Laucht, “Britain’s Picture Post Confronts Nuclear Energy,” 122.

71. Yavenditti, “John Hersey and the American Conscience,” 29.

72. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 3119, female, born 1924.

73. See note 71 above. Yavenditti, ‘John Hersey and the American Conscience’, 29.

74. MOA Directive, April 1947.

75. MOA Directive, April 1947, DR 1061, female, born 1889.

76. MOA Directive, April 1947, DR 4051, male, born 1924.

77. MOA Directive, April 1947, DR 1313, female, born 1891.

78. MOA Directive, April 1947, DR 2463, female, born 1890.

79. MOA File Report 2485, Atomic Weather, May 1947.

80. Huxford, “Escape from the Cold War,” 736.

81. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 3943, male, born 1908.

82. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 4195, female, born 1924.

83. See note 59 above. Shaw, ‘The British Popular Press’, 76.

84. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 4051, male, born 1924.

85. See note 56 above. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 3524, male, born 1921.

86. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 3884, male, born 1928.

87. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 2274, female, born 1896.

88. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 4208, female, born 1916.

89. Buhite and Hamel, “War for Peace,” 372–4.

90. For an excellent account of the extent of American military bases in Britain by the 1980s see, Campbell, The Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier.

91. Moody, Imagining Nuclear War, 23.

92. Heuser, Nuclear Mentalities, 8–9.

93. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 4412, male, no date of birth given.

94. Langhamer, “Mass Observing the Atom Bomb,” 214.

95. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 2921, male, born 1922.

96. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 3302, male, born 1888.

97. Hogg, British Nuclear Culture, 61.

98. Balmer, “UK Biological Weapons,” 50.

99. Hecht, “Imagining the Bomb,” 75.

100. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 4380, male, born 1914.

101. See note 86 above. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 3884, male, born 1928.

102. Langhamer, “Mass Observing the Atom Bomb,” 215, 220.

103. Hogg, “The Family that Feared Tomorrow,” 538.

104. Baylis and Stoddart, The British Nuclear Experience, 29–33 and Hennessy, The Secret State, 46–52.

105. Hogg, “The Family that Feared Tomorrow,” 543.

106. Grant, “Images of Survival,” 9.

107. Laucht, “Britain’s Picture Post Confronts Nuclear Energy,” 117–39.

108. Bingham, “The British Popular Press,” 609–24.

109. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 3225, male, born 1911.

110. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 2653, male, no date of birth given.

111. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 3989, male, no date of birth given.

112. King, “A Weapon too Far,” 9.

113. See note 71 above. Yavenditti, “John Hersey and the American Conscience,” 27.

114. Moody, Imagining Nuclear War, 115–6.

115. See note 112 above. King, “A Weapon too Far,” 10.

116. Desmarais, “Jacob Bronowski,” 588.

117. The Effects of the Atomic Bombs, 27–28.

118. Forgan, “Atoms in Wonderland,” 178.

119. Boyle, ”Exhibiting Britain’s First Nuclear Reactor,” 15.

120. Forgan, “Atoms in Wonderland,” 179–80.

121. Ibid., 182.

122. Cited in Boyle, “Exhibiting Britain’s First Nuclear Reactor,” 17.

123. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 3940, male, born 1928.

124. See, Savage, “Affluence and Social Change,” 457–473.

125. Ibid., 461.

126. MOA Directive, November 1946.

127. Peierls and Enogat, Science News 2, vii.

128. Forgan, “Atoms in Wonderland,” 190.

129. Hersey, Hiroshima, vi.

130. Sharp, “Yellow Peril to Japanese Wasteland,” 444.

131. See note 71 above. Yavenditti, “ John Hersey and the American Conscience,” 35.

132. See note 130 above. Sharp, ” Yellow Peril to Japanese Wasteland, ” 434.

133. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 3844, male, born 1904.

134. BBC Year Book 1947, 36.

135. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 3189, male, born 1895.

136. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 3848, male, born 1911.

137. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 4099, male, born 1929.

138. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 4103, male, born 1911.

139. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 4048, male, born 1919.

140. Luft and Wheeler, ”Reaction to John Hersey’s Hiroshima,” 136.

141. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 4203, female, born 1903.

142. MOA Directive February 1947, DR 4341, male, born 1929.

143. MOA Directive February 1947, DR 3945, male, born 1915.

144. Priestley, “On the Stairway of the Stars,” 355.

145. BBC Year Book 1948, 68.

146. Ibid., 68.

147. Ibid., 68.

148. See note 65 above. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 3945, male, born 1915.

149. “The Choice Before Us,” 364.

150. Bronowski, “Assessing the Damage,” 362.

151. Cheshire, “Dropping the Bomb,” 360.

152. Ibid., 361.

153. Falls, “Strategic Significance,” 365.

154. Ibid., 365.

155. See, for example, Brodie (ed.), The Absolute Weapon, 76.

156. Stone, “’Bertrand Russell as a Moral Force”, 18. Russell ceased advancing such a policy in early 1948 when it became clear that Soviet leaders would not be receptive to such coercive measures. See, Perkins, ‘Russell and Preventive War’, 139 and Grattan-Guinness, ‘Man of Dissent’,” 373–4.

157. Russell, “The Outlook for Mankind,” 370.

158. Ibid., 370.

159. See note 82 above. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 4195, female, born 1924.

160. MOA, Directive, August 1945, DR 2568, male, born 1903

161. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 2568, male, born 1903.

162. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 3815, male, born 1915.

163. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 3845, male, born 1921.

164. Hinton, The Mass Observers, 185–86.

165. Langhamer, “Mass Observing the Atom Bomb,” 215.

166. Ibid., 213.

167. de Rivera, “Facing Nuclear Weapons,” 749.

168. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 1099, male, born 1878.

169. Lifton, Death in Life, 186.

170. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 4361, female, born 1912.

171. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 1052, female, born 1892.

172. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 2575, male, born 1915.

173. Hinton, The Mass Observers, 97.

174. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 3842, male, born 1921.

175. Cited in Langhamer, “Mass Observing the Atom Bomb,” 220.

176. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 4072, male, no date of birth given.

177. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 4105, female, born 1912.

178. Hogg, “The Family that Feared Tomorrow,” 547.

179. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 4406, male, no date of birth given.

180. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 4241, female, no date of birth given.

181. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 4240, female, born 1916.

182. Hogg, “The Family that Feared Tomorrow,” 546.

183. See note 181 above. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 4240, female, born 1916.

184. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 3502, male, born 1925.

185. See note 169 above. Lifton, Death in Life, 34.

186. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 1140, male, born 1916.

187. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 3893, male, born 1920.

188. MOA Directive, August 1945, DR 2795, male, born 1914.

189. MOA, Directive, February 1947, DR 2795, male, born 1914.

190. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 4415, male, no date of birth given.

191. See note 65 above.MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 3945, male, born 1915.

192. See note 139 above. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 4048, male, born 1919.

193. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 4408, male, born 1908.

194. Schwenger, “Writing the Unthinkable,” 35.

195. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 4423, male, born 1909.

196. See note 169 above. Lifton, Death in Life, 35.

197. Boredom is emerging as a new analytical category through which to understand nuclear culture. See, for example, Huxford, “’Deterrence can be boring’”.

198. Cesarani, “Nazi Persecution and Mass Murder of Europe’s Jews,” 123.

199. MOA, Directive, August 1945, DR 1108, male, born 1907.

200. MOA, Directive, February 1947, DR 1108, male, born 1907.

201. MOA, Directive, August 1945, DR 2511, male, born 1921.

202. MOA, Directive, February 1947, DR 2511, male, born 1921.

203. MOA, Directive, February 1947, DR 3524, male, born 1921.

204. Hannah Rose Woods has documented several testimonies on these hardships by Mass Observation diarists in Rule Nostalgia, 97–107.

205. Hinton, The Mass Observers, 211.

206. Pearce, Holocaust Consciousness in Contemporary Britain, 25.

207. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 3956, male, no date of birth given.

208. See note 169 above. Lifton, Death in Life, 500.

209. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 4368, male, born 1927.

210. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 4127, male, no date of birth given.

211. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 4404, female, born 1925.

212. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 4152, male, no date of birth given.

213. Ibid. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 4152, male, no date of birth given.

214. MOA Directive, August 1945, DR 3119, female, born, 1924.

215. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 3119, female, born, 1924.

216. Mass-Observers adopted this stance on other issues too. See, Moss, Clarke, Jennings, and Stoker, “Democratic Engagement in Britain,” 449.

217. Cited in Hinton, The Mass Observers, 187.

218. Ibid., 187.

219. See note 167 above. de Rivera, “ Facing Nuclear Weapons,” 742.

220. Hogg, British Nuclear Culture, 49.

221. Langhamer, “Mass Observing the Atom Bomb,” 216–17.

222. See note 109 above. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 3225, male, born 1911.

223. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 3810, male, born 1893.

224. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 3799, male, born 1922.

225. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 3846, male, born 1913.

226. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 3630, male, born 1908.

227. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 3855, male, born 1926.

228. Ibid. MOA Directive, February 1947, DR 3855, male, born 1926.

229. Bourke, An Intimate History of Killing, 350.

230. Ibid., 371.

231. Ibid., 7.