Training for Atomic Warfare

In the early days of the Cold War, the United States Army underwent a fundamental shift in its strategic thinking. While World War II was won on a doctrinal paradigm of combined arms, the US Army of the 1950s believed that atomic weapons would change how international conflicts were won and lost. Training officers in atomic warfare was a challenge, since there was little real-world experience on which to draw. Initially resistant to atomic weapons, the Army evolved through school debates among t