The U.S. War Department’s September 1945 Secret Plan to Wage Nuclear War against the USSR

204 Atomic Bombs, 66 Urban Areas. “Wipe the Soviet Union Off the Map”

Apr 03, 2026

[This article was originally published on Global Research. You can read it here.]

At no point since the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945, has humanity been closer to the unthinkable.

All the safeguards of the Cold War era, which categorized the nuclear bomb as “a weapon of last resort”, have been scrapped.

Let us also recall the unspoken history of America’s doctrine pertaining to the conduct of nuclear war.

Barely six weeks after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the U.S. War Department released a Secret Plan on September 15, 1945 to bomb 66 cities of the Soviet Union with 204 atomic bombs.

The September 15, 1945 Plan was to “Wipe the Soviet Union off the Map” at a time when the US and the USSR were allies.

Confirmed by declassified documents, Hiroshima and Nagasaki served as a “dress rehearsal” (see historical details and analysis below).

The official narrative pertaining to nuclear war is that Nazi Germany was developing nuclear weapons. There is no firm evidence to that effect.

Were the August 1945 Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks used by the Pentagon to evaluate the viability of a much larger attack on the Soviet Union consisting of 204 atomic bombs?

This is confirmed by official documents of the War Department: The key documents to bomb 66 cities of the Soviet Union (15 September 1945) were finalized 5-6 weeks after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings (6, 9 August 1945):

“On September 15, 1945 — just under two weeks after the formal surrender of Japan and the end of World War II — Norstad sent a copy of the estimate to General Leslie Groves, still the head of the Manhattan Project, and the guy who, for the short term anyway, would be in charge of producing whatever bombs the USAAF might want.
As you might guess, the classification on this document was high: “TOP SECRET LIMITED,” which was about as high as it went during World War II. (Alex Wellerstein, The First Atomic Stockpile Requirements (September 1945)

Map of 66 Soviet Urban Strategic Areas to be Bombed with 206 atomic Bombs (Declassified September 1945)

The Kremlin was aware of the 1945 plan to bomb 66 Soviet cities.

The documents confirm that the US was involved in the “planning of genocide” against the Soviet Union.

“Let’s cut to the chase. How many bombs did the USAAF request of the atomic general, when there were maybe one, maybe two bombs worth of fissile material on hand?
At a minimum they wanted 123. Ideally, they’d like 466.”
This is just a little over a month after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Of course, in true bureaucratic fashion, they provided a handy-dandy chart (Alex Wellerstein, op. cit)

Hiroshima and Nagasaki Was a Dress Rehearsal

http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/1945-Atomic-Bomb-Production.pdf

Click here to access all the documents of the September 15, 1945 Operation.

The Nuclear Arms Race

Central to our understanding of the Cold War which started (officially) in 1947, Washington’s September 1945 Plan to bomb 66 cities into smithereens played a key role in triggering the nuclear arms race.

The Soviet Union was threatened and developed its own atomic bomb in 1949 in response to 1942 Soviet intelligence reports on the Manhattan Project.

While the Kremlin knew about these plans to “wipe out” the USSR, the broader public was not informed because the September 1945 documents were of course classified. They were declassified 30 years later in September 1975.

Today, neither the September 1945 Plan to blow up the Soviet Union nor the underlying cause of the nuclear arms race are acknowledged.

The Western media has largely focussed its attention on the Cold War US-USSR confrontation. The plan to annihilate the Soviet Union dating back to World War II and the infamous Manhattan Project are not mentioned.

Washington’s Cold War nuclear plans are invariably presented in response to so-called Soviet threats, when in fact it was the U.S. Plan released in September 1945 (formulated at an earlier period at the height of World War II) to wipe out the Soviet which motivated Moscow to develop its nuclear weapons capabilities.

The assessment of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists mistakenly blamed and continue to blame the Soviet Union for having launched the nuclear arms race in 1949, four years after the release of the September 1945 US Secret Plan to target 66 major Soviet cities with 204 nuclear bombs:

“1949: The Soviet Union denies it, but in the fall, President Harry Truman tells the American public that the Soviets tested their first nuclear device, officially starting the arms race. “We do not advise Americans that doomsday is near and that they can expect atomic bombs to start falling on their heads a month or year from now,” the Bulletin explains. “But we think they have reason to be deeply alarmed and to be prepared for grave decisions.” (Timeline of the Doomsday Clock, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 2017)

Had the US decided not to develop nuclear weapons for use against the Soviet Union, the nuclear arms race would not have taken place.

Neither the Soviet Union nor the People’s Republic of China would have developed nuclear capabilities as a means of “deterrence” against the US if the US War Department had not formulated plans to annihilate the Soviet Union as outlined in the Secret War Plan.

The Soviet Union lost 26 million people during World War II.

The Cold War Era

The Nuclear Arms Race was the direct result of America’s September 1945 Plan to “blow up the Soviet Union,” formulated by the US War Department.

The Soviet Union tested its first nuclear bomb in 1949. Without the Manhattan Project and the War Department’s September 15, 1945 “World War III Blueprint”, the arms race would not have occurred.

The September 15, 1945 War Department set the stage for numerous plans to wage World War III against Russia and China.

The Cold War List of 1,200 Targeted Cities

This initial 1945 list of 66 cities was updated in the course of the Cold War (1956) to include some 1,200 cities in the USSR and the Soviet block countries of Eastern Europe (see declassified documents below). The bombs slated for use were more powerful in terms of explosive capacity than those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

U.S. Cold War Nuclear Target Lists Declassified for First Time
According to 1956 Plan, H-Bombs were to be Used Against Priority “Air Power” Targets in the Soviet Union, China, and Eastern Europe
Major Cities in Soviet Bloc, Including East Berlin, Were High Priorities in “Systematic Destruction” for Atomic Bombings
Plans to Target People (“Population”) Violated International Legal Norms
SAC Wanted a 60 Megaton Bomb, Equivalent to over 4,000 Hiroshima Atomic Weapons
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 538
Edited by William Burr
Posted - December 22, 2015

For more information, contact: William Burr: 202.994.7000 or nsarchiv@gwu.edu.

National Security Archive

Washington, D.C., December 22, 2015 – The SAC [Strategic Air Command] Atomic Weapons Requirements Study for 1959, produced in June 1956 and published today for the first time by the National Security Archive www.nsarchive.org, provides the most comprehensive and detailed list of nuclear targets and target systems that has ever been declassified. As far as can be told, no comparable document has ever been declassified for any period of Cold War history.

The SAC study includes chilling details. According to its authors, their target priorities and nuclear bombing tactics would expose nearby civilians and “friendly forces and people” to high levels of deadly radioactive fallout. Moreover, the authors developed a plan for the “systematic destruction” of Soviet bloc urban-industrial targets that specifically and explicitly targeted “population” in all cities, including Beijing, Moscow, Leningrad, East Berlin, and Warsaw. Purposefully targeting civilian populations as such directly conflicted with the international norms of the day, which prohibited attacks on people per se (as opposed to military installations with civilians nearby).

The National Security Archive, based at The George Washington University, obtained the study, totaling more than 800 pages, through the Mandatory Declassification Review (MDR) process (see sidebar).

The SAC document includes lists of more than 1100 airfields in the Soviet bloc, with a priority number assigned to each base.

With the Soviet bomber force as the highest priority for nuclear targeting (this was before the age of ICBMs), SAC assigned priority one and two to Bykhov and Orsha airfields, both located in Belorussia. At both bases, the Soviet Air Force deployed medium-range Badger (TU-16) bombers, which would have posed a threat to NATO allies and U.S. forces in Western Europe.

A second list was of urban-industrial areas identified for “systematic destruction.” SAC listed over 1200 cities in the Soviet bloc, from East Germany to China, also with priorities established.

Moscow and Leningrad were priority one and two respectively. Moscow included 179 Designated Ground Zeros (DGZs) while Leningrad had 145, including “population” targets. In both cities, SAC identified air power installations, such as Soviet Air Force command centers, which it would have devastated with thermonuclear weapons early in the war.

According to the study, SAC would have targeted Air Power targets with bombs ranging from 1.7 to 9 megatons. Exploding them at ground level, as planned, would have produced significant fallout hazards to nearby civilians. SAC also wanted a 60 megaton weapon which it believed necessary for deterrence, but also because it would produce “significant results” in the event of a Soviet surprise attack.

click here to access : The Nuclear Vault

80th Anniversary of the Atomic Bombings: Revisiting the Record

Amid the wreckage of a prison in Nagasaki, three Manhattan Project specialists use Geiger counters to measure residual radioactivity. They are, from left to right: Captain Henry Barnett, author of the April 1946 medical report, Robert Serber, and Captain Harry O. Whipple. All three had been working at Los Alamos. [See Document 26]

New Evidence on Deadly Radiation, Blast and Fire Effects in Hiroshima and Nagasaki

British Calculated “Standardized Kill Rate” of 50,000 Per Bomb; Those Near Detonation Killed “Several Times Over”

U.S. Investigative Team Documented “Flash Burns” Caused by “Radiated Energy”

LATEST RELEASE OF CLASSIFED DOCUMENTS PERTAINING TO AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 1945

Washington, D.C., September 25, 2025 – Newly published documents and photographs concerning the radiation and blast effects of the August 1945 bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki provide graphic details on how U.S. and British officials first assessed the deadly impact of the atomic weapons. These and other records published today are among the data and evidence that helped undermine the public claim made at the time by Manhattan Project director Gen. Leslie Groves that radiation sickness was “a pleasant way to die.”

The new collection is a declassified update to a previous National Security Archive e-book on the radiation and blast effects of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and is part of a series of Archive publications marking the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Japan.

Records published today for the first time include the “Final Report” of the Manhattan Project’s “Investigative Group,” whose mission during the fall of 1945 was to probe nuclear weapons effects in both cities to ensure that radiation would not harm U.S. occupation forces. Its report included a detailed medical study on the injuries caused by the explosions along with photographic reports on blast and fire damage. Also published for the first time is a report on “flash burns” compiled by Robert Serber, a Los Alamos physicist who was a member of the U.S. investigative team in Japan.

Click hereto read the entire document