Letters from Vienna #127
Günther Anders, Claude Eatherly and the Threat of Nuclear War
How not to love the Bomb
It seems, if the plans of the Deep State actually go through, that both Europe and the US are to switch to a war-time economy[1]. What possibly could go wrong?
In April 2009, President Barack Obama warned the world that “if we believe that the spread of nuclear weapons is inevitable, then in some way we are admitting to ourselves that the use of nuclear weapons is inevitable”. Yet Obama was being far from sincere at the time and went on to invest vast sums of taxpayer’s money in modernising the US nuclear arsenal.
Just a month before Obama left office James E. Doyle wrote that by December 2016…“the threat of nuclear war between the United States and Russia or China, by mistake or miscalculation, had increased due to a general deterioration of relations and regional tensions over eastern Europe, Ukraine, Syria, and the South and East China seas. Russia dropped out of the nuclear security summit process in 2016, and Moscow and Washington had exchanged charges of violating the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which eliminated an entire class of nuclear weapons…In sum, there was little movement toward a world without nuclear weapons, with the United States and Russia armed with a combined total of about 9,000 nuclear warheads, plus another 5,000 retired but not yet dismantled.”[2]
“In the 1960s” Günther Anders wrote back in 1982, “a mass movement arose, the “Fight Atomic Death” movement, which, particularly in the Federal Republic (West Germany), reached its annual climax in the so-called “Easter Marches”. This movement, which was welcomed by one of the major federal republican parties at the time, then came to a standstill when the financial tap was shut off – the dreary history of this explicit dying out has never been written. And this closure was in turn prompted, of course, by pressure from Washington, which described the “cheap propaganda” against Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the nuclear threat, as well as the protest against the genocide in Vietnam, as “anti-American”, “pro-Soviet”, and “remote controlled”.
“And the anti-nuclear movement was also forgotten because substitutes for it were found. Soon there were international movements, mostly youth movements, which were partly against the Vietnam War, partly for the ideals of 1968, and partly in favour of feminism... These rebels omitted the decisive cause of our age (and for any further ones: the one of increasing nuclear armament and the associated “nuclear death” threat) and the main rebellion was smothered by subordinate ones. The fight against a future without a world or a futureless world became almost exclusively a fight against present evils or against evils in a certain future. Unfortunately, for years, the “rebels” were contented with that. And perhaps the suspicion is justified that the ruling powers were not as unhappy about these substitute rebellions as they pretended to be. Because while these rebellions were taking place, the world powers were able to intensify their insane nuclear arms race.”[3]
One of those Günther Anders corresponded with was Claude Eartherly. Robert Jungk wrote: “It was the “Eatherly Case” that first opened our eyes to this “delayed action effect” of the new “weapons”. Here we had a man who made no attempt to brush aside or dismiss from his mind the horrors in which he’d participated. He was conscious of a deep sense of contributory guilt and cried to high heaven, while almost the whole of the rest of the world remained silent and resigned.”
“It is said that after the shattering experience of Hiroshima Major Eatherly spoke to no one for days on end. This, however, was not taken very seriously on the island base of Tinian, where the members of his Bomber Group that had acquired such dubious world-wide notoriety were awaiting demobilisation. “Battle fatigue” they called it. It was something from which many a man had suffered in the past, and in 1943, after thirteen months of continuous patrol duty over the South Pacific, Eatherly himself had succumbed to a nervous breakdown.”
“On that occasion, a fortnight’s treatment in a New York clinic had cured him, and after Hiroshima, too, he seemed to return fairly quickly to that mental state which was regarded as “normal behavior” among off-duty Pacific veterans – hour after hour of poker, interspersed with curses, jokes and reminiscences.”[4]
On June the 3rd 1959 Günther Anders wrote to Claude Eatherly: “Even if one has harmed but one fellow man – I am not speaking yet at all of killings – it is, although the deed can be seen at a glance, no easy task to “digest” it. But here it is something else. You happen to have left 200,000 dead behind you. And how should one be able to mobilize a pain which embraces 200,000? How should one repent 200,000? Not only you cannot do it, not only we cannot do it, no one can do it. However desperately we may attempt it, pain and repentance remain inadequate. The frustration of your efforts is not your fault, Eatherly. It is a consequence of what I previously have described as the decisive newness of our situation. That we can produce more than we can mentally reproduce; that we are not made for the effects which we can make by means of our man-made machines; that the effects are too big for our imagination and the emotional forces at our disposal. Don’t reproach yourself for this discrepancy. But although the repentance cannot succeed, you must daily experience the frustration of your efforts. For outside of this experience of failure, there is nothing else which could replace the repentance, which could prevent us from having once again anything to do with such a monstrous deed. That you, since your efforts cannot succeed react with panic and uncoordinatedly, is comprehensible. One could almost say that it is proof of your moral health. For your reactions prove that your conscience is on guard.”
On June 12th, 1959, Eartherly replied: “Whilst in no sense, I hope, either a religious or a political fanatic, I have for some time felt convinced that the crisis in which we are all involved is one calling for a thorough re-examination of our whole scheme of values and of loyalties. In the past it has sometimes been possible for men to “coast along” without posing to themselves too many searching questions about the way they are accustomed to think and to act – but it is reasonably clear now that our age is not one of these. On the contrary I believe that we are rapidly approaching a situation in which we shall be compelled to re-examine our willingness to surrender responsibility for our thoughts and actions to some social institution such as the political party, trade union, church or State. None of these institutions are adequately equipped to offer infallible advice on moral issues and their claim to offer such advice needs therefore to be challenged. It is, I feel, in the light of this situation that my personal experience needs to be studied, if its true significance, not only for myself, but for all men everywhere, is to be grasped. If you feel that all this is relevant and more or less in accordance with your own thinking, what I would like to suggest is that we should together seek to work out its implications through a correspondence extended over a period of whatever time may be necessary.”
“I feel that you have an understanding about me that no one else, except my doctor and friend may have. My antisocial acts have been disastrous to my personal life, but I feel that in my efforts, in time my motives will succeed in bringing out my true convictions and philosophy.”
Given that humanity is faced with the existential threat of nuclear war and that we seem very much to be “sleepwalking” into World War Three, with all its fatal and bitter consequences, it’s vitally important that each and every individual pose themselves “searching questions” and “re-examine their whole scheme of values”, however painful this may be. This is a personal responsibility and one of conscience. There is no point looking toward “society” or the “state” or the “church” for help. Each and every-one has to fulfil this task alone.
[2] https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2016-11/features/nuclear-weapons-record-falls-short-lofty-ambitions
[3] pp.x-xi Hiroshima ist überall, Günther Anders
[4] xiii “Burning Conscience: the Case of the Hiroshima Pilot, Claude Eatherly, Told in His Letters to Gunther Anders”