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    "localId": "470155373",
    "label": "Report, Foreign Radio Reactions to the President's Hydrogen Bomb Decision",
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    "title": "Report, Foreign Radio Reactions to the President's Hydrogen Bomb Decision",
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        "President's Secretary's Files (Truman Administration)",
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    "seq": 3,
    "pageIndex": 0,
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    "ocrText": "RESTRICTED\nthe U.S. is now embarking on a new, large-scale attempt at blackmail.\" The decision\nis a \"continuation of the present war policy of the American Government\" and aims at\n\"intimidation of the peace-loving peoples.\" It reveals the mentality of American\ngenerals and politicians who are prepared to resort to \"mass murder\" in order to realize\ntheir imperialist plans. Its real aim was to create an atmosphere of fear in order to\n\"break up the peace movement.' A Leipzig commentator, putting words into American\nmouths, asserts that the following is \"what the Americans want to say\":\n\"\"It is in our power to kill the lot of you. Don't rebel, therefore, even if We\nmay be doing something that displeases you. You must realize after all that you\ncan continue to live only by following in the wake of the strong and invincible\nUnited States. 111\nThe decision is even described as a sort of internal American blackmail similar to\nHitler's attempt to encourage bitter-end German fighting \"with his tales of the forth-\ncoming German 'secret weapon. 111\nBUT THE USSR IS \"FURTHER ADVANCED IN ATOMIC ENERGY DEVELOPMENT\": To depreciate\nthe power of this new American \"blackmail\" threat, the Soviet-controlled broadcasts,\nespecially from Germany, resort to implied counter-threats of an unusually direct sort.\nThe Leipzig radio, for example, says that the hydrogen bomb has been under American\nconsideration ever since the \"embarrassing discovery that the USSR was further advanced\nin the development of atomic energy.\" And, bringing the subject up to date:\n\"The Americans know full well that the Soviet Union has the lead in the development\nof atomic energy and its application. They also realized that the USSR knows\nthe method for the production of the new hydrogen bomb and that it commands the\nresources necessary for its manufacture.\nImplying the same thing, a NEUES DEUTSCHLAND (Communist) article distributed by ADN\nfinds it \"true that the peril of war is heightened immensely by the decision of the\nU.S. Government; but he who SOWS the wind shall reap the whirlwind.\"\nTHE DECISIVE MILITARY IMPORTANCE OF MANPOWER: Then, from Radio Leipzig, comes an\nequally rare type of implied counter-threat--that based on \"manpower.\" \"For in spite\nof all this feverish development of the means of mass destruction,\" it is claimed that\n\"they (Americans, like former Secretary Forrestal who landed in a madhouse) know very\nwell that a war cannot be decided by these weapons but only by the use of manpower. And\nthe men who could be used for such operations are not on the side of those with a vested\ninterest in war.\" Rather, exemplified by the European workers who refuse to unload\nAmerican shipments of arms, they are allegedly on the side of the worldwide \"peace move-\nments\" and \"national liberation movements\" which are rallying around the Soviet Union.\nThus, despite the future American \"horror stories\" against which Radio Leipzig's\nlisteners are warned, this new attempt at \"intimidation\" and \"bluff\" will \"meet with\nthe same failure as the former atomic bomb policy.\"\nRESTRICTED"
}