ABSTRACT
John Hersey's "Hiroshima" etched in the public imagination gruesome and tragic images that would forever after be associated with nuclear weapons. Although the atomic bomb was all but unprecedented in world affairs, the feelings against it initially fit into existing movements that long predated atomic weapons: world government and pacifism. While the atomic scientists debated the future of the atomic bomb amid the escalating Cold War, US citizens faced a simultaneous and equally heated debate over their nation's domestic atomic energy policy. One World or None, described by historian Paul Boyer as the "representative text" of the Atomic Scientists' Movement, describes atomic weapons and the great danger they pose. As with international control, the Atomic Scientists' Movement played a leading role in the attempt to keep the atomic bomb free from military control. With civilian control of US atomic energy achieved, scientists focused their efforts on the establishment of international control of atomic weapons.
