Thursday, June 25, 2020

Radioactive no-man's land

In my book, Lethal Ground, published in 2018, Sgt. Dunn's main mission is to prevent the Germans from spreading nuclear material over the ground to sicken, kill, and stop the Allied advance into Germany. The story was triggered by my research, which found Operation Peppermint. It was created by the Americans in case the Germans did just that on the beaches of Normandy. The Germans didn't do it, but it was a real concern.

Fast forward to the present.

I'm reading The Korean War by military historian Sir Max Hastings. A few days ago I read the chapter about the dismissal of General Douglas MacArthur. It turns out, unbeknownst to me, that MacArthur wanted to drop atomic bombs in such number that a radioactive no-man's land would be created between the Korean peninsula and mainland China, which would made that area uninhabitable for years. 

Here's an interesting article about Truman firing MacArthur.