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During the period under discussion, NATO strategists expected tactical nuclear weapons as warfighting tools to be very effective but at terrible cost: destruction of the territory being defended and likely Soviet retaliation and escalation. But their real effectiveness was as a deterrent.

NATO’s overall defense concepts were set forth in the MC 14 series of publications. During the Cold War, NATO defense concepts paralleled but chronologically trailed American defense concepts. The 1960s-70s spans two eras of NATO defense concepts: MC 14/2 “Massive Retaliation” (adopted 1957) and MC 14/3 “Flexible Response” (adopted 1969).

It is important to keep in mind that these defense concepts were both directed primarily toward deterrence. Actually fighting a war was absolutely not to be desired. But any threat had to be credible in order to deter, so NATO had to procure the weapons and their delivery systems, include them in exercises, and in all respects appear ready to use them.

Massive Retaliation under MC 14/2 was premised on American nuclear supremacy (particularly at the strategic level) and called for immediate overwhelming use of nuclear weapons of all kinds in response to the Soviets initiating a general war, whether or not the Soviets themselves had used nuclear weapons. MC 14/2 envisaged the war in Europe playing out in two stages. There would be a period of high-intensity combat lasting no longer than 30 days, with many nuclear strikes in the first few days. This would give way to a period of “indeterminate duration” to reorganize forces and conclude the war (i.e., mop up the former Soviet Empire), during which the main remaining Soviet threat would be submarines interdicting NATO shipping. Presumably at this point the enemy ground and air forces had been destroyed and cities and factories converted to radioactive rubble.

Massive Relation aligned with the Eisenhower administration’s “New Look” which prioritized nuclear firepower over large conventional forces as a cost-saving measure. As long as adversaries were convinced of American/NATO nuclear supremacy and willingness to press the button, they would not attack. Conventional forces could thus be reduced to a tripwire.

Although Massive Retaliation promised immense savings once the huge nuclear arsenal was in place, it also required NATO to commit to fighting an extremely destructive war if deterrence failed. In a 1955 NATO exercise called Carte Blanche, a total of 335 simulated nuclear weapons were dropped on NATO territory to stop a hypothetical Soviet Attach. The umpires estimated the nuclear strikes had killed about 2 million civilians and wounded about 3.5 million more without even considering the effects of radioactive fallout. When this become public, there was outrage. And this was a small imaginary war: later ones had projected casualties over an order of magnitude higher, with a full-scale nuclear exchange (once the Soviets started deploying more weapons) potentially resulting in the near-extinction of human life in Western Europe. In response to the revelation of Carte Blanche, European press and politicians wondered whether such a costly defense could ever be considered successful. Supreme Allied Commander Europe Gen. Lauris Norstad (the post was always held by an American) suggested that NATO defensive operations should include an initial “pause” during which a conventional defense was at least attempted before resorting to nuclear weapons. But under the New Look policy, providing the necessary conventional forces was not a priority.