Nuke Pop: Popular Culture Images of Nuclear War • Credits

Collier’s “Preview of the War We Do Not Want”

Collier's Preview of the War We Do Not Want (text reveals nuclear explosion with fire in the letters)
Collier's magazine cover - soldier holding bayonet in front of map - his helmut says MP Occupation forces. Other text: October 27, 1951. Russia's defeat and occupation 1952-1960. Preview of the war we do not want. Robert E. Sherwood, Hanson W. Baldwin, Lowell Thomas, Arthur Koestler, Walter Winehoff, Allan Nevins, Edward R. Murrow, Hal Boyle, Stuart Chase, Bill Mauldin, Red Smith, J. B. Priestly, Senator Margaret Chase Smith, Erwin Canham, Marguerite Higgins, Philip Wylie, Howard Brodie, Walter Reuther, Chesley Bonestell, Oksana Kavenkina.
But it was not the threat nuclear weapons posed to the world at large that most concerned America’s leaders: it was the threat they posed to the Soviet Union. On October 17, 1951, the popular magazine Collier’s published a special issue imagining how America might defeat its adversary and impose its values on the Soviet people. Several distinguished and influential writers contributed to this project, entitled “Preview of the War We Do Not Want,” and government consultants advised the editors.
Among other contributors: Arthur Koestler, Bill Mauldin, Edward R. Murrow, J. B. Priestly, Walter Reuther, Senator Margaret Chase Smith, Lowell Thomas, Walter Winchell, and Philip Wylie.
Illustration: Nuclear explosion over city of Moscow, USSR
Although the USSR starts the war by invading Western Europe, the U.S. is the first to use nuclear weapons, here destroying Moscow, but not so thoroughly that prisoners cannot crawl away from the rubble of the Lubianka Prison. During this period almost everyone had difficulty estimating the scope of the damage that would be inflicted by a bomb.
Illustration: Multiple plumes of smoke rise from Washington D.C. with text, Washington Under the Bomb
The Soviet Union strikes back, doing serious damage to Washington, D.C.
Magazine spread with soldiers running away from camp and explosion behind them with text, Freedom - at long last.
All is well, as the prisoners in Siberia revolt, the people of the Soviet Union generally rise up to cast off the Communist government and welcome their American liberators.
Illustration of soldier in front of woman next to car in the ruins of a city.
Communism once eliminated from the earth, the two peoples join together enthusiastically. A spirited Russian lass, fetching even in her grimy overalls, helps the hero of this Philip Wylie story rebuild Philadelphia, but commits suicide because she has been sterilized by radiation, making way for her still-fertile American rival.

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