Point and Nuke

WHEN DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER TOOK THE OATH OF OFFICE as the 34th president of the United States in 1953, the total U.S. nuclear stockpile was approaching 1,000. When Ike left, eight years later, that number had grown to around 20,000—with further increases programmed in. Those weapons included one of the strangest creations of the Cold War: an atomic bazooka, putting nuclear destruction in the hands of as few as two soldiers.

For the U.S. military planners of the 1950s, nuclear weapons were not merely strategic assets to deter conflict