The Cold War Public Relations Campaign for the Atlas Missile and Nuclear Deterrent Strategy in the Great Plains, 1958–1962

The Cold War was not merely an international diplomatic and military conflict; it was a ‘total war’, demanding that the US government mobilize the consent of all Americans to counter the Soviet Union. From 1958 to 1962, the US Air Force and its contractors conducted a public relations campaign in Nebraska for the first-generation Atlas ICBM. Publicizing the Atlas was key to both its purpose and context: to create a credible deterrent, to reassure the US public after the shock of Sputnik, and to convince average Americans to accept nuclear missiles in their midst.