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THESPECTATOR SCRUTINIZINGCULTURE.
JAN.920095:12PM
The Letter of Last
Resort
The decision about nuclear apocalypse lying in a safe at the bottom of the sea.
By Ron Rosenbaum
Royal Navy nuclear submarine
The secret in the safe deposit box. That recurring image: I've found it fascinating and somewhat mysterious that, again and again, the mythic, apocryphal keys to some of the great mysteries of our time are said to be locked away in long-lost, deeply buried, or well-hidden safe deposit boxes.
Or in locked safes with combinations or locations unknown.
Ron Rosenbaum is the author of The Shakespeare
Wars and Explaining Hitler. His latest book is How the End Begins: The Road to a Nuclear World
War III.
When I was researching Explaining Hitler, I would often find that some crucial document—the 1931 Munich prosecutor's investigation of the death of Hitler's half-niece (and rumored sexual obsession) Geli
Raubal, for instance, or the memoir of
Hitler's hypnotherapist at a World War I military sanitarium; both documents said to offer hidden truths about Hitler's psyche had purportedly been secreted away, and subsequently lost, in Swiss safe deposit boxes. Then, more recently, the manuscript of The
Original of Laura, Vladimir Nabokov's final, unfinished novel, the one he wanted burned, was, we were told by his son
Dmitri, locked away in ... a Swiss safe deposit box.
And now, in the course of researching a book on the new face of nuclear warfare, I came upon an astonishing reference to a
"Last Resort Letter," a literally apocalyptic
FOLLOW SLATE
ABOUTUS
CONTACTUS
WORKWITHUS
USERAGREEMENT
PRIVACYPOLICY
FAQ
FEEDBACK
CORRECTIONS
PHOTOCOVERCREDITS
SlateispublishedbyTheSlateGroup,aDivisionoftheWashington
PostCompany.Allcontents©2013TheSlateGroup,LLC.Allrights
reserved.
SLATE ON IPAD IPHONE ANDROID KINDLE
REPRINTS
Advertisement
SINGLE PAGE
1 2 3
4 5
NEXT
THESPECTATOR SCRUTINIZINGCULTURE.
JAN.920095:12PM
The Letter of Last
Resort
The decision about nuclear apocalypse lying in a safe at the bottom of the sea.
By Ron Rosenbaum
Royal Navy nuclear submarine
The secret in the safe deposit box. That recurring image: I've found it fascinating and somewhat mysterious that, again and again, the mythic, apocryphal keys to some of the great mysteries of our time are said to be locked away in long-lost, deeply buried, or well-hidden safe deposit boxes.
Or in locked safes with combinations or locations unknown.
Ron Rosenbaum is the author of The Shakespeare
Wars and Explaining Hitler. His latest book is How the End Begins: The Road to a Nuclear World
War III.
When I was researching Explaining Hitler, I would often find that some crucial document—the 1931 Munich prosecutor's investigation of the death of Hitler's half-niece (and rumored sexual obsession) Geli
Raubal, for instance, or the memoir of
Hitler's hypnotherapist at a World War I military sanitarium; both documents said to offer hidden truths about Hitler's psyche had purportedly been secreted away, and subsequently lost, in Swiss safe deposit boxes. Then, more recently, the manuscript of The
Original of Laura, Vladimir Nabokov's final, unfinished novel, the one he wanted burned, was, we were told by his son
Dmitri, locked away in ... a Swiss safe deposit box.
And now, in the course of researching a book on the new face of nuclear warfare, I came upon an astonishing reference to a
"Last Resort Letter," a literally apocalyptic