Video: 'Today in History: Truman Announce H-Bomb'

(Wednesday, January 7, 1953, 9:00 a.m. EST; during the Cold War) — U.S. President Harry S. Truman announced today in his State of the Union message to Congress that the United States had developed a hydrogen bomb and warned Joseph Stalin that a war provoked by Russia now would mean the ruin of the Soviet regime and homeland.

Truman also warned that both sides of a world divided by Soviet design could be destroyed by weapons that were capable of snuffing out great cities in one blow.

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War in the hydrogen weapon era, Truman said, was no longer a possible policy for rational men, and just as soon as the communist rulers recognized this truth they would find the United States eager to reach an understanding of problems that threaten the world.

Truman’s message was delivered in writing just two weeks before President-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower would be inaugurated as President of the United States. [Note: The President’s message was read aloud by clerks in both Houses of Congress and was broadcast to foreign countries.]