On 15 March 1950,[1] the World Peace Council approved the Stockholm Appeal, calling for an absolute ban on
nuclear weapons. The appeal was initiated by the French physicist, communist and 1935
Nobel laureate in ChemistryFrédéric Joliot-Curie. About two weeks after the start of the
Korean War, the initiative's first publication called Peacegram claimed that the appeal has already earned 1.5 million signatories.[2] The total gathered petitions were allegedly signed by 273,470,566 persons (including the entire adult population of the
Soviet Union). The appeal was also signed by many prominent public figures, artists, and intellectuals.[3] The text of the appeal read:
We demand the outlawing of atomic weapons as instruments of intimidation and mass murder of peoples. We demand strict international control to enforce this measure.
We believe that any government which first uses atomic weapons against any other country whatsoever will be committing a
crime against humanity and should be dealt with as a war criminal.
We call on all men and women of good will throughout the world to sign this appeal.
Anti-Communist responses
The United States dismissed the Stockholm Appeal, with the U.S. Secretary of State
Dean Acheson branding it as "a propaganda trick in the spurious 'peace offensive' of the Soviet Union."[2][4] Liberals in the United States, led by
W.E.B. Du Bois established the
Peace Information Center (PIC) to publicize the Stockholm Appeal, but the
U.S. Justice Department alleged that the PIC was acting as an agent of the
Soviet Union, and thus required the PIC to register with the federal government.[5] Du Bois and other PIC leaders refused, and they were indicted for failure to register.[6]
Anti-communists in
France responded to the Stockholm Appeal (
French: L'Appel de Stockholm) by setting up the Paix et Liberté group to counter the Communist propaganda with their own: one of their first posters was La Pelle de Stockholm ("The Spade of Stockholm") digging the graves of the countries in
Eastern Europe that had been
subjugated by the Soviets.
^"Stockholm Peace Appeal". In W.E.B. Du Bois: An Encyclopedia. Gerald Horne; Mary Young eds. (2001). Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 301–302.
^
abBass, Amy (2009). Those about Him Remained Silent: The Battle Over W.E.B. Du Bois. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota Press. p. 43.
ISBN9780816644957.
^Amiard, Jean-Claude (2018). Military Nuclear Accidents: Environmental, Ecological, Health and Socio-economic Consequences. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. p. 195.
ISBN9781786303332.
^"Jacques Chirac, sabre au clair". Archived from the original on 8 June 2008. Retrieved 17 December 2011.{{
cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (
link). L'Humanité. 8 May 1995 (in French).