“Nothing like that could happen.” The first casualty of every war is the truth-and the Cold War was no exception to that dictum. “The incidents in ‘Fail-Safe’ are deliberate lies!” General Curtis LeMay, the Air Force chief of staff, said. An expert at the Institute for Strategic Studies called the events in the film “impossible on a dozen counts.” A former Deputy Secretary of Defense dismissed the idea that someone could authorize the use of a nuclear weapon without the President’s approval: “Nothing, in fact, could be further from the truth.” ( See a compendium of clips from the film.) When “Fail-Safe”-a Hollywood thriller with a similar plot, directed by Sidney Lumet-opened, later that year, it was criticized in much the same way. Although “Strangelove” was clearly a farce, with the comedian Peter Sellers playing three roles, it was criticized for being implausible. One reviewer described the film as “dangerous … an evil thing about an evil thing.” Another compared it to Soviet propaganda. Its plot suggested that a mentally deranged American general could order a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, without consulting the President. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.” Released on January 29, 1964, the film caused a good deal of controversy. This month marks the fiftieth anniversary of Stanley Kubrick’s black comedy about nuclear weapons, “Dr.
