Saving City X: Planners, Citizens and the Culture of Civil Defense in Baltimore, 1950-1964

This dissertation analyzes the local civil defense program in Baltimore, MD from 1950-1964. By looking at civil defense in one American city, it is possible to identify three key processes: how federal policy was implemented at the urban level, how civil defense public relations efforts reached urban populations and how those within civil defense bureaucracies acquiesced to, protested and to some degree shaped civil defense. This dissertation deals with all three processes. It also further explicates the relationship between Cold War civil defense and urban history. Between 1950 and 1964, as a result of changing nuclear capabilities, suburbanization and deindustrialization, civil defense went from a pro-urban policy dedicated to the preservation of cities to an anti-urban policy focused on the abandonment of the city. Civil defense volunteers and some among Baltimore's paid civil defense staff, who had bought the federal message that they could protect themselves and their communities in the event of nuclear attack, revolted against an increasingly militarized program, one that by 1961 emphasized police control in the wake of a nuclear attack and deemphasized the imperative to preserve urban neighborhoods.