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According to WordOrigins.com, the phrase was first used by the London Times on December 28, 1937: "Who can think without horror of what another widespread war would mean, waged as it would be with all the new weapons of mass destruction?" The article was referring to aerial bombing campaigns of the Spanish Civil War of that year, and in particular, the German attack on the Spanish city of Guernica. On April 27, 1937, over 1600 civilians were killed or wounded in less than three hours. During the Cold War, the phrase was picked up by the arms control community to refer to the atomic, and later the hydrogen, bomb. Although as this
article from the History News Network points out, President Truman didn't distinguish between nuclear and conventional arms. The term later grew to include biological, chemical, and radiological weapons. According to Michael Quinion's World Wide Words, the phrase has recently been added to the latest Penguin English Dictionary, as a result of its recent association with the Iraq War.
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