Vienna Appeal of the World Council of Peace Against Preparation of

(“Appeal to the Peoples of the World”), adopted on Jan. 19, 1955, at the session of the Bureau of the World Council of Peace held in Vienna from Jan. 17 to 19, 1955. The immediate cause of the adoption of the Vienna Appeal were the decisions of the Paris session of the NATO Council in December 1954 that in effect sanctioned the use of nuclear weapons. The Vienna Appeal pointed out that “any government that lets loose atomic war will forfeit the trust of its people and find itself condemned by every people of the world.” It demanded “the destruction of all stocks of atomic weapons wherever they may be and the immediate stopping of their manufacture.” At the call of the World Council of Peace, a campaign was launched in 1955 by national committees in support of peace for the collection of signatures to the appeal. By Aug. 6, 1955, some 665,963,811 signatures had been collected, including 123,543,604 in the USSR.