World War II, or, what did the future hold?

World War II appears in the history books as a series of moments when major events—Pearl Harbour, Operation Barbarossa, Hiroshima—suddenly transformed the image of the future for nations and, indeed, for most of the inhabitants of Earth. As l.F. Clarke notes, the war years were the time when future-think engaged the minds of all combatants—from the briefing of battalions for the operations of tomorrow to the labours of the decrypters who sought to discover the intentions of the enemy. The intelligence staffs interrogated the future—what? when? where? how many?—and the planners in operations decided the day, hour and place when the battle would begin. These labours of anticipation and prediction did not end with the Japanese ceasefire on 15 August 1945. They carried over into the immediate postwar period to provide models for the first think-tanks. Indeed, they are still with us. On 26 October 1993 the US Central Intelligence Agency introduced the R.V. Jones Intelligence Award for those who had displayed ‘outstanding scientific acumen in the cause of intelligence’. The medal was named for an Englishman, the Assistant Director of Intelligence (Science) who had located the V2 rocket site at Peenemünde. The first recipient was the former Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University of Aberdeen, R.V. Jones.