The Stockholm Appeal was an initiative launched by the World Peace Council on 19 March 1950 to promote nuclear disarmament and prevent atomic war. Background On 15 March 1950, the World Peace Council approved the Stockholm Appeal, calling for an absolute ban on nuclear weapons. The appeal was initiated by the French physicist, communist and 1935 Nobel laureate in Chemistry Frédéric Joliot-Curie. About two weeks after the start of the Korean War, the initiative's first publication called Peacegram claimed that the appeal has already earned 1.5 million signatories. The total gathered petitions were allegedly signed by 273,470,566 persons (including the entire adult population of the Soviet Union). The appeal was also signed by many prominent public figures, artists, and intellectuals. The text of the appeal read: We demand the outlawing of atomic weapons as instruments of intimidation and mass murder of peoples. We demand strict international control to enforce this measure. We believe that any government which first uses atomic weapons against any other country whatsoever will be committing a crime against humanity and should be dealt with as a war criminal. We call on all men and women of good will throughout the world to sign this appeal. Anti-Communist responses The United States dismissed the Stockholm Appeal, with the U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson branding it as "a propaganda trick in the spurious 'peace offensive' of the Soviet Union." Anti-communists in France responded to the Stockholm Appeal (French: L'Appel de Stockholm) by setting up the Paix et Liberté group to counter the Communist propaganda with their own: one of their first posters was La Pelle de Stockholm ("The Spade of Stockholm") digging the graves of the countries in Eastern Europe that had been subjugated by the Soviets. Notable signatories Jorge Amado, Brazilian writer and member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters Herbert Aptheker, American historian and political activist Louis Aragon, French poet Pierre Benoit, French novelist and member of the Académie française Leonard Bernstein, American composer and conductor Rudolf Carnap, German philosopher and advocate of logical positivism Marcel Carné, French film director Marc Chagall, Russian-French artist Maurice Chevalier, French actor and cabaret singer Jacques Chirac, French politician and later President of France (1995–2007) Frank Marshall Davis, American journalist, poet and activist W. E. B. Du Bois, American sociologist, historian and activist James Gareth Endicott, Canadian clergyman and Christian missionary Ilya Ehrenburg, Soviet-Jewish writer, journalist and historian Lion Feuchtwanger,