The doctrine of massive retaliation meant that, for the first time, atomic weapons became the basis of NATO strategy rather than an option of last resort. Similarly, the Soviet doctrine of non-atomic warfare began to change after Stalin's death in March 1953. In September that year a general proposed in a military journal that new weaponry might end a war quickly unlike World War II, and in October the Soviet Army held its first military exercise based on the enemy using atomic weapons. In 1954 Soviet forces in Europe received their first tactical atomic weapons, by which time Soviet officers publicly debated in the journal the merits of preemptive war.