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actual, real history:
Yes, Eisenhower considered using nuclear weapons on North Korean and possibly Chinese targets. But this plan was being discussed only at the most secret levels of the U.S. government and was kept hidden from the enemy.
Fortunately, Ike never had to pull the nuclear trigger. On March 5, 1953, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin died from a brain hemorrhage. Stalin had been an ardent backer of the North Korean war on South Korea, but his successors, an uneasy leadership team made up of Georgy Malenkov, Nikolai Bulganin, Nikita Khrushchev and Vyacheslav Molotov, felt uneasy about the war. It had been costly, had damaged the communist cause and promised no end in sight.
We know from once-secret documents, released after the collapse of the U.S.S.R., that this new Soviet leadership hatched a plan to ease world tensions in the wake of Stalin’s death. When Chinese Foreign Minister Zhou Enlai traveled to Moscow to attend Stalin’s funeral, the Soviet leaders told him it was urgent that China end the Korean War. Mao Zedong, who had long desired to ease the conflict, and North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung agreed that an armistice would be preferable to continued conflict. By early April 1953, the Chinese negotiators at the armistice discussions at Panmunjom began to make significant concessions on issues that had previously stymied progress.
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