Night of the Auk
by Arch Oboler

Claude Rains, Wendell Corey, Christopher Plummer and Martin Brooks opened on Broadway as the principal occupants of a rocket returning from the first trip to the moon.

As they approach the earth, a seizure of fear descends upon certain unnamed nations, and a vast atomic war erupts.

Within an hour the war is over, and the world is destroyed.

Written three years before the launching of the first space satellite.