Eventually, “cells” of thirty to forty members would hold elections to designate the “best” among themselves. Through the cohesiveness of the cells, the Bund would gradually overcome the tendency that individuals in capitalist societies have to “think of themselves in the middle of a struggle for everyone against everyone else.” In this way, Szilard’s desire for a “community purpose”—a decisive ingredient that he found missing in modern societies—might finally be defined and achieved. The way Szilard described this result, writing about 1930, sounds almost mystical:
Thus it seems quite feasible that by the weight of the personality of the individual [Bund] members and by the cohesiveness of this group, the Order might represent some form of structure in public life, which would leave an imprint on the whole spiritual life of the community. It is probable that subsequently other patterns will arise spontaneously, which will safeguard the transmission of public opinion—forever renewed within the Order in difficult strife—to the general population.31
The Weimar Republic’s own strife had led Szilard to devise the Bund, but he soon broadened the concept to include France and England. With members in “key positions in education and other fields of communication,” Szilard hoped, “the country as a whole would be responsive to the leadership of the Bund. . . .”32
Szilard’s scheme for the Bund envisioned a transition of one or two generations. In fact, the time remaining for meaningful reform in Germany was but one or two years. The Weimar Republic’s economy suffered new strains after the collapse of the world’s stock markets in October 1929, and within a year unemployment soared. In England, too, unemployment rose, and when Szilard returned to London in March 1930, the Bund had an urgency there that it had lacked just a year before. H. N. Brailsford, a British socialist leader acquainted with Einstein, was cordial when Szilard called to explain the Bund but noncommittal after hearing about it in what must have been numbing detail. After this meeting, Szilard sent Einstein a twelve-page, single-spaced summary to illustrate his ideas about the Bund.33
Confused by what Szilard had said, Brailsford also wrote to Einstein. Szilard’s “scheme interests me,” Brailsford said, “but my difficulty in making up my mind about it is aggravated by the fact that I know nothing of the personalities connected with it.” If there were “a very devoted and very able group of young men in Germany,” Brailsford might be more disposed to provide help in England. “I have seen enough of Dr. Szilard to realize that he is an attractive personality, and he evidently has what he calls the religious spirit,” Brailsford wrote. But he wondered if Szilard had the “capacity for this very difficult piece of work.” And he asked pointedly what Einstein thought of the whole idea.34
Einstein replied that Szilard had “a circle of excellent young people” interested in the Bund but “as yet no organization of any kind.” In this letter to Brailsford, Einstein was both friendly and candid when he assessed Szilard and his ideas.
First of all, I am of the opinion that [he] is a genuinely intelligent man, not generally inclined to fall for illusions. Perhaps, like many such people, he tends to overestimate the role of rational thought in human life.
As for the [Bund] itself, I, too, very strongly feel the incoherence of those who are magnanimous enough to wish for a more rational and more orderly power to determine the fate of mankind in the long run. But I do not really trust my judgment in practical matters of this kind; and I have no clear picture about the future prospects of the idea advocated by Szilard. Above all, I do not see a strong binding force that would give uniformity of action to a mass chosen in this way. On the other hand it would seem inappropriate to remain inactive in matters of such importance to mankind, simply to plant one’s cabbages and watch the power hungry and the obsessed turn the face of this planet into ever-increasing ugliness.
This does not answer your questions, but no fool gives more than he has.35
For all its inflated faith in reason and its intricate rules, Szilard’s Bund was remarkable in its time for two features: It included “boys and girls” on equal footing when European academic and government circles were almost exclusively male, and it required an internationalism by the participants that would not be echoed for almost two decades—and then mainly by Szilard’s own colleagues in their attempts to curb the spread of the nuclear weapons they had helped create. In his world, the international scientific community, contacts among scholars in different countries were commonplace, peer review was rigorous, and rational progress was something that many assumed was achievable. Despite repeated rejections of his Bund, Szilard strained for the rest of his life to devise a self-selecting intellectual elite that might provide both national and international leadership.
In 1930, by virtue of being a Privatdozent (university lecturer), Szilard received German citizenship. Yet his new country was by then lurching further from the democratic goals he was straining to perfect. Hitler’s Nazi party made surprising gains in the Reichstag, increasing its seats from 12 to 107 and becoming Germany’s second-largest party.
In Berlin that winter, Szilard resumed his casual academic career by joining the Austrian-born radiochemist Lise Meitner to teach “Questions of Atomic Physics and Atomic Chemistry” each Thursday at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry in Dahlem. And, on Fridays, he led “Discussion of New Work in Theoretical Physics” with von Neumann and Schrodinger.36 In the spring of 1931, Szilard joined with Dr. Emil Rupp at the Laboratories of the German General Electric Company (AEG) to study the behavior of polarized cathode rays in magnetic fields.37 During the summer semester that began in April 1931, Szilard’s teaching involved a single course on Friday afternoons when he led a “Discussion of New Work in Theoretical Physics” with Schrodinger.38 In June, with Einstein’s help, Szilard began efforts to secure an immigration visa to the United States. And, in July, he filed a patent for an electron microscope. No other achievements are recorded for this time in his curriculum vitae or in his papers. It seems likely that Szilard spent most of his energy thinking— worrying—about the shaky state of the world. An astute newspaper reader and amateur economist, Szilard watched in alarm as the Austrian and German banking systems collapsed in 1931. He watched as German unemployment soared, from fewer than a million in 1929 to more than 5 million in 1931. By that summer, US President Herbert Hoover declared a moratorium on Germany’s war-reparation payments, but this came too late to stay the country’s economic collapse.
During the winter of 1931, Szilard left Berlin for London, came back to Berlin, returned to London, then sailed to New York, where he filed immigration papers. In May 1932 he was back in Berlin with a fresh infatuation for nuclear physics. And fresh dread about the country’s fate: Two months later, his political anxieties proved warranted as the Nazis doubled their strength in the Reichstag and became, for the first time, the largest party.
Szilard’s acquaintance with Lise Meitner—around the KWI and at international conferences—had grown to a respectful friendship after they had taught together. He admired her research on the nature of beta and gamma radiation. He appreciated that she was just the patient experimentalist he could never be. And he fancied collaborating with her on some scientific experiments. But by 1932, Szilard’s interest in physics seemed more science fiction than science. After reading and talking to H. G. Wells, Szilard believed that human survival depended on colonizing other solar systems, and the atom seemed the only power source capable of sustaining space travel.39
Yet after a dozen restless years as a physicist, Szilard had little to show for his efforts—a few papers, a few patents, and a fruitless political scheme. Although he savored brainstorming with colleagues, Szilard did almost nothing to develop his ideas from such playful banter. Szilard had thought up and patented a linear accelerator in 1928, about the time that Rolf Wideröe first envisioned his successful invention.40 And Szilard had patented a cyclotron in 1929, a year before Ernest O. Lawrence built his first machine at Berkeley.41 But for all this th
oughtful turmoil, most of Szilard’s ideas seemed to evaporate as quickly as they were spoken.
Ironically, if Szilard and Meitner had collaborated in 1932, as he had wished, the world might have had the atomic bomb years before it did, but with more dreadful results. After Hitler took office in 1933, Szilard left Berlin for London and there conceived the nuclear “chain reaction.” He worked to keep this concept a military secret from Germany while searching for a natural element that would create a chain reaction, and in 1934 he enlisted Meitner (still in Berlin) to experiment with the release of neutrons from beryllium.42 In 1936, Szilard was intrigued by Meitner’s discovery of radioactive anomalies in uranium, which he saw as akin to his own research on indium—then the element he thought might fuel a chain reaction.43 But it was 1939 before Meitner first recognized that uranium split (fissioned) to give off extra neutrons, and this was just the element that ultimately yielded the first nuclear chain reaction in 1942, in a device codesigned by Szilard and Enrico Fermi. Had Szilard and Meitner worked together, they might have made their fateful discoveries about uranium while still in Hitler’s Berlin—a scientific possibility that we can be glad never occurred.
CHAPTER 8
A New World, a New Field, a New Fear
1931–1932
In the spring of 1931, Leo Szilard was more restless than usual. Every Friday afternoon he and physicist Erwin Schrödinger led a weekly “Discussion of New Work in Theoretical Physics” at the University of Berlin, and at other times during the week Szilard visited the laboratories of the German General Electric Company (AEG) to study the behavior of cathode rays in magnetic fields. But neither activity fully engaged his quick and quixotic mind, which wandered more than ever—from physics to politics to the appealing thought of visiting America. In June, Szilard had his colleague and friend Albert Einstein send a letter asserting that “the advancement of our commutual work” required Szilard to obtain an entry visa to the United States.1
That summer, Szilard poked around Austria, spent the last week of August in Salzburg, and when he returned to Berlin, received an invitation to spend a year at Princeton with a group that was developing “mathematical physics.”2 For this Szilard received a US quota immigration visa on October 4, packed frantically, and caught a train early the next morning for London. There Szilard rented a room at the King’s Court Hotel on Leinster Terrace, in the transient neighborhood of Bayswater, near Paddington Station. He went to the Bow Street Alien Registration Office in Covent Garden to file papers allowing him to stay in England, just in case that might be necessary.
While Szilard waited in London, he became convinced that he should immigrate to the United States, not just visit. He wrote Einstein seeking help to change his visa status and returned to Berlin. This time Szilard had Einstein write the American consul, saying: “My dear colleague Dr. Leo Szilard is planning to continue work, which we have started together, in America. As the carrying out of this work in which I myself have an interest will probably require some lengthy time, I am taking the liberty to support herewith his application for a nonquota immigration visa.”3 Once again, Einstein’s letter worked.
For the winter semester that began in November 1931, Szilard was scheduled to give the “Seminar on Questions in Atomic Physics and Atomic Chemistry” that he had taught before with Lise Meitner. He was also scheduled to again lead the “Discussion of New Work in Theoretical Physics” with Schrodinger.4 But at most Szilard appeared at only a few classes, for early on the morning of December 1, he boarded a train for London, where he bought a tourist-class ticket for the SS Leviathan. On December 19, 1931, Szilard sailed for America.5
Most immigrants who have steamed into New York harbor by ship retain vivid memories of their first impressions, and Szilard’s memories of that moment were also clear, though oddly different from those of his fellow passengers on deck that morning. Years later, he recalled the moment as gravely prophetic. “As the boat approached the harbor, I stood on deck watching the skyline of New York,” Szilard said in a 1954 interview. “It seemed unreal, and I asked myself, ‘Is this here to stay? Is it likely that it will still be here a hundred years from now?’
“Somehow I had a strong conviction that it wouldn’t be there. ‘What could possibly make it disappear?’ I asked myself . . . and found no answer. And yet the feeling persisted that it was not here to stay.”6 It was Christmas Day, 1931.
Once ashore, Szilard found Manhattan cold and dazzling. He made his way to the cavernous, neo-Roman Pennsylvania Station and from there rode by train to Princeton, where he checked into a hotel and called on Eugene Wigner, the Hungarian friend from Berlin who had suggested Szilard’s name to the mathematics department. Szilard met the department chairman and dean of faculty, Prof. L. P. Eisenhart, and joined in his colleagues’ seminars. But within a few days Szilard felt restless again. The young men working in mathematical physics were mostly interested in abstract mathematics, while he craved problems that were more concrete. And Szilard could not forget his brief time in New York; he was simply fascinated by the steely spirit of the place. Before long, he stopped his daily visits to the mathematics department and instead walked to Princeton’s cozy railroad station and rode into the city. On one trip Szilard paid six dollars to rent a box at the Chase Safe Deposit Company on Fourth Avenue and Twenty-third Street.7 On another visit he rode the subway to the stately campus of New York University, perched on a plateau over the Harlem River in the Bronx, and there dropped in on the physics department and its chairman, Prof. Richard T. Cox, a lively and friendly physicist who was about Szilard’s age. Cox was studying polarization and electron scattering, and when he heard about Szilard’s recent work at AEG, he wanted to duplicate it. Szilard, in turn, was beguiled by Cox’s informal interest—electric eels. Cox had devised electrical systems to measure their voltage and enjoyed wiring his specimens to power neon lights. Szilard and Cox got along well, and on the first day of February, Szilard packed his bags in Princeton and moved to New York, checking into the Kenmore Hall Hotel on East Twenty-third Street.8
The Battle of Shanghai began in February 1932, when Japan attacked the Chinese port city. The raid broke a Chinese embargo against Japanese goods, but at a price Szilard thought intolerable. Upset by the brutality and by the breach of international order that he already saw as cracking in Europe, Szilard protested Japan’s siege to several young scientists at NYU. He urged them to organize a protest. And he drafted a public statement to be signed by scientists, but with a twist: The signers committed themselves to boycott Japan only if a certain percentage of those approached actually signed the document. In this way, Szilard reasoned, most would be likely to sign, but no individual had to take the initiative.9 There is no record that his boycott amounted to anything, but Szilard was quick to organize fellow scientists for many other political causes until near the end of his life.
When summer semester at Berlin University began in April 1932, Szilard was scheduled to teach the “Discussion of New Work in Theoretical Physics” with Schrodinger. But he was still puttering around New York, running errands, and paying calls on the NYU physics department. Szilard picked up a German passport at the consulate and traveled at least once to Washington, probably to inquire about his immigration status and patents.10 It was May 4 before he boarded the SS Bremen to sail for Europe, his foray into mathematical physics now all but forgotten.
Back in Berlin, Szilard was eager to study nuclear physics and discussed a few possible experiments with Lise Meitner. And he resumed the “Discussion of New Work in Theoretical Physics” with Schrödinger, although his thoughts were elsewhere.11 In the summer of 1932, no one Szilard approached seemed interested in his proposal to save Europe from political catastrophe with the Bund—not even the intellectuals he hoped would make it a reality. But if saving Europe was impractical, what about saving the human race?
The notion took shape in Szilard’s mind that fall when Otto Mandl, the man who had introduced him to H. G. Wells in 1929, moved
from London to Berlin. An engaging person who was, by turns, both practical and philosophical, Mandl met with Szilard, and during one “memorable conversation,” Szilard later recalled, Mandl
said that now he really thought he knew what it would take to save mankind from a series of ever-recurring wars that could destroy it. He said that Man has a heroic streak in himself. Man is not satisfied with a happy idyllic life: he has the need to fight and to encounter danger. And he concluded that what mankind must do to save itself was to launch an enterprise aimed at leaving the earth. On this task he thought the energies of mankind could be concentrated and the need for heroism could be satisfied.
Szilard’s own reaction to all this he remembered clearly:
I told him that this was somewhat new to me, and that I really didn’t know whether I would agree with him. The only thing I could say was this: that if I came to the conclusion that this was what mankind needed, if I wanted to contribute something to save mankind, then I would probably go into nuclear physics, because only through the liberation of atomic energy could we obtain the means which would enable man not only to leave the earth but to leave the solar system.12
By the fall of 1932, Szilard’s thoughts were so freewheeling, his professional options so uncertain, that he considered taking up a new field: biology. His first contact with biology had come through reading. He had enjoyed The Microbe Hunters, Paul Henry de Kruif’s 1926 saga about the discovery and early use of the microscope in bacteriology, and he probably read The Science of Life, H. G. Wells’s 1929 visionary story about genetic engineering. Besides meeting and liking Wells, Szilard had tried to contact Wells’s coauthor, biologist Julian Huxley, when promoting the idea of the Bund in London. Undoubtedly, Szilard also knew British biologist John B. Haldane’s inspiring 1924 essay Daedalus, or Science and the Future, about the human consequences of biological progress, since he had tried to interest Haldane in the Bund during the same London visit.
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