Genius in the Shadows

by William Lanouette

  Finishing this visionary document on Monday, March 12, Szilard faced a practical problem. “Since I didn’t suppose that he would know who I was, I needed a letter of introduction.” He turned to his mentor and friend Albert Einstein.3 His letters on Szilard’s behalf had reached FDR in 1939 to initiate the bomb program and in 1940 to help move it along. So, on March 15, Szilard drafted a letter to the president that he hoped Einstein would sign and a memo to the Met Lab’s associate director, Walter Bartky, about postwar controls of the A-bomb.

  In the spring of 1945, Szilard was not the only person actively trying to influence the president’s thinking about such postwar controls, but strict “compartmentalization” within the project kept like-minded individuals from sharing their thoughts. The same day that Szilard drafted the letter for Einstein, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson met with FDR at the White House for lunch to review the need for policy decisions about international control of atomic energy.4 A respected cabinet member to four presidents, Stimson posed two control strategies: a secret pact by the United States and Britain to share nuclear technology or an open international exchange of information. This issue had to be settled before the bomb was used, Stimson said, and he left the White House convinced that the president agreed with him.5 Later in March, Danish physicist Niels Bohr, a consultant at Los Alamos, also sent FDR a follow-up letter to their August 1944 discussions on postwar controls.6

  To prepare his approach to the president, Szilard arrived by train in Princeton on March 23 and walked the few blocks to the white clapboard house on Mercer Street where Einstein lived. The two friends met in the study, a sunny room that looked onto a back garden and lawn, and once Szilard explained his plight, Einstein agreed to sign the letter of introduction.

  112 Mercer Street

  Princeton, New Jersey

  March 25, 1945

  The Honorable Franklin Delano Roosevelt

  The President of the United States

  The White House Washington, D.C.

  Sir:

  I am writing you to introduce Dr. L. Szilard who proposes to submit to you certain considerations and recommendations. Unusual circumstances which I shall describe further below induce me to take this action in spite of the fact that I do not know the substance of the considerations and recommendations which Dr. Szilard proposes to submit to you.

  In the summer of 1939 Dr. Szilard put before me his views concerning the potential importance of uranium for national defense. He was greatly disturbed by the potentialities involved and anxious that the United States Government be advised of them as soon as possible. Dr. Szilard, who is one of the discoverers of the neutron emission of uranium on which all present work on uranium is based, described to me a specific system which he devised and which he thought would make it possible to set up a chain reaction in un-separated uranium in the immediate future. Having known him for over twenty years both from his scientific work and personally, I have much confidence in his judgment and it was on the basis of his judgment as well as my own that I took the liberty to approach you in connection with this subject. You responded to my letter dated August 2, 1939 by the appointment of a committee under the chairmanship of Dr. Briggs and thus started the Government’s activity in this field.

  The terms of secrecy under which Dr. Szilard is working at present do not permit him to give me information about his work; however, I understand that he now is greatly concerned about the lack of adequate contact between scientists who are doing this work and those members of your Cabinet who are responsible for formulating policy. In the circumstances I consider it my duty to give Dr. Szilard this introduction and I wish to express the hope that you will be able to give his presentation of the case your personal attention.

  Very truly yours,

  (A. Einstein)

  After the two men had chatted awhile, Szilard’s thoughts rushed on to his next task: drafting a new memorandum to send with Einstein’s letter. In it Szilard warned FDR that “our ‘demonstration’ of atomic bombs will precipitate a race in the production of these devices between the United States and Russia and that if we continue to pursue the present course, our initial advantage may be lost very quickly in such a race.” Szilard suggested delaying the A-bomb’s use, called for a system of international controls, and asked that a cabinet-level committee meet to hear the scientists’ views on atomic-energy issues.7

  On the other hand, Szilard’s second memo to FDR failed to mention the prospect of rockets delivering A-bombs, and most significantly, it omitted “the outbreak of a preventive war” as the “greatest danger” in a postwar world, substituting instead a nuclear arms race itself.

  Szilard recalled that in July 1943 an assistant to Eugene Wigner had managed to put complaints about the Hanford reactor project before the president by going through First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt; he now thought this approach worth a try and, with a note to her, enclosed a copy of Einstein’s letter.8

  Szilard could not know that on March 27, two days after he met with Einstein and drafted his memorandum, General Groves wrote a memo of his own, declaring that he expected the A-bomb to end the war in the Pacific, thereby justifying the project. Eleanor Roosevelt replied to Szilard in early April, proposing a meeting at her Manhattan apartment on May 8. Excited by this break, Szilard rushed to Compton’s office and told him what he had done. Szilard was nervous as Compton slowly read the memo, expecting to be scolded for again working outside official channels. “I hope that you will get the president to read this,” Compton said, and Szilard left the office elated. He was at his desk about five minutes later when he heard a knock on his office door. In walked Norman Hilberry, Compton’s assistant, with news he had just heard on the radio. President Roosevelt had died.9 Szilard’s first attempt to stop the bomb had ended.

  That afternoon, Vice-President Harry S. Truman was sworn in as the thirty-third president of the United States, and after a brief meeting with the grief-stricken cabinet, Secretary of War Stimson told him in vague but ominous terms about a new explosive of unbelievable power. The next day, Truman learned more details from James F. Byrnes, a friend from the Senate who had served until recently as FDR’s director of war mobilization.

  “ There I was now with my memorandum, and no way to get it anywhere,” Szilard recalled. “At this point I knew I was in need of advice.”10 The Met Lab’s associate director, Walter Bartky, suggested a talk with university chancellor Robert M. Hutchins. A man of independent views, Hutchins listened intently to Szilard, then asked what this situation might lead to. Szilard’s answer was abrupt: A world under one government.

  “Yes,” Hutchins said, “I believe you are right.” Despite their quick rapport, Hutchins was no help to Szilard at this, their first meeting. “I do not know Mr. Truman,” he said.

  Anxious days and nights passed as Szilard paced his room and the campus, groping for some way to reach Truman. The Met Lab was a large project, he reasoned. Someone there must come from Kansas City, Truman’s political base. At Bartky’s office, Szilard flipped through the lab’s personnel files and found Albert Cahn, a young mathematician from Kansas City. Cahn agreed to help, telephoned home, and in two days—through the political machine of Tom Pendergast—Szilard had an appointment at the White House. But not until May 25, more than a month away.11

  Truman learned more about the bomb by April 25, through a briefing by Groves and Stimson. Groves insisted that Japan had always been the target, and Stimson raised the long-range implications of the bomb, mentioned a possible nuclear arms race, warned about the horrors of a nuclear war, and urged international control. Szilard, the outsider, was struggling to give Truman similar advice, but “official” events were outpacing him. On April 27, Groves’s Target Committee, which included four military men and nine scientists (Oppenheimer among them), held its first meeting. To measure the new bomb’s effectiveness, the committee sought targets that had suffered little damage from conventional weapons and picked seventeen cities, including Hiroshima an
d Nagasaki.

  Stimson convened an Interim Committee of the bomb program “to study and report on the whole problem of temporary war controls and later publicity, and to survey and make recommendations on post war research, development and controls, as well as legislation necessary to effectuate them.” The war in Europe ended on May 8, and the next day, the Interim Committee met for the first time. At the table with Stimson were navy under secretary Ralph A. Bard, Assistant Secretary of State William L. Clayton, bomb-program executives Vannevar Bush and James Conant, Byrnes (Truman’s representative), and Karl T. Compton, Arthur Compton’s brother from MIT. At Conant’s suggestion, the Interim Committee appointed a Scientific Panel, which included Oppenheimer, Ernest O. Lawrence, Enrico Fermi, and Arthur Compton.12

  For his White House appointment on May 25, Szilard took along Bartky and Cahn. Matthew J. Connelly, Truman’s appointments secretary, read Einstein’s letter and Szilard’s memo carefully. “I see now,” Connelly said, “this is a serious matter. At first, I was a little suspicious, because this appointment came through Kansas City. The president thought that your concern would be about this matter, and he has asked me to make an appointment for you with James Byrnes, if you are willing to go down to see him in Spartanburg, South Carolina.” Szilard and Bartky were surprised but said they were glad to go wherever the president directed them. Szilard asked if he might also bring Harold Urey, a Manhattan Project chemist and Nobel laureate, and Connelly agreed.

  As their overnight train rolled south through the Virginia hills, Szilard, Bartky, and Urey wondered aloud why the president had sent them to Byrnes. He had been a US representative and senator from South Carolina, becoming a budgetary expert during Roosevelt’s New Deal legislative reforms. Named to the Supreme Court in 1941, Byrnes had resigned a year later to direct economic stabilization and, later, war mobilization. Now in his first weeks of retirement from government service, he seemed to have the president’s ear. But why? Szilard suspected that Truman must be planning to appoint Byrnes to a new government post, perhaps to head atomic work after the war.13

  During the train ride the three agreed to raise two points: First, they wanted to explore how the A-bomb would affect world affairs after the war and how America’s role would change if it used the bomb to end the Pacific war. Second, they worried about the future of atomic energy and the need to plan postwar research.

  Set in the mountains of northwestern South Carolina, Spartanburg was a small market and university town. From the tiny station the three walked past flat-front stores and beneath arching trees to Byrnes’s red-brick colonial and once seated in the living room, Szilard handed him Einstein’s letter to Roosevelt and his own memorandum. Byrnes glanced at the letter and studied the memo, but before he could finish reading, Szilard began a forceful lecture about the dangers of Russia’s becoming an atomic power if the United States demonstrated the A-bomb’s power and used it against Japan.

  “General Groves tells me there is no uranium in Russia,” Byrnes interrupted.

  Wrong, said Szilard. There are rich ore deposits in Czechoslovakia, which Russia can obtain, and their own vast territory must contain some uranium.

  Szilard then argued that the United States should not reveal the A-bomb’s existence until the government had decided its postwar policy. Indeed, the United States should not even test the bomb, since its existence is its greatest secret.

  “How would you get Congress to appropriate money for atomic energy research if you do not show results for the money which has been spent already?” Byrnes the politician replied.14 He thought the war would be over in about six months, and his worry was Russia’s postwar behavior. Russia had invaded Hungary and Rumania and wouldn’t be persuaded to withdraw troops unless the United States demonstrated its military might. The bomb, Byrnes said, would make the Russians “more manageable.” Szilard was “flabbergasted by the assumption that rattling the bomb might make Russia more manageable.”

  “Well,” Byrnes added, “you come from Hungary—you would not want Russia to stay in Hungary indefinitely.” This made Szilard furious. Byrnes had assailed Szilard’s chief moral guide, his “sense of proportion,” and his anger persists in an account written fifteen years later: “I was concerned at this point that . . . we might start an atomic arms race between America and Russia which might end with the destruction of both countries. I was not disposed at this point to worry about what would happen to Hungary.”15

  Szilard’s anger turned to astonishment as the four men began to discuss the future of the Manhattan Project and Byrnes seemed indifferent. Only later did Szilard learn that Byrnes was not in line to head the project but to become Truman’s secretary of state.

  Byrnes later wrote that Szilard’s “general demeanor and his desire to participate in policy-making made an unfavorable impression on me. . . .” At the same time, Szilard became convinced that Byrnes did not grasp the importance of atomic energy, or much else.16 The encounter left him frightened that if Byrnes had his way, a US Soviet nuclear arms race would be inevitable.

  Byrnes tucked Szilard’s letter and memo into his suit-coat pocket as he rose to bid his three visitors farewell, and Szilard later imagined that his memorandum stayed there—all the way to the dry cleaner. But an unsigned memorandum was found by historians among Byrnes’s papers. In retrospect, Szilard thought their Spartanburg visit “fittingly naive,” while Bartky concluded that it was “purely academic” and accomplished nothing.17 As far as Szilard knew, his second attempt to stop the bomb had been as futile as his first.

  “I was rarely as depressed as when we left Byrnes’ house and walked toward the station,” Szilard wrote later. “I thought to myself how much better off the world might be had I been born in America and become influential in American politics, and had Byrnes been born in Hungary and studied physics. In all probability there would have been no atomic bomb, and no danger of an arms race between America and Russia.” At the station, Szilard, Urey, and Bartky boarded the next train for Washington.

  Eager to influence the Interim Committee, Szilard audaciously telephoned General Groves’s office in the New War Building on May 30 to arrange a meeting there with Oppenheimer for later that morning.18 But almost as soon as the two scientists sat down, they disagreed: first over plans to use the bomb, then over its postwar control.19 It would be a serious mistake to use the bomb against Japanese cities, Szilard said.

  “The atomic bomb is shit,” Oppenheimer replied, surprising Szilard.

  “What do you mean by that?” Szilard asked.

  “Well, this is a weapon which has no military significance,” said Oppenheimer. “It will make a big bang—a very big bang—but it is not a weapon which is useful in war.”

  Yet Oppenheimer did think it important to tell the Russians that we had an A-bomb and intended to use it on Japan’s cities rather than taking them by surprise. Szilard knew Secretary of War Stimson shared this view, but he complained that while warning Russia was necessary, it was not sufficient.

  “Well,” said Oppenheimer, “don’t you think that if we tell the Russians what we intend to do and then use the bomb in Japan, the Russians will understand it?”

  “They’ll understand it only too well,” Szilard replied, no doubt with Byrnes’s intentions in mind.20

  When the Interim Committee met at the Pentagon on May 31, the four Scientific Panel members—Oppenheimer, Lawrence, Fermi, and Compton—attended, along with Gen. George C. Marshall, there to hear firsthand the scientists’ concerns. Oppenheimer echoed some of Szilard’s ideas as he proposed an exchange of atomic information, with emphasis on peaceful uses. The goal of atomic energy, he said, should be the enlargement of human welfare, and America’s moral position would be greatly strengthened if information were offered before the bomb were used.21 What’s more, Oppenheimer said, Russia had always been very friendly to science, and the United States should not prejudice its attitude toward cooperation. They would not have to await such cooperation, however, for S
oviet spies had already informed Stalin of American progress.22

  The Interim Committee agreed later that day that “the most desirable target [for the A-bomb] would be a vital war plant employing a large number of workers and closely surrounded by workers’ houses.” While Szilard could not attend this meeting, he was there in spirit, thanks to the anger of General Groves. Complaining about the “handling of undesirable scientists,” Groves said that “the program has been plagued since its inception by the presence of certain scientists of doubtful discretion and uncertain loyalty.” After the bomb becomes public, he vowed, there should be “a general weeding out of personnel no longer needed.”23

  Back in Chicago, Compton assured his Met Lab colleagues that Interim Committee members were receptive to the scientists’ suggestions.24 And, he said, they would welcome more advice at their next meeting at Los Alamos in two weeks. Compton offered to convey to the Scientific Panel any recommendations prepared by the time he left Chicago on June 14, and by Monday, June 4, the Met Lab scientists had seized this opportunity, forming committees on organization, research programs, education and security, production, and social and political implications.

  Szilard was named chairman of the production group but declined in order to focus his energies as a member of the social and political committee that was headed by physicist James Franck.25 Szilard quickly became its catalytic member and its conscience.26 Eugene Rabinowitch, who drafted the Franck Committee report, recalled “many hours spent walking up and down the Midway with Leo Szilard arguing about these questions [and] sleepless nights when I asked myself whether perhaps we should break through the walls of secrecy and get to the American people the feeling of what was to be done by their government and whether we approved it. . . .” Rabinowitch credited Szilard with “the whole emphasis on the problem of the use of the bomb which really gave the report its historical significance—the attempt to prevent the use of the bomb on Japan.” The report’s “fundamental orientation,” he said, was “due above all to Leo Szilard and James Franck. . . .”27