The Principle

by Jérôme Ferrari

  The bomb made the acquaintance of its victims, some of whom, because it offered death new faces, belong only to it. And among them, there are those who, more than others, shared its intimacy and grasped the unaccustomed singularity of its essence. Not of course those who, like so many others before them in so many cities, were buried beneath the ruins of their houses or perished in the fires; nor those who saw their hair fall out or their skin turn to shreds; nor those in whom the part of the body exposed to the radiation was burned to the bone while the rest remained intact and fresh; nor even those killed years later by the radioactive seed secretly planted in them—no: the true casualties of the bomb disappeared without leaving any trace except, perhaps, a vague bright silhouette on a charred wall, frozen in the moment of revelation; the uranium heart beat very close to theirs, they communed with the core of things and returned all at once, without pointless effort, without superfluous stages, to the common substance composing them, which, deep down, like that silhouette, like their memories, like themselves, is nothing.

  In a somewhat radical fit of pragmatism, an American general first suggested shooting them. Although presenting the undeniable—and seductive—advantage of simplicity, this solution is not adopted and, on July 3, 1945, after short stays in France and Belgium, the British move ten German scientists who belonged to the various teams working on the Nazi nuclear program into a house called Farm Hall, under the guardianship of Major Rittner, whose orders are to keep their presence secret but to treat them as guests. Their names are as follows:

  Professor MAX VON LAUE

  Professor OTTO HAHN

  Professor WERNER HEISENBERG

  Professor WALTHER GERLACH

  Dr. PAUL HARTECK

  Dr. CARL FRIEDRICH VON WEIZSÄCKER

  Dr. KARL WIRTZ

  Dr. KURT DIEBNER

  Dr. ERICH BAGGE

  Dr. HORST KORSCHING

  Microphones have been hidden in all the rooms in the house. The guests have all given their word of honor that they won’t try to escape or make contact with anyone on the outside.

  Among them are world-famous theorists and young researchers. Some have long-lasting, unshakable ties of friendship. Others are barely acquainted, or frankly hate each other. With the notable exception of Professor von Laue, who was a cautious but fierce opponent of the Nazis, the exact nature of their respective relations with the regime remains to be clarified.

  Indifferent to such subtleties, British soldiers have categorically refused to serve them, so it’s German prisoners of war who take care of their washing and make them the most copious meals they’ve eaten in six years. Although they’re worried about their families, who are still in Germany, and have absolutely no idea how long they will remain in detention, they appreciate the unexpected comfort offered them by the rural setting of Farm Hall. For a time, they almost feel as if they’re on vacation.

  They take turns organizing lectures on different scientific subjects.

  They stroll in the garden.

  They play the piano.

  They put on weight.

  On the evening of August 6, Major Rittner shuts himself upstairs with Professor Hahn, tells him that a uranium bomb has just been dropped on Hiroshima, and sees him snap, as if struck by a single mortal blow. He supports him, puts a glass of gin in his hand, which he has to help him lift to his lips, then pours him another. In an unrecognizable voice, Professor Hahn says over and over that he is guilty, he says that he’d already thought of killing himself when the worst was only a possibility, and now everything has become real. He’s surrounded by countless dead. That’s a fact. But he’s still alive. Major Rittner isn’t cruel enough to point that out to him. He contents himself with pouring him more gin and uttering pointless words of comfort, until Professor Hahn feels calm enough to go back down to the living room and announce the news to the other guests.

  When the shock wave of Hiroshima reaches them in their turn, it unleashes in them a storm of confused reactions, a mixture of incredulity, horror, relief, curiosity, disappointment, and bitterness. In their stunned amazement, they reveal themselves much more profoundly than they would have wished, or than the demands of modesty or politeness usually allow them. The microphones record the constant, violent, uncertain combat being fought inside them between generosity and selfishness, self-sacrifice and vanity, humility and arrogance, nobility and pettiness.

  They’re relieved that they didn’t build the bomb, they congratulate themselves noisily on the fact, but they’re also terribly upset that the Americans succeeded in doing so by shamelessly exploiting a German discovery. The reasons they come up with are contradictory, but they don’t care, as long as those reasons provide an honorable explanation for their failure.

  They convince themselves that they didn’t want to succeed but that, if they’d wanted to, they obviously would have succeeded, unless they would have failed anyway, for lack of raw materials, or because they weren’t trusted, or because they would never have been granted the necessary resources in the middle of the war effort, or because Hitler, exasperated at the slowness of their progress, would have cut their heads off, unless, of course, British intelligence had already spared him the bother by taking on the task of eliminating them as soon as the nature of their work was known.

  They wander through the house, break up into febrile little groups, find it impossible to get their memories to match up, accuse each other of incompetence or sabotage, or suggest, without much concern for consistency, that they themselves did everything they could to make sure that their research didn’t have any military application.

  Professor Heisenberg is hurt that Dr. Goudsmit, who he apparently supposes had nothing more urgent to do than to confide a state secret to an enemy physicist, should have had the nerve to tell him such a shameless lie in Heidelberg. He feels ridiculous at having offered to share his knowledge, when it’s now clear that nobody in America has anything to learn from him.

  All the same, he says he’s glad he only worked on a reactor.

  Voices are raised, condemning the use of the bomb. Dr. von Weizsäcker is shocked: he asserts that it’s “madness.”

  Professor Heisenberg replies that, on the contrary, it could be considered as having been the quickest way to end the war. But a bit later, he in his turn describes the bombing as “the most diabolical act imaginable.” He observes bitterly that, if German scientists had perfected and used such a weapon, they would all have been executed as war criminals.

  Professor Hahn hopes that Niels Bohr has not lowered himself so far as to participate in such a monstrous project.

  Discovering the recordings, Dr. Goudsmit hears only despicable men trying to rely on their own incompetence in order to draw moral advantage from it, while allowing themselves the luxury, from the height of their own unforgivable compromise, of lecturing those colleagues of theirs who had the courage to fight Nazism. Major Rittner almost chokes at the nerve of these Germans taking offense at the barbarity of Allied military decisions. For a moment he regrets having been so kind to Professor Hahn, who’s surrounded by many more dead than he can fear.

  Dr. Korsching makes some acerbic and unusually discourteous remarks to Professor Gerlach, who goes up to his room in tears. His despair stubbornly resists all attempts to comfort him. He has no doubt that in Germany he will be held responsible for a defeat he was unable or unwilling to avoid and which has plunged his country into chaos. His compatriots will think that he deserves the ignominious death reserved for traitors, and he’s clearly convinced that he himself is one.

  As soon as he sets foot on German soil again, someone will kill him.

  They’ll all be killed, that’s for sure.

  He continues to shed tears, the meaning of which Professor Hahn doesn’t understand. “Are you upset because we didn’t make a uranium bomb?” he asks him. “I go down on my knees and thank God we didn’t make
a uranium bomb. Or are you depressed because the Americans did it before us?”

  But no doubt Professor Gerlach no longer understands himself. He can only wander endlessly in the labyrinth of his contradictory feelings of remorse, where nobody wishes to join him.

  Later that night, Professor Heisenberg is clearheaded enough to admit that because of the personality of Hitler, the moral problem posed by the development of the bomb couldn’t have been the same for German and American scientists.

  He makes an effort to comfort Professor Hahn, who’s wrong to feel particularly guilty. Supposing that it’s even relevant to talk about guilt, that guilt applies to all those, alive or dead, who participated in the development of modern science. A discovery such as nuclear fission only incidentally belongs to an individual. It isn’t an end point, it’s a stage, more visible than others, more spectacular, perhaps, but no more essential: all stages are essential because they all make up a destiny that amuses itself pretending to be chance.

  The bomb might be the destiny of physics, its degradation, its triumph, and its downfall. It’s also a fascinating enigma.

  “How did they do it?” Professor Heisenberg wonders. “It really would be shameful if we, the professors who worked on it, weren’t at least capable of understanding how they did it.”

  Professor Gerlach’s despair seems to have abated. But his curiosity is insatiable. He too now admits: “I really would like to know how they did it.”

  They still have no idea. Their frustration is immense.

  After discussing it for part of the night and coming up with all kinds of conjectures, they’ve gone back to their rooms, not without first making sure one last time, at the prompting of Professor von Laue, that Professor Hahn won’t try to kill himself.

  They can’t get to sleep.

  Until dawn, at regular intervals, the microphones record the cries and plaintive moans of the guests weeping in the dark.

  But it’s impossible to guess which.

  Above all, it’s impossible to understand why.

  In carrying out his mission, Major Rittner doesn’t neglect his gentle but wicked sense of humor.

  Dr. Bagge is at the end of his tether. Thoughts of his wife, of whom he’s had no news since he left her alone in Hechingen, where French colonial troops undertook to systematically rape all the women as soon as they entered the town, drive him mad with worry. He pours his heart out to Dr. Diebner. He knows that three Moroccans are billeted in his house. He holds back his sobs. In his distress, he compares the conditions of his detention with those in the Nazi camps, even judging them somehow less justifiable in Farm Hall because the war is over.

  “They can’t do the same thing to us now.”

  He threatens to start a protest by way of a hunger strike.

  Major Rittner has made the following note in the margin of the recording transcripts: Bagge is much too fat: a diet of bread and water wouldn’t do him any harm.

  Among the guests, Dr. Bagge and Dr. Diebner are the only ones who were party members. They fear the British attitude to them, and above all that of their colleagues, their unfair resentment.

  They aren’t actually guilty of anything.

  Dr. Bagge claims to have been enrolled without his knowledge, following an unfortunate initiative of his mother. Dr. Diebner makes it clear that, even though he joined of his own free will, it cost him a great deal of mental anguish, which he would clearly like to be recognized at its true worth. His political beliefs have always been at the opposite extreme from Nazism, and in any case played no role in a choice he made simply in order to gain professional benefits that, in the event of a German victory, would have been reserved for party members, so nobody can reasonably hold it against him. He doesn’t doubt for a moment that this is an honorable justification, and one that’s enough to absolve him totally.

  “I helped so many people!” he sighs.

  All of them, without exception, make constant attempts to shrug off their own responsibilities.

  They knew nothing of the extent of the slaughter and, although they may only have vaguely suspected it, they all made perilous efforts to oppose it.

  They all tried to help colleagues in danger, even though this was often in vain. They make lists of these colleagues and submit them to the other guests, who listen with polite skepticism.

  So, for example, Professor Heisenberg was unable to save Jean Cavaillès from the firing squad—Jean Cavaillès who saw no incompatibility between his love of mathematics and political commitment, and for whom the same compelling need governed demonstrative inferences and acts of resistance.

  Major Rittner may have become so weary and disgusted at constantly hearing about their pathetic heroism that he ends up totally indifferent to the task of distinguishing truth from falsehood.

  In September, he is replaced by Captain Brodie, who writes and signs all the reports.

  Idon’t understand.”

  Having kindly provided the desired clarification, Professor Heisenberg resumes the little lecture he’s giving to the guests on the subject of the uranium bomb, a week after it flattened Hiroshima. This, most likely, is how it works: unlike thermal neutrons, rapid neutrons allow the chain reaction to spread before the rise in temperature has had time to vaporize the load and prevent it from exploding at its full power; the use of a reflector makes it possible to considerably reduce critical mass by sending those neutrons that escape via the surface back to the center of the uranium sphere, where they are able to provoke new fissions; the delicate problem of transportation can be resolved if the fissile matter is divided into two halves that must be hurled toward each other as fast as possible, at the moment of the drop, so that together they reach critical mass.

  In exploding, the white-hot uranium sphere would burn two thousand times brighter than the sun. It would radiate so intensely that its unprecedented light might actually come to life, at least for a moment, and sweep away everything, like a strange gust of wind. Then the sphere would dilate, stop burning, and become steam and dust. It would stretch out for a long time across the sky.

  It would be over.

  The world would no longer be the same.

  It is no longer the same.

  Maybe Professor Hahn briefly closes his eyes and again feels the presence of the dead around him, their tireless devotion.

  “When I was a child,” Professor von Laue says, “I wanted to practice physics and see history being made. Well, I’ve practiced physics and I’ve seen history made! I’ll be able to say that until my dying day.” He expresses himself with the bitterness characteristic of those who’ve seen what it costs to have their wishes granted.

  What will practicing physics mean from now on?

  The guests imagine that scientists, who alone possess the secrets of the bomb, will have no other choice than to take on major political responsibilities in a new Platonic republic. They envisage this prospect with indifference, eagerness, or disgust.

  In the garden of Farm Hall, they already reign over a whole nation of pipe dreams.

  Dr. Von Weizsäcker prefers to dream that he will devote himself to philosophy. The others sadly envisage the possibility that they may be prevented from pursuing their work on uranium. They’re ready to resign themselves to that. But they’re afraid that they may also be forbidden to ever practice physics again. Above all, they’re afraid they will never be allowed to go back to Germany for fear they might be tempted to offer their services to the Soviets, unless the Soviets actually abduct them to make sure of their valuable collaboration.

  They never doubt their own importance.

  They wanted to understand, to look for a moment over God’s shoulder.

  The beauty of their project seemed to them the greatest that could be imagined.

  They’d reached the point where language has its limits, they’d explored a sphere so radically strange tha
t it can only be evoked in metaphors or in the abstraction of mathematical speech, which, basically, is itself nothing but a metaphor.

  They constantly had to reinvent what the word understanding means.

  The knowledge they venerated has been used to perfect a weapon so powerful that it’s no longer a weapon, but a symbol of the Apocalypse.

  They’ve all been its oracles and its slaves.

  To a remark by Professor Heisenberg suggesting that Dr. Goudsmit of the Alsos Mission might come to their aid, Dr. Wirtz replies: “A man like Goudsmit can’t really help us; he lost his parents.” And Dr. Harteck adds: “Of course Goudsmit can’t forget that we murdered his parents.”

  But Dr. Harteck, described in the reports as a man of great charm, didn’t murder Dr. Goudsmit’s parents.

  Later, Dr. Wirtz admits to Professor Heisenberg: “We did things that are completely unprecedented. We went to Poland and not only did we murder the Jews of Poland but, for example, the SS showed up at a girls’ school, took out the oldest ones, and shot them, simply because the girls were at school and the intelligentsia had to be eliminated. Just imagine if they’d come to Hechingen, showed up at a school, and shot all the girls! That’s what we did.”

  But Wirtz, described in the reports as intelligent, sly, and self-centered, didn’t shoot those schoolgirls.

  Obviously, none of the guests killed anybody. They probably never even dreamed of it, except perhaps in those obscure fantasies on which dreams and anger sometimes cast a fleeting light. But they know what they must answer for collectively. Their differences, dislikes, and rivalries cannot keep them apart forever. When they have to talk about the killings, a single personal pronoun rises reluctantly to their lips––we. This we keeps them all united within its ring of steel. They didn’t kill anybody, that’s the truth, but they know that, in a way, each of them closed the gas chamber door on Dr. Goudsmit’s parents. Each of them raised a steady hand and shot a Polish schoolgirl.