The committee’s recommendations would count for little with Churchill compared with the opinions of Lindemann, who was unlikely to wait for the committee to plod through weeks of hearings before he gave his view to the Prime Minister. Hankey probably guessed this; if so, he was right.
AUGUST TO OCTOBER 1941
Lindemann backs a British Bomb
‘Physicists and engineers in the US would be competent to develop this project, [but] it would seem undesirable to depend on them. In general, the Americans [are] slow starters.’
FREDERICK LINDEMANN, 17 September 19411
On 27 August 1941, the day Hankey officially received the MAUD report, Lindemann decided to cut the red tape and give his views directly to the Prime Minister.2 In his first minute to Churchill on the advisability of building a nuclear bomb, the Prof began by referring to their conversations about a ‘super-explosive’ but, perhaps surprisingly, did not remind him that they had worked together on several articles pointing out that such weapons were probably on the way. The important news now, Lindemann wrote, was that ‘it seems almost certain that this can be done’. He suggested that the government should fund research for another six months, when a final decision would be possible. In words that will have resonated with Churchill’s concerns about sharing technical secrets with the Americans, Lindemann declared himself strongly in favour of building the Bomb ‘in England or at worst in Canada’. ‘However much I may trust my neighbour and depend on him,’ Lindemann wrote, ‘I am very much averse to putting myself completely at his mercy.’ Britain should ‘not press the Americans to undertake this work’, he wrote, but simply ‘continue exchanging information’.
Lindemann was sceptical that the Bomb could be produced within two years, as the experts were claiming. They were giving odds of ten to one on success, he reported, while he would not bet more than two to one against, or evens. But he believed strongly that the project should go ahead: ‘It would be unforgivable if we let the Germans develop a process ahead of us by means of which they could defeat us in war or reverse the verdict after they had been defeated.’
When Churchill read Lindemann’s note, he was in low spirits.3 The talks with Roosevelt earlier that month went well, with the President reaffirming his support for Britain, though he made it clear that he had little time for the Prime Minister’s enthusiasm for preserving the Empire in perpetuity. Churchill had returned to London with nothing concrete apart from the Atlantic Charter, a stirring post-war vision that later formed the basis of the United Nations. Whitehall mandarins muttered that the agreement was a glorified press release.4 Worse, when the President arrived home he was as slippery as ever about his commitment to Britain and its allies: when asked in a press conference if America was any closer to entering the war, he said no, but refused to be quoted.5
On 28 August, probably the day Churchill received Lindemann’s hand-delivered note on nuclear weapons, he cabled Harry Hopkins to say that reports of the President’s comments had sent ‘a wave of depression’ through the Cabinet, which feared that the Russians would be ‘knocked out’ in a few months, leaving Britain and its Empire alone again. Churchill ended pitiably, asking Hopkins ‘if you could give me any sort of hope’.6 Lindemann’s note appears to have cheered up the Prime Minister, as news of a fearsome new device produced by his scientists usually did. When he read that it was extremely likely that the Bomb could be built, he wrote in the margin, ‘Good’.7
Predictably, Churchill went along with his chief science adviser’s advice, and a few days later he became the first national leader to approve the development of a nuclear weapon. He wrote a brief minute to his Chiefs of Staff, beginning with words that he later said ‘turned on the full power of the State to what was then a remote and speculative project’:8
Although personally I am quite content with the existing explosives, I feel we must not stand in the path of improvement, and I therefore think that action should be taken in the sense proposed by [Lindemann], and that the Cabinet Minister responsible should be Sir John Anderson.
A week later, at a meeting chaired by Churchill, the Chiefs of Staff enthusiastically supported the project, declaring that the government should spare no time, labour, materials or money in pushing it forward.9 Furthermore, the Chiefs agreed ‘that the development should proceed in this country and not abroad’, while accepting that the final tests could be ‘carried out, if necessary on some lonely, uninhabited island’.10
Lindemann had no interest in overseeing the nuclear project – he always preferred advising to delivering, exercising power and influence without the wearisome demands of executive office. It seems from comments made by Lindemann’s friends that in his heart he could not quite believe that the Bomb would work – and he never risked association with an operational failure.11 Lacking managerial talent, it suited him to work alongside the stolid Anderson, who had such qualities in abundance.
Less than two years before, Anderson was ‘quite sure’ that the uranium bomb was not feasible, but over the past few months he had changed his mind.12 A trained scientist now approaching sixty, Sir John was already in charge of the rest of the government’s science research and was well qualified to oversee the development of nuclear weapons. As a student at Leipzig University he had written a thesis on the chemistry of uranium, before becoming a career civil servant in the Hankey mould – reliable, hard-working and without the slightest trace of glamour. Some admired his gravitas, others thought him crusty and portentous, but everyone agreed that he was an administrator without peer and a formidable negotiator. ICI executives had learned this to their cost when he ran rings round them during an attempt to extract a subsidy from the government – the officials were so impressed that they appointed him a ‘lay director’ in 1938.13
No one admired Anderson’s administrative skills more than Churchill, who delegated to him all the spadework of domestic government. Anderson absorbed huge quantities of work without complaint, with the concentration of a surgeon, from precisely 10.15 a.m. to 6.15 p.m. every working day, with an hour and a half for lunch, never taking work home.14 With no following among the public or in any of the political parties, he was no threat to any of his colleagues.
Soon after his appointment as overseer of the British Bomb project, he wrote the first of his scientifically literate, thoughtful letters about it, immediately attaching ‘enormous importance’ to its post-war implications.15 He proposed setting up a small Advisory Council, including Lindemann, Hankey and Appleton, but with no specialist nuclear physicist.16 Although Anderson could be charged with failing to avail himself of the best scientific advice, no one could accuse him of following the majority. He agreed with Blackett that the MAUD report had seriously underestimated the time needed to develop the weapon and was quite clear that he disagreed with the Prime Minister and Lindemann: the Bomb should be produced ‘not here but in America’.
Until the end of his tenure as Prime Minister during the war, Churchill treated the British nuclear project as something close to a private fiefdom. Within Whitehall, only he, Lindemann and Anderson knew exactly what was going on, leaving the Cabinet in near-total ignorance of Britain’s role in making the most revolutionary weapon of the war. This way of doing business, very much of Churchill’s own making, put him under considerable pressure as a strategist in a new field of weapons research. Success depended heavily on the quality of his advisers, who would influence Churchill in decisions that were to prove critically important for the country’s nuclear policy for decades to come.
Lindemann’s industry and commitment to the war effort were never in doubt. Even the Luftwaffe could not disrupt his monastic routine and his devotion to work – he disdained communal air-raid shelters, preferring the comfort of his apartment in Westminster, even when bombs were falling around his street. After an especially violent raid one night, his valet dashed to his side and found him in bed reading P. G. Wodehouse. On hearing the knock at the door, Lindemann looked up and enquired, ‘Is t
here anything wrong, Harvey?’17
The Prof spent most working days in his room, a few paces from the Prime Minister’s, in the Great George Street headquarters of the War Cabinet. At weekends, he returned to Oxford, his chauffeur delivering him in his new Packard Tourer limousine to the front door of the Clarendon Laboratory, where Francis Simon gave him an insider’s perspective of the MAUD project. Lindemann stayed in his newly decorated rooms in Christ Church, complete with tasteful furnishings and a Bechstein piano.18 Only here would he allow himself a few hours’ relaxation, lying in his bath – the water at precisely 104 degrees Fahrenheit and no deeper than the government’s permitted maximum of six inches – reading Dornford Yates thrillers, the latest Quarterly Journal of Mathematics and back copies of Men Only.
His one hobby was intellectual – thinking about prime numbers, an interest he had been pursuing in his spare moments since the early 1930s, when he published the first of four articles on the subject, some of them later cited by experts.19 In mid-September, sitting at his desk in Christ Church, he drafted the second of his contributions, in the form of a short letter to the editor of Nature, a few days before he gave his views on the MAUD project to a meeting of the Scientific Advisory Committee held in Hankey’s office. Five other scientists were present, including the President of the Royal Society Henry Dale and also A. V. Hill, who was still campaigning to lessen Lindemann’s influence on the running of the war effort.20
It was extremely unusual for Lindemann to emerge from his Whitehall cave and allow his scientific colleagues to question him. He spoke only briefly and gave away little of his hand, making a few technical comments about the fission of 235U, all of them common knowledge to experts. There was not much doubt that the Germans were interested in the subject, he said, pointing out that they had secured some supplies of heavy water.21 Most revealing was the case he outlined – timidly, by his standards – for developing the Bomb in Britain, rather than handing it over to the slow Americans. To the question of how a factory in the UK could be protected from aerial bombing, he said that ‘it should be possible . . . either by placing it underground or by the use of concealment or camouflage’.
The committee’s report was ready a week later, on 24 September 1941.22 It was a classic Hankey document – clear, well informed and careful to accommodate every shade of opinion, though it firmly rejected ICI’s offer to take over the research into nuclear power. Hankey recommended uncontentiously that the venture should be transferred from the Air Ministry to the natural home for the government’s science projects, the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. Most important, the report proposed that the gaseous diffusion plant needed to produce the 235U for the Bomb should be built in Canada, with the Americans treated as consultants.23 The British and American project would therefore be separate but linked.
Later, after Churchill’s meeting with Roosevelt, Hankey had heard excited talk from the Air Ministry that nuclear weapons might enable ‘America and ourselves to control and police the world’.24 He was sceptical. Thirty years of working with America had led him to doubt that it would ever join Britain in such a role.25
On Sunday 12 October, a message from Roosevelt arrived on Churchill’s desk. This was not unusual: since their meeting in Placentia Bay, the President had written to him eight times, on each occasion about American support for the Allies. Churchill attended to these notes carefully – as he commented several years later, ‘No lover ever studied every whim of his mistress as I did those of President Roosevelt.’26 The communication that arrived that day deserved special attention – it was the first note to be exchanged between the leaders on the subject of nuclear weapons:27
My Dear Winston, It appears desirable that we should soon correspond or converse concerning the subject which is under study by your MAUD Committee, and by Dr Bush’s organization in this country, in order that any extended efforts may be coordinated or even jointly conducted . . .
The President had deemed the letter so important that he arranged for it to be carried to the Prime Minister by hand, by Frederick Hovde, head of the US’s National Research and Defense Committee’s office in London. Roosevelt concluded by inviting Churchill to contact Hovde directly ‘to identify the subject more explicitly’ and to answer questions about American research in this field.
When Churchill read this letter, he may well not have understood that it was about nuclear research, as he probably did not know what the ‘MAUD Committee’ did – it was one of dozens in Whitehall and not a prominent one. Soon, his aides will have apprised him of the note’s content: Roosevelt was offering him a close collaboration – quite possibly a partnership on equal terms – in developing the Bomb. The benefits to Britain were potentially considerable: it would be able to capitalise on the lead it had established over the Americans, take advantage of their huge scientific and financial resources and begin to develop the weapon far from the Luftwaffe’s reach. This was an exceptional diplomatic opportunity.
As he had demonstrated in his attitude to the Tizard mission, Churchill was chary of giving technical secrets to the United States, at least until it was rather more generous in its support of Britain’s war effort. So it was far from clear whether he would set aside his unwillingness to work closely with the country whose partnership he valued most dearly, and grab the offer with gusto, as many of his nuclear scientists would have urged if they had known about it. One thing was certain: such an offer was not going to be on the table for long.
When Churchill, Lindemann and Anderson were considering how to respond to the President’s note, they may have wondered what prompted him to make the offer, apparently out of the blue. They did not know that it was largely the result of the activities in the US of one of the MAUD physicists most eager to involve the Americans in building the nuclear bomb.
AUGUST 1941 TO JANUARY 1942
Oliphant bustles in America
‘Mark [Oliphant] is getting very notorious for outspoken and quite unjustified statements in everything and sundry . . . “Oliphantic” has been coined to describe his statements.’
JOHN COCKCROFT, February 19411
Mark Oliphant was not among the prime movers of the MAUD committee but he was the most vociferous champion of its report. Speaking with a bluntness reminiscent of his hero Rutherford, Oliphant lobbied energetically in the United States, and then at home in Britain, urging officials to act quickly and effectively on the report’s conclusions. His forceful candour, sometimes as embarrassing to his colleagues as it was to government officials, served to remind them how different the interface between politics and fundamental science would have been if Rutherford were still alive.
In his native Australia, Oliphant had first seen Rutherford lecture in 1925 and had been ‘electrified’ by the great physicist’s ‘words and personality’.2 Within two years, they were working together at the Cavendish and getting on famously – later, they even went on vacation together with their families. Oliphant was a resourceful and hard-working experimenter, becoming the first to demonstrate that atomic nuclei could be fused, and that the process would release energy. Although he was not the most talented physicist in Cambridge, he was a valued member of the team and one of its liveliest characters, hot-headed and impulsive. ‘He’s a brash young man, but he’ll learn,’ Rutherford had chuckled.3
Despite his belligerence, Oliphant was always entertaining company. With his tight curls of greying hair, gold-rimmed circular spectacles and neat three-piece suit, he often resembled a lovable schoolmaster. But when some idiocy moved him to outrage, he became an angry proselytiser, buttonholing and telephoning every colleague who would hear him out. Although G. P. Thomson knew that Oliphant had a loose tongue, he nonetheless asked him to make ‘discreet enquiries’ during a long-scheduled visit to the US in the summer of 1941 – shortly before Thomson stood down as MAUD’s chairman – to find out why American scientists were virtually ignoring the committee’s reports.4 As Thomson did not explicitly say that anyth
ing on the MAUD agenda was too secret to share, Oliphant believed he had been given a free hand to talk about the project to anyone he deemed worthy of his trust.5
Oliphant had planned to spend most of his time discussing radar, but when he saw the state of American research on nuclear weapons he made it his top priority to promote the conclusion of the MAUD committee. His single-handed campaign to shake things up in America began on a sweltering Washington day in early August. When he and Charles Darwin paid a visit to Lyman Briggs, chair of the Uranium Committee set up by Vannevar Bush to look into the possibilities of producing nuclear chain reactions, they found him to be distressingly dull and incoherent.6 The bumbling Briggs was obsessed with secrecy – whenever the minutes of MAUD meetings had arrived from London, he had locked the papers in his safe, without copying them to his colleagues, who remained ignorant of the British initiative. Forty years later, Oliphant could still remember how ‘amazed and distressed’ he had been by Briggs’s incompetence.7
Oliphant spent most of August and September badgering American scientists and officials, trying to persuade them of the urgency of beating the Nazis to the manufacture of nuclear weapons.8 The best way to achieve the goal of being first to make the Bomb, he believed, was for the British and Americans to pool their resources and get cracking. At first, his pitch did not go down well. Over a tense lunch in Washington, Conant was tight-lipped, unwilling to discuss state secrets. In New York, Bush was no more forthcoming and Fermi was still unconvinced that a bomb was possible, though Szilárd – struggling to win influence – was desperate to breathe life into the moribund American project. Oliphant was most successful at Berkeley, where he met his old friend Ernest Lawrence, whose invention of the cyclotron two years before had made him America’s youngest Nobel Prize-winner. He was also a member of Briggs’s ineffectual committee.
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