This same tendency particularly worked against him with Teller, who never had any appreciation for Oppie’s poetic license, particularly as he had often been the object of his slings and arrows, and grew increasingly impatient with what he saw as the director’s consuming need for redemption. In his memoir, Teller recalled that the day after peace was established, Oppenheimer came into his office at Los Alamos and told him that “with the war over, there is no reason to continue work on the hydrogen bomb.” Teller was stricken. Work on the hydrogen bomb had begun in earnest only two months earlier, following the Trinity test, when Oppenheimer had appointed Bethe and Fermi to head up the fusion bomb program. “His statement was unexpected,” wrote Teller. “It was also final. There was no way I could argue; no way I could change Oppenheimers mind.”
Beginning with his strange comment after the Trinity test (a quotation from Bhagavad Gita, “I am become the Destroyer of Worlds”), Oppenheimer had seemed to lose his sense of balance, his perspective. After seeing the pictures from Hiroshima, he appeared determined that Los Alamos, the unique and outstanding laboratory he had created, should vanish. When asked about the future, he responded, “Give it back to the Indians.”
Teller was greatly disturbed by the growing sentiment among Oppenheimers division leaders and senior staff to turn against military work. “The emotion,” Teller observed, “seemed especially strong among those who had been most enthusiastic about using the bomb before the actual bombing.” His bitter childhood memories of Hungary—and the violent antisemitism that led to the deaths of thousands of Jews—had made him less sanguine about the prospects for peace, and he wanted to see the atomic bomb program continue so that the United States could maintain its technological superiority in nuclear weaponry. After having been forced by Oppenheimer to take a backseat on the wartime project, he was more determined than ever to realize his ambition to develop the Super. But given the present mood at the laboratory, he knew there would be little support for a program to develop fission bombs, let alone a fusion weapon, which would be a hundred times as powerful. An interim successor for Oppenheimer as director had been named, but Teller had little faith in the mild-mannered Norris Bradbury, a Stanford University physicist who had joined the project midway. Bradbury wanted to turn Los Alamos into a peacetime research facility to study the military applications of nuclear energy and had asked Teller to remain on as head of the Theoretical Division. Teller chose to go to Chicago with his friends instead. “Bradbury,” he observed, “maintained a cautious approach, then and throughout his career as director.”
Teller’s ambition to do work on the hydrogen bomb was well known on the mesa, and he was regarded, as much by himself as by everyone else, as virtually the sole proponent and defender of this work. “They were all against it, everybody except Teller,” said Dorothy, recalling the strong feelings on the mesa at the time. “They thought it was shocking, excessive and unnecessary, and we could destroy the world easily enough with our little atomic bomb.” Dorothy knew that Oppenheimer thought it was an unconscionable weapon. They had all had enough death as it was. “But Teller just thought for the sake of science we ought to do it… he kept hammering, hammering, hammering until he finally got it,” she said. “We hated the idea of it.”
At the farewell party for Deke Parsons, who had just been promoted, Oppenheimer greeted Teller jovially and said, “Now that you’ve decided to go to Chicago, don’t you feel better?” Teller did not feel better, and he told Oppenheimer so, adding that he thought their “war time work was only a beginning.” Oppenheimer brushed off the statement. “We have done a wonderful job here,” he replied. “It will be many years before anyone can improve on our work in any way.” Years later, Teller remained bitter about Oppenheimer’s decision to send him packing. “He wanted to stop me,” Teller said in an interview “He was very kind about it, but he was giving me a command. He wanted me to go back to Chicago and do physics.” Teller went grudgingly, “but I was already wondering about his attitude.” No two men could have been more at odds about the future development of nuclear weapons and which path the country should follow. Given their past experience, Oppenheimer should have known that this would not be the end of it. Teller would not be so easily dismissed.
On October 16, on a flawless New Mexico afternoon, the laboratory was awarded the Army-Navy “E” (for excellence) Award. A grandstand had been erected in front of Fuller Lodge for the occasion, and draped in red, white, and blue bunting. Beyond, on the horizon, were the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, cloaked in fall shades of lavender and blue and as serenely beautiful as ever. There was no brass band, but a military guard marched in and put on a good show, making for quite a change from the laughable SED parades. An enormous crowd had gathered, including nearly all the remaining scientists, who now numbered about a thousand, as well as hundreds of WACs and GIs, clusters of Indian housemaids in their colorful shawls, and many of the Spanish laborers who had worked at the laboratory and had come out of respect to “Señor Oppenheimer.” They were an eclectic lot, as usual, and it was amazing to think that they had ever managed to come together and work effectively as a team. Dorothy, who had come up to the Hill for the ceremony, was amused by the improbable sight of a radio crew struggling to set up their equipment to broadcast the speeches to the world at large. Much had changed in their secret city in the two months since the war ended.
As she joined the milling throng, shaking the hands of people she had hired over the past two years and hugging departing friends, Dorothy glimpsed Oppenheimer, a lean figure off by himself in the distance, dressed in an ill-fitting suit, his porkpie hat hiding the crew cut which had begun to show the first hint of gray. “Robert was pacing along,” she recalled, “he was within himself, and I knew that because when he’s within himself he’s not conscious of anyone else.” She went over to him and said, “Hello.” When he looked up, there was “a rather glazed look in his eyes,” and she realized he was still composing the speech he was due to give in a few moments’ time. For some reason, that image of him became fixed in her mind. It was the way she always liked to remember him—wandering the mesa, lost in thought. That was “the best portrait of him,” she said years later, “and it was one of the best speeches that has ever been done.”
Dorothy sat in one of the rows of folding chairs in the dusty field and watched Oppenheimer on the stage, shaking Groves’ hand and accepting the Certificate of Appreciation from the secretary of war. Next to the squat figure of the general, stuffed into his dress uniform, and the row of well-fed dignitaries, Oppie stood apart, looking strikingly tall and thin, like the member of a separate, attenuated race. He had kept his hat on, and the wide brim cast a shadow across his face as he stood to speak. He was the one they had all come to see, and a hush fell over the crowd as he briefly and very eloquently summed up what they all felt in their hearts, but had not been able to express, After thanking the men and women of Los Alamos for their work, Oppenheimer told them, “It is our hope that in years to come we may look at this scroll, and all that it signifies, with pride.”
Today that pride must be tempered with concern. If atomic bombs are to be added as new weapons to the arsenals of the warring world, or to the arsenals of nations preparing for war, then the time will come when mankind will curse the names of Los Alamos and Hiroshima.
The peoples of this world must unite or they will perish. This war that has ravaged so much of the earth has written these words. The atomic bomb has spelled them out for all men to understand. Other men have spoken them, in other times, of other wars, of other weapons. They have not prevailed. They are misled by a false sense of human history who hold that they will not prevail today. It is not for us to believe that. By our works we are committed to a world united, before this common peril, in law, and in humanity.
Among the various awards handed out, every laboratory employee received a tiny sterling silver pin, no bigger than a dime, bearing a large “A” and in smaller letters, the word “BOMB.”
It was a strangely diminutive token to commemorate such a monumental undertaking, but they probably had their penny-pinching general to thank for that. According to the papers, Groves was already busy defending their $2 billion budget and charges that their man-made town was so expensive that the handful of aspens planted by the Army Corps of Engineers were referred to as “twenty-four-carat trees.” But that did not matter. While Groves may have been head of the Manhattan District, and the University of California their actual employer, according to their paychecks, Dorothy, like most people on the mesa, had always thought of herself as working for Oppie. He had been their undisputed leader, loved or despised, and was already well on his way to becoming a legendary figure.
Now that Oppenheimer was leaving, and had handed over the directorship to Norris Bradbury, the project was officially over. The laboratory might continue to exist, but it would never be the same. Only those who had been there from the very beginning, who had answered his urgent call for help, who had been sworn to silence and had labored long hours under conditions of extreme secrecy, could know what an adventure it had been. “It was sort of like falling in love,” Dorothy told an interviewer years later. “You carry on and everything, and then you’re aware of this fact that’s hit you.” Smiling, she shook her head, as if trying, and failing, to describe an unknown phenomenon, the Oppenheimer mystique. “I don’t mean to compare this project—the atomic bomb—to love,” she added. “I’m just trying to tell you …”
On another occasion, she put it all down to Oppenheimer’s peculiarly vivid blue eyes, a visionary’s eyes, the exact color of the gentians that carpeted the valleys, and the matchless New Mexico sky. “He hypnotized me with those blue eyes,” she said.
He mesmerized them all. Dorothy’s allegiance to Oppenheimer was deeply personal to the end, but it was not unique. In many ways, it was emblematic of his leadership style and the profound mark he made on everyone who came to the Hill. He inspired love, loyalty, hard work, and dedication. He seemed to expect no less, and he reciprocated with his warmth and solicitude, and by living up to his own high standards and never dictating what should be done. “He brought out the best in all of us,” said Hans Bethe, when he spoke at Oppenheimer’s memorial service in 1967. “Los Alamos might have succeeded without him, but certainly only with much greater strain, less enthusiasm, and less speed. As it was, it was an unforgettable experience for all the members of the laboratory. There were other wartime laboratories … but I have never observed in any of these other groups quite the spirit of belonging together, quite the urge to reminisce about the days of the laboratory, quite the feeling that this was really the great time of their lives.”
TWENTY
Elysian Dreamer
WITH THE PROJECT winding down, the pressure at 109 East Palace eased. Dorothy, like everyone else, was preoccupied with tidying up loose ends. The laboratory, like the country, would have to find a new way to go forward. A number of physicists who had fallen in love with the setting, and still savored the technical challenges, wanted to stay on. It looked as if the government might allow Los Alamos, which the papers had dubbed “Uncle Sam’s town,” to continue as a weapons research center for at least a few years, producing more bombs for the country’s stockpile and working on necessary improvements.
Most of the younger scientists were dead set against this and insisted the laboratory should be closed down. A group of them had even taken a bus to Washington to protest the May-Johnson bill, hastily introduced before Congress on October 3, 1945, which left open the possibility for military control over all atomic energy work. The problem was that the vaguely worded bill, which was being rushed through hearings, did not go far enough in promising that nuclear research would be wrested from the military and put in the hands of a civilian commission. Complicating matters, Oppenheimer, along with the other members of the scientific panel, had sided with Groves and endorsed the legislation. Older, wiser, and weary, Oppie thought it would make for a smoother transition to leave the bomb initially in military control. He maintained that this was only an interim measure, and he believed the military authority would eventually yield to a world body. He was already drafting an amendment he hope would explicate this and placate his critics.
At Los Alamos, politics had replaced physics as the topic of conversation, and as the arguments intensified, both sides became more entrenched. Morale was at a lower point that at any time during the war. The scientists seemed to have lost their sense of purpose and direction. The dissent that fomented on the mesa reflected the growing public tension and confusion about the country’s atomic policy in the months after the war. In the meantime, with Los Alamos’s future far from certain, Dorothy had been asked by Norris Bradbury to remain on as manager of the Santa Fe office. She agreed, girding herself for the troubled times ahead.
Almost immediately after the Army-Navy E Award ceremony, Oppenheimer went back to Washington. Dorothy knew it was the first of many good-byes leading up to his final departure for Pasadena later that fall. It was a time of many tearful farewells, but there was none she dreaded more. But at the same time, she could see how badly he wanted to get away. His beloved Sangre de Cristo Mountains were now “under the shadow of the mushroom cloud,” and the mountains and wooded trails would never again promise the same sweet escape and tranquility. There was nothing to hold him there anymore. He had made a tremendous sacrifice for his country, he had paid for it in pounds of flesh, and the time had come for him to move on to new challenges. War was a time when personal desires were of necessity subjugated to a singleness of purpose, and she had satisfied herself with being his most loyal and devoted lieutenant, his confidante, and his friend. She had done so readily, and without regret.
Oppenheimer had told her that after much indecision, he had finally made up his mind to rejoin the faculty at Caltech. It had not been an easy decision. He had turned down an invitation to go to Harvard, sending Conant a heartfelt note saying that his “one regret” was that he would not have him as a boss. “I would like to go back to California for the rest of my days,” he wrote. “I have a sense of belonging there which I will probably not get over.” He had still been undecided about returning to Berkeley, however, writing to his old professor Raymond Birge, “how hard it would be” not to return, but at the same time confessing real doubts about the kind of welcome he could expect. He had clashed with officers of the university when he was running Los Alamos and was wary that the high-profile role he sought as presidential advisor on atomic policy might result in further conflict. He added, “As you can see, I am worried about the wild oats of all kinds which I have sown in the past; nor am I quite willing in the future to be part of any institution which has any essential distrust or essential lack of confidence in me.”
Although Oppenheimer was anxious to join the arms control issue along political lines, realizing that the opportunity to use his influence might not come along again, some of his devoted staff members worried about how he would fare on the treacherous path from Los Alamos to Washington. His new secretary, Anne Wilson, who had been accompanying him to the capital, where he was testifying at Senate and House committee hearings, confided her doubts to her predecessor, Priscilla Greene Duffield, commenting that the theoretical physicist might not be cut out for the rough and tumble world of politics. “She said, ‘He’d better be careful. He is going to get into terrible trouble,’” recalled Priscilla. “I think she was referring to the fact that he spoke out immediately about what he was feeling, and that he perhaps had the wrong [mentors], the people he was admiring in Washington initially were the wrong people. She really was concerned about him and obviously knew what she was talking about.”
Wilson remembered her sense of foreboding that autumn. Oppenheimer’s new celebrity and talent for clear exposition made him an obvious choice for the administration, and he would not be able to resist the lure of the corridors of power. “He was riding high and enjoying it,” she said. “And he was very intense about tryi
ng to make something out of all this that was not all bad.” But Oppenheimer had more enemies than he knew, and she wondered who in Washington would watch his back. Wilson was particularly sensitive on this score as she had been adopted by the Tellers upon arriving at Los Alamos and had observed Edward’s deep antagonism toward Oppenheimer, even though she could see that the obstinate Hungarian had brought many of his problems on himself. Oppie had a gift for drawing people to him, like moths to a flame, and they either basked in his glow or got burnt. “The woods were always thick with people who had nasty things to say about Robert,” she said, noting that everyone knew that in some sense what he had achieved at Los Alamos went beyond any Nobel Prize. Jealousy was already afoot on the mesa: “There were always people who were vying for his attention, and those who felt snubbed by him, or felt hurt because they thought Robert didn’t love them anymore.”
Oppenheimer’s verbal knife play, which he had used over the years to dazzle or wound, had given more offense than he realized, and after the war it became more of a problem. His reputation as a great humanist, and his new seerlike role in world affairs, gave even his offhand comments an edge. Even some of his old friends, who were familiar with his sharp tongue and his habit of poking holes in people, including those he liked and admired, were finding it hard to overlook some of his behavior and had cooled toward him. “He was so arrogant after the bomb—his triumph,” said Emily Morrison. “This confirmed to many people, particularly those who never liked him, their worst suspicions about what he was really like. For his students, of course, he was still God, and they went on worshipping him.” But Morrison recalled that when Oppenheimer started casually dropping the names of four-star generals in conversation, and took to calling General Marshall “George,” even her husband, a longtime acolyte, decided to stop idolizing him. His fame as “Father of the Atomic Bomb” was having an intoxicating effect on him. “Oppie changed,” she said. “He was interested in being a great man and dealing with other great men.” Phil Morrison did not dispute his wife’s appraisal. “After the war, Oppenheimer thought he was powerful,” he said. “But he was not as powerful as he thought.”
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