by P. D. Smith
28. Szilard, interviewed in 1956; in CW2, 144.
29. Szilard to Compton, 12 Nov. 1942; in CW2, 146.
30. Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (London: Penguin, 1988), 378–9.
31. Szilard to Bush, 26 May 1942; in CW2, 152.
32. Quoted in Alice Kimball Smith, ‘The Elusive Dr Szilard’, Harper’s Magazine, 221 (July 1960), 80.
33. Compton to Bush, 1 June 1942; in Lanouette, 233.
34. Teller, 149.
35. Szilard, ‘What Is Wrong with Us?’, 21 Sep. 1942; in CW2, 156.
36. Szilard to A. H. Compton, 25 Nov. 1942; in CW2, 160.
37. Szilard, ‘What Is Wrong with Us?’, 21 Sep. 1942; in CW2, 154.
38. ibid., CW2, 153, 154.
39. Arthur Train and Robert Williams Wood, The Man Who Rocked the Earth (New York: Doubleday, 1915), 142.
40. Szilard to A. H. Compton, 25 Nov. 1942; in CW2, 160.
41. Lt Col. Kenneth D. Nichols, quoted in Rhodes, 426.
42. Stephanie Groueff, Manhattan Project: The Untold Story of the Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Bantam, 1968), 35–6.
43. Samuel K. Allison, interview with A. K. Smith; quoted in Lanouette, 238.
44. Groves, quoted in Carol S. Gruber, ‘Manhattan Project Maverick: The Case of Leo Szilard’, Prologue, 15, no. 2 (summer 1983), 86; cited in Lanouette, 240.
45. Confidential report, June 1943; in CW3, p. xxxiii.
46. Henry D. Smyth, ‘The Stockpiling and Rationing of Scientific Manpower’, BAS, 7 (Feb. 1951), 38.
Chapter 15
1. Bethe, quoted in Jeremy Bernstein, Hans Bethe: Prophet of Energy (New York: Basic, 1980), 71.
2. Arthur Holly Compton, Atomic Quest: A Personal Narrative (London: Oxford University Press, 1956), 127–8.
3. Heisenberg (in 1946), recalling von Weizsaäcker’s idea of an ‘Atomsprengstoff’; quoted in Paul Lawrence Rose, Heisenberg and the Nazi Atomic Bomb Project: A Study in German Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 14.
4. Heisenberg, ‘The Workon Uranium Problems’, June 1942; this lecture has only recently been rediscovered: see Rainer Karlsch and MarkWalker, ‘New Light on Hitler’s Bomb’, Physics World (June 2005), http: //physicsweb.org/articles/world/18/6/3/1#Pwnew2–06–05.
5. Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich (London: Macmillan, 1970), 227.
6. Hitler, Aug. 1941; quoted in Michael J. Neufeld, ‘The Guided Missile and the Third Reich: Peenemünde and the Forging of a Technological Revolution’, in Monika Renneberg and Mark Walker, eds., Science, Technology and National Socialism (Cambridge University Press, 1994), 62.
7. Neufeld, 51.
8. Tom Lehrer, ‘Wernher von Braun’, on That Was the Year That Was (Reprise R/RS 6179, 1965), lyrics as reproduced in Tom Lehrer, Too Many Songs by Tom Lehrer (New York: Pantheon, 1981, 125).
9. Carl Sagan, letter to FrederickI. Ordway, III, 30 Nov. 1989; in Ernst Stuhlinger and FrederickI. Ordway, III, Wernher von Braun: Crusader for Space (Malabar: Krieger, 1996, 251).
10. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited (New York: Harper & Row, 1989; 1st edn 1958, 94).
11. Jeremy Bernstein, Oppenheimer: Portrait of an Enigma (London: Duckworth, 2004), 76.
12. Groves, quoted in John Canaday, The Nuclear Muse: Literature, Physics and the First Atomic Bombs (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000),
143.
13. Groves interview, 8 Mar. 1946; quoted in Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (London: Penguin, 1988), 448–9.
14. William L. Laurence, Dawn over Zero: The Story of the Atomic Bomb (London: Museum 1947), 149.
15. Szilard, quoted in Nuel Pharr Davis, Lawrence and Oppenheimer (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1968, 163.
16. Edward Teller with Judith Shoolery, Memoirs: A Twentieth-Century Journey in Science and Politics (Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus, 2001, 165.
17. Colgate, quoted in Teller, 166.
18. C. P. Snow, ‘A New Means of Destruction?’, Discovery, ns 2, no. 18 (Sep. 1939, 443.
19. ibid., 444.
20. Douglas W. F. Mayer, ‘Energy from Matter’, Discovery, ns 2, no. 18 (Sep. 1939, 460.
21. ‘Civilian’, ‘The New Weapon’, Times (28 Sep. 1939, 9.
22. Douglas W. F. Mayer, ‘Energy from Matter: Some Recent Developments’, Discovery, 2, no. 20 (Nov. 1939, 573.
23. Laurence, p. xiii.
24. ibid., p. xv.
25. William L. Laurence, ‘Vast Power Source in Atomic Energy Opened by Science’, NYT (5 May 1940, 1, 51.
26. Laurence, Dawn Over Zero, p.xv.
27. ibid.
28. ‘V-3?’, Time (27 Nov. 1944, 88.
29. ibid. On recent discoveries of documents which suggest that German scientists may have attempted to use high explosives to create implosion devices, see Karlsch and Walker, ‘New Light on Hitler’s Bomb’, http: //physicsweb.org/articles/world/18/6/3/1#Pwnew2–06–05.
30. Louis N. Ridenour, ‘Nuclear Fission in Lay Language’, Saturday Review, 30 (28 June 1947, 15.
31. Robert A. Heinlein, ‘Blowups Happen’, Astounding Science Fiction (Sep. 1940; in Groff Conklin, ed., The Golden Age of Science Fiction (New York: Bonanza, 1980; 1st edn 1946, 103, 105, 114, 105.
32. For example, the novels Command the Morning (London: Methuen, 1959 by Pearl S. Buckand most recently Oh Pure and Radiant Heart (London: Heinemann, 2006 by Lydia Millet. Szilard also makes an appearance (in the bath) in Roland Joffé’s film Shadow Makers (Paramount, 1989.
33. Don A. Stuart, ‘Atomic Power’, Astounding Science Fiction (Dec. 1934; in Conklin, 140–51. A. E. van Vogt, ‘The Great Engine’, Astounding Science Fiction (July 1943; in van Vogt, Away and Beyond (New York: Berkley, 1959; 1st edn 1952, 5–34. Theodore Sturgeon, ‘Artnan Process’, Astounding Science Fiction (June 1941; in Sturgeon, Starshine (London: Gollancz, 1969, 45–70.
34. Clifford D. Simak, ‘Lobby’, Astounding Science Fiction (Apr. 1944; in Conklin, 95–6, 90, 93.
35. ibid., 95–6.
36. Cleve Cartmill, ‘Deadline’, Astounding Science Fiction (Mar. 1944; in Conklin, 77, 78.
37. ibid., 82–3.
38. Heinlein, ‘Introduction: Pandora’s Box’ (first published as ‘Where To?’, 1952, in The Worlds of Robert Heinlein (London: New English Library, 1970, 9.
39. Anson MacDonald, ‘Solution Unsatisfactory’, Astounding Science Fiction (May 1941; in Conklin, 4.
40. ibid., 6.
41. ibid., 6, 7, 8, 10.
42. ibid., 12.
43. ibid., 13, 16.
44. ibid., 16, 13, 18.
45. ibid., 21.
46. On censorship, see Greg Mitchell, ‘Hiroshima Cover-up Exposed’, E&P Online (1 Aug. 2005, available at
47. MacDonald, 21.
48.ibid., 26, 27.
49. ibid., 32, 33, 35.
50. John W. Campbell, ‘Concerning Science Fiction’ (1946, in Conklin, p. xi.
51. National Academy of Sciences report, 17 May 1941; quoted in Rhodes, 365.
52. PIC (22 July 1941, 6–8; quoted in William Lanouette with Bela Silard, Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard, The Man Behind the Bomb (University of Chicago Press, 1994; 1st edn 1992), 226.
53. Henry D. Smyth, Atomic Energy for Military Purposes: The Official Report on the Development of the Atomic Bomb (Princeton: United States Government Printing Office, 1945); quoted in Conklin, 3.
54. Davis, 182.
55. Oppenheimer to Fermi, 25 May 1943; quoted in Joseph Rotblat, ‘Leaving the Bomb Project’, BAS, 41 (Aug. 1985, 18.
56. ibid.
57. ‘General MacArthur Complained of British Perfidy’, Times (9 Apr. 1964, 11.
58. Quoted in Spencer R. Weart, Scientists in Power (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988), 96.
59. Robert Wilson to H. D. Smyth, 27 Nov. 1943; quoted in Canaday, 206.
60. Sturgeon, quoted in Mike Ashley, Th
e Time Machines: The Story of the Science-Fiction Pulp Magazines from the Beginning to 1950 (Liverpool University Press, 2000), 168–9.
61. Campbell, ‘Atomic Age’, Astounding Science Fiction, 36, no. 3 (Nov. 1945, 4–6.
Chapter 16
1. Otto R. Frisch, What Little I Remember (Cambridge University Press, 1979), 121.
2. Wells, The Shape of Things to Come: The Ultimate Revolution (London: Hutchinson, 1933), book 2, ch. 4, 169.
3. Edward Teller with Allen Brown, The Legacy of Hiroshima (New York: Doubleday, 1962), 211.
4. Quoted in George Marx, The Voice of the Martians (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1997), 59.
5. Laura Fermi, Atoms in the Family: My Life with Enrico Fermi (University of Chicago Press, 1961; 1st edn 1954), 206.
6. Quoted in Steven Shapin, ‘Don’t Let That Crybaby in Here Again’, London Review of Books (7 Sep. 2000), 16.
7.Ruth Marshak, ‘Secret City’, in Jane Wilson and Charlotte Serber, eds., Standing By and Making Do (Los Alamos Historical Society, 1988), 2.
8. Serber, quoted in Edward U. Condon, ‘The Los Alamos Primer’, Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, 1; quoted in Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (London: Penguin, 1988), 460.
9. Quoted in Rhodes, 464.
10. Leslie R. Groves, Now It Can Be Told (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), 296.
11. William L. Laurence, Dawn over Zero: The Story of the Atomic Bomb (London: Museum 1947), 3.
12. ibid., 6.
13. Isidor I. Rabi, Science: The Center of Culture (New York: World Publishing, 1970), 138.
14. Emilio Segrè, Enrico Fermi: Physicist (University of Chicago Press, 1970), 147.
15. Morrison, quoted in Rhodes, 673.
16. Fermi, 239.
17. Laurence, 9.
18. ibid., 10–11.
19. Kistiakowsky, quoted in ibid., 9.
20. Farrell, quoted in ibid., 161–2.
21. Farrell, quoted in Peter Wyden, Day One: Before Hiroshima and After (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984), 212.
22. Conant, quoted in James G. Hershberg, James B Conant: Harvard to Hiroshima and the Making of the Nuclear Age (Stanford University Press, 1993), 232.
23. Ferenc Morton Szasz, The Day the Sun Rose Twice (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984), 85.
24. McMillan’s statement is online: ‘Impressions of Trinity Test’, 19 July 1945
25. Anderson, quoted in Laurence, 163.
26. V. Weisskopf, Inter-office memorandum to Lt Taylor, 24 July 1945:
27. Victor Weisskopf, The Joy of Insight: Passions of a Physicist (New York: Basic, 1991), 152.
28. Bhagavad Gita, ch. 11, verse 32.
29. Oppenheimer, ‘The Atom Bomb and College Education’ (1946); quoted in Rhodes, 676.
30. Oppenheimer to Groves, 20 Oct. 1962; quoted in Rhodes, 571–2.
31. FrederickSoddy, The Interpretation of Radium: Being the Substance of Six Free Popular Experimental Lectures Delivered at the University of Glasgow (London: John Murray, 1912; 1st edn 1909), 251.
32. John Hersey, ‘Profiles: Mr. President’, New Yorker (7 Apr. 1951), 50.
33. Tennyson, Locksley Hall, lines 123, 128.
34. Baldwin, quoted in Bomber Command Continues: The Air Ministry Account of the Rising Offensive Against Germany July 1941–June 1942
(London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1942), 49–50.
35. FrederickW. Lanchester, Aircraft in Warfare: The Dawn of the Fourth Arm (London: Constable, 1916), 191f; quoted in Sven Lindqvist, A History of Bombing, trans. Linda Haverty Rugg (London: Granta, 2002), para. 93.
36. Freeman Dyson, Weapons and Hope (New York: Harper & Row, 1984); quoted in Lindqvist, para. 205.
37. ‘Now Terror, Truly’, Newsweek (26 Feb. 1945), 34, 37.
38. Vonnegut, quoted in Rhodes, 593.
39. Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse 5 (London: Vintage, 2000), 130.
40. Vonnegut, quoted in Rhodes, 593.
41. Vonnegut, TV interview by James Naughtie, Culture Show (BBC2, 10 Feb. 2005).
42. Winston Churchill, memo to Gen Ismay, 28 Mar. 1945, UK Public Record Office, CAB 121/3; quoted in FrederickTaylor, Dresden: Tuesday 13 February 1945 (London: Bloomsbury, 2004), 430.
43. Curtis E. LeMay with McKinlay Kantor, Mission with LeMay: My Story (New York: Doubleday, 1965), 352; quoted in Rhodes, 596.
44. US Strategic Bombing Survey 96; quoted in Rhodes, 599.
45. Max Born, My Life: Recollections of a Nobel Laureate (London: Taylor & Francis, 1978; 1st edn 1975), 261.
46. Protocol III of the ‘Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons’, agreed in 1980, covers ‘Prohibitions or Restrictions on Use of Incendiary Weapons’.
47. R. Peierls, review of Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, New York Review of Books (5 Nov. 1987), 48.
48. Churchill, quoted in Ferenc Morton Szasz, British Scientists and the Manhattan Project: The Los Alamos Years (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992), 30.
49. Joseph Rotblat, ‘Leaving the Bomb Project’, BAS, 41 (Aug. 1985), 18.
50. Rhodes, 459.
51. Rotblat, 18–19.
52. L. R. Groves, ‘Memorandum to the Secretary of War’, 23 Apr. 1945; quoted in Arjun Makhijani, ‘“Always” the target?’, BAS, 51, no. 3 (1995), 23.
53.Rotblat in ibid., 24.
54. Memorandum by Groves, Military Policy Committee, 5 May 1943; quoted in Makhijani, 24. Bush and Conant were present at the meeting of the Military Policy Committee.
55. James F. Byrnes, ‘Memorandum for the President’, 3 Mar. 1945; quoted in Makhijani, 26.
56. David Robertson, Sly and Able: A Political Biography of James F. Byrnes (New York: Norton, 1994), 410.
57. Szasz, British Scientists and the Manhattan Project, 30.
58. Szilard, ‘Atomic Bombs and the Postwar Position of the United States in the World’, Spring 1945; 1st published in BAS, 5 (Dec. 1947), 351–3; in CW2, 196 (emphasis in original).
59. ibid., CW2, 197–8.
60. Szilard, document prepared for President Roosevelt but subsequently given to Byrnes (Mar. 1945); in CW2, 206.
61. Szilard, taped interview, May 1960; in CW2, 184–5.
62. ibid., 186.
63. Szilard, transcript of magnetic recordings made May 1956; CW2, 186.
64. ‘avoid mass slaughter’: Szilard, ‘The Story of a Petition’ (28 July 1946); ‘what we did not discuss’: interview in US News and World Report (15 Aug. 1960), 68; both in CW2, 186.
65. Szilard, taped interview, May 1960; in CW2, 187.
66. Szilard to Teller, dated 4 July 1945, but according to Teller the letter arrived in late June; its full text is in Edward Teller with Judith Shoolery, Memoirs: A Twentieth-Century Journey in Science and Politics (Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus, 2001), 204–5.
67. Teller to Szilard, 2 July 1945; in CW2, 208–9.
68. Szilard to Ed Creutz, 10 July 1945; in CW2, 212–13.
69. Szilard, ‘A Petition to the President of the United States’, 17 July 1945; in CW2, 211.
70. The Hiroshima bomb, ‘Little Boy’, contained about 130 lb of uranium 235 altogether. See Richard L. Garwin and Georges Charpak, Megawatts and Megatons: The Future of Nuclear Power and Nuclear Weapons (University of Chicago Press, 2002), 34–5, 59.
71.The Committee for the Compilation of Materials on Damage Caused by the Atomic Bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, The Impact of the A-bomb: Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 1945–85 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1985); quoted in James N. Yamazaki and Louis B. Fleming, Children of the Atomic Bomb: An American Physician’s Memoir of Nagasaki, Hiroshima, and the Marshall Islands (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995), 73.
72. The Committee for the Compilation of Materials on Damage… ; quoted in Rachelle Linner, City of Silence: Listening to Hiroshima (New York: Orbis, 1995), 18.
73. Seiko Ikeda interviewed by Miyko Yamada, ‘The A-Bomb Survivors’, Independ
ent (2 July 2005).
74. Kevin Burke, ed., Pedro Arrupe: Essential Writings (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2004), 50.
75. Wilfred Burchett, ‘Warning to the World’, Daily Express (5 Sep. 1945); in Wilfred Burchett, Shadows of Hiroshima (London: Verso, 1983), 35.
76. Brig. Gen. T. F. Farrell as reported in ‘The Greatest Weapon: Conquest by Atom’, Newsweek, 26 (20 Aug. 1945), 22.
77. For casualty figures in both cities, see Committee for the Compilation of Materials on Damage Caused by the Atomic Bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Hiroshima and Nagasaki: The Physical, Medical, and Social Effects of the Atomic Bombings (New York: Basic Books, 1981), 113, 367–9.
78. Manhattan Engineer District, ‘The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki’, 29 June 1946: http: //www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/MED/index.shtml.
79. ibid.
80. ibid.
81. Laurence, 196.
82. Robert Shaplen, ‘Boiling Nagasaki Inferno’, Newsweek, 26 (20 Aug. 1945), 23.
83. ‘White House Press Release on Hiroshima: Statement by the President of the United States’, 6 Aug. 1945. The full text can be seen at http: //www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/PRHiroshima.shtml.
84. Jacob Bronowski, Science and Human Values (London: Hutchinson, 1961), 13.
85. Manhattan Engineer District.
Chapter 17
1. Hal Boyle, ‘Washington Under the Bomb’, Collier’s (27 Oct. 1951); quoted in Lewis H. Lapham, ed., The End of the World (New York: Thomas Dunne, 2000), 257–8.
2. Wheeler to Feynman, 29 Mar. 1951; Michelle Feynman, ed., Richard P. Feynman: Don’t You Have Time to Think? (London: Allen Lane, 2005), 83–4.
3. Quoted in Laurie Johnston, ‘Einstein Sees Bid to “Annihilation” in Hydrogen Bomb’, NYT (13 Feb. 1950), 1.
4.Donald Porter Geddes, ed., The Atomic Age Opens (New York: Pocket Books, 1945), 40.
5. New York Herald Tribune; in Geddes, 41–2.
6. John W. Campbell, interviewed in PM (7 Aug. 1945); in Geddes, 159–61.
7. Stanley Baldwin, 10 Nov. 1932; in Parliamentary Debates, 5th series, vol. 270, House of Commons (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1932), 631.
8. Brig. Gen. David Sarnoff writing in the NYT (10 Aug. 1945); in Geddes, 163.