Pandora's Keepers

by Brian Van DeMark

  Bethe relieved the pressure by hiking nearly every Sunday in the nearby mountains, frequently climbing Lake Peak (12,500 feet) across the Rio Grande Valley in the Sangre de Cristos. At the top, through a fringe of cedars, spread an alpine meadow extravagantly carpeted with purple mariposa lilies. These hikes gave Bethe a chance to unburden himself by giving his body exercise and his mind a chance to wander. Others went on weekend camping and fishing trips, rock-gathering expeditions, pueblo visits, and other activities that relieved the tensions of the project and the weight of the moral justifications of bomb making. Some would ride the bus to Santa Fe and sit in the plaza in the center of town, drowsing in a sunny siesta, then dine at the La Fonda, an adobe hotel with exposed beams and wooden balconies. Others walked the quiet streets of old Santa Fe, peering over adobe walls that seemed to soak up the abundant sunshine into the romantic and exotic gardens within. Some found that they could never leave their work behind. They were missing something.

  On December 30, 1943, an older man arrived on the Hill as a consultant to the British delegation. His security guards referred to him as “Mr. Nicholas Baker” but physicists instantly recognized “Mr. Baker” as Niels Bohr. Bohr’s long odyssey from Copenhagen to Los Alamos had begun in April 1940, when Germany invaded and occupied Denmark. Half Jewish, Bohr was put under surveillance and his phones were tapped. Secretly communicating with the Danish resistance, he urged his country’s leaders to fight Jewish deportations from Denmark, even as German troops patrolled the street in front of his institute.

  In late September 1941, as German troops neared Moscow and looked poised to knock Russia out of the war, Bohr received a visit from Heisenberg. The two had once been very close—mentor and beloved protégé. Now Heisenberg was back as the leading scientist of a nation that seemed on the verge of conquering all of Europe. Bohr greeted his former student with careful politeness and invited him into his office at the institute. They busily avoided each other’s eyes as they began their conversation. Shy and arrogant, Heisenberg expressed his confidence that Germany would win the war but told Bohr that if the war lasted long enough it would be decided by atomic bombs, said that he was involved in such research for Nazi Germany, and had no doubt that it could be done. After the war, Heisenberg would claim that he was subtly hinting at moral qualms about building an atomic weapon in wartime and suggesting that physicists on both sides of the conflict should refuse to do so. But Bohr, fearful and shaken, did not see it that way. He later recalled that Heisenberg “gave no hint about efforts on the part of German scientists to prevent such a development.” 60 Visibly startled by what Heisenberg had said but trying to contain his deep fright, Bohr said nothing and suddenly cut short the conversation. Afterward, he confided to his family that Heisenberg had tried to pry information from him about fission and, by implication, the Allied atomic project. Hans Bethe was probably closest to the truth when he later remarked that “one talked with one set of assumptions and the other with a totally different set of assumptions.” 61 The meeting, however, unquestionably intensified Bohr’s suspicion, and fear, that the Nazis were racing toward an atomic bomb.

  Two years later, in September 1943, Bohr learned from the Swedish ambassador in Copenhagen that deportation of Danish Jews would begin soon. The ambassador hinted that Bohr, whose mother was Jewish, would be arrested himself. Confirmation came the next morning from an informer at Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen who had seen orders for Bohr’s arrest and deportation. Late that afternoon, Bohr and his wife, Margrethe, walked to a seaside garden and hid in a gardener’s shed. They waited anxiously for nightfall. Then, at a prearranged time, they left the shed and crossed to the beach. From the beach a motorboat took them out to a fishing boat. Dodging German minefields, they crossed the choppy sound between Denmark and Sweden by moonlight.

  When Bohr landed in Sweden, a Swedish officer was told to bring him to Stockholm and to attract no attention on the way. (The officer was too proud of having the famous Dane in his charge, so despite orders he stopped in many places for a drink, each time saying, “Do you know whom I am escorting to Stockholm…?” 62 ) When Bohr reached Stockholm the next day, he was put up in the home of a Danish diplomat and never went out alone. Britain moved its diplomatic pouch in and out of Sweden in a fast, unarmed bomber that flew at a high altitude to avoid German antiaircraft batteries along the coast of Norway. The plane’s bomb bay was fitted for a single passenger. Temporarily leaving his wife behind, Bohr boarded the plane for the flight to England on October sixth. Once in London, he learned from British scientists that fission research had progressed a great deal since his stay in Princeton four years earlier. An atomic bomb was being made at Los Alamos, the British were preparing to send a team there, and they wanted Bohr to join it.

  Bohr agreed to join the British team at Los Alamos. When he reached the United States in December, his first stop was the sprawling U-235 separation plant at Oak Ridge. Seeing what he saw, and being one of the most farsighted of men, he had no doubt now that the atomic bomb would be built, and would be a presence in the world forever. Groves joined him afterward at the Met Lab, and together they boarded a train for Los Alamos. Bohr did most of the talking as their train hurtled south across the Plains and then west over the Rockies, Groves struggling all the while to understand Bohr’s mumbled words. When they finally reached Los Alamos, Oppenheimer was there to greet them. He noticed that Groves looked tired and irritated. He asked the general what the trouble was. “I’ve been listening to Bohr,” he grumbled. 63

  Oppenheimer arranged a reception for Bohr at his home with other physicists. When Bohr spotted Teller, he said, “Didn’t I tell you that you could not make a nuclear explosive without turning the whole country into a huge factory? Now you have gone and done it.” 64 Bohr then related an account of his personal adventures, including his conversation two years earlier with Heisenberg. He said that Heisenberg and other talented German physicists were diligently working on a bomb. The thought of how far the Nazis might have come in the years since the discovery of fission was enough to make everyone at the reception shudder. Bohr also related what he knew about Nazi-occupied Europe to those who had left loved ones behind. The atmosphere was very somber.

  The first question Bohr put to physicists at Los Alamos was: “Is it really big enough?”—was the atomic bomb they were building big enough to make future wars too destructive to be contemplated? Bohr made a clear distinction between the bomb’s wartime use, which he considered an all but inevitable military decision, and its political and diplomatic implications, which bore on the longer-range issues of world peace and security and relations among nations. “What role it [the bomb] may play in the present war,” Bohr wrote, was a question “quite apart” from the overriding concern: the need to avoid an atomic arms race. 65

  Bohr’s thinking was shaped by two assumptions: first, the bomb’s destructiveness would be unprecedented and indiscriminate; and second, such a weapon could not be monopolized—sooner or later it would be developed by other nations—thus posing the frightful prospect of a nuclear arms race. Bohr had no doubt that scientists in the Soviet Union would also grasp the significance of the bomb and convey their understanding to Stalin just as scientists in the United States had conveyed their understanding to Roosevelt. He also believed that if statesmen could be made to see the military and political implications of atomic weapons, they would respond positively to international control. There were no historical precedents to guide them, he knew, but the threat of a nuclear-armed world was also unprecedented. If national security was not achieved by nations through international control of atomic energy, he concluded, they would inevitably indulge in an arms race that would plant the seeds of their own destruction. These ideas would become Bohr’s central preoccupation from 1943 until the end of the war. 66

  Bohr spent many hours that winter discussing his ideas with Oppenheimer, who was deeply impressed. Bohr had articulated thoughts and sentiments that lay unformed and unexpress
ed in Oppenheimer’s own mind and conscience. Indeed, Oppenheimer was so taken by the depth and insight of Bohr’s thinking that he began to regard him as a kind of sage. One afternoon, as Oppenheimer and his assistant David Hawkins were escorting Bohr from the Tech Area back to his room at Fuller Lodge, they skirted Ashley Pond and Bohr tested the ice along the bank. “My God,” Oppenheimer whispered to Hawkins, “suppose he should slip? Suppose he should fall through? What would we all do then?” 67

  Oppenheimer noticed that Bohr never seemed relaxed. He always had a sad expression on his face and looked as though he carried all of the cares of the world on his broad shoulders. In a very real sense he did, and he knew it. Bohr forced his colleagues to come to terms with what they were doing. He inspired them to begin their soul-searching—and to think about the future. Numerous Los Alamos physicists poured out their worry and guilt to him in private discussions that went on far into the night. He understood; he spoke the same language; he shared the responsibility. He did not need to remind them of the evils of Nazism or the horror of an atomic bomb in Hitler’s hands, but he did not shy away from the ethical and moral problems raised by building a weapon of mass destruction and the terrifying potential of a nuclear arms race.

  Bohr spoke the bravest words in the most hesitant and gentle voice. He always seemed to look straight at his listener and his face was difficult to forget, with its eyes full of intelligence and sadness. He addressed matters squarely and frankly. Always the paradoxist, he continued to argue that every problem bore the seeds of its own solution. And here he believed that the atomic bomb could not only end this war but even end war as a means of settling disputes between nations. His thinking brought hope to others who wanted to believe that such a devastating weapon would make leaders see that future wars would be suicidal.

  Bohr used hikes with other physicists in the mountains and canyons around Los Alamos to spread his message. As he had done during the train ride with Groves, he placed huge demands on his listener. He spoke very low and softly, often with a pipe clenched in his teeth. People closed in around Bohr to hear, but as they pressed near his voice fell further, until finally the listeners formed a straining, hushed knot around him. “He speaks, everyone listens,” was the saying on the Hill. “And you had to listen,” remembered a physicist who was there, “because he spoke in such a low voice that you couldn’t hear if you didn’t.” 68 “This is the keston,” Bohr would say. “What does ‘keston’ mean?” a frustrated listener would say. “Keston means question,” someone would finally realize. 69

  Convinced that international control could be achieved only if the Soviet Union was told about the Manhattan Project before the bomb was a certainty and before the war was over—thus creating a postwar political climate of cooperation rather than confrontation—Bohr set out to convince President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to approach Stalin on this all-important subject. Bohr did not think technical details of the bomb should be revealed to the Russians; he simply thought that informing them of the bomb’s existence might open the way for some sort of international arms control agreement. He understood that such an initiative did not guarantee the Soviet Union’s postwar cooperation; but he also believed that its cooperation was unlikely, if not impossible, unless such an initiative was made. The timing, moreover, was crucial: the initiative had to be made before developments proceeded so far as to make an approach to the Russians appear more coercive than friendly.

  Bohr contacted Roosevelt through Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, a friend and adviser of FDR whom Bohr had befriended at the University of Oxford before the war. Frankfurter invited Bohr to lunch at the Supreme Court when Bohr returned to Washington in February 1944. There, in the privacy of Frankfurter’s chambers, Bohr presented his ideas. Frankfurter relayed them to the president in an Oval Office meeting at the end of the month. Roosevelt confronted a dilemma: on the one hand, to exclude Stalin from any official information about the bomb—even though FDR had been informed by Army Intelligence that the Soviet Union was already getting information about vital secrets through espionage—was bound to affect Soviet perceptions and thus the prospects for postwar cooperation; on the other hand, to continue to withhold such information might yield diplomatic leverage and military advantages vis-à-vis Russia after the war against Nazi Germany was over.

  Whatever his thinking, Roosevelt left Frankfurter with the impression that he was “plainly impressed” by Frankfurter’s account of the matter. When Frankfurter had suggested that the solution to the problem of the atomic bomb might be more important than the plans for a United Nations, FDR had ostensibly agreed. Moreover, he had authorized Frankfurter to tell Bohr that he might inform “our friends in London that the President was most eager to explore the proper safeguards in relation to [the bomb].” Frankfurter also told Bohr that Roosevelt was “worried to death” about the bomb and was very eager for all the help he could get in dealing with this problem. 70

  In April, Bohr traveled to Britain specifically to see Churchill. While waiting for an audience with the prime minister, he was sent a letter by a Russian physicist. After alerting British security officers, Bohr went to the Soviet embassy in London to pick up the letter, where a Soviet diplomat asked him what information he had about secret war work by American and British scientists. Bohr finessed the question by quickly changing the subject, but to Bohr the inquiry meant that the Soviets knew of the Manhattan Project and were probably working on a bomb of their own. This reinforced Bohr’s conviction that the only solution was international control.

  Bohr finally won an appointment at 10 Downing Street on May 16, 1944. The meeting misfired from the start. Churchill was preoccupied, with D day only three weeks away. Bohr began by mumbling in his typically discursive way. Churchill grew impatient. Here was a scientist presuming to advise him about international affairs and naive enough to urge informing the Russians about the most secret Anglo-American project of the war. The prime minister curtly told him: “I cannot see what you are talking about. After all, this new bomb is just going to be bigger than our present bombs. It involves no difference in the principles of war. And as for any postwar problems, there are none that cannot be amicably settled between me and my friend, President Roosevelt.” Churchill preferred an Anglo-American monopoly of the bomb to postwar international control as a way to check Soviet adventurism and to preserve Britain’s influence in the world. Before he would tell Stalin anything about the bomb, he wanted some assurance of cooperation. To Bohr, that was putting the cart before the horse. As the meeting ended, Bohr, sensing failure, asked if he could send the prime minister a letter developing the points he wanted to make. “It will be an honor for me to receive a letter from you,” answered Churchill, but then added tartly, “But not about politics.” 71 “We did not speak the same language,” Bohr said ruefully afterward. 72

  Churchill’s assumptions about the bomb and his expectations about the future were, of course, governed by his understanding of the past. He did not anticipate that the bomb would revolutionize international relations and he did not believe anything could be gained by surrendering the atomic monopoly he thought America and Britain would enjoy after the war. 73

  Bohr returned to the United States less than a week after D day, buoyed by the thought that the war was entering its final phase but discouraged by his failure to persuade Churchill. He reported to Frankfurter on his dismal meeting with the prime minister and Frankfurter carried the news to Roosevelt, who expressed a willingness to see the Danish physicist again. The meeting was arranged for August twenty-sixth. FDR received Bohr in the Oval Office late that afternoon for an hour and a half of private talk. He welcomed Bohr with a big smile. Bohr sat down beside the president’s desk. In front of him windows framed a view of the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial. Roosevelt was warm, cordial, and amiably sympathetic, as usual.

  The two men spoke in a frank and encouraging manner. Bohr told his son, Aage, after the meet
ing that Roosevelt agreed an approach to the Soviet Union had to be tried along the lines that Bohr suggested. The president said he was optimistic that such an approach would yield a “good result.” In his opinion, Stalin was enough of a realist to understand the bomb’s revolutionary importance and consequences. FDR also expressed confidence to Bohr that Churchill would come around to his view of things. The two leaders had disagreed before, he said, but they always resolved their differences in the end. Roosevelt told Bohr another meeting might be useful after he had talked with Churchill at the second Quebec Conference to be held the following month. 74

  Bohr was hopeful as Roosevelt met Churchill in Quebec on September eleventh and the two leaders then traveled to the president’s estate along the Hudson River in upstate New York a week later to continue their talks more privately. High on their agenda was the Manhattan Project. Seated amid the brilliant foliage of a Hyde Park autumn, FDR and Churchill signed a secret agreement that codified their position on the bomb. The heart of their joint agreement said this:

  The suggestion that the world should be informed regarding [the Manhattan Project] with a view to an international agreement regarding its control and use, is not accepted. The matter should continue to be regarded as of the utmost secrecy… Enquiries should be made regarding the activities of Professor Bohr and steps taken to ensure that he is responsible for no leakage of information, particularly to the Russians. 75

  Roosevelt and Churchill had resolved to maintain the Anglo-American atomic monopoly—despite Bohr’s warning that it was a chimera—as a counter against Stalin’s postwar ambitions. The two leaders, unable to grasp the technical fact that fission was common knowledge among scientists throughout the world and that Japan, Germany, and Russia—like Britain—had not pursued a bomb because they lacked the resources in the middle of a war, could not conceive of forgoing an advantage they thought would assure the peace on terms they felt deep in their hearts were best for mankind. Their agreement may also have reflected their fear that Stalin’s mistrust would only be aroused if he were informed of the project’s existence and then did not receive detailed information about it. Whatever the reasons, Bohr was never invited to meet with either leader again. There would be no attempt at international control before the bomb became a reality. And at the very moment FDR and Churchill signed their secret agreement, a member of the British team at Los Alamos, Klaus Fuchs, was busy betraying many of the details of the bomb to Soviet agents. The hoped-for monopoly would not last long.