Before the Fallout

by Diana Preston

  In the United States, President Truman had on 1 o August given the order to suspend further atomic bombing. He spoke to the American people in a nationwide radio broadcast after his return from Potsdam: "Having found the bomb we have used it. We have used it against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans."

  * Later deaths from cancer can be attributed to the effects of the bomb only statisticallv. This is done by assessing how many more deaths from cancer occur in the Hiroshima population than would be expected in a similar population not exposed to radiation. The calculations are fraught with difficulty in identifying comparable populations, and estimates vary widely. Official figures suggest fewer than one thousand such deaths since the end of 1945.

  *The actual force of the explosion is now generally agreed to have been equivalent to around fifteen thousand tons of TNT.

  TWENTY-SIX

  "ANEW FACT IN THE

  WORLD'S POWER POLITICS"

  AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS supported the use of the atomic bomb. The New York Times said on 12 August, "By their own cruelties and treachery our enemies had invited the cruelty." An academic study later showed that of nearly six hundred American editorials, fewer than 2 percent opposed the bomb's use. In Britain it was much the same. The Times editorial pondered the consequences had Germany been first to the bomb and then rejoiced that "in the intellectual sphere as on the battle field the discipline of free minds has its inalienable advantage. Pre-eminence in the pursuit of knowledge must belong to a social system in which men, whatever their origin, are free to follow whithersoever the argument may lead." However, in both countries any concerns expressed stemmed less from worries about the morality of the bombing of Hiroshima than, as the American magazine New Republic put it, "thoughts of its future use elsewhere and specifically against ourselves and our children."*

  The immediate response in the rest of the world's press was not so unanimous as that in Britain and the United States. On 7 August the Vatican's newspaper, I!Osservatore Romana, condemned the dropping of the bomb and juxtaposed its use with Leonardo da Vinci's reputed withdrawal of his invention of the submarine for fear of its misuse. The Swedish Aftenblader on 9 August reflected: "Although Germany began bomb warfare against open towns and civilian populations, all records in this field have been beaten by the Anglo-Saxons. The so-called rules of warfare . . . must brand the bombing of Hiroshima as a first-class war crime. It is all very well if atom raids can shorten the war but this experiment with the population of an entire city as guinea pigs reflects no martial glory on the authors." In France Le Figaro remarked that it was "not probable that the Anglo-Saxons will long remain the sole possessors of this thunderbolt" and looked forward to French participation in nuclear projects.

  Newspaper headline announcing the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima

  Among Allied troops, including those preparing to move from the now quiet European front to take part in the invasion of Japan, there was only relief. On Okinawa American forces fired so many weapons into the air in joy that shell splinters falling back to the ground killed seven men. A British doctor wrote of the atomic bombings: "We were packing for the invasion of Penang Island. None of us wept for the victims. Perhaps we were wrong but on the night the war ended I don't think any of us gave a damn. Reprieve is sweet. I was home six months later." American soldiers thought similarly. A twenty-one-year-old second lieutenant wrote: "When the bombs dropped and the news began to circulate that [the invasion of Japan] would not, after all, take place, that we would not be obliged to run up the beaches near Tokyo assault-firing while being mortared and shelled, for all the fake manliness of our facades we cried with relief and joy. We were going to live. We were going to grow up to adulthood after all."

  Klaus Fuchs was not able to get the details of the Trinity test to his contact until September. Therefore, despite his previous fore warnings, the explosion of the bomb and its massive powrer were still a surprise to the Russian leadership. The London Sunday Times's experienced Moscow correspondent wrote that the news had had an "acutely depressing effect"; "it was clearly realised . . . that this was a newr fact in the world's power politics, that the bomb constituted a threat to Russia and some Russian pessimists I talked to that day dismally remarked that Russia's desperately hard victory over Germany was now 'as good as wasted.'" Stalin told Kurchatov, "Hiroshima has shaken the whole world. The balance has been destroyed." Another of those working on the Russian bomb project, the physicist and future human rights activist Andrei Sakharov, wrote that when he saw the newspaper headline, "I was so stunned that my legs practically gave way. . . . Something new and awesome had entered our lives, a product of the greatest of the sciences, of the discipline I revered."

  Stalin redoubled efforts on the Soviet Union's own weapons program, telling Kurchatov, "If a child doesn't cry the mother doesn't know what he needs. Ask for whatever you like. You won't be refused." The initial Soviet test would closely resemble Trinity, and the main Soviet separation plant near Sverdlovsk would be configured almost identically to the plant at Oak Ridge. Bolstered by further information from Fuchs, the Russians would test their first nuclear weapon on 29 August 1949, beating the British to become the world's second nuclear power.

  The news of Hiroshima reached the German scientists rounded up by the Alsos mission and interned at Farm Hall in the late afternoon of 6 August. Farm Hall was a pleasant country house surrounded by gardens with a tennis court, a good library, and a piano. Each scientist had a German POW as his orderly. When they had first arrived in July, Kurt Diebner had asked Werner Heisenberg, "I wonder whether there are microphones installed here?" Heisenberg laughed and replied, "Microphones installed? Oh no, they're not as cute as all that. I don't think they know the real Gestapo methods; they're a bit old fashioned in that respect." He was entirely wrong. Microphones had been installed in every common room and bedroom when the house was used to train agents so that the British spymasters could check on their morale and loyalty. Thus the officer in charge, Major T. H. Rittner, and his staff were able to listen to all the German scientists' discussions, the content of which confirmed that they did not suspect they were being recorded. He had translated transcripts made of the more interesting points and transmitted them to his own superiors. Other copies went to the U.S. Embassy, whence they reached General Groves.

  In his report for 6 August, Major Rittner recounted how Otto Hahn was the first at Farm Hall to be told of the bomb. "Hahn was completely shattered by the news and said he felt personally responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of people, as it was his original discovery which had made the bomb possible. He told me that he had originally contemplated suicide when he realised the terrible potentialities of his discovery and he felt that now these had been realized and he was to blame. With the help of considerable alcoholic stimulant, he was calmed down and we went down to dinner where he announced the news to the assembled guests. . . . The announcement was greeted with incredulity."

  In a BBC interview Otto Hahn would recall the events of that evening slightly differently. Major Rittner "told me about the dropping of the bomb and I of course was frightened, or should I say very sad about it and depressed and I told the man 'Couldn't you have not done it another way?' [sic] Then the major answered me, 'well I don't care about 100,000 or 150,000 Japs if we can save a couple of our British and American people therefore we dropped the bomb.' The man was very satisfied about it."

  Major Rittner was certainly right about the scientists' incredulity and conceit that anybody else could have done something that they had not achieved. Werner Heisenberg insisted that it was a bluff; "it's got nothing to do with atoms." Carl-Friedrich von Weizsacker said, "I don't believe it has anythi
ng to do with uranium." Otto Hahn, perhaps braced by the alcoholic stimulant provided by Major Rittner, responded, "If the Americans have a uranium bomb then you are all second-raters. Poor old Heisenberg . . . you might as well pack up." A little later, another exchange took place among the three:

  WEIZSACKER: / think it is dreadful of the Americans to have done it. I think it is madness on their part.

  HEISENBERG: One can't say that. One could equally well say 'That's the quickest way of ending the war!

  HAHN : That's what consoles me.

  At 9 p.m. they listened to the official announcement of the bombing on the BBC and appeared to be convinced of its authenticity. There was some squabbling as to why their own program had failed. One of the junior scientists praised the cooperation between the American scientists and contrasted this with the disharmony within their own program wherein "each one said the other was unimportant." Erich Bagge wrote in his diary that day that one reason for the failure was that some of the scientific leaders had looked down on isotope separation "and only tolerated [wrork on] it at the margins." Von Weizsacker rationalized their failure another way: "I believe the reason we didn't do it was because all the physicists didn't want to do it, on principle. If we had all wanted Germany to win the war we would have succeeded." Otto Hahn replied, "I don't believe that but I am thankful we didn't succeed." Heisenberg took up von Weizsacker's theme: "At the bottom of my heart I was really glad that it [the object of their research] was to be an engine [reactor] and not a bomb." Hahn said, "I thank God on my bended knees that we did not make the uranium bomb"—which he called "an inhuman weapon." He later said that he would have "sabotaged the [German] war [effort] if I had been in a position to do so."

  After further discussion together and in small groups, they retired to bed. None of them got much sleep. Otto Hahn wras clearly very depressed and agitated. According to Erich Bagge's diary, "At 2 am there was a knock on our door and Mr. von Laue entered. 'We must do something; I am very worried about Otto Hahn. This news has shaken him horribly, and I fear the worst.' We stayed awake a long time, and only when we were able to tell from the next room that Mr. Hahn had finally fallen asleep did we all go to bed."

  The transcribed discussions on both 6 and 7 August reveal fundamental misunderstandings on the part of the German scientists about how a bomb could be made to work. Heisenberg stated on 6 August that "a ton" of U-235 would be required to produce the critical mass necessary for an explosion. In his explanation of why this was so he used an irrelevant (and arithmetically incorrect) calculation. His description also omitted any discussion of the effect of heat gasifying the material and causing only some 2 percent of it to be consumed. Had Heisenberg realized this, his calculation would have produced an even higher figure of fifty tons. While inaccuracy in calculation can be forgiven in the heat of discussion and the stress of just having heard about Hiroshima, Heisenberg's account seems to miss too many fundamental points for there to be any doubt that the German project was some way from understanding even the theory of an atomic bomb, never mind the engineering practicalities of separating enough fissile material and of constructing one.

  Over the next fewr days the transcripts reveal that the scientists, under the leadership of von Weizsacker, began to develop a rationale of why their work had failed, perhaps designed to protect them against three kinds of criticism: from Germans who thought they should have done better to protect their fatherland; from Allied scientists who could not understand how thev could have worked for Hitler on an atomic bomb; and self-criticism based on doubts about their own scientific abilities and moral values. Von Weizsacker's statement that they did not do it because they did not want to formed one of the two key strands of what Max von Laue called their "version" (Lesart in German) of events, from which he distanced himself. The other justification, not entirely compatible with the first but more pragmatic, was that it was impossible to produce a bomb during the expected duration of the war with the resources available to them. Von Laue noted that during their discussions Heisenberg was "mostly silent."

  · · ·

  The sense of purpose that had fueled Robert Oppenheimer ended wdth the war. He confessed that there was "not much left in me at the moment." Determined to return to academe, he resigned from Los Alamos. In the immediate postwar years he remained an influential adviser to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC)—the successor to the Manhattan Project. However, he did not support the AEC's plans to build the world's first hydrogen bomb based on the release of energy caused by the fusing of hydrogen atoms, believing the fission bomb quite powerful enough for America's military needs.

  Some other scientists, especially Edward Teller, resented Oppenheimer's attitude. The passionately anticommunist Teller feared the Russians would soon acquire the capability to build an atomic bomb and had devoted himself to what he called the "sweet technology" of the hydrogen bomb. His supporters included Ernest Lawrence, and the project went ahead. On i November 1952 the United States conducted the H-bomb equivalent of the Trinity test over the Pacific. The device destroyed an island a mile in diameter, exploding with a force five hundred times greater than Little Boy. To an observer it seemed like "gazing into eternity, or into the gates of hell."

  The news depressed Oppenheimer deeply and convinced him he had lost all influence. Before long he fell victim to the prevailing mood of anticommunist hysteria centered around the Republican senator Joe McCarthy. On 12 April 1954 the New York Times reported that the AEC had suspended Oppen­heimer's security clearance and planned a hearing that day to consider charges that Oppenheimer's left-wing contacts and activities in the 1930s made him unfit to have access to classified information.

  The AEC hearing was held in private and lasted more than three weeks. Op­penheimer was the first witness to appear before the three-man board. Many others followed and, as the transcripts show, most gave him their wholehearted support, but some, including Edward Teller, did not. Under cross-examination Teller stated, "If it is a question of wisdom and judgment, as demonstrated by actions since 1945, then I would say one would be wiser not to grant clearance." By "actions" Teller was no doubt referring to Oppenheimer's overt opposition to the H-bomb, which he interpreted as unpatriotic. The board recommended by two to one that Oppenheimer's security clearance should not be renewed. The AEC endorsed that view but emphasized, somewhat ambiguously perhaps, that though they considered him a security risk, Oppenheimer's personal loyalty was not in question.

  Oppenheimer was deeply wounded but refrained from public denunciation of his detractors. He continued as director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton—a post he had taken up in 1947—and in 1963 the AEC, in a gesture of rehabilitation, aw-arded him the Enrico Fermi Award for outstanding contributions to atomic energy. Throat cancer prompted the chain­smoking Oppenheimer's resignation from the institute in 1966, and he died in his elegant Princeton home the following year at the age of sixty-two. Enrico Fermi himself had returned to the University of Chicago but had died in 19C4, aged just fifty-three, seven months after testifying in Oppenheimer's defense.

  Oppenheimer had always remained on good terms with Leslie Groves. Groves retired from the army in 1948 when General Dwight D. Eisenhower, then chief of staff, who thought Groves insensitive, arrogant, and ruthless, made it plain both that Groves would no longer exercise the same influence on nuclear policy as he had during the war and that he would not be appointed the army's next chief of engineers. Instead, the fifty-one-year-old Groves joined the Remington Rand Corporation. At the 1954 AEC hearings Groves did his best to support Oppenheimer, the man he had always considered a genius, asserting that he "would be astounded" if Oppenheimer had ever committed a disloyal act. However, under cross-examination he admitted that, under a strict interpretation of the AEC's security rules, Oppenheimer should not be given security clearance. Groves would die of a heart attack in 1970.

  Ernest Lawrence excused himself from testifying at the Oppenheimer hearings on health gro
unds. Some colleagues claimed this was simply an excuse—he had been intending to testify against Oppenheimer but could not bring himself to go through with it. Others believed the excuse was genuine—he was suffering from severe ulcerative colitis. Lawrence spent his postwar career raising ever-larger sums for ever-larger cyclotrons. He finally overreached himself with plans for a device that contravened the special theory of relativity and was physically unachievable. His futile strivings to make it w-ork undermined his already frail health. He died in 1958.

  Edward Teller was longer lived. He became the inspiration behind President Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" strategy—the building of a defensive shield in space to ward off missile attack. Some also thought him and his views the inspiration for the movie Dr. Strangelove. He died in 2003 at the age of ninety-five.

  Among the many young American scientists who contributed to the Manhattan Project, the mercurially brilliant, safecracking, wisecracking Richard Feynman stands out. He became a highly influential figure in many areas of postwar science. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for his work on the theory of quantum electrodynamics and played a decisive role in diagnosing the fatal flaw that destroyed the Challenger space shuttle in 1986. Feynman died two years later.