Before the Fallout

by Diana Preston

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  Another major "what if?" relates to the conduct of the German atomic bomb program. What if the key German scientists had been more committed to their work on an atomic bomb for Hitler? The question contains a major assumption that these scientists could have been more committed. There is considerable evidence for varying degrees of lack of commitment. Many—von Weizsacker, Heisenberg, Hahn, and Strassmann, for example—were not members of the Nazi Party when it was politic to be so. Hahn helped Lise Meitner to flee and met and corresponded with her thereafter. Strassmann, with Hahn's knowledge, risked his life and that of his family to hide the Jewish pianist Andrea Wolffenstein. Houtermans got word of the German work on the atomic bomb out to the United States through Fritz Reiche. Even after being warned off by the Gestapo, Heisenberg made tentative attempts to help some of his colleagues.

  Edward Teller saw a continuing "conflict between Heisenberg's patriotism and Heisenberg's thorough unwillingness to help the Nazis." He also recalled, "I could not imagine that he would support the Nazis willingly, much less do so enthusiastically." Teller's remarks are typically clear-cut and the reality perhaps less so. Heisenberg and von Weizsacker made compromises with the authorities when, as von Weizsacker stated in a private conversation with Heisenberg at Farm Hall, they were aware that "the right [correct] position [for us] would really have been in a concentration camp [as protestors] and there are people who chose that." Heisenberg remained involved because, like many others, he was a German patriot w ho feared the consequences of defeat particularly by the Russians at least as much as those of victory. Heisenberg was also naive and tactless and entirely unable to appreciate the perspectives of others and hence the impact of his words and actions upon them. In the words of Sam Goudsmit to Rudolf Peierls, long after the war, the problem was that "this great physicist, our idol, wrasn't any better [morally] than we are."

  Levels of commitment fluctuated with the progress of the war. When Heisenberg visited Niels Bohr in Copenhagen in autumn 1941, when the Germans seemed to have nearly won the war, one of Heisenberg's messages was that Bohr must accept the reality of a German victory. At around that time too, Houtermans, despite previously leaking information to the Allies at great personal risk, told his superiors and others of his work on plutonium instead of attempting to conceal it. Perhaps scientific conceit played a part, but there was also an element of accommodating to the likely outcome of the war. Such pragmatism seems to have influenced most of the Germans who remained, with the notable exception of Max von Laue, who did not work on the German bomb project and gave moral support to Jewish former colleagues. According to Houtermans, when he told von Laue that he was worried about the possibility of Germany making a bomb during the war, von Laue's ambiguous reply was "An invention is not made which one doesn't want to make."

  The twro waiters of the memorandum that spurred Britain and the United States to action—Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls—both commented in 1965 about the attitude of the German scientists they had known well before the war. Peierls suggested, "In the west, we all felt that this was our war and that for Hitler to acquire complete domination of the world would be a disaster. The German scientists, I think, were not so identified with their owrn regime. . . . it may be that as a result they were less active in thinking about these possibilities." Peierls, however, added a sentence suggesting plausibly that scientific curiosity might have kept them involved despite themselves: "The possibility was a very exciting thing for any physicist, whatever you decide to do with it."

  Otto Frisch thought similarly: "In the first place I think it is true to say that all the best scientists did not wish to have such a frightful weapon in Hitler's hands. I think that many of them hoped that once the war was over and won the Nazi regime could be disposed of, or softened or civilized . . . but they didn't want them to get the tremendous power that would go with possession of such a weapon. Second, there were very bad relations on the whole between scientists and government and military in Germany. The scientists regarded the government simply as a source of revenue to be otherwise kept at arm's length."

  If we accept that most German scientists had misgivings about producing a bomb which may have unconsciously inhibited their work, does this mean that the full implication of their "version" of events, developed at Farm Hall and later, should be accepted—that is, that if they had been fully committed, they could have made a bomb on the same timescale as the Allies and even that some of the scientists tried to sabotage the war effort? There is no evidence to substantiate any sabotage. There is, however, considerable evidence that the Germans did not understand the physics necessary to make a bomb, such as that revealed by Heisenberg's failure to describe the physics at Farm Hall, and in particular to identify the correct critical mass, and by Bothe's disregard of the potential of graphite as a moderator. As one of them said at Farm Hall, they also looked down on essential isotope-separation work perhaps as more chemical engineering than physics.

  The German project was, as admitted in the recorded conversations at Farm Hall, riven by personality differences and rivalries. Competition between the army, the Reich Research Council, and the Kaiser Wilhem Society fragmented rather then focused the German program, and scientists competed against each other for scarce supplies of heavy water. Heisenberg was undoubtedly a great physicist, but he was not a great leader or project manager in the way that Groves was. Until the war he never oversaw any major project. He was not an enthusiastic experimentalist, as evinced by his near failure in his doctoral exams when questioned about how experiments and equipment worked. He was also not renowned for skill at undertaking mathematical calculations to back up his brilliant insights. "Though a brilliant theoretician," according to Rudolf Peierls, "he was always very casual about numbers."

  The German project never employed more than about one hundred scientists. Even multiplying this figure ten or fifteen times to allow for technicians and other workers produces a total workforce of only around i percent of the Manhattan Project. Even had German scientists shown more commitment and pressed for greater resources from Speer and others, it is by no means clear they would have been forthcoming. The V-i and V-2 rocket programs and the jet aircraft program had both begun before the war and had clear priority. In 1941, when the scientists seem to have had the greatest commitment, the very reason for that increase in commitment—the perceived proximity of a German victory—would have worked against them because they could not claim a bomb would have been finished in time to end the war.

  One reason why Britain moved its work to the United States was a lack of resources. Another was fear that German bombing might destroy any facilities constructed. Similarly, the Germans at Farm Hall and elsewhere recognized that, had they increased their resources, the British and Americans would have quickly become aware of this and destroyed their plants, just as they attacked the Vemork heavy water factory and the laboratories in Berlin. They were right. Not only did the Allies have a committed agent in Paul Rosbaud, they also had excellent photoreconnaissance aircraft, which would have been bound to identify any large-scale plant. They were also prepared to contemplate abduction or assassination of key personnel such as Heisenberg.

  Therefore, leaving any moral queasiness on the scientists' part aside, it is highly unlikely that Germany would have been able to make an atom bomb before it was defeated. It may well have been able to make a "dirty bomb," which, attached to a V-1 or V-2 rocket, could have distributed radioactive material over London, as feared by several of the scientists at Los Alamos, or along the Normandy invasion beaches, as General Groves warned General Eisenhower. However, for whatever reason, in practice no one in Germany seems to have considered this option.

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  A final question addresses the human element in the story. What if Niels Bohr had not mumbled? All an individual's attributes are important to whether they succeed in their chosen task. Leo Szilard said after his unsuccessful meeting with Secretary of State James Byrnes that
it might have been better for the world if he, Szilard, had been secretary of state and Byrnes a physicist. Hans Bethe said that the Manhattan Project "changed everything; it took scientists into politics." The requirement on scientists to understand the wider world applies in reverse, of course, to politicians and laypeople in regard to science. Rudolf Peierls said in 1986, "I'm afraid forty years ago we overestimated the capacity of those in power to understand the implications of what we had created."

  In fact, interaction across these boundaries had begun before Los Alamos at the time when Leo Szilard was voicing his first concerns about the nuclear bomb. Such interchanges required a whole new set of skills from the scientists. To be good scientists had previously required people to be intelligent and knowledgeable in their own sphere. However, it did not require them to be good communicators, or good with people, to be politically aware, or to display good judgment of any kind in any area other than science, and even then only on a specialized subject. Atomic energy was perhaps the first subject among several that now exist—such as genetics and nanotechnology—to require scientists first to communicate their findings effectively and then to decide whether to express a view on their use or to present options or simply to say, "Here they are; this is what they mean; it is for others to decide to what use they should be put."

  Robert Oppenheimer's view was simple: A scientist could not stop such a thing as the bomb. "If you are a scientist, you believe that it is good to find out how the world works; that it is good to find out what the realities are; that it is good to turn over to mankind at large the greatest possible power to control the world and to deal with it according to its lights and values." However, individuals' personalities determine what attitude they take to these challenges. Their abilities outside science determine their success. Niels Bohr was a great scientist and a warm, compassionate human being who found it easy to win the affection and respect, both scientific and general, of his colleagues. Yet, when he tried to move out of his own sphere into the political, he failed because he could not communicate properly. Within physics the difficulty of understanding him in print and in speech was well-known and affectionately tolerated. Robert Oppenheimer once said it was "easy for even wise men not to know what Bohr was talking about." A greater ability to communicate (and perhaps to listen) might have given Bohr more political influence. It would certainly have provided greater clarity about some of the major events such as the Copenhagen meeting in which he was involved. Similarly, if Szilard had been less eccentric or egocentric, he might have won more allies and convinced more people. If Heisenberg had been more empathetic and less conceited, he might have seen things differently.

  Marie Curie insisted that "in science we must be interested in things, not in persons." William Penney, who retained no personal papers, went farther: "People are not important—history is too much about people." Both were wrong. History—even the history of science—is inherently about people, how they thought, what they did with their thoughts, and howr they interacted with the individuals immediately around them and then with society and the greater world order. All involved in this story—regardless of race, sex, creed, age, or intellectual ability—had the potential to act individually. In thinking about history but, above all, about the future, we should not depersonalize situations but remember our individual responsibility for them and the consequences for others. The plea of a Hiroshima survivor stands out: "When I was younger they used to call us atomic bomb maidens—more recently they called us hibakusha [atom bomb survivors]. . . . I don't like this special view of us. I'd like to stand up as an individual."

  * About three thousand B-29S would have been needed to drop conventional bombs carrying the amount of TNT equivalent to the bomb Enola Gay dropped on Hiroshima.

  *Discrimination may have been subliminal. In 1922 Lise Meitner's inaugural university lecture, "The Significance of Radioactivity for Cosmic Processes," was reported in the academic press as a talk about the significance "of Radioactivity for Cosmetic Processes."

  NOTES AND SOURCES

  Abbreviations used in this section

  AIP. American Institute of Physics, College Park, Md., U.S.

  BBC. Interview and program transcripts in the production files of the BBC Written Archives Centre, Caver sham, Berkshire, U.K.

  CCC. Churchill College, Cambridge, U.K. Among the papers consulted, JC denotes James Chadwick, LM denotes Lise Meitner, and NF denotes Norman Feather.

  CUL/R. Cambridge University Library, Cambridge, UK/the Ernest Rutherford Papers.

  CUL/S. Cambridge University Library, Cambridge, UK/Henry Stimson's diary (on microfilm; the original is at Yale University).

  LIV. Liverpool University Physics Department Archive, Liverpool, U.K.

  LOC. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., U.S.

  NARA. U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Md., U.S.

  PRO. U.K. National Archive, Kew, London, U.K. Individual file numbers are given in each case.

  UCLA/BL. University of California/ Bancroft Library, Berkeley, Calif., U.S.

  Prologue

  "an airplane . . . blue sky"; "A parachute is falling"; "an indescribable light": Account of Futaba Kitayama, published in Bombing Eye-Witness Accounts by Hiroshima City and available on the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum Web site.

  "a giant purple . . . terribly alive"; "Fellows . . . history": P. W. Tibbets, Mission Hiroshima, p. 227.

  "When I... peeled off"; "Suddenly inaction": Account of Futaba Kitayama.

  "dried squid . . . to eat": Account of Dr. Hiroshi Sawachika from www.inicom.com/ hibakusha /hiroshi. html.

  "cried after all": P. Fussell, Kansas City Star and Times, 30 August 1981.

  "This is history": H. S. Truman, Year of Decisions, p. 421.

  "This revelation . . . comprehension": Times (London), 7 August 1944. (PREM/8/109, PRO contains the text and earlier drafts.)

  "torturing regrets . . . moment": P. Monck quoted in P. Boyer, By the Bomb's Early Light, p. 16.

  "witches' sabbath": Quoted in R. Pflaum, Grand Obssession—Madame Curie and Her World, p. 160.

  "wholly new . . . away": P. Jordan quoted in R. Jungk, Brighter Than a Thousand Suns, p. 9.

  "It was . . . creation": These quotes are from R. Oppenheimer's 1943 BBC Reith Lectures reproduced in his book Science and the Common Understanding. The quotes are on p. 37.

  "moonshine": Rutherford quoted in the Times (London), 12 September 1933.

  "physicists sin": Los Alamos Science, Winter / Spring 19835. 2c.

  "not completely guilt": BBC interview with Robert Oppenheimer for "The Building of the Bomb."

  "killed subject": M. Oliphant quoted C. P. Snow, Variety of Men, p. 10.

  "maid's work": Quoted in W Lanouette, Genius in the Shadows, p. 274.

  "bombardment ... cities": Times (London), 2 September 1939.

  "may . . . country": The Frisch-Peierls memorandum (see chapter 9 for detailed reference).

  One. "Brilliant in the Darkness"

  "brilliant in the darkness": Quoted in the Lancet, 21 November 1907.

  "one of.. .youth": M. Curie, Pierre Curie, p. 81.

  "during these years future work"; "the habit... work": Ibid. p. 82.

  "icy atmosphere of criticism": Letter of 1 8 March 188 8, E. Curie, Madame Curie, p. 80.

  "very cold lacked coal"; "to be able bedcovers": M. Curie, Pierre Curie, p. 84.

  "It was .allliberty": Ibid., p. 85.

  "the tender hours": Pflaum, Grand Obsession, p. 40.

  "a kiss need": Quoted in S. Quinn, Marie Curie, p. 114.

  "women . . . rare"; "when . . . struggle": Pierre Curie's entry in his diary as a young man of twenty-two, M. Curie, Pierre Curie, p. 36.

  "his simplicity confidence"; "a surprising kinship": Ibid., p. 34.

  "It would legitimate": Ibid., p. 35.

  "little queen": Letter from M. Curie to M. Sklodovski of 10 November 1897, quoted in E. Curie, Madame Curie, p. 158.


  "x-ray proof underwear": E. Larsen, The Cavendish Laboratory, p. 31.

  "I hear rays": M. J. Nye, Before Big Science, p. 148.

  "We do not... in toto!": Punch, 25 January 1896.

  "the unconscious . . .genius"; "shining out . . . background": W Crookes, Proceedings of the Royal Society, Obituary Notices of Fellows Deceased, A. 83, xxii, 1909-10.

  "much excited study of it": M. Curie, Pierre Curie, p. 89.

  "The element.. .find it": E. Curie, Madame Curie, p. 166.

  "with passionate substance ": Ibid., p. 167.

  "must be enormous": Paper of 26 December 1898 presented to the French Academy of Sciences.

  "one of us"; "radioactivity property": Ibid.

  "miserable old shed": M. Curie, Pierre Curie, p. 92.

  "extremely handicapped personnel": Ibid., p. 47.

  "sometimes . radium": Ibid., p. 92.

  "our precious . . . enchantment": Ibid., p. 49.

  "Are our bicycles . . . oil": H. C. Bolton quoted in L. Badash, Scientists and the Development of Nuclear Weapons, p. 17.

  "butterfly wings of radium": E. Curie, Madame Curie, p. 243.

  "Madame burns": Ibid., p. 207.

  Two. A Rabbitfrom the Antipodes

  "That's dig": Quoted in A. S. Eve, Rutherford, p. 11.

  "would have been . . . mathematics": Quoted in A. Brown, The Neutron and the Bomb, P. 45