In 1944 everyone understood that Roosevelt’s fourth term would be his last. The man he selected for Vice President would therefore almost certainly take the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 1948. Byrnes expected to be that man and Roosevelt encouraged him. But the assistant President was a conservative Democrat from the Deep South, and at the last minute Roosevelt compromised instead on the man from Missouri, Harry S. Truman. “I freely admit that I was disappointed,” Byrnes writes with understatement approaching lockjaw, “and felt hurt by President Roosevelt’s action.”2279 He made a point of visiting the European front with George Marshall in September 1944, in the midst of the presidential campaign; when he returned FDR had to appeal to him formally by letter—a document Byrnes could show around—to endorse the ticket with a speech.
Byrnes undoubtedly regarded Truman as a usurper: if not Truman but he had been Roosevelt’s choice he would be President of the United States now. Truman knew Byrnes’ attitude but needed the old pro badly to help him run the country and face the world. Hence the prize of State. The Secretary of State was the highest-ranking member of the cabinet and under the rules of succession then obtaining was the officer next in line for the Presidency as well when the Vice Presidency was vacant. Short of the Presidency itself, State was the most powerful office Truman had to give.
Vannevar Bush and James Bryant Conant had needed months to convince Henry Stimson to take up consideration of the bomb’s challenge in the postwar era. He had not been ready in late October 1944 when Bush pressed him for action and he had not been ready in early December when Bush pressed him again. By then Bush knew what he thought the problem needed, however:
We proposed that the Secretary of War suggest to the President the establishment of a committee or commission with the duty of preparing plans.2280 These would include the drafting of legislation and the drafting of appropriate releases to be made public at the proper time. . . . We were all in agreement that the State Department should now be brought in.
Stimson allowed one of his trusted aides, Harvey H. Bundy, a Boston lawyer, father of William P. and McGeorge, at least to begin formulating a membership roster and list of duties for such a committee. But he did not yet know even in broad outline what basic policy to recommend.
Bohr’s ideas, variously diluted, floated by that time in the Washington air. Bohr had sought to convince the American government that only early discussion with the Soviet Union of the mutual dangers of a nuclear arms race could forestall such an arms race once the bomb became known. (He would try again in April to see Roosevelt; Felix Frankfurter and Lord Halifax, the British ambassador, would be strolling in a Washington park discussing Bohr’s best avenue of approach when the bells of the city’s churches began tolling the news of the President’s death.) Apparently no one within the executive branch was sufficiently convinced of the inevitability of Bohr’s vision. Stimson was as wise as any man in government, but late in December he cautioned Roosevelt that the Russians should earn the right to hear the baleful news:
I told him of my views as to the future of S-1 [Stimson’s code for the bomb] in connection with Russia: that I knew they were spying on our work but had not yet gotten any real knowledge of it and that, while I was troubled about the possible effect of keeping from them even now that work, I believed that it was essential not to take them into our confidence until we were sure to get a real quid pro quo from our frankness. I said I had no illusions as to the possibility of keeping permanently such a secret but that I did not think it was yet time to share it with Russia.2281 He said he thought he agreed with me.
In mid-February, after talking again to Bush, Stimson confided to his diary what he wanted in exchange for news of the bomb. Bohr’s conviction that only an open world modeled in some sense on the republic of science could answer the challenge of the bomb had drifted, in Bush’s mind, to a proposal for an international pool of scientific research. Of such an arrangement Stimson wrote that “it would be inadvisable to put it into full force yet, until we had gotten all we could in Russia in the way of liberalization in exchange for S-l.”2282 That is, the quid pro quo Stimson thought the United States should demand from the Soviet Union was the democratization of its government. What for Bohr was the inevitable outcome of a solution to the problem of the bomb—an open world where differences in social and political conditions would be visible to everyone and therefore under pressure to improve—Stimson imagined should be a precondition to any initial exchange.
Finally in mid-March Stimson talked to Roosevelt, their last meeting. That talk came to no useful end. In April, with a new President in the White House, he prepared to repeat the performance.
In the meantime the men who had advised Franklin Roosevelt were working to convince Harry Truman of the increasing perfidy of the Soviet Union. Averell Harriman, the shrewd multimillionaire Ambassador to Moscow, had rushed to Washington to brief the new President. Truman says Harriman told him the visit was based on “the fear that you did not understand, as I had seen Roosevelt understand, that Stalin is breaking his agreements.” To soften that condescension Harriman added that he feared Truman “could not have had time to catch up with all the recent cables.” The self-educated Missourian prided himself on how many pages of documents he could chew through per day—he was a champion reader—and undercut Harriman’s condescension breezily by instructing the ambassador to “keep on sending me long messages.”2283
Harriman told Truman they were faced with a “barbarian invasion of Europe.”2284 The Soviet Union, he said, meant to take over its neighbors and install the Soviet system of secret police and state control. “He added that he was not pessimistic,” the President writes, “for he felt that it was possible for us to arrive at a workable basis with the Russians. He believed that this would require a reconsideration of our policy and the abandonment of any illusion that the Soviet government was likely soon to act in accordance with the principles to which the rest of the world held in international affairs.”
Truman was concerned to convince Roosevelt’s advisers that he meant to be decisive. “I ended the meeting by saying, ‘I intend to be firm in my dealings with the Soviet government.’ ”2285 Delegates were arriving in San Francisco that April, for example, to formulate a charter for a new United Nations to replace the old and defunct League. Harriman asked Truman if he would “go ahead with the world organization plans even if Russia dropped out.”2286 Truman remembers responding realistically that “without Russia there would not be a world organization.” Three days later, having heard from Stalin in the meantime and met the arriving Soviet Foreign Minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, he retreated from realism to bluster. “He felt that our agreements with the Soviet Union had so far been a one-way street,” an eyewitness recalls, “and that he could not continue; it was now or never. He intended to go on with the plans for San Francisco and if the Russians did not wish to join us they could go to Hell.”2287
Stimson argued for patience. “In the big military matters,” Truman reports him saying, “the Soviet government had kept its word and the military authorities of the United States had come to count on it. In fact . . . they had often done better than they had promised.”2288 Although George Marshall seconded Stimson’s argument and Truman could not have had two more reliable witnesses, it was not counsel the new and untried President wanted to hear. Marshall added a crucial justification that Truman took to heart:
He said from the military point of view the situation in Europe was secure but that we hoped for Soviet participation in the war against Japan at a time when it would be useful to us. The Russians had it within their power to delay their entry into the Far Eastern war until we had done all the dirty work. He was inclined to agree with Mr. Stimson that the possibility of a break with Russia was very serious.2289
Truman could hardly tell the Russians to go to hell if he needed them to finish the Pacific war. Marshall’s justification for patience meant Stalin had the President over a barrel. It was not a
n arrangement Harry Truman intended to perpetuate.
He let Molotov know. They had sparred diplomatically at their first meeting; now the President attacked. The issue was the composition of the postwar government of Poland. Molotov discussed various formulas, all favoring Soviet dominance. Truman demanded the free elections that he understood had been agreed upon at Yalta: “I replied sharply that an agreement had been reached on Poland and that there was only one thing to do, and that was for Marshal Stalin to carry out that agreement in accordance with his word.”2290 Molotov tried again. Truman replied sharply again, repeating his previous demand. Molotov hedged once more. Truman proceeded to lay him low: “I expressed once more the desire of the United States for friendship with Russia, but I wanted it clearly understood that this could be only on a basis of the mutual observation of agreements and not on the basis of a one-way street.” Those are hardly fighting words; Molotov’s reaction suggests that the President spoke more pungently at the time:
“I have never been talked to like that in my life,” Molotov said.
I told him, “Carry out your agreements and you won’t get talked to like that.”
If Truman felt better for the exchange, it disturbed Stimson. The new President had acted without knowledge of the bomb and its potentially fateful consequences. It was time and past time for a full briefing.
Truman agreed to meet with Stimson at noon on Wednesday, April 25. The President was scheduled to address the opening session of the United Nations conference in San Francisco by radio that evening. One more conditioning incident intervened; on Tuesday he received a communication from Joseph Stalin, “one of the most revealing and disquieting messages to reach me during my first days in the White House.”2291, 2292 Molotov had reported Truman’s tough talk to the Soviet Premier. Stalin replied in kind. Poland bordered on the Soviet Union, he wrote, not on Great Britain or the United States. “The question [of] Poland had the same meaning for the security of the Soviet Union as the question [of] Belgium and Greece for the security of Great Britain”—but “the Soviet Union was not consulted when those governments were being established there” following the Allied liberation. The “blood of the Soviet people abundantly shed on the fields of Poland in the name of the liberation of Poland” demanded a Polish government friendly to Russia. And finally:
I am ready to fulfill your request and do everything possible to reach a harmonious solution. But you demand too much of me. In other words, you demand that I renounce the interests of security of the Soviet Union, but I cannot turn against my country.
With this blunt challenge on his mind Truman received his Secretary of War.
Stimson had brought Groves along for technical backup but left him waiting in an outer office while he discussed issues of general policy. He began dramatically, reading from a memorandum:2293
Within four months we shall in all probability have completed the most terrible weapon ever known in human history, one bomb of which could destroy a whole city.
We had shared the development with the British, Stimson continued, but we controlled the factories that made the explosive material “and no other nation could reach this position for some years.” It was certain that we would not enjoy a monopoly forever, and “probably the only nation which could enter into production within the next few years is Russia.” The world “in its present state of moral advancement compared with its technical development,” the Secretary of War continued quaintly, “would be eventually at the mercy of such a weapon. In other words, modern civilization might be completely destroyed.”
Stimson emphasized what John Anderson had emphasized to Churchill the year before: that founding a “world peace organization” while the bomb was still a secret “would seem to be unrealistic”:
No system of control heretofore considered would be adequate to control this menace. Both inside any particular country and between the nations of the world, the control of this weapon will undoubtedly be a matter of the greatest difficulty and would involve such thorough-going rights of inspection and internal controls as we have never heretofore contemplated.
That brought Stimson to the crucial point:
Furthermore, in the light of our present position with reference to this weapon, the question of sharing it with other nations and, if so shared, upon what terms, becomes a primary question of our foreign relations.
Bohr had proposed to inform other nations of the common dangers of a nuclear arms race. At the hands of Stimson and his advisers that sensible proposal had drifted to the notion that the issue was sharing the weapon itself. As Commander in Chief, as a veteran of the First World War, as a man of common sense, Truman must have wondered what on earth his Secretary of War was talking about, especially when Stimson added that “a certain moral responsibility” followed from American leadership in nuclear technology which the nation could not shirk “without very serious responsibility for any disaster to civilization which it would further.” Was the United States morally obligated to give away a devastating new weapon of war?
Now Stimson called in Groves. The general brought with him a report on the status of the Manhattan Project that he had presented to the Secretary of War two days earlier. Both Stimson and Groves insisted Truman read the document while they waited. The President was restive. He had a threatening note from Stalin to deal with. He had to prepare to open the United Nations conference even though Stimson had just informed him that allowing the conference to proceed in ignorance of the bomb was a sham. A scene of darkening comedy followed as the proud man who had challenged Averell Harriman to keep sending him long messages tried to avoid public instruction in the minutiae of a secret project he had fought doggedly as a senator to investigate. Groves misunderstood completely:
Mr. Truman did not like to read long reports. This report was not long, considering the size of the project. It was about twenty-four pages and he would constantly interrupt his reading to say, “Why, I don’t like to read papers.” And Mr. Stimson and I would reply: “Well we can’t tell you this in any more concise language. This is a big project.” For example, we discussed our relations with the British in about four or five lines. It was that much condensed. We had to explain all the processes and we might just say what they were and that was about all.2294
After the reading of the lesson, Groves notes, “a great deal of emphasis was placed on foreign relations and particularly on the Russian situation”—Truman reverting to his immediate problems. He “made it very definite,” Groves adds for the record, “that he was in entire agreement with the necessity for the project.”2295
The final point in Stimson’s memorandum was the proposal Bush and Conant had initiated to establish what Stimson called “a select committee . . . for recommending action to the Executive and legislative branches of our government.” Truman approved.
In his memoirs the President describes his meeting with Stimson and Groves with tact and perhaps even a measure of private humor: “I listened with absorbed interest, for Stimson was a man of great wisdom and foresight. He went into considerable detail in describing the nature and the power of the projected weapon. . . . Byrnes had already told me that the weapon might be so powerful as to be capable of wiping out entire cities and killing people on an unprecedented scale.” That was when Byrnes had crowed that the new bombs might allow the United States to dictate its own terms at the end of the war.2296 “Stimson, on the other hand, seemed at least as much concerned with the role of the atomic bomb in the shaping of history as in its capacity to shorten this war. . . . I thanked him for his enlightening presentation of this awesome subject, and as I saw him to the door I felt how fortunate the country was to have so able and so wise a man in its service.” High praise, but the President was not sufficiently impressed at the outset with Stimson and Harriman to invite either man to accompany him to the next conference of the Big Three. Both found it necessary, when the time came, to invite themselves. Jimmy Byrnes went at the President’s invitation and sat at t
he President’s right hand.
Discussion between Truman and his various advisers was one level of discourse in the spring of 1945 on the uses of the atomic bomb. Another was joined two days after Stimson and Groves briefed the President when a Target Committee under Groves’ authority met for the first time in Lauris Norstad’s conference room at the Pentagon. Brigadier General Thomas F. Farrell, who would represent the Manhattan Project as Groves’ deputy to the Pacific Command, chaired the committee; besides Farrell it counted two other Air Force officers—a colonel and a major—and five scientists, including John von Neumann and British physicist William G. Penney. Groves opened the meeting with a variant of his usual speech to Manhattan Project working groups: how important their duty was, how secret it must be kept. He had already discussed targets with the Military Policy Committee and now informed his Target Committee that it should propose no more than four.2297
Farrell laid down the basics: B-29 range for such important missions no more than 1,500 miles; visual bombing essential so that these untried and valuable bombs could be aimed with certainty and their effects photographed; probable targets “urban or industrial Japanese areas” in July, August or September; each mission to be given one primary and two alternate targets with spotter planes sent ahead to confirm visibility.
Most of the first meeting was devoted to worrying about the Japanese weather. After lunch the committee brought in the Twentieth Air Force’s top meteorologist, who told them that June was the worst weather month in Japan; “a little improvement is present in July; a little bit better weather is present in August; September weather is bad.” January was the best month, but no one intended to wait that long. The meteorologist said he could forecast a good day for bombing operations only twenty-four hours ahead, but he could give two days’ notice of bad weather. He suggested they station submarines near the target areas to radio back weather readings.
Making of the Atomic Bomb Page 86