Bomb (28 page)

And if you think atomic explosions in Asia wouldn't affect Americans, consider this. A study published in
Scientific American
in 2010 looked at the probable impact of a “small” nuclear war, one in which India and Pakistan each dropped fifty atomic bombs. The scientists concluded that the explosions would ignite massive firestorms, sending enormous amounts of dust and smoke into the atmosphere. This would block some of the sun's light from reaching the earth, making the planet colder and darker—for about ten years. Farming would collapse, and people all over the globe would starve to death. And that's if only half of one percent of all the atomic bombs on earth were used.

In the end, this is a difficult story to sum up. The making of the atomic bomb is one of history's most amazing examples of teamwork and genius and poise under pressure. But it's also the story of how humans created a weapon capable of wiping our species off the planet. It's a story with no end in sight.

And, like it or not, you're in it.

RACE TO TRINITY

Albert Einstein's letter to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, warning of the possibility that Germany might be developing an atomic weapon.

Top left: Fermi's atomic pile under construction, November 1942. Uranium was loaded into the holes in the graphite blocks. Top right: The bomb core is carried to a waiting vehicle on its way to the tower at Trinity, July 1945. Bottom right: The 100-foot tower that will house the gadget. Bottom left: The core (right) is ready for insertion into the gadget (left).

Top left: The fully assembled gadget is raised on a pulley. Top right: The gadget awaits the test at the top of the tower. Bottom left: The Trinity explosion .006 seconds after detonation. Bottom right: The explosion .127 seconds after detonation.

Top: A mushroom cloud roils over Trinity 12 seconds after detonation. Bottom left: Aerial view of the crater created by the Trinity test. Bottom right: Robert Oppenheimer and Leslie Groves survey the remains of the test tower on a visit to the site, September 9, 1945.

SOURCE NOTES

AS I SAID IN THE BEGINNING,
this is a big story, and I had a lot to learn before I could pull it all together. Here's the list of books and other sources I used. If you'd like to find out more about any particular aspect of the bomb race, these sources might help.

Bomb Race Sources

My book weaves together three basic story lines: the Americans try to build a bomb, the Soviets try to steal it, and the Allies try to sabotage the German bomb project. Each of the sources below focuses on some part of one or more of these stories. The bible on this whole subject, by the way, is Rhodes's
The Making of the Atomic Bomb
.

Conant, Jennet.
109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos
. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005.

Gallagher, Thomas.
Assault in Norway: Sabotaging the Nazi Nuclear Program
. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 1975.

Haynes, John Earl, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev.
Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America
. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.

Holoway, David.
Stalin and the Bomb: the Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939–1956
. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994.

Jungk, Robert.
Brighter Than a Thousand Suns
:
A Personal History of the Atomic Scientists
. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1956.

Lamont, Lansing.
Day of Trinity
. New York: Atheneum, 1965.

Laurence, William.
Dawn Over Zero: The Story of the Atomic Bomb
. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1947.

Los Alamos National Laboratory Public Affairs Office.
Los Alamos 1943–1945: The Beginning of an Era
. Los Alamos, NM, 1986.

Mears, Ray
. The Real Heroes of Telemark
. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2003.

Persico, Joseph E.
Roosevelt's Secret War: FDR and World War II Espionage
. New York: Random House, 2001.

Powers, Thomas.
Heisenberg's War: The Secret History of the German Bomb
. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 1993.

Rhodes, Richard.
Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb
. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.

Rhodes, Richard.
The Making of the Atomic Bomb
. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986.

Serber, Robert.
The Los Alamos Primer: The First Lectures on How to Build an Atomic Bomb
. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992.

Shirer, William, L.
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960.

Toland, John.
The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936–1945
. New York: The Modern Library, 2003.

Zoellner, Tom.
Uranium: War, Energy, and the Rock that Shaped the World
. New York: Viking, 2009.

Character Sources

Here's a list of sources dealing with one or more of this book's important characters. I'd say
American Prometheus
is the single best Oppenheimer book, but there are a lot to choose from. Two other favorites were Moss's
Klaus Fuchs
and Hornblum's
The Invisible Harry Gold.
Albright and Kunstel's
Bombshell
is a priceless source because the authors actually met with Ted Hall before he died.

Albright, Joseph, and Marcia Kunstel.
Bombshell: The Secret Story of America's Unknown Atomic Spy Conspiracy
. New York: Times Book, 1997.

Bird, Kai and Martin Sherwin.
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
. New York: Vantage Books, 2005.

Cook, Haruko Taya and Theodore F. Cook.
Japan at War: An Oral History
. New York: The New Press, 1992.

Cole, K.C.
Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens: Frank Oppenheimer and the World He Made Up.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2009.

Davis, Nuel Pharr.
Lawrence and Oppenheimer
. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1968.

Dawidoff, Nicholas.
The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg
. New York: Pantheon Books, 1994.

Goodchild, Peter,
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Shatterer of Worlds
. New York: Fromm International Pub. Corp., 1985.

Hall, Joan. Interview on PBS program “Secrets, Lies, and Atomic Spies.” Broadcast Feb. 5, 2002.

Herken, Gregg.
Brotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller
. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2002.

Hornblum, Allen M.
The Invisible Harry Gold: The Man Who Gave the Soviets the Atom Bomb
. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010.

Larsen, Rebecca.
Oppenheimer and the Atomic Bomb
. New York: Franklin Watts, 1998.

McCullough, David.
Truman
. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.

Moon, Thomas and Carl F. Eifler.
The Deadliest Colonel
. New York: Vantage Press, 1975.

Moss, Norman.
Klaus Fuchs: The Man Who Stole the Atom Bomb
. London: Grafton Books, 1987.

Norris, Robert S.
Racing for the Bomb
. South Royalton, VT: Steerforth Press, 2002.

Pais, Abraham.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Life
. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Roberts, Sam.
The Brother: The Untold Story of Atomic Spy David Greenglass and How He Sent His Sister, Ethel Rosenberg, to the Electric Chair
. New York: Random House, 2001.

Royal, Denise.
The Story of J. Robert Oppenheimer
. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1969.

Steeper, Nancy Cook.
Gatekeeper to Los Alamos: Dorothy Scarritt McKibben
. Los Alamos, NM: Los Alamos Historical Society, 2003.

Sykes, Christopher.
No Ordinary Genius: The Illustrated Richard Feynman
. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1994.

Williams, Robert Chadwell.
Klaus Fuchs: Atom Spy
. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.

Primary Sources

Here's the heart of the book—firsthand accounts by participants in the bomb race, found in a huge variety of memoirs, interviews, articles, letters, speeches, hearings, secret recordings, and a few primary source collections. Leslie Groves, Richard Feynman, Knut Haukelid, Paul Tibbets, and others take you
inside
the bomb race, while Harry Gold gives his version of history in his testimony in
Scope of Soviet Activity in the United States
, a series of congressional hearings held in 1956. Oppenheimer never wrote an autobiography, but he tells his story though letters, interviews, and testimony in
In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer
, the 1954 hearing that brought him down.

Alvarez, Luis. Interview conducted by Charles Weiner and Barry Richman, February 15, 1967. Recording housed at Niels Bohr Library and Archives, College Park, MD.