Authors: Brian Van DeMark
If atomic bombs are to be added to the arsenals of a warring world, or to the arsenals of nations preparing for war, then the time will come when mankind will curse the names of Los Alamos and Hiroshima.
The peoples of this world must unite, or they will perish. This war, that has ravaged so much of the earth, has written these words. The atomic bomb has spelled them out for all men to understand. Other men have spoken them, in other times, in other wars, of other weapons. They have not prevailed. There are some, misled by a false sense of human history, who hold that they will not prevail today. It is not for us to believe that. By our works we are committed, committed to a world united, before this common peril.
22
Oppenheimer spoke for the last time at Los Alamos on November second, the night before he returned to Berkeley. Hundreds jammed the largest auditorium on the Hill to hear their leader’s parting thoughts. It was a stormy night and thunder rolled over the mesa. This was the first—really the only—time at Los Alamos that he felt truly free to speak what was on his mind and in his heart:
I should like to talk tonight as a fellow scientist, and at least as a fellow worrier about the fix we are in…. I would have liked to talk to you at an earlier date—but I couldn’t talk to you as Director…. I think that it can only help to look a little at what our situation is—at what has happened to us—and that this must give us some honesty, some insight, which will be a source of strength in what may be the not-too-easy days ahead….
What has happened to us forced us to re-consider the relations between science and common sense…. They forced us to be prepared for the inadequacy of the ways in which human beings attempted to deal with reality…. In some ways I think these virtues, which scientists quite reluctantly were forced to learn by the nature of the world they were studying, may be useful even today in preparing us for somewhat more radical views of what the issues are than would be natural or easy for people who had not been through this experience….
I think that it hardly needs to be said why the impact is so strong. There are three reasons: one is the extraordinary speed with which things which were right on the frontier of science were translated into terms where they affected many living people, and potentially all people. Another is the fact, quite accidental in many ways, and connected with the speed, that scientists themselves played such a large part, not merely in providing the foundation for atomic weapons, but in actually making them. In this we are certainly closer to it than any other group. The third is that the thing we made… arrived in the world with such a shattering reality and suddenness that there was no opportunity for the edges to be worn off.
In considering what the situation of science is, it may be helpful to think a little of what people said and felt of their motives in coming into this job. One always has to worry that what people say of their motives is not adequate. Many people said different things, and most of them, I think, had some validity. There was in the first place the great concern that our enemy might develop these weapons before we did, and the feeling—at least, in the early days, the very strong feeling—that without atomic weapons it might be very difficult, it might be an impossible, it might be an incredibly long thing to win the war. These things wore off a little as it became clear that the war would be won in any case. Some people, I think, were motivated by curiosity, and rightly so; and some by a sense of adventure, and rightly so. Others had more political arguments and said, “Well, we know that atomic weapons are in principle possible, and it is not right that the threat of their unrealized possibility should hang over the world. It is right that the world should know what can be done in their field and deal with it.” And the people added to that that it was a time when all over the world men would be particularly ripe and open for dealing with this problem because of the immediacy of the evils of war, because of the universal cry from everyone that one could not go through this thing again, even a war without atomic bombs. And there was finally, and I think rightly, the feeling that there was probably no place in the world where the development of atomic weapons would have a better chance of leading to a reasonable solution, and a smaller chance of leading to disaster, than within the United States. I believe all these things that people said are true, and I think I said them all myself at one time or another….
There are [those] who try to escape the immediacy of this situation by saying that, after all, war has always been very terrible; after all, weapons have always gotten worse and worse; that this is just another weapon and it doesn’t create a great change; that they are not so bad; bombings have been bad in this war and this is not a change in that—it just adds a little to the effectiveness of bombing; that some sort of protection will be found. I think that these efforts to diffuse and weaken the nature of the crisis make it only more dangerous. I think it is for us to accept it as a very grave crisis, to realize that these atomic weapons which we have started to make are very terrible, that they involve a change, that they are not just a slight modification….
I think the advent of the atomic bomb and the facts which will get around that they are not too hard to make—that they will be universal if people wish to make them universal, that they will not constitute a real drain on the economy of any strong nation, and that their power of destruction will grow and is already incomparably greater than that of any other weapon—these things create a new situation…. I think when people talk of the fact that this is not only a great peril, but a great hope, this is what they should mean…. There exists a possibility of realizing those changes which are needed if there is to be any peace.
Those are very far-reaching changes. They are changes in the relations between nations, not only in spirit, not only in law, but also in conception and feeling. I don’t know which of these is prior; they must all work together, and only the gradual interaction of one on the other can make a reality…. Atomic weapons are a peril which affect everyone in the world, and in that sense a completely common problem, as common a problem as it was for the Allies to defeat the Nazis. I think that in order to handle this common problem there must be a complete sense of community responsibility. I do not think that one may expect that people will contribute to the solution of the problem until they are aware of their ability to take part in the solution….
I think it is important to realize that even those who are well informed in this country have been slow to understand, slow to believe that the bombs would work, and then slow to understand that their working would present such profound problems. We have certain interests in playing up the bomb, not only we here locally, but all over the country, because we made them, and our pride is involved. I think that in other lands it may be even more difficult for an appreciation of the magnitude of the thing to take hold. For this reason, I’m not sure that the greatest opportunities for progress do not lie somewhat further in the future than I had for a long time thought….
The thing which must have troubled you, and which troubled me, in the official statements was the insistent note of unilateral responsibility for the handling of atomic weapons. However good the motives of this country are… we are 140 million people, and there are two billion people living on earth. We must understand that whatever our commitments to our own views and ideas, and however confident we are that in the course of time they will tend to prevail, our absolute—our completely absolute—commitment to them, in denial of the views and ideas of other people, cannot be the basis of any kind of agreement….
We are not only scientists; we are men, too. We cannot forget our dependence on our fellow men. I mean not only our material dependence, without which no science would be possible, and without which we could not work; I mean also our deep moral dependence, in that the value of science must lie in the world of men, that all our roots lie there. These are the strongest bonds in the world, stronger than those even that bind us to one another, these are the deepest bonds—that bind us to our fellow men.
23
Down beside the Rio Grande River, at the teahouse where Oppenheimer had often sought refuge from his burdens, Edith Warner read a transcript of his remarks in the newspaper a few days later. She had made a point during the war of never questioning Oppenheimer as she quietly served him dinner, but she had sensed all along that he was thinking about more than just science. On November twenty-fifth, she wrote Oppenheimer a letter:
Dear Mr. Opp,
I have thought of you frequently…. So it was especially satisfying to read your recent speech. I hope you do not mind my having it.
As I read, it seemed almost as though you were pacing my kitchen, talking half to yourself and half to me. And from it came the conviction of what I’ve felt a number of times—you have, in lesser degree, that quality which radiates from Mr. Baker [Niels Bohr]. It has seemed to me in these past few months that it is a power as little known as atomic energy, which has greatly increased man’s need for it. It also seems that even recognition of it involves responsibility.
There are many things for which I would express my gratitude…. Your hours here mean much to me and I appreciate, perhaps more than most outsiders, what you have given of yourself in these Los Alamos years. Most of all I am grateful for your bringing Mr. Baker. I think of you both, hopefully, as the song of the river comes from the canyon and the need of the world reaches even this quiet spot.
May you have strength and courage and wisdom,
In Bohr’s view, because the problem of atomic weapons and war
had
to be solved, it
would
be solved; the threat to humanity’s survival simply left no other choice. Bohr believed that scientists should not portray the atomic bomb to the public solely as a potential destroyer, but as a “forceful reminder of how closely the fate of all mankind is coupled together,” and as “a unique opportunity to remove obstacles to peaceful collaboration between nations and to enable them jointly to benefit from the great promises held out by the progress of science.” Bohr saw physicists like himself as the unique agents of this opportunity, both as makers of the bomb and as the teachers of its universal lessons.
25
Bohr looked to Oppenheimer as a key ally in this effort. After settling back in Copenhagen, Bohr wrote to him in November:
I was very sorry that I was not able see you again before my return to Denmark, but, due to difficulties in arranging passage for Margrethe and me, we could not, as we had intended to, return to the U.S.A. before the secret of the project was lifted, and then it was thought advisable that I no longer postponed my return to Denmark.
I need not say how often Aage and I think of all the kindness you and Kitty showed us in these last eventful years, where your understanding and sympathy have meant so much to me, and how closely I feel connected with you in the hope that the great accomplishment may contribute decisively to bringing about harmonious relationships between nations. I trust the whole matter is developing in a favorable way.
26
Oppenheimer shared Bohr’s goal, and sought to achieve it by courting policy makers, whom he believed would listen to him. He was, after all, now an international celebrity and a national hero. Oppenheimer urged other physicists to keep the horrors of atomic war fresh in the public’s mind. “It will not help to avert such a war,” he told them, “if we try to rub the edges off this new terror that we have helped to bring to the world. If I return so insistently to the magnitude of the peril,” he continued, “it is because I see in that our one great hope. As a vast threat, and a new one, to all the peoples of the earth, by its novelty, its terror, its strangely promethean quality, it has become, in the eyes of many of us, an opportunity unique and challenging.”
27
Other physicists besides Oppenheimer began lobbying policy makers, their efforts made easier because policy makers now looked on them much as primitive tribesmen had looked on their shamans: as high priests in touch with mysterious, supernatural forces whose awsome power they alone could fathom. Fermi wrote Washington Democratic Senator Warren Magnuson in September 1945 to warn against the fallacy of an atomic monopoly. “The safety offered this country by the attempt to withhold from foreign powers what we know is only limited,” Fermi stressed. “Any major power could reach our present stage in this development in five years. It would be extremely dangerous to rely on secrecy.”
28
Compton told an audience of civic leaders in St. Louis in November that “if the United States should be a party to an atomic war,” America’s cities would “follow Hiroshima and Nagasaki into oblivion.” “If our nation should eventually win,” Compton said, “what would we have gained? Perhaps the control of the world. But of what value would this be with our civilization gone and our population decimated?” “We must keep in mind,” he added, “that when all are armed with atomic weapons no superiority of one nation can free it from danger of great damage by another.”
29
Rabi agreed with Fermi and Compton—and set out to do something about it. His solution would not be—indeed, could not be—scientific. Try as he might, Rabi could not recapture the single-minded focus on physics he had enjoyed before the war. Now he was an older and wiser man who had experience dealing with the military, politics, and warfare, aware in a way he had not been as a young professor of the complexity of his own equations. Rabi thought that by working from the “inside,” with the government in Washington, he might be able to do something about controlling its dangers.