Another Los Alamos leader, Hans Bethe, added his own argument. “I believe the most important question is the moral one,” he said. “Can we, who have always insisted on morality and human decency between nations as well as inside our own country, introduce this weapon of total annihilation into the world?”
President Truman saw it differently. The Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was proving to be ruthless and untrustworthy. It would be dangerous—even irresponsible, Truman figured—to let the Soviets become more powerful than the United States. And, as always, there was a political angle. If the Soviets got the hydrogen bomb first, American voters might blame the president who’d let it happen.
When it came time to make the decision, Truman had one question about the hydrogen bomb: “Can the Russians do it?”
Yes, said his advisors.
“In that case, we have no choice. We’ll go ahead.”
On January 31, 1950, Truman announced that the country was moving forward with work on the hydrogen bomb.
“We keep saying, ‘We have no other course,’” lamented Truman’s advisor David Lilienthal. “What we should be saying is, ‘We are not bright enough to see any other course.’”
Albert Einstein, who had first alerted President Roosevelt to the possibility of building atomic bombs, was deeply disturbed. “If successful,” he said, “radioactive poisoning of the atmosphere and hence annihilation of any life on earth has been brought within the range of technical possibilities.”
*
ON NOVEMBER 1, 1952, on a tiny island in the South Pacific, the United States tested the world’s first hydrogen bomb. It exploded with the incredible force of 10 megatons of TNT. That’s 10 million tons of TNT—more than 500 times more powerful than the bomb that flattened Hiroshima.
Less than a year later, in Kazakhstan, the Soviets successfully tested their first hydrogen bomb.
From this point on, there could be no such thing as winning a nuclear war. “We may be likened to two scorpions in a bottle,” Oppenheimer wrote in a 1953 article, “each capable of killing the other, but only at the risk of his own life.”
Quotes like this got Oppenheimer into trouble. They particularly annoyed Lewis Strauss, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), the government agency in charge of the country’s atomic energy policy. Strauss argued that Oppenheimer’s opposition to the H-bomb was an act of disloyalty to America. He suggested that maybe Oppenheimer had always been disloyal. As evidence, he dug up those flimsy charges the army and FBI had investigated ten years before: that Oppenheimer was secretly a Communist and maybe even a Soviet spy.
Strauss devised a plan for taking Oppenheimer down. He’d have the AEC strip Oppenheimer of his security clearance. Without this clearance, Oppenheimer would no longer be allowed to see secret information on the latest atomic weapons research. He couldn’t advise the government, because he wouldn’t know what was going on.
Oppenheimer had two options: demand a hearing, or simply walk away. He knew by now that nothing he did or said could stop the arms race. But there was a principle involved—he couldn’t let the charges against him go unchallenged. “This course of action,” he told Strauss, “would mean that I accept and concur in the view that I am not fit to serve this government that I have now served for some twelve years. This I cannot do.”
Oppenheimer got his hearing, but it was bogus from the start. Strauss personally picked the panel of judges. The FBI tapped Oppenheimer’s phones and listened in on conversations between him and his attorney. This illegally gathered information was used against Oppenheimer in court.
Strauss and his lead lawyer, Roger Robb, came up with two main lines of attack. First, they argued that Oppenheimer objected to the hydrogen bomb, and therefore was helping to weaken America. Second, that Oppenheimer had never come clean about the so-called Chevalier incident. This was the time in late 1942 when Oppenheimer’s friend, Haakon Chevalier, had come to his house and mentioned that a Soviet agent he knew would be interested in any scientific information Oppenheimer might like to share.
Oppenheimer had hashed it all out with army security officers back in 1943. But now Robb suggested that Oppenheimer had never told the whole truth about the Chevalier incident. If the incident had really been so innocent, Robb asked, why hadn’t Oppenheimer reported it to Leslie Groves right away?
Robb was clearly implying that Oppenheimer had closer contact with the Soviets than he was admitting. The judges were swayed—they voted to revoke Oppenheimer’s security clearance. “Dr. Oppenheimer is not entitled to the continued confidence of the government,” declared the AEC.
*
OPPENHEIMER WAS ONLY FIFTY YEARS OLD, but friends said he suddenly looked older.
“I think it broke his spirit, really,” Robert Serber said of the ruling.
“I think to a certain extent it actually almost killed him, spiritually,” agreed Isidor Rabi. “It achieved what his opponents wanted to achieve; it destroyed him.”
During the hearing a friend mentioned that Oppenheimer, with his scientific reputation, would be welcome at any top university in Europe—why not go?
Tears glazed Oppenheimer’s eyes as he said, “Damn it, I happen to love this country.”
Even after the hearing, the FBI continued listening in on Oppenheimer’s phone calls. When he and his family flew to the Caribbean island of St. John for a vacation, agents kept watch. “According to the plan,” declared one FBI report, “Oppenheimer will first travel to England, from England he will travel to France, and while in France he will vanish into Soviet hands.”
Actually, Oppenheimer sat on the beach for a few weeks. Then he went home to New Jersey.
He continued working in Princeton until his retirement in 1966. That same year he was diagnosed with cancer of the throat. He died in 1967, at the age of 62.
*
ALL THE WHILE the arms race expanded.
In 1954, the United States tested a massive 15-megaton hydrogen bomb on the tiny Pacific island of Bikini Atoll. A cloud of radioactive dust spread over 7,000 square miles of ocean. To this day, the radioactive soil of Bikini Atoll makes the island uninhabitable.
Soviet bomb makers responded with the biggest atomic explosion in history—an incredible 50-megaton monster. The test knocked down brick buildings 25 miles from the blast. The shock wave cracked windows 500 miles away.
Other countries decided they needed the bomb as well. Great Britain tested its first atomic bomb in 1952. France followed with its first bomb test in 1960. Then came China in 1964, and India in 1974.
The United States and Soviet Union continued racing. The race was no longer to build bigger bombs—the bombs were already too big for any possible target. The race was to build more bombs, and faster and more accurate ways to deliver them by airplane, submarine, and missile. By the mid-1980s the two sides had a total of 65,000 nuclear bombs. Each side could now destroy the other’s cities within minutes of the start of war. The rivals had enough bombs to destroy all human life—many times over.
The world has since stepped back a bit from this cliff.
In the late 1980s, the United States and U.S.S.R. began negotiating treaties to reduce the number of atomic weapons. The reductions have continued since the end of the Cold War. Together, the United States and Russia now have about 22,000 atomic weapons.
But other countries have joined the nuclear club. Pakistan tested a uranium fission bomb in 1998. North Korea has had the bomb since 2006. Israel may have about eighty atomic bombs, though it will not officially confirm or deny its bomb program. In 2011, United Nations inspectors announced that they had found evidence that Iran was very likely working, in secret, to build its own atomic arsenal.
The big question is: Will any of these bombs ever be used?
Most of the world’s atomic bombs are still in the hands of the United States and Russia. And while our two countries are not exactly friendly, tensions are far lower than they were during the Cold War. For now, at least, it’s ha
rd to imagine a realistic series of events that could lead to a massive exchange of atomic bombs.
But other dangers exist. One is the nightmare scenario of a terrorist group getting hold of an atomic weapon. Another is that an actual government—like the secretive rulers of North Korea—might just be crazy enough to lash out with atomic bombs. Or long-time enemies India and Pakistan could go to war, as they have several times, and this time the shooting could escalate into a nuclear battle.
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.
Anderson, Herbert L. “Fermi, Szilard, and Trinity.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Oct. 1974, pgs. 40–47.
Badash, Lawrence, Joseph Hirschfelder, Herbert Broida, editors. Reminiscences of Los Alamos, 1943–1945. Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1980.
Bernstein, Jeremy. Hitler’s Uranium Club: The Secret Recordings at Farm Hall. New York: Copernicus Books, 2001.
Blum, John Morton, editor. The Price of Vision: The Diary of Henry A. Wallace. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1973.
Churchill, Winston. The Hinge of Fate. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950.
Feklisov, Alexander, and Sergei Kostin. The Man Behind the Rosenbergs: Memoirs of the KGB Spymaster. New York: Enigma Books, 2004.
Fermi, Laura. Atoms in the Family. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961.
Ferrell, Robert H., editor. Harry S. Truman and the Bomb: A Documentary History. Worland, WY: High Plains, 1996.
Feynman, Richard P. Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! Adventures of a Curious Character. New York: Bantam Books, 1986.
Feynman, Richard P. What Do You Care What Other People Think? Further Adventures of a Curious Character. New York: Bantam Books, 1989.
Frisch: What Little I Remember. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979.
Fuchs, Klaus. Statement made at British War Office, January 27, 1950. Available online at www.mi5.gov.uk.
Goudsmit, Samuel Abraham. Alsos. New York: Henry Schuman, Inc., 1947.
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