The Journey of Anna Eichenwald

by Donald Hunt

  “He was a muscular man with a magnificent furrowed forehead and enormous brown eyes. He was most cordial, but seemed a bit puzzled as to why we were there.”

  Szilard explained about the secondary experiments toward the chain reaction with Uranium and graphite. Surprisingly, Einstein said he had not considered the concept, but quickly visualized the implications of this technology and that it might be developed by the Nazis.

  He was reluctant to approach the Queen directly, but said he would help in any way possible. He dictated a letter to the Belgian Ambassador as Wigner took it down by long-hand in German. That letter was taken back to Princeton, translated and typed in English. Wigner was then off on holiday to California with his family.

  The letter went to Szilard for review. During that time, Szilard was put in contact with Alexander Sachs, a Russian emigrant and economist who had become a consultant to President Roosevelt. Sachs convinced Szilard, who then convinced Einstein that the matter should by-pass the Belgians and go directly to the White House. The letter was revised and the plan was for Sachs to meet with Roosevelt. All of the issues with a weapon of this magnitude could only be imagined. The Hungarians had their own agenda and hoped it would lead to world peace and possibly even a world government.

  Sachs was scheduled to see the President the first week of September 1939. However, history did not cooperate. Hitler had already taken over Austria, the Rheinland neutral zone on the French border, and Czechoslovakia, all with no armed opposition. On September 1, 1939, he boldly invaded Poland.

  Sachs did not see Roosevelt the first week of September, nor the second, third or fourth week. Britain and France declared war on Germany on September 3rd. The Germans were throwing 56 divisions plus nine tank battalions and full air support against 30 thinly spaced Polish divisions that were using WWI armament and artillery. The invasion was a colossal mismatch.

  As Europe was being thrust into yet another conflagration, a debate was going on in the U.S. Congress concerning the bombing of innocents. Long range bombers had been developed since WWI and the fear was that thousands of women and children would be killed or injured as a result. The previous June, the Senate had passed a resolution condemning “inhumane bombing of civilian populations.” Six months before the resolution Roosevelt had requested funds for long range bombers. The drama and debate spread nationwide. Scientific American had the most accurate evaluation, saw the dark truth and put it in print:

  “Although aerial bombing remains an unknown intermediate quantity, the world may be sure that the unwholesome atrocities which are happening today are but curtain raisers on insane dramas to come.”

  Finally, late on Wednesday afternoon, October 11, Alexander Sachs got to see Roosevelt. His aid, General Edwin Watson reviewed Sachs’ agenda then opened the door to the Oval Office.

  “Alex”, Roosevelt said with a broad smile. “What have you been up to?”

  Sachs had copies of Einstein’s letter and the introduction letter from Szilard, but decided to explain them in his own words rather than read them. His version of the fission story emphasized the goodness of atomic energy, power production and in medical treatments, then the potential of a weapon. He purposefully juxtaposed the potential ‘good and evil’ of atomic power. He ended the presentation reading from a 1936 lecture by Francis Aston titled, “Forty Years of Atomic Theory”.

  “Personally I think there is no doubt that sub-atomic energy is available all around us, and that one day man will release and control its almost infinite power. We cannot prevent him from doing so and can only hope that he will not use it exclusively in blowing up his next door neighbor.”

  Roosevelt was listening intently.

  “Alex, what you are after is to see that the Nazis do not blow us up.” “Exactly,” Sachs replied.

  Thus, with the help of a letter from Einstein, the effort to build an atomic bomb in the U.S. was launched.

  * * *

  “Danzig is German, will always be German, and will sooner or later become part of Germany.”

  These words of Adolph Hitler were spoken to Polish Foreign Minister Jozef Beck during the first week of January 1939. The old port of Danzig had been made a free city by the Versailles Treaty, along with a corridor giving Poland access to the Baltic Sea. Now Germany wanted it back. Beck’s reply was that an attempt to take the city by force would lead to armed conflict. Fresh reports of an imminent attack on Poland prompted the British and French governments to pledge support to Poland if attacked. Now a line had been drawn in the sand. For Poland, the wolf was at the door.

  For the first time, the U.S. government made an effort to influence the European process. On April 15, President Roosevelt sent a telegram to Hitler and Mussolini. It was a simple request that those two leaders give assurances they would not attack their European neighbors. Hitler replied in a Reichstag speech on April 28th, filled with ridicule and sarcasm. Soon after this, Hitler retreated to his summer home at Berchtesgaden to supervise the final military plan to invade Poland at summer’s end. A last minute letter to Hitler from Chamberlain gave assurances that an attack on Poland would be considered an attack on England.

  At daybreak on September 1, 1939, German troops poured across the Polish border to attack Warsaw. In support, the German Luftwaffe attacked targets from the air bringing for the first time in world history, swift death and destruction of unimagined magnitude. While people were dying by the thousands in Warsaw, people in Berlin were mostly apathetic. They were dazed to find their country in a war they were sure their Fuehrer would avoid. After all, they had taken Austria and Czechoslovakia without firing a shot. This was a stark contrast to ‘August Days’ of 1914 when the Kaiser and his troops had been cheered with wild enthusiasm. Once again, Germany began a major military action in ‘response’ to a faked attack on a German instillation. During the night of August 31st, German SS men dressed in Polish uniforms attacked the German radio station at Gleiwitz. From the outset, the German invasion was referred to as a ‘counter attack’. It was now of little consequence that the most brutal and destructive war in history was started by a diabolical plot of deception.

  Hitler and Himmler viewing map of troop movements – 1939

  Hanz Eichenwald knew the world of violence and anti-Semitism was closing in around him. He had made a decision to remain in Germany based on two factors. One, he felt that anti-Semitism was pervasive throughout Europe, and any move would be of no benefit from that standpoint. And two, he felt that intellectuals in Germany could remain above the political turmoil. He was correct on the first count but dead wrong on the second. His own daughter, an associate professor of surgery at the University of Berlin, was being watched by the Gestapo and was in danger of being “detained”.

  In April of 1939, Frederic Joliet in Paris published a paper in Nature that documented 3.5 secondary neutrons per fission of uranium. It concluded that if a sufficient amount of uranium were immersed in a suitable moderator, a chain reaction could perpetuate itself. This information had reached the Reich Ministry of Education who, in turn, set up a meeting with the Wehrmacht’s ordinance department. In attendance were Eichenwald, Paul Harteck, a young physicist working in Hamburg, and Kurt Diebner, a nuclear physicist who was working in the ordinance department. Otto Hahn had been invited but in an effort to avoid the issue, arranged to be elsewhere. These three men were asked to evaluate the evidence to date on the possibility of developing a nuclear bomb in Germany or anywhere else. After three hours of discussion, the three men drafted a letter to the German War Office concluding it was possible, perhaps probable, that a nuclear weapon could be produced with explosive potential many orders of magnitude greater than conventional ones.

  By September the War Office Department had consolidated German fission research under its authority and determined the director of research would be Hanz Eichenwald. It was now clear to Eichenwald why he had been allowed to stay in Germany without
persecution. The project would be centered in Berlin at the KWI.

  Other physicists involved included Otto Hahn, Walter Bothe, and Hans Geiger, as well as Harteck and Diebner. It was a strong team. Given the resources and funding, they might just pull it off.

  The first person Eichenwald wanted to talk to was his friend and mentor, Max Planck. Planck had been responsible for bringing Hanz to the KWI, and the Nobel Laureate had been like a second father. The morning after the meeting with the War Department, Eichenwald stopped by Planck’s office. His secretary was accustomed to Dr. Eichenwald’s drop-in visits.

  “He’s in his office,” she said with a smile.

  Max Planck was a physicist of the classical school. At the turn of the century he outlined what was to become known as Quantum Theory. It stated that light and energy do not move in continuous waves but in small ‘bundles’ he called quanta. As a young physicist he had believed that atoms existed only in theory. Now in his 80’s, he was still very bright and enjoying the rapid fire discoveries in the world of physics. As the two old friends shook hands Planck got right to the point. “So, Hanz, you have agreed to head our bomb project.” Eichenwald smiled as he took a sip of his coffee.

  “I’m not so sure the position is voluntary. This seems to be the reason I was not forced to leave the KWI three years ago. At any rate, from a technological standpoint, I’m not sure it can be done; at least not in the four year target date.”

  Planck was a loyal German but no Nazi supporter. Privately he thought Hitler was a mad man. His loyalties were with his country, war notwithstanding. Hanz continued, “I find it strange that the War Department would put a project of this magnitude in the hands of a Jew, especially in view of what this country is doing to the Jews.”

  “You are the best qualified and most of the others have left,” replied Planck. “A number of men who were forced to leave including Teller, Szilard, Fermi and a half a dozen others, are now helping the Americans build their bomb. Hanz, I’m sure you realize you are in a vulnerable position. They may decide to cast you off like so many rotting fish off of a fishing boat. You must remain valuable to them.”

  Hanz did not speak at first. He clearly understood what Planck was saying, made eye contact with his old mentor and nodded his head.

  “I would like to stop by from time to time just to visit,” he finally said. “Anytime,” Planck replied. “I won’t be much help with the physics, but…as a friend.”

  “Thank you.”

  Hanz had gotten the information he needed. He closed the door as he left.

  On the evening of September 20th, Hanz and Marlene Eichenwald faced life issues they could not have imagined three years earlier. A megalo-maniac had plunged their country into a war many Germans neither understood nor wanted. Their daughter was in danger of being arrested. And Hanz had been made director of a military project to support a regime he now hated.

  They picked at their food and tried to finish their meal. Finally, Hanz spoke in a muted voice.

  “Marlene, we must give Anna over to God. She is a treasure to us and I believe a treasure to God as well. We are powerless to protect her. Thousands of Jews are being arrested, but so far Anna has been spared. She is very intelligent and the man who loves her will help her.”

  Marlene looked at her half full plate.

  “I pray you are right. I feel like someone in a boat being swept along by a raging river with no oars and no rudder. We all may survive or we may be dashed on the rocks by the rapids. We have no control.”

  Hanz then shared with his wife that he had no intention of helping the Nazis develop a weapon so they could dominate the world. He had developed a deep and abiding hatred for the Nazis and their pogrom against the Jews. Both of their parents had died and for that they were grateful, but they had a number of relatives who had been placed in ghettos and were being moved to concentration camps. His plan was to remain ‘valuable’ to the War Office at least until he could plan their escape. Now it would be much more difficult and dangerous. Like Anna, he would be watched carefully by the Gestapo.

  The previous year at Bohr’s Copenhagen conference, Hanz met Chaim Weizmann. This fascinating man, a biochemist, was working on fermentation products. He had become good friends with Ernst Rutherford, the legendary New Zealander now working in England. Rutherford had won the 1908 Nobel Prize for unraveling the complex transmutations of certain radioactive elements. Hanz wanted to know more about Rutherford as well as Weizmann. The two men spent an entire afternoon in conversation. As for Weizmann, he was a Zionist and always looking for converts. Born in western Russia and raised the third of 15 children, his family lived in a section that had been cordoned off for Jewish families, the Pale of Settlement. When Weizmann was only an eleven year old, he had written a prophetic letter. He had stated that “the Kings and Nations of the world are plainly set upon the ruin of the Jewish Nation; the Jews must not let themselves be destroyed; England alone may help them to return and rise again in their ancient land of Palestine.”

  By the age of 18 he had worked his way to Berlin and earned a PhD at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. He and his wife immigrated to England where he worked as a research chemist and discovered an anaerobic bacteria that decomposes starch. In the process, he found that one of the decomposition products was acetone, a critical ingredient in the manufacture of cordite, the explosive used in heavy artillery. This led him to a meeting with Winston Churchill, who at the time was the First Lord of the Admiralty. The British were in dire need of cordite and were short because of the shortage of acetone. The Weizmann process could produce an almost unlimited amount of acetone. Thus, Weizmann played a major role in the evolution of WWI and contributed significantly to the Allied victory. The government of Great Britain wanted to honor him is some way, but Weizmann declined any award and simply stated that at sometime in the future England “could do something for my people.”

  Weizmann had become acquainted with Arthur Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary and had made him aware of his dream of the establishment of an Israeli nation in Palestine. In 1917, the Balfor Declaration was issued by Foreign Secretary Arthur J. Balfour endorsing the idea of establishing the idea of establishing a “national home” in Palestine for the Jewish people. Weizmann was indeed grateful and saw this as a beginning for his dream.

  Hanz was curious about Rutherford. The two had met at the Copenhagen conference.

  “Tell me about Rutherford,” he said to Weizmann. “He seems an exceptional man.”

  Weizmann replied, “He is… he really is. His work on alpha particles was elegant, plus he is a very charismatic person. Frequently he has friends and students for dinner on the weekends, followed by long hours of discourse about almost anything, even if he knows nothing about the subject. All in all, he is one of the brightest and most delightful fellows I have met.”

  “And what of politics,” asked Hanz.

  “That’s the one subject he will not discuss and one in which he seems to have no interest.”

  Hanz had taken an immediate liking to Weizmann. As they parted, he turned solemnly to him. “My situation in Berlin is tenuous and there might be a time when the risk reaches critical mass. I would like to stay in touch about my situation.”

  Weizmann reached out his hand. “I look forward to hearing from you. You can always reach me at this number.” He handed Hanz a card. As he turned to leave Hanz said, “Count on it,”

  Chaim Weizmann (to right of Einstein) SS Rotterdam – 1921

  In London at 11:15 a.m. on September 3, 1939, Lord Halifax handed the German charge d’affaires a formal note that stated, “I have the honor to inform you that a state of war now exists between our two countries from today, September 3rd”. An ultimatum was issued by the government of France later that day. This was, in fact, a technicality. There was much more going on behind the scenes. Days before, Mussolini had backed out of any mili
tary action. So early on the morning of the 3rd, Hitler sent an urgent letter to try to draw him back into the alliance. In a much more significant development, the Nazis entered into highly secret negotiations with Russia to join the attack on Poland. In turn Russia would get Lithuania. When the agreement was made public, Stalin was the clear winner, receiving almost half of Poland and control of the Baltic States. In his first encounter with Hitler, Stalin was the clear victor.

  An internal struggle was also brewing in the German Naval High Command. They felt strongly they were not prepared for the war but were forced by Hitler to commit to the action of September 1st. At 9:00 p.m. that same day, the Nazi submarine U-30 torpedoed an unarmed British ocean liner, Athenia, carrying 1,400 passengers. 112 perished, including 28 Americans. The French armed forces, although superior to the Germans in overall strength, failed to act, and the British were simply not prepared. By October 15th, Poland had been swallowed up and no longer existed as a country.

  Marlene Eichenwald had many acquaintances but only two close friends. Victor and Paula Herzog were owners of a small family bakery and pastry shop on Konigstrasse just east of the main post office. When the Eichenwalds first moved from Munich, Marlene had walked past the shop and noticed the front door and sign. The entrance was wooden and in the form of a pumpkin with a glass door in the center. The shop was called “The Pumpkin House.” She met Paula Herzog and they became fast friends. Paula was four years older than Marlene, with short, light brown hair and large hazel eyes. She tended to smile most of the time and was always eager to inquire about the state of affairs of the patrons. She treated regular customers and newcomers in the same, congenial way. Victor did the baking. While everything was good, the pumpkin bread was their specialty. Twice a day, at 9:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m., hot pumpkin bread made its way to the shelves. In the back of the shop was a courtyard with an arbor covered with wisteria and honey suckle. A series of six wooden tables filled the courtyard for coffee, tea and conversation. The Herzogs closed on Shabbat for Synagogue and opened an hour late on Sundays. They did a brisk business.