109 East Palace

by Jennet Conant

  The cooperation between the British and American scientists was an event of international significance and represented the culmination of two years of negotiations between Churchill and Roosevelt. In 1939 and 1940, when fission work in the United States was still moving at a snail’s pace, the British scientists were making considerable progress and were confident enough of atomic energy’s potential usefulness as an explosive weapon to impress both Lawrence and Oppenheimer during the Berkeley conference in the summer of ’42. With Groves’ approval, Oppenheimer had reciprocated by sending the British a report on the conference’s conclusions to Rudolf Peierls, the director of the British bomb project, which was code-named Tube Alloys. Peierls, a Dutch Jew, had been rescued by the Academic Assistance Committee and had joined the British effort. By then, the constant bombing and threat of invasion had forced Churchill to concede that they needed the United States’ help in researching and developing an atomic bomb if it were to be completed in time to help save their island from Nazi domination. The Americans, however, had remained wary and were reluctant to share classified military weapons and techniques. After the fall of France, the British, in a bold move, had sent a delegation headed by Sir Henry Tizard across the ocean to try to initiate the exchange of secret military and scientific research. In a series of meetings in Washington, D.C., and Tuxedo Park, New York, the British scientists had overwhelmed the suspicious American army and navy officers with tangible evidence of their crucial breakthrough in the field of radar, proving to their red-faced hosts that the United States was, as an astounded Vannevar Bush had reported to Conant, “five years behind on the detection of planes.” After that, the Americans and British entered into an unprecedented partnership to start a secret wartime radar laboratory to develop powerful new detection devices that would help England in its life-and-death struggle, and speed the day of victory.

  But when it came time to pool their valuable atomic information, both countries played their cards close to the vest. The prime minister’s advisors were reluctant to surrender what they believed was the one thing that could continue to guarantee Britain’s status as the preeminent imperial power. The Americans, galvanized by the Pearl Harbor disaster, were happy for all the technical assistance the British could provide but, as soon as the project was poised to move from the research stage to large-scale production, became skittish about who would control the fruits of their collaboration. Talks between Churchill and Roosevelt had become increasingly tense as the two nations bickered over who would gain more military and diplomatic advantages in the postwar world, and it was another eight months before they resolved their differences. Finally, by the summer of ’43, Britain, realizing it was in no position to compete with the United States’ huge commitment of money and resources, agreed to the resumption of a “full and effective collaboration,” with the production plants based in the United States. In the fall, a Combined Policy Committee was established, and by late 1943, British atomic scientists began arriving in the United States and were assigned to the various Manhattan Project laboratories.

  Earlier that fall, during his last visit to Los Alamos, Groves had briefed Oppenheimer on the select list of people whom he could expect at Los Alamos. The eminent British physicist Sir James Chadwick, discoverer of the neutron, would be leading the mission, which to Dorothy’s surprise contained only a handful of actual Englishmen and instead included German, Austrian, Swiss, and Polish scientists, all sporting brand-new British passports. “There were around twenty members,” Dorothy recalled, ticking off the list with her encyclopedic memory for names and faces: Otto Frisch, the nephew of Lise Meitner and one of the first to arrive; Rudolf Peierls; William Penney; Ernest Titterton; Philip Moon; James Tuck; Joseph Rotblat; Egon Bretscher; and Klaus Fuchs, to name a few.

  One name on the list stood out from all the others: Niels Bohr. The Danish physicist was a living legend, and his narrow escape to Sweden in October had been the talk of the mesa for weeks afterward. The story had been told and retold: Bohr, despite being half Jewish, had defiantly remained in occupied Copenhagen, and on the day he learned that he had been slated for arrest by the Germans, he and his wife slipped away to the seaside. They hid in a gardener’s shed until nightfall, when the underground had arranged for a small fishing boat to take them across the sound to safety in Sweden. Just before leaving, Bohr received a tip that the following day all Jews and other “undesirables” were to be rounded up and deported. At great personal risk, he traveled immediately to Stockholm, which was thick with German spies, and campaigned relentlessly to help secure the asylum in Sweden of more than seven thousand Danish Jews.

  After receiving a formal invitation to come to England from Lord Cherwell, Churchill’s scientific advisor, the fifty-eight-year-old physicist made the last leg of his trip huddled in the bay of a Mosquito bomber, losing consciousness during the flight when the plane climbed in altitude and he failed to hear the pilot’s instructions to put on his oxygen mask. Bohr remained in London for several weeks, where he was reunited with his son Aage, who along with another of Bohr’s sons had crossed into Sweden separately. Bohr was briefed by Chadwick on the progress of the secret Tube Alloys project and agreed to join the delegation that was being sent to America to help build the bomb. The British were delighted at the prospect of having the Danish Nobel laureate and his son as part of their team and considered this quite a feather in their cap. The Bohrs were to travel to America separately, and there was so much subterfuge and mystery attached to their plans that one member of the mission asked why “they hadn’t been packed and sent in a crate; it would have been so much simpler.”

  By the time the British began trickling into Los Alamos in groups of twos and threes, there was already a frosty chill in the air. There was no room on Bathtub Row for the distinguished guests—even neighboring Snob Hollow was packed to overflowing—so they were apologetically informed that the bachelors would be put up in the Big House, but married scientists would have to make do with houses in the newer, less desirable part of town. Most had come on their own, though in some cases their families would follow later, so they easily accommodated themselves to dorm living. The British were impressed by the speed of the construction and watched in amazement as workmen laid a foundation of a few concrete blocks and then, using wooden planks nailed to a framework of timber, completed a new cabin in only a couple of days. While the Americans complained about the shoddy buildings, to the war-weary British, who had endured the blackouts and bombardments of wartime England, life at Los Alamos seemed safe and relatively comfortable. There was no nightly wail of the air-raid sirens and no waking up to find a well-known building had been reduced to an empty shell. Just the chance to eat fresh fruit and fried eggs after several years of wartime austerity was an unheard-of luxury.

  For many of them, this was also their first introduction to the United States, and the dizzying altitude and dry climate could not have been more different from that of their soggy island. Otto Frisch, who arrived with the first contingent, thought that Los Alamos, with its alien landscape and eccentric inhabitants, was the most exceptional “small town” he had ever seen: “I had the pleasant notion that if I struck out on any evening in an arbitrary direction and knocked on the first door that I saw I would find interesting people inside, engaged in music making or in stimulating conversation.”

  The British were also pleased and surprised to find themselves reunited with so many of their European cohorts at Los Alamos and, despite the fractious negotiations that preceded their coming, by the warm and collegial atmosphere that greeted them. Two old school buildings behind Fuller Lodge were renovated for their use, and they were quickly made to feel at home. Oppenheimer had originally planned to have Chadwick head up his own team at the laboratory, but the mission brought badly needed specialists in nuclear physics, electronics, and explosives, and he ended up plugging them into the existing divisions where they could do the most good. The hardest thing for them to adjust to was the distinguishe
d American director’s informal style, which extended from the laboratory uniform of jeans and open-neck shirts to calling everyone by his first name. Oppenheimer apparently startled more than one proper Englishman by strolling over, his thumbs dangling from his big Mexican silver belt buckle, and greeting him with the words, “Welcome to Los Alamos, and who the devil are you?” But the new arrivals were very good sports, particularly during the first few meetings when, as Frisch recalled, it seemed that almost everyone answered to the name Bob.

  The British scientists’ firsthand experience of war had a sobering effect on many of the young American scientists. Shortly after their arrival, Bill Penney, a British mathematician who was an expert on the effects of blast waves, gave a talk at one of the colloquiums on the damage caused by the German bombardment of England, and his cool recitation of the facts and figures left the audience in a shocked silence. “His presentation was in the scientific matter-of-fact style, with his usual brightly smiling face,” recalled Peierls, who was only able to stay at the site for a few days of conferences and meetings, but would be rejoining the mission later. “Many of the Americans had not been exposed to such a detailed and realistic discussion of casualties.” After that, his impressed American colleagues dubbed him “the smiling killer.” (Months later, people were stunned by the news that Penney’s wife was among those killed in one of the worst bombing raids on London.) The refugee scientists brought with them their personal experiences of exile and persecution, and the hardships and tragedies that followed. Rudolf Peierls and his Russian wife, Eugenia, had fled Austria for England, but had grown so afraid of the pummeling blitz and what would happen if the Nazis invaded that they had packed their two children, aged four and six, off to Canada. They had endured a separation of four long years and were finally reunited again in America, and Peierls was looking forward to their joining him on the Hill in the summer. Joseph Rotblat’s wife and family were missing in Poland, and he had no idea if they were alive or dead. (It was not until after the war that Rotblat learned she had been killed in Lublin.) There were no words for the overwhelming anger and sadness the Americans felt at hearing these stories, or the gnawing sense that time was working against them. The atomic weapon that could stop the death and destruction was still many months away from being a reality, and was new and unproven. The uncertainty and frustration were almost unbearable at times, but it made them all the more resolved to get on with the job and complete the awful task they had been assigned.

  The first Christmas on the mesa was hard on everyone, particularly the members of the new British contingent, as it was punctuated by thoughts of the hard times at home and families and relatives in harm’s way. But there was nothing to do but make the best of it, and people decorated their homes and threw holiday parties in an effort to make the season as festive as possible. There were many formal dinners, and to mark the occasion the men wore black tie and the women got dressed up in their finest evening clothes and carefully picked their away across boards laid along the side of the muddy roads so as not to ruin their shoes. The weather cooperated by blanketing Los Alamos in white, hiding the bulldozed fields and construction scars under deep drifts of snow. Foot-long icicles hung from the shingled water tower. The town resembled an old-fashioned Christmas card, with a thick frosting of powder transforming the lodge and rustic log cabins into gingerbread houses. Each evening, the sunset turned the snowcapped mountains in the distance a delicious pink, like mounds of strawberry ice cream. The air was cold, dry, and crisp. Apart from the occasional blizzard, the winter sky was cloudless, and the sun was hot on their faces. Everyone took up sledding and skiing, raiding the supply of old equipment left behind by the schoolboys. Ice skating became a favorite weekend activity. The skating pond was down in Los Alamos Canyon, and the soldiers built a shelter and bonfire pit, where people could warm their hands on bitter cold nights. The pond became a popular gathering spot and was crowded with families and courting couples on Sundays.

  The army did its best to get into the holiday spirit, and one of the ubiquitous memorandums designated one hillside as an official “tree-hunting area.” Soldiers cut down Christmas trees of every size and shape for the laboratory personnel to choose from. A huge blue spruce was chopped down and erected in Fuller Lodge and strung with lights. Dorothy cornered the market on tinsel and trimmings at the Woolworth’s in Santa Fe and did her best to fill all the orders for ribbon, paper, and candles. She rushed parcels up to the Hill as soon as they arrived, loading them onto the buses. She asked local merchants to stock assorted seasonal delicacies she thought some of the foreign scientists might be missing, including good brandy and cigars. She advised a few ambitious physicists where they might hunt for wild turkeys and instructed more than one urban housewife on how to pluck and dress the birds for cooking. She also warned them to be sure to remove as much of the lead shot as they could or they would be in for a rude surprise at dinner. Two days before Christmas, Kitty called down and asked Dorothy to get her a big goose for their holiday meal. It was such short notice, that Dorothy practically turned the town upside down until she finally located one and had it sent straight up. She later grumbled that all she got for her trouble was Kitty’s complaint that it had “a crooked breast.”

  On Christmas Eve, the community chorus piled into the back of an army truck and sang carols as they slowly drove around town. It was a strange and lovely Christmas, but the true cause for cheer that holiday season arrived in the person of Niels Bohr and with his son Aage, who quietly materialized on the mesa in late December. Security mandated that Bohr’s comings and goings be as stealthy as possible, so even the Daily Bulletin, which barraged them with announcements and orders, made no mention of their celebrated visitor. Oppenheimer had taken the added precaution of assigning both Bohrs, as well as Chadwick, pseudonyms in advance as, he wrote Groves, they would doubtless be receiving all kinds of important long-distance calls and mail, and “it would be preferable if such well known names were not put in circulation.” As soon as they set foot on American soil, Groves’ security force presented them their new identities: Niels Bohr became “Nicholas Baker,” and his son Aage was “Jim Baker.” Following the complicated instructions given to them before they left New York, the Bohrs/Bakers got off the train at the stop before Lamy, where they were met by an army car. They were then driven to an isolated stretch of road, transferred to another vehicle, and then whisked up to the site.

  Bohr’s arrival at Los Alamos buoyed everyone’s spirits. He was famous as one of the fathers of quantum theory and had taught a whole generation of physicists how to change their way of thinking to accommodate the uncertainty principle and the dual particle-wave nature of matter. Many of the project members had studied with him and had made the pilgrimage to his Institute of Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen. But above all, he was the man who had first reported to American scientists the news of fission—that the Germans had produced an atomic fission which could lead to the vast release of atomic energy. It was, in effect, the warning shot in the arms race that had soon consumed physicists and changed their profession, and their lives, forever. He was not very old, but to them he seemed ancient, the great pioneer of quantum theory and the embodiment of wisdom. Caught like all of them in the grip of history, he had come to the desert to preside over the building of the first atomic bomb. Fresh from his frightening experience at the hands of the Nazis, Bohr, whose sad face seemed to have borne witness to a world of experience beyond that of most of the mesa’s young scientists, appeared to them as a kind of spiritual leader.

  “Bohr at Los Alamos was marvelous,” Oppenheimer recalled in a lecture after the war. “He made the enterprise seem hopeful when many were not free of misgiving.” Bohr reenergized them with his passionate words about Hitler and reassured them that no one would succeed in enslaving Europe in the same way again. “He said nothing like that would ever happen again,” said Oppenheimer. “And his own high hope that the outcome would be good, and that in this the role o
f objectivity, the cooperation which he had experienced among scientists would play a helpful part; all this, all of us wanted very much to believe.”

  “It was the first time we became aware of the sense in all these terrible things,” recalled Victor Weisskopf. “Because Bohr right away participated not only in the work, but in our discussions. Every great and deep difficulty bears in itself its own solution… . This we learned from him.”

  As it turned out, Bohr had not escaped Europe empty-handed. He had brought with him a drawing that the German physicist Werner Heisenberg, a brilliant former protégé, had secretly passed to him after a troubling conversation about the military applications of atomic energy and the moral implications of doing such work. Afterward, Bohr suspected Heisenberg was on an elaborate fishing expedition and was attempting to find out what his famous mentor knew of the Allies’ progress in building a bomb. While no two accounts of their clandestine meeting agree, it ended on a bitter note, and Heisenberg left Bohr with more questions than answers. The biggest riddle of all was the drawing itself. Bohr could not be sure what he was looking at: Was it a sketch of an experimental heavy-water reactor the Nazis were working on, or was it misinformation meant to confuse the enemy? In any event, Bohr knew he had no choice but to alert the Allies of its existence, and he did so immediately after reaching London.

  On New Year’s Eve day, Oppenheimer called a handful of senior staff to his office. When Serber got there, he found both Bohrs were present, as well as Bethe, Teller, and Weisskopf.

  Oppie handed me a scrap of paper that looked like it had been carelessly ripped from a note pad. It bore a sketch, and he asked me what I thought the sketch represented. After a minute I handed it back and said it looked like a heavy water moderated nuclear reactor. He then told me Bohr had gotten it from Heisenberg. The question was whether it could be interpreted as a weapon. The Los Alamos experts gathered in that room all agreed that it was useless as an explosive.