The Making of the Atomic Bomb

“The authority of scientific opinion remains essentially mutual; it is established between scientists, not above them.” 

Michael Polanyi, a theoretician in chemistry and economics and a philosopher of science, sets out the essence of the scientific project, that it is ruled by truth rather than politics

“‘It is wrong,’ he told his colleagues repeatedly, ‘to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is’—which is the territory classical physics had claimed for itself. ‘Physics concerns what we can say about nature.’” 

Part of Bohr’s greatness is that he insists on delving ever deeper into natural phenomena. His goal is not simply to know how the parts of reality fit together but to know why they do so. The “why” of things reveals much more than simply their “what.” 

“One of the weapons contemplated was poison gas […] it was a way of saving countless lives, if it meant that the war could be brought to an end sooner." 

Nobel laureate Fritz Haber develops synthetic fertilizer, which will save millions of lives, but he also invents industrial-strength chemical warfare, the first effective weapon of mass destruction, which maims and kills over a million people during the First World War. His company later produces Zyklon B, a fumigant used by the Nazis to exterminate Jews in concentration camps. He argued that “death is death,” no matter how it is delivered, and his hope was that chemical weapons would shorten the war. This same hope reemerges among the atomic scientists of World War II; their invention, potentially vastly more devastating than Haber’s, achieves somewhat better results at bringing a war to a close. 

“I have often felt myself scientifically very lonesome, under the impression that my effort to develop the principles of quantum theory systematically to the best of my ability has been received with very little understanding.” 

Bohr’s advocacy of the quantum theory of the atom is met with strong resistance. Quantum mechanics, like relativity theory, is not a “classical” theory but something well beyond the old-fashioned intuitive way of thinking about nature. Even Einstein, who helped develop quantum theory, resisted the randomness inherent in the calculations. It’s no wonder Bohr felt lonely during the years before quantum ideas gained wide acceptance. 

“The difference between the thinking of the paranoid patient and the scientist comes from the latter’s ability and willingness to test out his fantasies or grandiose conceptualizations through the systems of checks and balances science has established—and to give up those things that are shown not to be valid on the basis of these scientific checks.” 

The world is full of wild ideas, and among them are useful principles yet to be established. Only those ideas, though, that pass the rigorous tests of science can be considered valid; a theory is valid not because it’s eccentric but because it’s true. Most ideas will fail that test; researchers accept such verdicts as part of the price of doing science. 

“[…] Hitler pathologically feared and hated the Jews. In black megalomania he masked an intelligent, industrious and much persecuted people with the distorted features of his own terror. And that would make all the difference." 

Hitler blames the Jews for Germany’s defeat in World War I, believing their efforts to end the war’s suffering amounted to a “stab in the back.” Thereafter he goes on a crusade to eliminate Jewry from Germany and Europe, and millions die as a result. Ironically, many of Germany’s best scientific minds are Jewish, and these people escape to England and America, where they regroup to design powerful weapons that will be used to defeat Hitler and his allies. 

“When a neutron enters a nucleus, the effects are about as catastrophic as if the moon struck the earth. The nucleus is violently shaken up by the blow, especially if the collision results in the capture of the neutron. A large increase in energy occurs and must be dissipated, and this may happen in a variety of ways, all of them interesting." 

Isidor Rabi’s lecture graphically illustrates the powers latent within the atom, and how those powers release massive amounts of energy that humans can use for good or ill. Rabi also expresses the genuine fascination scientists feel in the face of such discoveries. This hints at the tidal pull felt by scientists drawn toward even more knowledge, whether such learning will prove useful or destructive. 

“‘The discoveries of scientists,’ he wrote, ‘have given weapons to mankind which may destroy our present civilization if we do not succeed in avoiding the further wars.’” 

Szilard’s 1934 prediction darkly anticipates not only advances in aircraft technology and their probable use in industrial bombing of cities—something briefly tried during World War I—but also the possibility of a weapon that unleashes the immense power of the atom and could threaten life on Earth. 

“We worked with incredible stubbornness. We would begin at eight in the morning and then take measurements […], almost without a break, until six or seven in the evening, and often later." 

As anti-Semitism rumbles through Italy, taking with it several members of Fermi’s nuclear physics team, Fermi and his sole remaining associate hold out long enough to complete important scientific experiments. Science is never easy: The work is intellectually difficult to begin with, and it often must be performed tediously, with limited equipment cadged together under budgetary and time constraints. Even then, success may come too late if other teams have gotten the results first. 

“We take the liberty of calling to your attention the newest development in nuclear physics, which, in our opinion, will probably make it possible to produce an explosive many orders of magnitude more powerful than the conventional ones...That country which first makes us of it has an unsurpassable advantage over the others.” 

Beginning in 1939, letters from American, British, French, Russian, and Japanese scientists to their respective governments contain similar passages, but this one is penned by physicist Paul Harteck and sent to the war office of his country, Nazi Germany. 

“I remember the spring of 1941 to this day. I realized then that a nuclear bomb was not only possible—it was inevitable […] I had then to start taking sleeping pills. It was the only remedy. I’ve never stopped since then.” 

Cambridge physicist and Nobel laureate James Chadwick, interviewed in 1969, exemplifies the fear and doubt nuclear scientists felt when they first realized the vast potential of the atom to destroy civilization. 

“Patriotism contributed to many decisions, but a deeper motive among the physicists, by the measure of their statements, was fear—fear of German triumph, fear of a thousand-year Reich made invulnerable with atomic bombs.” 

Many scientists at the start of World War II are Jews who have escaped Nazi Germany’s anti-Semitic persecutions. They are uniquely positioned to affect the outcome of the war by making scientific discoveries that lead directly to weapons that can defeat Hitler. 

"The bomb was latent in nature as a genome is latent in flesh. Any nation might learn to command its expression. The race was therefore not merely against Germany. As Roosevelt apparently sensed, the race was against time.” 

Upon learning of the possibility of an atomic bomb, Roosevelt at once grasps the political and military implications, not merely for World War II but for the future of American foreign policy, military preparedness, and the danger to worldwide safety. He authorizes funds for research and directs that all policy decisions will be made by a small group within his administration. 

“No matter what you do with the rest of your life, nothing will be as important to the future of the World as your work on this Project right now.” 

Glenn Seaborg expresses the attitude of the young physicists who give up their career projects to join the nuclear weapons effort in support of the US against the Axis war machine. 

“For some time we had known that we were about to unlock a giant; still, we could not escape an eerie feeling when we knew we had actually done it. We felt as, I presume, everyone feels who has done something that he knows will have very far-reaching consequences which he cannot foresee.” 

Physicist Eugene Wigner touches on the feelings of the scientists who witness the first successful atomic pile chain reaction, a simple event with no visible motion or noise that ironically augurs a future of immense, and possibly devastating, consequences. At the end of all that hard work, the reward, strangely, is a chill down the spine. 

“Science—a fragile, nascent political system of limited but increasing franchise—would have to wait until the war was won. Or so it seemed. But a few among the men and women gathered at Los Alamos—certainly Oppenheimer—sniffed a paradox. They proposed in fact to win the war with an application of their science. They dreamed further that by that same application they might forestall the next war, might even end war as a means of settling differences between nations.” 

Overwhelmingly, the workers at Los Alamos, are eager to design a super-weapon that can bring the war to an end. Some, however, believe their efforts might, ironically, serve a peaceful purpose, when future belligerents hesitate to go to war for fear that their opponents might utterly destroy them. 

“Extend war by attrition to include civilians behind the lines and war becomes total.” 

The Allies bomb industrial targets inside Germany, but the weapons often miss and instead strike nearby workers’ housing. Planners decide to attack entire cities to guarantee strikes against industry and to break down enemy morale. Before long, as bombing effectiveness improves, tens of thousands are dying on a nightly basis. Thus, efforts to destroy war-making capacity lead to wholesale annihilation of the enemy’s civilian population. This paves the way for the use of atomic weapons, which destroy entire cities indiscriminately. 

“We are in a completely new situation that cannot be resolved by war.” 

Bohr’s comment reflects that he is one of the first to realize how different nuclear weapons are—in volume, they can destroy most life on the planet—and how this changes all the equations of international affairs. The use of nuclear weapons, far from assuring victory in war, simply assures the destruction of both sides. For Bohr, the answer involves restricted weaponry and open inspections. 

“Oppenheimer did not doubt that he would be remembered to some degree, and reviled, as the man who led the work of bringing to mankind for the first time in its history the means of its own destruction. He cherished the complementary compensation of knowing that the hard riddle the bomb would pose had two answers, two outcomes, one of them transcendent.” 

The Los Alamos director knows the bomb will threaten the planet, but the fact that the ultimate horror of nuclear destruction might lead, ironically, to world peace gives hope and courage to Oppenheimer’s efforts. 

“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” 

On witnessing the Trinity nuclear test, Oppenheimer quotes from the ancient Hindu Poem, the Bhagavad Gita, to express his fears for the future of humanity in the nuclear age. This is Oppenheimer’s single most famous utterance. 

“People exposed within half a mile of the Little Boy fireball […] were seared to bundles of smoking black char in a fraction of a second […] At the same instant birds ignited in midair. Mosquitoes and flies, squirrels, family pets crackled and were gone. The fireball flashed an enormous photograph of the city at the instant of its immolation fixed on the mineral, vegetable and animal surfaces of the city itself. A spiral ladder left its shadow in unburned paint on the surface of a steel storage tank. Leaves shielded reverse silhouettes on charred telephone poles.” 

The devastation of the atomic blast leaves eerie marks on walls and poles, as if tagging the place with reminders of its sheer power. When living beings are reduced to nothing but shadows on concrete, the horror of nuclear destruction becomes etched on the mind’s landscape, a permanent reminder of the world-ending power of this new weapon. 

“In Japan the impasse persisted between civilian and military leaders. To the civilians the atomic bomb looked like a golden opportunity to surrender without shame, but the admirals and the generals still despised unconditional surrender and refused to concur.” 

During the Pacific war, Japanese soldiers are conditioned never to surrender, and usually they fight to the death. Were this tradition to continue among the civilians during an American invasion of the Japanese homeland, the death toll would mount terribly. The atomic bombs, with their effect of total annihilation, would instead simply reduce Japanese society to nothing, making meaningless the nobility of death in battle. It takes the emperor himself to turn the tide, force the military to stand down, and accept the inevitable. 

“Truman said he had given orders to stop the atomic bombing. He said the thought of wiping out another 100,000 people was too horrible. He didn’t like the idea of killing, as he said, ‘all those kids.’” 

Suddenness, lack of warning, lack of any means of escape, and totality of destruction within seconds make nuclear weapons orders of magnitude more devastating, and thus much more challenging ethically, than any conventional high-explosive. The sheer thoroughness of the atomic bomb’s destructive power gives pause even to the tough-minded leaders who contemplate its use. Truman balks at the further deployment of such weapons even as he permits the continued fire-bombing of Japanese cities, which in total has resulted in more death and devastation during five months even than the two atomic bombs.