Mark Levene
‘The War of the Martians’: Leo Szilard, Edward Teller and Budapest’s Nuclear Catastrophists, Part 1: The Road to the Trinity
Mark Levene - The War of the Martians, Part 1: The Road to the Trinity
- I’m going to start us off right in the middle of things here, and I’m going to start this lecture off about Szilard Teller and what I call the nuclear catastrophists, also the martians or a group of the martians, and their role in the road to Trinity. And you can see that name is on the screen here. I’m going to start this with a smidgen, a literal microsecond of time. That time, as you can see, 5:29 AM, 16th of July, 1945 in the desert of New Mexico. And I’m going to start with the proposition that this is a moment, is the moment to date when Earth history, billions of years old, of course, and human history finally collide in an explosive way, and but this is a, we used a literary term, this is a caesura. This is a moment where human history has been developing along a trajectory for the last however many thousands of years, history, anyway, not the whole human sequence, but history, and that there is a break at this point so much so that Earth scientists today, when they look back at this moment, they use it as a stratographic marker for what has now become commonly called the Anthropocene. It’s the moment where humanity, for those who have made this decision about where this marker is, they decided that this is the moment where we can mark humanity as a geological actor, a geological actor with the potential to harness the energy of the universe on such a scale as to destroy all of us, humankind, and bring about planetary nemesis. So a nice jolly start. And at Trinity, those who had been the initiators, the makers of the bomb, knew this.
Those of you who have seen the “Oppenheimer” film, I haven’t, will know that he made a famous quote when he was at Trinity, at this event, “Now I am death, the destroyer of worlds,” quoting from the “Bhagavad Gita,” and lots of his colleagues sort of said other things, mostly with biblical reference. So we’re looking at an event here which paved the way for tragedies manifold, manifold tragedies. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were to follow, two types of nuclear device which were initiated as a result of the process which we call the Manhattan Project, where these scientists came together to develop atom bombs. Further atomic tests produced radioactive fallout, which killed thousands of people in the process. This moment enabled powerful states to create nuclear weapons of their own, huge nuclear arsenals. And what we also know now from the 1970s and 1980s, but even a small fraction of those nuclear weapons, if states resorted to their use in a limited nuclear exchange, that would produce something called a nuclear winter. In other words, there would be so much debris and soot on the Earth that it would blank out the Sun, and life on Earth would effectively, certainly you and I, would effectively cease to exist. So I want to start this with a sort of personal note and a personal warning, if you like. In the 1980s, I was entirely involved. I didn’t have a proper job. I was entirely involved in the peace movement as a anti-nuclear activist and peace campaigner.
And on the basis of that, what I was doing in that period, which was a period of intense danger, which I’m not going to rehearse here, but some of you will remember it, intense danger of nuclear Armageddon, you wouldn’t expect me on the basis of that to be sympathetic to the creators of the bomb. But there’s a complication. Because I’m also a historian of Jewish history, and I can’t be helped, I can’t help but be struck by the overwhelming part played by scientists who were Jewish or whose immediate background was indubitably Jewish. And more precisely, I’m thinking about the theoretical physicists who were involved in the inception of the bomb, Iva working initially for America or for Britain in a parallel project called Tube Alloys. And I’m proposing that these characters were, indeed, these characters were seminal actors in their own right. Now, this is often elided in a lot of the commentary. And very often what you get is the term emigre European scientists. And sometimes the Jewish background is sort of accepted and sometimes it’s not. There’s sometimes an argument that these people weren’t really very Jewish or their Jewishness was really inconsequential or irrelevant. And there are some of scientists who were involved in this. One can think of Lise Meitner, who doesn’t participate in the project, or Hans Bethe, who were very adamant that they didn’t want to be typecast in this way. Yet the flip side of this, none of these scientists would’ve been involved in what ultimately became the Manhattan Project if they hadn’t in some sense been casualties of what was happening in Europe in the period through the forties and into the forties. This is a Europe of course, which by 1939 is dominated by Hitler and the Nazis.
And these people are casualties in the sense that they are kicked out of their very prestigious, very often prestigious posts in European universities, German universities in particular. And that includes Meitner who didn’t particularly want to have anything to do with her Jewish background, but has to ultimately flee for her life to survive. And so what I’m proposing here in telling this story is we have a paradox. We have the paradox between what appears at this time to be the total, the utter powerlessness of European jury at a time when indeed, for these many of these scientists, their families are being herded into gas chambers. Yet on the other hand, here we have a group of people who are at crux of a development, which makes them immensely powerful. So we have a sort of a dichotomy, a sort of dissonance. And I should add that this powerfulness is a powerfulness amongst this mighty handful who, not just in their role as scientists, but as protagonists in this development and indeed as communicators of what this meant and would mean for humankind. Now, I’m not wanting to overwork this paradox or this dissonance here, but I think it is interesting that most historians and most authors don’t really want to tread onto this ground, perhaps for very obvious reasons of what I would call a Hiroshima Holocaust nexus. So what I’m going to do here is I’m going to, in two parts, the first part tonight, a second part later on, is concentrate on two particular individuals. Next one’s actually, Jess, next one, Jess. Yes, this one. Thank you, Jess. This character Leo Szilard, who one associates with being the initiator of the bomb project, the thing which would lead to Manhattan. Of course, we all think of Oppenheimer as the director of the project, but I’m proposing this is the man who is the actual initiator of this.
Next one, Jess, and this man Edward Teller who becomes within time the progenitor of the super bomb, the hydrogen bomb project. And who is, as we’ll find out, has a relationship of an intellectual and personal relationship with Szilard. But these men are sort of come across initially at least as two complete polar opposites. Szilard a sort of tragic hero. Teller somebody who we associate correctly or incorrectly, and I’ll come onto this next time as the figure we, who is the progenitor of “Dr. Strangelove” in Kubrick’s film of a nuclear madman. So let’s move on, Jess. Let’s see what’s next. Right, so what I’m going to propose about these characters is that what we’re talking about here amongst these emigre European scientists who are indeed non-religious, essentially non-religious, nevertheless, they are part of a Jewish subculture, more immediate, more specifically a Jewish subculture in which they hobnob with each other, speak the same language intellectually. And within that subculture, there is indeed a further subculture itself. And here you’ve got a sort of nice example of it. This is the home of a lady called Laura Pollan in New York. And at the centre of this little picture is Leo Szilard himself. And it’s a group of Hungarian people, all interconnected, women as well as men, as you can see. And they are of course speaking Hungarian. And their background is most specifically from Budapest in Hungary, even though they’re in New York.
So what we have here is the beginning of what one might call the stuff of legends, because here we’ve got a group of people who are very, very closely connected. And a story starts to develop around them of who these people are, and they are referred to as the martians. Now there’s lots of stories about how this term martians arises, but one interesting case of this is an interchange between Szilard himself and a Italian emigre scientist who interestingly is one of the few of these theoretical scientists who isn’t Jewish, but his wife is, a man called Enrico Fermi. And Enrique Fermi is having this debate with group of scientists saying, well, look, we know that there’s, there should be life on other planets out there. It’s, you know, logical, but so why is there no evidence of the facts? And Szilard responds rather impatiently saying, there is evidence. They’re already here on planet earth, these aliens, they just call themselves Hungarians. And it’s very interesting in terms of, you know, looking at this from a brute biography point of view. If we go onto the next one, Jess, we have here another one of this group, Eugene Wigner. You note the dates, by the way, they’re quite closely connected in date terms. Next one, John von Neumann, again, just a year younger than Wigner.
And this man as well, a little bit older. And but this one also, the first four we’ve looked at, Szilard, Teller, Wigner and Neumann, all great polymaths. You know, you can pick and choose which one you want to be the greatest polymath of all. A lot of people would say von Neumann, but they all become associated with the Manhattan Project. This man isn’t, but he becomes a key figure in American aerodynamics. Now, as I say, my main interest here is not to overdo the extraordinariness of these men’s intellect. And indeed I couldn’t give it it’s full due anyway, because it’s what they do in the field of quantum physics, et cetera, is way beyond my understanding. But I am interested in the political and personal tragedy which comes out of this particular context of 1939/45, and particularly the role of these two figures, Szilard and Teller. Now, I’m going to leave, but Teller is going to be a big player in today, what I’m talking about today. My main focus is on Szilard. But first of all, rather than this being just some sort of coincidence that these group of people happen to come from Hungary, they happen to be Jewish, they happen to become involved in theoretical physics. I want to give just a little bit of historical background. So Jess, next one, please, right, a map.
What you have here, quick recap. The Austrian Empire, the Habsburg Empire ruled from Vienna, of course, by the, you know, by generations of Habsburg emperors. 1866, the Empire is catastrophically defeated by Prussians under Bismarck, Franz Joseph, the emperor of Austria has to concede this reality. And as a result, there is a rethinking, total rethinking of the empire. It is now in two parts, a Austrian parts which governs large parts of the empire, and a, if you like a dual monarchy with Hungary. And Hungary itself governs large parts of this multi-ethnic empire. You can see the slightly lighter green is the Hungarian area. It includes lots of Croats, lots of Slovens, lots of Romanians. And these groups are considered very problematic because like the Hungarians themselves, they are increasingly nationalistic. And the Hungarians are concerned about keeping their part of the empire stable and keeping these people down if necessary, trying to assimilate them to being good Hungarians. But being very aware all the time of this being a problem. It so happens that there has been mass Jewish migration from the Carpathian area into Hungary proper in this period. And the fact that there are already in the 1860s, 5% of the population of the Hungarian part of the dual monarchy is Jewish, means that if the Jews are loyal to the Hungarian regime, then they can be taken on board as part of the Hungarian population. And so we have a situation here where Jews are effectively embraced by their regime in Budapest and encouraged to be Hungarians. It’s an assimilatic to process. It’s an open field for Jews to become not Orthodox, but what is called Neolog.
And the majority of Jews, particularly in the Hungarian heartland in cities like Budapest and Jegkert they accept this arrangement. And with that they accept all the possibilities which this new arrangement allows for. So what we have in a period of a really, very, very short period, what we’re really talking about is two generations of accelerated change. Jews become part of the powerhouse of what at this period of fantasy eclat, the 1870s through to 1914 is the powerhouse of Hungary. By 1914, 23% of the population of Budapest, sometimes disparagingly referred to as Judapest, most of them living in Pest rather than in Buda, are Jewish. And they are generally, if we will, to look at it in socioeconomic terms, they are on the up. It’s interesting to think what Herzel, for instance, what his future would’ve been if he’d stayed in Hungary. The family leaves for Vienna in when he’s 17. But if you are looking for a sort of a way of understanding what’s going on here in this period and after, there’s a great film called “Sunshine” by the Hungarian Jewish director István Szabó. And this chronicles the family Sonnenschein who take on the name Sores, this is part of this assimilative process. Jews like Szilard who had the name Spits, changed their name to something much more . And they have the opportunity to get on. And that film “Sunshine,” very good example of what’s going on here. Now, why is this relevant? Even more so than in Germany, what we have here is a seed bed for the development of a process of a development from Jewish people who do well, who do very well in business, who become capitalists, if you like.
Their enablement of their sons to take that stage further through education. And nowhere is better at this time for a good education anywhere in the world than here in Budapest. And it’s sort of, it’s interesting to look at these characters, Von Karman, Szilard, Teller, they go to an extraordinary Gimnázium called the Minter Academy, which is actually founded by Theodore Von Karman’s father, Morse von Karman, who guess what, is in noble for that? Can you imagine a sort of an educationalist somewhere in Britain at this time being in noble for having set up, you know, an educational academy. The other two key figures, Wigner and Von Neumann are a year apart at another school, which interestingly, Herzl earlier on had gone to called the Fasori Gimnázium. The background of the Fasori by the way, is Lutheran. And this tells us something about the background, but I won’t go into it too much here. What’s interesting about the Fasori, let’s go to the next picture, Jess. Yeah, what’s interesting about the Fasori is it has some of the most outstanding teachers on record. It has a man called László Rátz who teaches maths, another one called Sando Micala who teaches physics. And these people have streets named after them in Budapest. And what’s interesting about the schooling here is they’re not just powerhouse schooling, it’s not just stuffing information into kids.
It’s more about how you cross relate one subject with another, get people to do mathematical equations in Latin to get the kids to think for themselves and to deal with difficult problems within a schooling context. Now, interestingly, Teller wasn’t very enthusiastic about any of this, but that’s not the general record. By the way, looking at this picture Fasori, this is later, this is in 1929. And I dunno if you can see much of this picture, but it’s very, very clear to me looking at this. But it is a mixed community. There are still, even though this is no longer a good period for the Jews in Hungary, this is still a mixed community of Jewish and Gentile students. Now, why does this in itself matter, this thing about Gimnázium. Jews in Hungary, like elsewhere, tended not to follow into the status quo jobs of the military, except in certain departments like the medical part of the military, or in government, the bureaucracy. These high elements of state are not, are implicitly not for Jews. But these people anyway, through Fasori and Minter and colleges like that are being intellectually equipped to move on from that to get involved in really what are cutting edge developments in the European sciences in this period. And there is nothing more cutting edge at this time than the emergence of quantum mechanics, more specifically the study of very, very small atomic elements and particles and how they very unusually behave and react.
And the critical moment of this where this is all becoming very evident that this is something completely new and compelling, I suppose it’s a bit like AI today or genome developments, you know, a generation back, this becomes very, very evident when a figure called Neils Bohr gives a Nobel prize set of lectures at the University of Goettingen in 1922, in which he explains the new concept of an atomic structure. And Einstein calls this, this whole edifice a miracle moment. Now the spoke in the wheel of all this. So what I’m suggesting is there’s a trajectory for these young men. There are a few women involved as well, come onto that in a moment. Oh, hang on, I just have to do something to my computer here. There is a trajectory which is presenting itself for these young men, which is going to be extraordinary. It’s in the field of quantum mechanics. They’re going to be at the forefront of developments which are happening in Europe, in Central Europe at this time, scientific developments. The smoke in the wheel, of course is the first World war. The collapse and dismemberment of Austria-Hungary, the creation of a whole set of new nation states. The collapse more specifically of government in Hungary itself, the refusal of the allies, the western allies, to be sympathetic to attempts to maintain it in some thought, shape or form, followed by a communist revolution led by Jewish figures, Bela Kun in particular. And then after that, a period of white terror, a really vicious period in which Jews particularly, are targeted in Hungary.
And then of course a peace treaty, which sort of, you know, rubs Hungary’s nose in the mud, if you like, in the mud, the Treaty of Trianon. Now what this in effect, this collapse of this arrangement which has existed before means for Jews after this period, is that the happy time of Hungarian Jewish accord, of , of being together really ends almost at this moment in time. There is something called a numerus clausus brought in, which prevents Jews having very large numbers at universities. And Von Neumann speaking of this period, as he tells it to another scientist, Stanley Ulam says, he talks about a feeling of extreme insecurity in the individuals and the necessity to produce the unusual or face extinction. Decayed before Hitler, Richard Rhodes, who wrote a book, the book on the making of the atomic bomb speaks of these Hungarians as connoisseurs of advancing fascism. So there’s this as part of this background. Now, I don’t want to get too overboard on the victim element of this because I think there is also agency and these young men, they are very young, of course, in the 1920s. Wigner would’ve been 20 in 1923, for instance. They have the opportunity to move and get posts in European universities, the places where quantum mechanics, particularly theoretical physics is developing is in Berlin or Leipzig or the Cavendish laboratory in Cambridge. And these people choose to move and to take posts elsewhere. It’s a paradox of course. So that means that because these people leave Hungary, Budapest doesn’t become a centre of quantum physics. It’s shifted elsewhere. And the long term story, personal and political story of this is that of course come the rise of Hitler these people then find themselves in exile yet again.
Some of these people like Szilard, they move to Germany, they take on German citizenship, then they move again, Szilard’s case to Britain and then moves again to America, eventually has American citizenship. Though that’s a story in itself. So let me focus a little bit on Szilard and sort of develop how this story of a group, a group biography folk can be focused on this particular individual. So Szilard born Leo Spitz in 1898, a man who, a child from the very beginning, very obviously very clever, but also a bit of a gadfly. He’s somebody who, you know, you can’t sort of stop for one minute in one place. And Szilard moves from being a engineer to a physicist, to a theoretical physicist, to ultimately a molecular biologist. There’s an irony in his story too. He’s called up because he’s old enough to serve in the first world war. He’s called up in 1918 and is trained in an artillery regiment. He gets Spanish flu at a time when lots of people are getting Spanish flu. So he’s in hospital when his unit is sent to the front and nearly all of them are killed. So there’s a sort of an an interesting irony here. After the war, immediately after the war, he attempts to enrol in the Budapest University of Technology. He and his brother re-identify as Calvinists. They convert to Calvinism from being Jewish for purely functional purposes, but it doesn’t allow him to go into the university of, into the Budapest University. And so like Teller and Wigner, he moves to Germany. He studies interestingly under a man called Werner Heisenberg, a little bit more on him later.
And he’s moving through universities and getting involved in all sorts of projects, some of which are with Einstein in Germany, the so-called Einstein refrigerator, the electron microscopes, cyclotrons, nothing of course nuclear yet, that’s yet to come. And interestingly, because Szilard has his own interesting side to him about being aware of what’s going on in the world, he’s somebody who leaves Germany the day before Hitler is declared vice chancellor. And indeed from Britain, from New Post in Britain, he sets up the Academic Assistance Council. He co-found the Academic Assistance Council, which is to get academics like himself out of Germany. And indeed this man who has, who’s everybody speaks of who has written about this, talks about his political antenna. In early 1938 he decides even Britain isn’t sufficiently safe and he moves to the USA. Now, next slide actually, Jess, just a sort of. Now something on root here, which is sort of a famous moment, and it’s sort of relevant to this story. Szilard’s life, he mostly lives in hotels, by the way. He’s always developing new patents for himself. He never has a proper academic job. And where he does, he usually finds funders, people who will fund him to do whatever he’s sort of planning on at that moment in time.
So he’s very self, he’s a very much an autonomous figure. In 1933, actually I think this is 1930, I can’t remember it’s 33 or 34, there’s a story about how he reads in the paper. But Rutherford has, who is the great, sort of the great figure in British study of radioactivity and atomic particles at this time had delivered a lecture in which he said that atomic energy wouldn’t get us anywhere really. And Szilard is sort of very piqued by this. And he does what he often does or always does. He goes for a long walk to think about this. And this is the story about Szilard and his moment of truth. And I can read this for you. “As he waited at a set of traffic lights at Russell Square, terrible fault suddenly struck Szilard. If a chemical element to be bombarded with neutrons, a nucleus could absorb a neutron split in smaller parts and emit two neutrons in the process. These two neutrons could divide two further nuclei, releasing four neutrons. When the lights changed and Szilard stepped into the road, the horrific consequences became apparent. Szilard’s saw that if you have enough of the element, you could create a sustained nuclear chain reaction that could release vast amounts of energy. With such a critical mass, as we now call it, the reaction would lead to a nuclear explosion.” Now, this has become, you know, the stuff of legend in itself, but this is the moment in time where Szilard realises that you can make a nuclear bomb. And some scientists more recently have questioned this and say, well is this really what was in Szilard’s mind at this time. What he had seemed to have fought through was that you could actually have some sort of nuclear reaction, a chain reaction, and that it could produce, it could produce a lot of energy, a lot of energy from this reaction. And indeed, the first thing that Szilard does after this is he goes and takes out a patent with the admiralty for this idea. Now, what’s also interesting in terms of our story is that nothing much materialises as a consequence of this for a number of years.
Szilard is working in a hospital, Barts in London at the time, and he’s also using this opportunity to try and do some experiments to see whether this chain reaction can be made to work. But he doesn’t actually make a lot of progress with this. He’s doing this on a sort of very much, you know, whereas this would be a major project, an academic project, scientific project today. He’s really doing this on a sort of, a very localised basis. But come the end of 1938, and if you think about the end of 1938, the end of 1938 is what’s happening in Germany is Christian, it’s becoming a period where there’s almost no turning back from a Jewish point of view in relation to the state, the German state attitude towards them. At this time, there is just another set of experiments taking place which have unforeseen consequences. A couple of scientists who Szilard would’ve known of course called Otto Hahn and Strassmann, were conducting an experiment in which they were bombarding uranium with slow neutrons. And they were surprised by the results of this. They thought the results couldn’t be right because what they seemed to have at the end of this process was a different element entirely. That instead of having a radium, they had actually seemed to have produced barium and they couldn’t really quite understand what had happened. And they conveyed the results of this to some colleagues. Next picture, actually Jess. Right, the colleague they convey this to, and this is a certain irony here, Otto Hahn had worked for years.
Otto Hahn is not a Nazi, by the way, he’s an anti-Nazi. He had works with a brilliant theoretical physicist from Vienna, originally called Lise Meitner, who I’ve mentioned just previously. This is in the Kaiser Institute, Wilhelm Institute of Chemistry. Meitner has just, with Hahn’s assistance, left for the Dutch border, has fled for her life because she’s deemed Jewish, even though she doesn’t consider herself Jewish. But nevertheless, this has happened to her and she’s ended up in Sweden. And there, who comes to visit her from Britain, where he is now working is her nephew Otto Frisch. And they do some, this is again, sort of stuff of legend. They do some, they go for a walk in the cold in the winter of early winter of 1939, they sit down on a tree stump and do some equations. And they come to the conclusion that yes, indeed, what has happened is that the unknowingly the Hahn experiment has split the atom that they have created form of chain reaction. And this is something that Frisch dubs a nuclear fission. Brief irony here. This is the last time on the cusp of the second World War where there is an effect, a sort of cooperation between scientists who would think of themselves normally in colorblind terms. But on the one hand, Hahn and Strassmann, and on the other hand, Meitner and Frisch confirming that what has happened is something dramatically new. Now, what follows briefly is that this news becomes internationally, you know, a sort of an amazing story. It’s conveyed by Niels Bohr who travels to America at this time for a conference in Washington. And just a few days before, Hitler makes a very, very famous speech warning about us Jewish financiers not to interfere with what Germany is doing in Europe. Bohr brings this parallel bit of information that this really is nuclear fission which has happened. And everybody is agog with this story. Szilard, who isn’t at the conference however, is the real person who sees its significance. Now remember that Szilard at this time is something rather interesting here.
Szilard, as I’ve said, he’s not Einstein, he’s not a figure with, you know, who politicians and the public would instantly know as a great scientific figure. But he has caught onto the fact here that this could be momentous for all the wrong reasons. That if Germany is able to use, to take this information and use it and weaponize it, the result could be the production of a nuclear bomb. Szilard is also very politically savvy. He knows that there’s got to be a way by which this potential development needs to be stopped. And he’s also concerned, let’s have a look at the next picture actually, Jess. Yeah, he’s also concerned about a particular figure in all this. Two corporators in the whole story of quantum physics had been Niels Bohr, who I’ve mentioned just now, and a German figure, a great theoretical physicist who is not Jewish, Werner Heisenberg. Werner Heisenberg is in America in the summer of 1939. And a lot of colleagues here then urge him not to go back to Germany, but he does go back. And Szilard is of the opinion that unless something can be done, there is the possibility that this is going to lead to a German nuclear bomb project. And he’s one of the figures who is trying to stop the flow of papers as a result of the experiments which are happening as a consequence of the Hahn, Strassmann experiments in late 1938. And what he decides to do is, you know, who can he engage, who other people are going to listen to? It’s not going to be him.
And he contacts Einstein, who he knows, and indeed, because he doesn’t drive, he gets his friend Wigner to drive him to Einstein summer residence on Long Island. And the initial idea is that they are going to prevent, they’re going to alert the Belgian government, which of course controls the Congo to prevent uranium being shipped from the Congo to Antwerp and bused to Europe. But then Szilard decides this isn’t really enough. Einstein writes a letter to the Belgian crown ‘cause he knows members of the Belgian royal family. But he goes back again, Szilard. Again, because he can’t drive, he gets Teller to drive him to Einstein. And the result is this, next picture, actually, Jess. And the next one there you have Einstein and Szilard. And the next one, Jess, you don’t need to know the detail of this. No, no, no, back one, actually, Jess. Thank you. Thank you. The important thing about this is that in this letter, which actually is a Szilard letter composed with the assistance of Wigner and Teller, but it has Einstein’s signature there as well. It’s a letter to President Roosevelt, and it’s a letter which alerts Roosevelt or aims to alert Roosevelt to the possibility that the Germans could create a nuclear bomb, that America ought to be aware of this and ought to be doing something about it. Irony of irony is, initially, this letter does not arrive on Roosevelt’s desk, so it’s sort of, it gets conveyed to him eventually, but it’s not priority material.
So the impetus towards doing something to combat the possibility of a German bomb, i.e by getting there first, lapses and it takes another memorandum, a much more detailed memorandum by two other emigres this time working in Britain, Rudolf Peierls and Wigner’s nephew, Otto Frisch, to write another memorandum in March, 1940 for the British government in which they detail how a bomb could be made. It’s no longer a matter of tonnes of uranium. They think it can be reduced to about 10 kilogrammes. And what it would mean in terms of devastation and radioactive fallout and what it would mean politically in terms of even the potentiality of a nuclear arms race. Even at this point in 1940, the contours of what are going to happen is laid out in the Peierls fresh memorandum. The British at this point set up their own project called Cube Alloys, but because Churchill desperately wants America in the war on the British side, they convey the information which Peierls and Szilard have provided to the Americans. There is also evidence at this time, or seems to be evidence that there is indeed a German project called Uranverein and that Heisenberg is involved and that there is indeed the potentiality of a competition for who is going to get there first. Now there’s a paradox in all this and the paradox is that it actually takes quite a long time. The best part of three years before the, what we call the Manhattan Project is initiated. The American, the British of course, come into this project as junior partners. That’s an important shift in terms of the politics of all this. A year later they become part of the Manhattan Project.
Some of the physicists, the emigre Jewish physicists, but not only emigre Jewish physicists go over to America to participate in this. And it’s brought under, as you know, it’s brought under the aegis of a scientific director who is not Szilard, but Robert Oppenheimer an American. And I think at this time, Szilard is still trying to get naturalised as an American, but the other director of this is a man called Leslie Groves. Actually, let’s see if the next picture gets us to that. Next one, Jess. No, actually just now. Okay, let’s come back to that. Let’s go on a picture, Jess. Yeah and here we have, just so you know who these two figures are, General Groves, the big character with Oppenheimer at ground zero in 1945. And this is sort of important to our story here, that with the creation of the Manhattan Project, it’s clear now that the political military, it is political military control of the project. It’s no longer vested in a group of scientists who have an idea about what might happen. It’s actually vested in the United States who are going to pile a load of money, what in modern terms would be billions of pounds and a lot of personnel into the creation of this atomic bomb. So let’s just go back to Szilard for a moment and his role in all this. Szilard had started out from the premise that there was a danger of a German nuclear bomb. And that the way to respond to it is to create an atom bomb or to produce an atom bomb as a counter to that. He doesn’t start out from the premise that the purpose is to explode a nuclear bomb.
You will notice the distinction, it’s to create one, but not necessarily to explode one. Now, as far as that is concerned, to defeat the Germans, to defeat the Nazis, there is a necessity to go down this path. He is involved in the advisory committees, which has started in 1939, which look into this whole possibility. And later on he is involved in the creation within Enrico Fermi of the nuclear reactor, which is created at the place where he has now got a post at the, what’s called Chicago met, the Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory at Chicago University in 1942. But it’s interesting how he reacts when they actually get this, when they get this reactor to take off, as it were, in December, 1932. He describes the moment at which the pile has gone critical at this point, this exploratory thing that Fermi and Szilard have in effect created as a black day in the history of mankind. So the interesting thing about Szilard from this point onwards is that he’s not, he’s on board for the Manhattan project, but he’s on board in the way, which as a sort of dissenter from this moment on, he is within, but without. Now if we just go back for a minute, Jess, yeah, this is Einstein on the bomb. “Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in producing an atomic bomb, I would’ve never lifted a finger.” So Einstein’s position, and Einstein has nothing to do with the Manhattan Project, by the way. His role is in writing that letter at Szilard’s request. His position is, I don’t want to have anything to do with it. Meitner from 1939 onwards when she realised the possibility, decided absolutely that she would have nothing to do with the creation of an atom bomb.
So there’s those who, some of these theoretical physicists, they know where their moral compass is and they really are appalled by the possibilities. Now what about Szilard and Szilard’s sort of diminishing role within the actual creation of the bomb? Let’s go on a bit, I can’t quite remember which pictures I had next, but go on to the next one and next one. Right, okay, let’s just leave it here. This is the move towards where Szilard finally ends up. First of all, thing to be said, Szilard’s nemesis lies in the character of Groves, the scientific director. Szilard has already got himself into some hot water by being very difficult about the actual process which had resulted in the nuclear reactor in Chicago. And there’d been an attempt at that stage to get him fired. But with Groves it becomes altogether more serious. Groves doesn’t like all these foreigners particularly, It’s not specific. There may be an implication of antisemitism, but he just sees them as all a bunch of people who, you know, seem to not be wanting to accept a sort of military discipline, which clearly they don’t. But in Szilard’s case, it’s altogether much worse because Szilard is always questioning the authority of administrators. People like Szilard, he’s quite open about it. You might say he’s a little bit arrogant. He thinks only scientists should really understand all this business. And so he’s already typecast himself almost from the word go as a sort of troublemaker.
And to make things worse, he goes over the head of Groves and sends missives to Vannevar Bush, the head of the line management for the Manhattan Project, who is part of the American administration telling him what needs to be done. So he’s not a very good team member. And Groves responds to this by trying to get him off the project by referring to his German alien status, which is actually overruled. It’s also interesting too that Wigner and Teller also get into a sort of little bit of problem. Wigner has his own upset when he’s given responsibility for mass plutonium production. When he hears that DuPont are going to get involved in this, he has his own wobbly of sorts. And Teller, of course, is extremely problematic because he’s decided that what he wants to create is not to be involved in what is called the creation of the gadget, the atom bomb that they’re trying to produce out in the New Mexico desert, but something even bigger, a super bomb, which was eventually become the hydrogen bomb. And so it’s quite interesting that Oppenheimer has three difficult Hungarians on his books. And there is a famous quote from Oppenheimer, which is “God protect us from the enemy without, and the Hungarians within.” But having said that, there’s a much bigger tragedy involved. By late 1943, it’s very clear that Heisenberg’s Uranverein project is not getting anywhere very fast, doesn’t have the sort of resources or of course the theoretical physicists, which who have all gone to America that Manhattan project has. And the attempts to get information by Heisenberg from Neils Bohr in Copenhagen, a very famous incident lead nowhere.
And Bohr by this time by 1943, has been whisked away to be part of the, to be associated with the Manhattan project team. And by late 1944, the team which has gone out to Europe in the wake of D-Day to check up on the actual status of the Uranverein project, has unequivocally brought back the information that there will be no German bomb. So where does this leave somebody like Szilard who has been its initiator. The project is going ahead and though Szilard doesn’t know it, what we know now from declassified information is that from 1943, they’re already, the US government is already looking at targets for the targeted use of atom bombs. That targeted use is not going to be in Germany, it’s going to be in Japan. And Szilard later says, as far as he’s concerned, the whole rationale, he has a famous televised debate with Teller in the early 1960s. And as far as he’s concerned the whole trajectory towards the creation of the bomb was based on a false premise. So what we have by the time we’re getting much closer to the creation of the bomb is Szilard increasingly marginalised and very much working on an outside lane. Others in the system are willing to go along with it. Von Neumann, interestingly is on the team which proposes targets. He’s actually suggests Kyoto, which is actually blocked as one potential place for an atom bomb to be dropped. Oppenheimer and Fermi are sort of on board. Jewish scientists from Poland, Joseph Rockblatt, when he realises what is actually going on, what the purpose of the US project, it actually is, he quits and Bohr, Neils Bohr, who is now in America, attempts to meet both Roosevelt and Churchill, which he does.
The meetings are entirely unsuccessful, partly because Bohr is not a great communicator, paradoxically, and his line is very much that this, that there should be a, the development of the bomb, it should be detonated somewhere where people can see the result of it, but it should also be put under, the bomb should also be put under an international control. And Szilard’s efforts are actually almost running in parallel to this, are very similar, but alas, they run like, they run a little bit like a thriller story, where the result is not the one you want to hear. He does succeed in getting a meeting with Roosevelt, which is scheduled for May 8th, 1945. Roosevelt dies on April the ninth, 1945. So the meeting never happens. Instead he meets a former close associate of Roosevelt, Burns, who had been director of the office of war mobilisation. Burns, by the way, is committed to using the bomb. And so you can see that this is going to get nowhere fast and certainly Burns is not impressed by Szilard’s argument, which is A, to demonstrate the bomb if necessary, but not to use it. To put scientists in charge of an atomic future and to make the information freely available to the whole international scientific community, including the Soviets. His argument is the Soviets are sooner or later going to be able to develop this anyway. It’s much more important at this point in time to put this under scientific lock and key. So failure number one, Burns, Szilard turns to a second line of approach. He gets together some other scientists also including emigre’s Frank, James Frank from Germany. They get together with a another, originally an emigre, , and a man called Glenn Seaborg. All people who have been involved in the Manhattan project. And they set themselves up as a committee and again, they attempt to warn the administration.
Now under Truman, they put together a sort of proposal. This is June, 1945. So it’s just a month off from Trinity that if the bomb is actually used, it will lead to a nuclear arms race. And what is needed is international control. But if you really want to use the bomb to stop to make it clear to the Japanese what the result will be, then drop it on a desert island. The report is ignored by Truman. It’s ignored. So Szilard is in effect almost on his own at this point. And he therefore sets out to create a petition, a petition in which he gets together as many theoretical physicists as possible to tell Truman the truth. A nation which sets the precedent of using these newly liberated forces of nature for the purposes of destruction may have to bear the responsibility of opening the door to an era of devastation on an unimaginable scale. The petition signed by 58 59 Chicago met scientists. It’s repeated again, actually a day after Trinity is after trinity. But it never gets beyond Burns, it never gets to Truman. And it’s also interesting to show the difference between Teller and Szilard on this. Next one. We’re almost there by the way, next one. How does Teller respond to this? Tellers offers an apology for not signing. 'I have no hope of cleaning my conscience. The things we are working on are so terrible that no amount of protesting or fiddling with politics will save our souls.“ More to the point, Teller refuses to get others to sign and refuses Szilard’s request to find more signatories elsewhere. Oppenheimer won’t help with Szilard’s petition and so we know what happens next from Szilard’s point of view, a disaster.
So to summarise on this, Szilard had begun as the prime mover in the making of the bomb. What was he now at the time of Trinity? His persona, non grata. He’s not even invited to Trinity itself and indeed has no knowledge of him, no knowledge of the event. Groves, meanwhile, his nemesis is conspiring to nail him under the espionage act for attempting to publish the petition. And indeed in Chicago at the university, Szilard is threatened with the termination of his contract if he attempts to have that petition published. So Szilard had attempted what had been the purpose of Szilard’s involvement from the start. It was to create a bomb to prevent the Nazis getting there first and thus to prevent the Nazis winning the war. Szilard had always believed himself to be somebody who could save the world. That was, if you like, his conceit. Instead, he had enabled not by purpose, but by the consequences of consequences. He had enabled what would end up being the destructions of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the very arms race he and other scientists had warned against. At this point in time, the personal and political tragedy is complete and Szilard is at the epicentre of that tragedy. The rest one might say is either history or at some subsequent moment beyond the now, the end of history. But for now, let’s leave it at that. There is more on what happens to Szilard in the 1940s and fifties from, and of course that’s to do with his opposition to the bomb, but then we have the rather ambiguously oppositional figure of Edward Teller whose direction is quite different. That will do, thank you.
[Jess] Have you heard the term undue to describe someone?
Undue?
[Jess] Yeah.
Yeah, I have. Yes, that’s the answer. Yes, I have heard that expression.
[Jess] When will this recording become available? Absolutely brilliant. I’m pretty sure they’re quite speedy, so pretty soon. They’re more just praises and comments, to be honest about-
Well, that’s nice. Thank you to an audience, a good audience for sitting through a lot of stuff, is all I can say, thank you.
Q&A and Comments:
[Jess] You are welcome. Yes, amazing, and then someone’s just said, Nuclear bombs on Japan ended their war instantly, turned it into a non-military country with a pacifist future from the West that turned it into an economic powerhouse.
Yeah, well, that’s a way of looking at this, but this isn’t really what the, this is another story, and there is a, you know, this is if you like, this is a good version of why the bomb ought to have been dropped. But I don’t think it gets to the heart of the dissonance between what the scientists like Szilard are proposing and what actually happens in terms of American geopolitics and where that goes once trinity happens. I think this is a much bigger, a wider debate here, yeah.
[Jess] Fabulous. Right, well, that was perfect 'cause we are right on time.
Right, we go we can.
[Jess] Thank you very much.
We can all go have supper.
[Jess] Thank you so much.
Thank you very much, Jess. Thank you very much to all of you.
[Jess] You’re welcome.. Have a lovely week, everyone. bye-bye.