Henry L. Stimson Quotes

Germany had some world class physicists. Our scientists, military intelligence people, and political leadership assumed that the Germans were also seeking to develop the Atomic Bomb. Ironically, it turned out that they were not, and what Truman reported in this quotation was untrue (although that was not fully known at the time.) Einstein and several of the scientists who were early pioneers in modern physics were Jewish, and Hitler referred to the study of nuclear fission and fusion as “Jewish Science.” As a result, the German government did not commit the resources to the development of an atomic bomb. Instead, they were betting on the development of the Jet Airplane which they succeeded in deploying against the Allies at the end of the war. But they did not have enough or enough pilots left alive to fly them, and Germany was overrun by the Allied Troops. Prior to Truman’s erroneous report about the German development of an atomic bomb, there had only been one piece of evidence that the Germans were not developing one. An OSS secret agent, Moe Berg, had talked with Werner Heisenberg, at a Swiss scientific conference during the war. He was going to assassinate the greatest of the German physicists if Berg thought he was working on a nuclear device. Berg concluded from his discussions that Heisenberg did not know enough about nuclear fission to have been working on that. Berg did not kill Heisenberg, and reported that he did not think the Germans were developing a bomb as if they were Heisenberg would have been deeply involved. However, the American intelligence people and the American scientists, did not trust Berg’s analysis and conclusion. Berg was not a trained scientist. He was a professional baseball player—the NY Yankee backup catcher to Bill Dickey. He was a college graduate, a brilliant guy and a very fast learner who had studied physics books and papers before his assignment. Berg turned out to have been right, but that was not confirmed until a few years after the war. Truman had relied on an incorrect intelligence estimate when he made this quotation. It was not the first such error of intelligence analysis in American history and it would not be the last.

This prediction was sadly terribly accurate. Nuclear terrorism is a realistic threat at the millennium. Pannekoek was one of the first to predict it.

After the first atomic bomb test, the day before the Potsdam Conference began:

This quotation is very important in helping to understand the 1950s in America with respect to nuclear weapons policy. McCormick was one the better educated, sophisticated, and influential Americans. Yet he appears to be a technological and nuclear ignoramous. Most people had not yet realized that atomic weapons were not just much larger traditional bombs. They could do terrible damage, but it would always be localized they thought. Chicago might be destroyed but the people out of range would be OK. He never got it that a dirty bomb could be dropped on Detroit and depending on which way the wind is blowing could wipe out Chicago and much of the Midwest as well. He knew nothing of the genetic effect the radiation, nor the implications for the environment of maintaining a large nuclear manufacturing industry. He and many like him did not realize that after the first bombs were created, how easy it would be for the Russians and others to also develop a nuclear arsenal. And 50,000 warheads was just a matter of effort. The implications of these things would inhibit our carrying out his and others ideological views of foreign policy. Oppenheimer and most nuclear scientists explained all this, but believing them and acting on those beliefs would have been too much of a change.

1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma

This rhetoric turned out to be just that. When Israel developed a nuclear capability, the Egyptians became more rational and sobered. It was Anwar Sedate however who was the Egyptian leader wise enough and strong enough to make peace with Israel.

This quotation represents a colossal failure of politicians to understand science and the way that it works. They assumed that the processes and methods were secrets that if kept secret, would prevent others from constructing an atomic bomb. The reality was that the most important “secrets” had emanated from Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and other published scientific papers. So any competent physicist knew immediately how the bomb worked. A triggering mechanism would need to be developed but that was just a complicated engineering project. The largest barrier was the supply of enough radioactive material with sufficient purity. That then (as today) took a lot of money and some time. But after the initial bomb, the secrets might speed things up but were not necessary. That is why the French and the Russians quickly developed their bombs, and why it did not take the Israelis long once the had decided to invest the resources. China, India and Pakistan did not need the secrets either when much later, they decided to develop nuclear weapons. With the atomic bomb, spying and obtaining secrets shorten the required time and reduce the cost, but are not necessary. This is why nuclear proliferation is so hard to stop.

At the time Iran was claiming that its nuclear program was for atomic energy only.

The Scientific Project that developed the Atomic Bomb. The Scientific Project that developed the Atomic Bomb

At the time, surprising to most people now, the use of the atomic bomb was not an issue of controversy at all. There were no Congressman who questioned it, no newspapers which editorialized against the use of the bomb. There were not even any other counties which protested its use. The blessing of ending the war, even at the cost of less than 200,000 deaths seemed a clearly desirable tradeoff when compared with the many millions of deaths that would have occurred had the bomb not been used. As an example, the conventional bombing of Tokyo before the nuclear weapons were used killed as many Japanese as either Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

At the time, Pakistan was the only nuclear nation that was very unstable and full of terrorist groups which the government nor the military could control and in some cases even wanted to control. A takeover by militant Islamic terrorists was a possibility or the acquisition of one of the nuclear weapons byr terrorists was then a possibility. India, the United States, and other countries were very concerned.