Phyllis Schlafly Quotes
The atomic bomb is a marvelous gift that was given to our country by a wise God.
Her critics later started to ask whether the same wise God gave the atomic bomb to the Russians, and to the Pakistanis and the North Koreans.
Phyllis Schlafly, Political Author & Founder of the Eagle Forum, Quoted in Raymond Coffey, "Women are the Best Warmakers", The Day (New London, Connecticut), July 8, 1982
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
There were some doubts the scientists developed after Germany had surrendered as Hitler had been their greatest fear. So they were briefed on the planned invasion of the Japanese mainland and the military medical preparations for treating and caring for ½ million serious wounded casualties. In addition, given the state of war, there was expected about the same number of American Military deaths. On top of that, there would be many more Japanese military casualties plus even more Japanese civilian deaths and wounded. The use of the Atom Bomb would save all those lives but have casualties of its own, but far fewer. 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.
Bethe and other European refugees joined American and British scientists at Los Alamos, NM, for the development of the atomic bomb.
For a similar view from the eyes of an American, see Pearson {612242}.
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.
Phyllis Stewart Schlafly was an American attorney, conservative activist and author. She held traditional conservative social and political views, opposed feminism, gay rights and abortion, and successfully campaigned against ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. She was opposed in turn by moderates and liberals for her attitudes on sex, gender roles, homosexuality and a number of other issues. More than three million copies of her self-published book, A Choice Not an Echo (1964), a polemic against Republican leader Nelson Rockefeller, were sold or distributed for free. Schlafly co-authored books on national defense and was critical of arms control agreements with the Soviet Union. In 1972, Schlafly founded the Eagle Forum, a conservative political interest group, and remained its chairwoman and CEO until her death in 2016 while staying active in traditional conservative causes.
