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The Making of the Atomic Bomb
Lansing Lamont's Day of Trinity was the first book I read about the Manhattan Project. In what turns out to be a decent if uncritical look at the pursuit of atomic weaponry, Lansing was given exclusive access throughout the life of the Manhattan Project. In reading the book you feel like you have a fly-on-the-wall view of the process of producing the first uranium and plutonium bombs.
Lamont's telling is a bit thin though, not going into the motivations of the scientists and only barely touching on the geopolitical situation at the time. This not to say that it is craven, but it is overly sympathetic and a bit too rah-rah about atomic weaponry and their usefulness.
In the book, Mr. Rhodes takes the time to explore the base motivations of the scientists. Ever wonder exactly what motivated Teller's bloodthirstiness? What inspired the scientists to continue driving toward the atomic prize even after the fall of Germany? Rhodes has spent the time researching exactly what made the major players tick.
This is all well and good, but probably the most enjoyable thing about the book is how it's not really a story about the men so much as the science they pursued. The book is not really about the bombs, either, but more the history of physics and physicists.
Always keeping the science accessible and exciting, he manages to explain concisely the process of discovery and experimentation and how the significant events of history affected both the project's progress.
The way that Mr. Rhodes tracks the movements of physicists from anti-semitic Germany to Los Alamos, Chicago and other centers of the nuclear arms program is especially compelling and lends keen insight into the motivations of the physicists involved.
One of the most important (and stomach churning) things about the book is how it shows how cheap human life became in the first half of the 20th century. I think that it is important, when considering the horror of dropping bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that people have the proper historical context before coming to one conclusion or another about the morality of the dropping of the bomb. This book gives that context.
This is not to say that this is a perfect book. Reaching as it does from the mid 1800s through to the dawn of Teller's super-bomb, the book's scope means that some discoveries and scientists don't get the in-depth coverage that Bohr, Szilard and Oppenheimer do, and he doesn't talk much at all about the espionage that surrounded nuclear development. Nor in my mind does he fully answer the question of why the scientists remained motivated to produce the weapons after Germany had been conquered.
Those caveats aside, this is a terrific book well worth checking out if you are interested in the birth of modern physics, the men and women behind it, or the most powerful weapon that has ever been used on humans.
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...and I have to agree with the reviewer. The book doesn't spend much time on the emotional or philosophical issues the people involved in developing the bomb were experiencing.
I believe it was meant strictly as a factual account of how things progressed, who did what, etc. It definitely was interesting to see how physics was brought to the US and the fact the US was way behind in science before the biggest minds in Europe started coming over because of the war.
All in all a good long read, sometimes too much detail in spots but iteresting nonetheless.
"It's comin' back around again..." -RATM
For me, the bomb is a really good case on the illegitamcy of democracy or at least the need to fix it up.
6 years
43,000 Employees
2.2 billion dollars in a time of war
7 installations
operations in 19 states, including Canada
the multinational marshalling of expertise
All this was hidden from congress, the vice president, and many other high ranking gov. officials. It was strictly censored from the media as well.
Once invented, the same companies that produced televisions were hired to manufactured the bomb for the government. I mean RCA, NBC, and General Electric.
Of the 85,000 feet of film shot in Japan depicting the massive chaos and suffering the bomb inflicted, ZERO made it onto television because of a STRICT GOVERNMENT PRESS BAN until the 1980s.
Production companies prefered to depict test explosions, especially at the beautiful Bikini Atoll (now non-existant).
How can we make any claim that we live in a democracy?
-- "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." Jean Jacques Rousseau
I assume you are talking about why they remained motivated to produce the weapons after Germany was conquered, but before Japan was. The reason which was discussed in the book was that they had already spent a lot of money, and it had been decided by then that the concept would work. Because of the perceived usefullness of the thing to end what looked at the time to be a protracted war with the Japanese they kept going. Just because the initial motivation was as a foil for Germany, it didn't mean it was a bad idea after Germany was gone. Plus by that time the scientists were genuinely interested in the idea and really wanted to see it go boom after living in the desert on the top of a mesa for a few years.
For the motivation after the end of World War II was over, you should read Rhodes' followup book, Dark Sun, The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb. This book goes a lot more into the wholesale operation of Russia's espionage business here in the US after the war and details what was going on at Los Alamos while the Cold War was really building up steam.
Rhodes wrote a fantastic sequel, too: "Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb."
Dark Sun is even more fascinating -- and more ominous. The idea seemed to be in the 50s and 60s to keep making bigger and bigger bombs. Some of the photographs of the test shots are amazing.
Also, if you're reading this stuff, by all means check out the play "Copenhagen" by Michael Frayn. It details a meeting between Bohr (a Dane) and Heisenberg (a German) in the middle of the war. The text is pretty engaging -- both for the questions it asks (Why did Heisenberg visit Bohr? Was he trying to figure out what Bohr new about the American atomic programs) and for the background it offers about the beginnings of atomic energy. Highly recommended.
This is off-topic, but I add it because I find it fascinating: but one of the topics touched upon in 'Copenhagen' is the fact that the Germans, apparently, had constructed a reactor in Germany and where literally days away from activating it (without any safety precautions or control mechanisms) when the Allies came crashing through and destroyed it. Why this incident hasn't been made into a film -- even a crappy Bruce Willis/Stallone film -- is beyond me. It's absolutely fascinating -- the idea that the Allies may or may not have know about the reactor but were lucky enough to catch it just before it went live. The reactor was constructed at the bottom of a mountain in a deep cave. It's amazing, actually. Frayn touches upon it in his play when Bohr reminds Heisenberg -- like something straight out of a Bruce Willis movie, in fact -- that had they successfully activated the reactor, there was no mechanism to slow or even control the reaction. It could have conceivably gotten completely out of control. Absolutely frightning.
There's really no better work than Richard Feyman's "Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman".
It might be hard to comprehend from our vantage point but, for the most part, people building the bomb really didn't *have* any emotional or philosophical issues. They had one of histories grandest scientific head rushes.
Think about. Hell, until they had actually built and used the thing to them it was just bomb, but bigger. We were making lots and LOTS of bombs at the time.
*Afterward* is a different story, after the work and the head rush were over and everyone could sit back and reflect on what God, and they, had wraught.
Richard actually went into a deep depression for a while and didn't want to do physics anymore. There were a lot like him.
But at the time they were doing it it was pretty much a grand adventure.
KFG
I have this book and Rhodes' follow-up, Dark Sun, The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb. Both are excellent reads... while they've both been out a while, like Shirer's Third Reich book, these take a while to read and digest properly.
What I find fascinating about both books is that it really isn't as easy to make a nuke as some claim, particularly given the right-wing paranoia that seems to have swept the U.S. as of late.
Although this isn't brought up in either book (the 2nd gives you an excellent overview of Cold War issues, spying, and just how destructive McCarthyism was in the 50s... plus you do get the clear impression that Curtis LeMay was both a genius and a psycho all wrapped up into one neat package) I do get paranoid thinking about nuclear security issues - namely, all those Soviet-era nukes that are lying around that someone could conceivably rip off.
I can see where a Kidman-Clooney Peacemaker scenario could easily unravel - someone might remove the fission trigger of an H-bomb and walk into a city and set it off. Although I'm sure Hollywood took some liberty in that movie; I somehow don't think the triggers are small enough... and light enough (plutonium + the HE compression mechanism) to slip into a backpack.
Maybe they are, h3ll, I'm not a nuke weapons expert. But that seems a lot more plausible scenario - someone stealing (or more grimly, buying, on the black market) a fission trigger and setting it off - than the scenario shown in the Sum of All Fears.
Still would kill a lot more people than an airplane full of aviation fuel, even if set off at ground level amongst skyscrapers (the Nagasaki bomb had a higher yield - being a plutonium weapon - than the uranium gun design Hiroshima bomb - but because it landed in a hilly area, some of the bomb's effect was dampened (I believe both bombs were proximity/altitude fused - neither went off close to ground level)). The best way to inflict a lot of damage with a nuke is the compression wave (it also limits fallout) with an airburst. However, terrorists might be more interested in having as much fallout contaminate as large of an area as possible. So a groundburst is probably more likely if, God forbid, they ever get a hold of a nuke.
I agree with a previous post that the eyewitness accounts from Hiroshima that are in the book are extremely sobering. Plus the pictures of people who were flash-incinerated and their "photos" left on buildings.
I have very mixed feelings on the use of the Bomb... my wife would not be here, nor would my children, as her father was a POW (captured during Bataan and had the lovely experience of surviving the 50+ %age casualty rate of the Death March) who was about a month from death by starvation and abuse (he was a POW for 3 1/2 years) when we caulked Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I do not believe the Japanese of that time would have surrended if the Bomb had not been used.
War is simply horrible, plain and simple. I look at the current Iraqi situation... and North Korean... and look at my family, and think, "damn, nukes are horrible, and I don't like war... but I don't want to see my children die in the future because we were afraid/hesistant to take care of rogue states." I don't think we have a choice if Saddam uses WMDs on our troops or Israel. We have to turn Baghdad into green glass. And that thought turns my stomach, but that's war.
They'd do the same thing to us if the positions were reversed.
I'm GLAD the government has the ability to hide huge national secrets like the atomic bomb. If it couldn't, we might have had it used on us.
There's a difference between free government and an open government. The Nazi government was kind of open, in the sense that if you weren't Arayan you knew you were screwed. Didn't make it free. Free means you can do what you want - open means you get to know what everybody else does.
And for those who say that democracies have to be free, you're right. That's why there aren't any democracies, but a bunch of representative republics. The difference is subtle, but important here. We appoint people to make our decisions - not necessarily to tell us what all those decisions are.
When it comes right down to it, it's impossible to simultaneously maintain a free, open, secure society. You can maybe pick two out of the three, but those two will compromise the third.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
They did. However, this kind of logic always has bothered me. The Japanese Army slaugthered thousands of innocent civilians. So, to punish "them", we slaughthered an order of magnitude more innocent civilians.
I suggest you read the book "Hiroshima".
...richie - It is a good day to code.
Teller is about as whacked as they come.
Eddy was one of the primary culprits that wanted to use nukes in major engineering efforts, such as creating waterways and such. To such ends, tons of radioactive material was taken from the Nevada Test Site up Alaska way. That and the blasts in Amchitka (5 MegaTON below ground test). Six months of my life were spent trying to monitor the dispersal of material up Barrow, AK. Not the best of times....
My favorite Teller story is when he'd come visit us at LANL. We were working on the Edward Teller envisioned Stars Wars project. Every 6 months or so Ed would drop on by and land by helicopter in our parking lot. Between visits, a liquid hydrogen storage facility was erected and the parking lot closed / marked and not a landing site. Next visit, helicopter lands at the same place and a couple guys get out and spark up some ciggies. Safty Officer went fuggin crazy. Turned out Teller told them to disregard markings and land anyhow.
I don't think Harry Truman had to think too long about the decision, or that he loat any sleep over it. If he hadn't done it he would have been hung from the nearest lamppost by a mob when the people found out about the bomb.
Another thing to consider: The USSR had just declared war on Japan at the time; if the war had gone on longer it's likely all of Korea would have been occupied by the Soviets, and likely a few other areas in the far east also.
I'm well aware of the atrocities committed by the Japanese troops in China and elsewhere.
The atom bombs weren't dropped to "punish" Japan, and to state that the ~200K people -- military as well as civilian -- that they killed far exceeded the death toll wrought by Japan is flat out wrong.
I didn't mean to imply that the death toll from the bomb exceeded the number of people killed by the Japanese. I know it didn't. Even the fire bombings of Japanese cities killed more people in one night than the A-bombs.
I suggest you learn the Pacific/Asian war was more than Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima.
I've read quite a bit about the war in the Pacific. Did you know that Curtiss LeMay said of the fire bombings: "If we had lost, I would most likely be tried for war crimes.".
But, I'm simply trying to make this point: if a bunch of people (like the Japanese army) go and do some terrible things to innocent people, and then in response, we (i.e. our army etc) go and kill thousands of people, who mostly had nothing to do with the stuff their army did and were for the most part innocent.
That's all. It bothers me that people think that this is OK. War is hell, and somehow these things occur, but we should not dismiss them so casually.
...richie - It is a good day to code.