Inside the Centre: The Life of J. Robert Oppenheimer (109 page)

The device that obliterated the island of Elugelab was not a deliverable bomb. This is because it used as its fusion-fuel liquid deuterium, which boils at 23.5 degrees Kelvin (minus-250 degrees Celsius). This meant that heavy and unwieldy cryogenic equipment – twenty tons of it – had to be used to maintain the deuterium at below this extremely low temperature. This, in turn, meant that the ‘bomb’ weighed more than eighty tons,
about twenty times more than the ‘Little Boy’ fission bomb and much too heavy to be considered a practical weapon. No one doubted, however, that if the Ulam–Teller design worked with liquid deuterium, it would also work with lithium-6, which is a solid metal, perfectly suited for a practical, deliverable bomb.

The Mike test could indeed, then, be seen as, in William Borden’s phrase, the ‘thermonuclear Trinity’. Nevertheless, through its very success, it confirmed something that Oppenheimer and his dwindling (and increasingly isolated) band of political supporters had been saying for the previous four years: with a yield of ten megatons, the H-bomb was, surely,
too
big to be considered as a military weapon. Who could imagine actually using a bomb powerful enough to destroy completely, in a single moment, a large city like London or New York? This thought seems not to have diminished the sense of triumph felt by those responsible for the H-bomb’s development. For Teller, particularly, even though he had not been part of the Los Alamos team responsible for the Mike test, this was a moment of celebration. Having received a detailed report of the test results, he decided to go to Princeton to keep his friend John Wheeler up to date and to thank him for the support he had given him at a time when Teller had felt shunned by other scientists with experience of nuclear armaments.

While Teller was at Princeton, Oppenheimer invited him over for a drink at Olden Manor, an occasion remembered by Teller in his memoir in the following extraordinary anecdote:

Then, after he had returned to Chicago, Teller received a phone call from Oppenheimer, who asked if he remembered their conversation in Princeton: ‘I assured him that I did. He then explained that he just wanted me to know that he had found a way to get his suggestion to President Elect Eisenhower.’ Teller, who ‘had not thought of the hydrogen bomb as designed for battlefield use, except possibly in an extreme crisis’, naturally recorded that he ‘could not understand Oppenheimer’s behaviour’.

The most obvious explanation, surely, is that Oppenheimer was pulling Teller’s leg, teasing him about the military uselessness of his newborn ‘boy’. Given that it was too big to transport (as Teller himself cheerfully concedes, the Mike device ‘was so huge and clumsy that a hundred oxcarts
would barely get it to a target!’), it would have to be assembled on the spot where it was to be used, and, assuming that its purpose was to attack a
military
target and not to kill millions of civilians in a large city, then the scenario described by Oppenheimer to Teller was the
only
conceivable way in which it could be used. Of course, given the possibility of using lithium-6 as a fuel, an H-bomb
could
be made that was not vulnerable to exactly this kind of ridicule (if that is what it was), but, as we have seen, Oppenheimer did not think a transportable H-bomb was a practical military weapon either.

In the aftermath of the Mike test, Oppenheimer was evidently in a provocative frame of mind. The final report of the Disarmament Panel, which was delivered to Dean Acheson in January 1953, just before Acheson gave way to his Republican counterpart, John Foster Dulles, contained several recommendations that to Acheson would have been seen as misguided, but to Dulles would have been complete anathema. While Dulles had made clear his adherence to the policy of massive retaliation, the report recommended reducing ‘our commitment to the use of nuclear weapons’. The five main proposals of the report were: 1. a policy of greater ‘candor’ about nuclear weapons with regard to the American people; 2. better communication with the US’s allies regarding nuclear matters; 3. greater priority and attention to air-defence systems; 4. withdrawal from the fruitless UN disarmament discussions; 5. better communications with the Soviet Union. Eisenhower was initially surprisingly sympathetic to these proposals, but in the month he received them, his first month in office, he took a step that would more or less ensure that this report had no impact whatsoever on US policy: he appointed Lewis Strauss as his atomic-energy advisor.

Both Strauss and Eisenhower were present when, on 17 February 1953, Oppenheimer gave a lecture in New York to the Council on Foreign Relations that was an abridged, and somewhat censored, version of the Disarmament Panel’s report. The talk, entitled ‘Atomic Weapons and American Policy’, is notable for the directness of its style and tone – Oppenheimer, for once, abandoning his usual allusiveness in favour of plain speaking. He later said about himself and his colleagues on the Disarmament Panel that in the course of their work they ‘became very vividly and painfully aware of what an unregulated arms race would lead to in the course of years’, and it is this awareness and a determination to communicate it that, above everything else, pervade this talk.

Oppenheimer begins with the thwarted hope, following ‘the bright light of the first atomic explosion’, that ‘this might mark, not merely the end of a great and terrible war, but the end of such wars for mankind’. Again, as he had done many times previously, he pins the blame for the thwarting of that hope firmly on the Soviet Union:
‘Openness, friendliness and cooperation did not seem to be what the Soviet government most prized on this earth.’ Once that hope was dashed, Oppenheimer goes on, the ‘Free World’ took refuge behind the ‘shield’ of nuclear bombs. ‘The rule for the atom was: “Let us stay ahead. Let us be sure that we are ahead of the enemy.”’ However, according to Oppenheimer, this rule is no longer sufficient, because of the nature of the arms race that it has led to. At this point, Oppenheimer makes clear, his mission to communicate the perils of that arms race runs aground because of the secrecy to which he is opposed, but to which he is nevertheless bound. ‘It is easy to say “Let us look at the arms race.” I must tell about it without communicating anything. I must reveal its nature without revealing anything; and this I propose to do.’

Oppenheimer could not, for example, mention the hydrogen bomb, nor did he feel able to mention two of the Disarmament Panel’s five recommendations (those to do with withdrawing from UN discussions and establishing better communication with the Soviet Union). This left him with the task of putting the case publicly for the other three recommendations, concentrating in particular on the first: the need for greater candour.

‘It is my opinion,’ Oppenheimer told his audience, ‘that we should all know – not precisely, but quantitatively and, above all, authoritatively – where we stand in these matters.’ For, he said, his experience was that when the facts of the matter were brought to the attention of ‘any responsible group’, the result was ‘a great sense of anxiety and somberness’. He estimated the Soviet Union to be about four years behind the US in the development and stockpiling of more and more powerful nuclear weapons, but this was ‘likely to be small comfort’ when it was realised that ‘our twenty-thousandth bomb . . . will not in any deep strategic sense offset their two-thousandth’. Such was the terrifying nature of this arms race.

One reason Oppenheimer gave for greater candour was the importance of allowing the public to reflect, in an informed way, on the security policies that were being pursued in their name, but the details of which they were not allowed to know. Rather bravely, in the face of the political winds then blowing, Oppenheimer gave as an example of such a questionable policy the plan to use nuclear weapons and ‘a rather rigid commitment to their use in a very massive, initial, unremitting strategic assault on the enemy’. This fresh attack on the doctrine of massive retaliation, of course, would have been duly noted by Strauss, Griggs, Borden and the rest of the military establishment.

‘The prevailing view,’ Oppenheimer said, ‘is that we are probably faced with a long period of cold war in which conflict, tension and armaments are to be with us.’

In such a situation, Oppenheimer insisted: ‘We need strength to be able to ask whether our plans for the use of the atom are, all things considered, right or wrong.’ And this is where the need for openness and candour makes itself clear, since: ‘We do not operate well when the important facts, the essential conditions, which limit and determine our choice are unknown. We do not operate well when they are known, in secrecy and fear, only to a few men.’

In a startling display of his own candour, Oppenheimer went on to give some examples of the foolishness of trusting these ‘few men’. The first was Truman: ‘It must be disturbing that an ex-President of the United States, who has been briefed on what we know about the Soviet atomic capability, can publicly call in doubt all conclusions from the evidence.’ The allusion here is to a statement Truman made to the press on 26 January, in which he said: ‘I am not convinced Russia has the bomb. I am not convinced the Russians have the know-how to put the complicated mechanism together to make an A-bomb work. I am not convinced they have the bomb.’

Oppenheimer’s next two examples were clearly identifiable as General Groves and Arthur Compton:

Compton, when asked about Truman’s scepticism about the bomb, had delighted the President by saying that in his view it was ‘problematical’ that the Soviets had the bomb, while Groves had told the press that the fact that there had been a nuclear explosion in Russia ‘does not prove that they have the bomb in workable form’.

Oppenheimer then went on to cite a less readily identifiable ‘high officer of the Air Defense Command’ who had said ‘only a few months ago, in a most serious discussion of measures for the continental defense of the United States’, that it was ‘not really our policy to attempt to protect this country, for that is so big a job that it would interfere with our retaliatory capabilities’. ‘Such follies,’ Oppenheimer added caustically, ‘can occur only when even the men who know the facts can find no one to talk to about them, when the facts are too secret for discussion, and thus for thought.’

Having dealt with the need for candour at some length, Oppenheimer covered his next two points – the need for greater cooperation with allies and the importance of improving air-defence systems – much more briefly. He ended on a portentous note: ‘We need to be clear that there will not be many great atomic wars for us, nor for our institutions. It is important that there not be one.’

It was an uncompromising and courageous speech. Somewhat surprisingly there was, initially at least, some sign that Oppenheimer’s views might have an impact on the new administration. Eisenhower, impressed by the Disarmament Panel’s report, and now by this speech, for the next few months encouraged the development of what became known as ‘Operation Candor’. The fact that Eisenhower seemed sympathetic to Oppenheimer’s views, however, seemed to Lewis Strauss and his allies only to make it more urgent and more important to combat, and finally to destroy once and for all, Oppenheimer’s influence on American policy.

In the May issue of
Fortune
magazine appeared an article that contained the most sustained and direct assault yet on Oppenheimer’s reputation. It was entitled ‘The Hidden Struggle for the H-bomb: The Story of Dr Oppenheimer’s Persistent Campaign to Reverse US Military Strategy’, and began dramatically: ‘A life and death struggle over national military policy has developed between a highly influential group of American scientists and the military.’ The ‘prime mover’ among these scientists was identified as Oppenheimer, and the central issue at stake the tenability of the doctrine of massive retaliation. Oppenheimer, the article stated, had ‘no confidence in the military’s assumption that SAC [Strategic Air Command] as a weapon of mass destruction is a real deterrent to Soviet action’, and was asking the US ‘to throw away its strongest weapon for defense’.

The article was published anonymously, but was in fact written by Charles Murphy, a reserve officer in the US air force and the author of a regular column in
Fortune
called ‘Defense and Strategy’. Just as Murphy’s column invariably presented the air-force view and reflected close communication with people at the very top of the air force, so this article on Oppenheimer reflected at every turn the views of Griggs,
Finletter and Strauss. The May issue of
Fortune
would have gone on sale sometime in April, which means that the article was most likely written in March, soon after Oppenheimer delivered his confrontational speech in New York, so it seems natural to assume that its publication represented the rising of Strauss and the air force to what they saw as Oppenheimer’s public provocation. David Lilienthal described the
Fortune
piece as ‘another nasty and obviously inspired article attacking Robert Oppenheimer in a snide way’.