The First War of Physics (18 page)

On 6 December General Georgei Zhukov ordered his troops to launch a massive counter-attack on German positions across a 200-mile front. The Soviet Union had lost about four million men, two-thirds of its coal production capacity, and three-quarters of its iron production. The sheer scale of the Soviet counter-offensive in the depths of winter was startling. Hitler ordered his troops to maintain their positions, but they could not. They were overwhelmed.

Pearl Harbor

Japan was a small island nation with limited natural resources but with big ambitions. Steeped in a warrior culture, Japanese writers and poets of the late nineteenth century had elaborated the vision of a Japanese Asian empire, presided over by Japan’s emperor, a direct descendant of the sun god Amaterasu. In the first decades of the twentieth century, Japan had
begun to build the foundations for such an empire using the unique blend of manufacturing know-how, commercial capability and violence borrowed from the successful model of British imperialism.

In 1937 Japan had renewed hostilities with its cultural nemesis, China. In August 1940, it had announced the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, intended as an economic bloc designed to achieve self-sufficiency for Japan, China and the Far Eastern British, Dutch and French colonies. It was not a new concept, and was perceived largely as an attempt to free Asia from European imperialism, replacing the European invaders with a Japanese empire. On 27 September 1940 Japan signed the Tripartite Pact in Berlin, binding the country to Germany and Italy, and undertaking to ‘assist one another with all political, economic and military means if one of the Contracting Powers is attacked by a Power at present not involved in the European War or in the Japanese–Chinese conflict’. It was a not-soveiled threat to America.

America responded with economic sanctions and boycotts. As Japan increased pressure on Malaya, the Dutch East Indies and French IndoChina in the first few months of 1941, America tightened the screw. On 25 July Roosevelt imposed an oil embargo and froze Japanese assets. The embargo tipped Japan’s delicately balanced economy into crisis.

Roosevelt moved the American Pacific Fleet to Hawaii and ordered a build-up of forces in the Philippines, hoping that this show of strength would deter any further Japanese aggression in the region. Japan’s military leaders considered their options. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of Japan’s Combined Fleet, had won support for a plan to attack American forces in the spring of 1941. He had been building up
matériel
and training pilots through the summer. The attack was eventually authorised on 1 December.

At 07:58 on 7 December an urgent message was relayed to a startled world from the Ford Island command centre:

AIR RAID PEARL HARBOR. THIS IS NOT DRILL.

The Japanese had launched their attack. The Allies declared war on Japan the next day. Germany and Italy declared war on America on 11 December. American Admiral William Halsey declared: ‘When this war is over, the Japanese language will be spoken only in Hell.’

The war in Europe had now become the Second World War.

¹
This site had been purchased by the Ministry of Supply in 1938 and was used for the manufacture and underground storage of chemical weapons. The Valley Works factory produced mustard gas shells until April 1945. The site was decommissioned in 1959 and the stockpile of chemical weapons was disposed of over the following ten years. The site is now a nature reserve.

²
Anderson had been responsible for preparing defensive measures against air raids prior to the outbreak of war. He initiated the development of a prefabricated air-raid shelter that came to be called an ‘Anderson shelter’.

³
Cairncross is often referred to as the ‘fifth man’ in the notorious Cambridge spy ring. However, although Cairncross knew of Blunt, Burgess, Maclean and ‘Kim’ Philby, he later insisted that there was never a link between their activities as spies.

⁴
Glavnoe Razvedyvatel’noe Upravlenie (Main Intelligence Directorate), created by Lenin in 1918. The GRU handles all military intelligence.

⁵
And incidentally proving that light behaves as a collection of particles (photons) as well as a wave.

⁶
The MIT laboratory where wartime research on radar was carried out was named the Radiation Laboratory to disguise its purpose. To avoid confusion with the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory, in this book I will always refer to ‘radar at MIT’ and reserve the name Radiation Laboratory (or Rad Lab) for the Berkeley facility.

PART II

WEAPON

Chapter 6

A MODEST REQUEST

March–November 1942

E
inar Skinnarland was a ruddy, blond, jovial Norwegian in his early twenties. Born and raised with seven brothers and sisters in the small town of Rjukan, he worked as a construction superintendent at the Møsvatn (Mos Lake) dam which provided power for the region, including the Vemork plant. His brother Torstein also worked as an engineer at the dam. He was highly resourceful, fluent in English, a champion skier and intimately familiar with the local landscape and the community that lived within it. In March 1942 he advised his employers of his intention to take some leave.

But instead of taking a holiday, he joined a small group of resistance fighters formally known as Norwegian Independent Company, No. One.
¹
The unit had been formed a year before by the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) to carry out commando raids in occupied Norway. Under the leadership of Odd Starheim,
²
on 15 March the group seized the 600-ton coastal steamer SS
Galtesund
and sailed it to Britain. After two days crossing the North Sea in ferocious weather, they arrived in Aberdeen, Scotland.

The SOE had been established by Churchill on 16 July 1940 to conduct war by other means – facilitating espionage and sabotage behind enemy lines. It was also intended to serve as the core of a resistance movement in the event that Britain itself was invaded. It was formed initially from three departments: Section D of the SIS, Military Intelligence Research (a War Office department), and a propaganda organisation known as Department EH. The SOE went by various alternative names, including the ‘Baker Street Irregulars’,
³
the ‘Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare’ and ‘Churchill’s Secret Army’. Its activities remained strictly secret throughout the war.

Inevitably, there was a certain amount of internal rivalry between the SIS and SOE. The SIS was charged with the task of gathering intelligence and exerting influence through its network of agents and therefore favoured a quiet, thoughtful and calm approach to its missions. In contrast, the SOE thrived on creating chaos, consistent with Churchill’s charge that it should ‘set Europe ablaze’. A successful SOE operation frequently resulted in a crackdown by the Gestapo, risking the exposure and the very lives of valuable SIS agents. As an organisation the SOE was not without restraint, however. It adhered to a rule that there should be no explosions without the prior approval of the Foreign Office.

Skinnarland was a gift to the SOE. He had extensive contacts at the Vemork plant and knew the area as well as anyone could possibly know it. On his arrival in Britain he was questioned by an expert on Norwegian affairs. It soon became apparent that if they could get Skinnarland back to Rjukan before he was missed, he would be able to pick up his life as though nothing had happened. Armed with some rudimentary skills, he could be a very useful British spy working close to a production plant critical to the German nuclear programme.

Skinnarland was briefed by Tronstad, now head of Section IV of the Norwegian High Command, responsible for intelligence-gathering, espionage and sabotage in collaboration with the SOE. He was also given a short but intensive training course in wireless/telegraph operation, explosives and intelligence-gathering at one of the SOE’s Special Training Schools in the Scottish Highlands. There was time enough for only one practice parachute jump. On 28 March, only eleven days since arriving in Aberdeen, he took off from Kinloss bound for a dropping zone near Rjukan. Aside from a moment’s panic as he attempted what was only his second parachute jump, he landed safely and the following morning reported for work.

He told his colleagues that he had enjoyed a relaxing break.

Nuclear physics as a weapon

Heisenberg had returned empty-handed from Copenhagen, but he had little time to ponder on what might have been or what this meant. In September 1941 the German armed forces had appeared near-invincible. They had annexed or conquered most of Western Europe and the Eastern European countries bordering the Soviet Union. But by December the tide of war was beginning to turn against Nazi Germany on its Eastern front.

Hitler put the German economy on a formal war footing. Difficult decisions had to be taken, with conflicting demands weighed in the balance of expediency. Inevitably, the Uranverein received notice that its work could continue ‘only if there is a certainty of getting some benefit from it in the near future’.

Bothe, Hahn, Harteck and Heisenberg were called to report on the progress they had made at a conference held on 16 December 1941 at the headquarters of German Army Ordnance in Berlin. The conference concluded that nuclear fission was unlikely to offer any significant advantage to the German war effort, at least in the near future. Schumann went on to recommend that the army withdraw from nuclear research and from
the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics, and pass responsibility for supervision of the programme to another organisation. The Reich Research Council, which had originally established the Uranverein in April 1939, was waiting eagerly in the wings.

If, as they later claimed, the German physicists were looking for ways to avoid work that might lead to delivery of a super-weapon for Hitler’s arsenal, then this decision certainly worked in their favour. However, the Reich Research Council was a weak organisation and the army retained control over that part of the programme that it had itself initiated in 1939 under Kurt Diebner.

By this time Heisenberg and Weizsäcker’s research priorities appeared to have undergone a subtle shift. On their return from Copenhagen, they had tended to focus their research efforts on a reactor and downplay the potential for a weapon. But Diebner did not share their pessimism. His group had continued to contribute to the nuclear research programme from a laboratory in the Gottow suburb of Berlin, and he had developed considerable enthusiasm for the prospects for a bomb.

The Uranverein drafted a report, delivered to German Army Ordnance in February 1942, which summarised the physicists’ current thinking. It seems that optimism prevailed. The report clearly stated the potential for an explosive ‘a million times greater than the same weight of dynamite’ based on either U-235 or element 94, the latter produced in a nuclear reactor. It concluded that a bomb could be constructed using from ‘10 to 100 kilograms of fissionable material’ and recommended that a major industrial effort be initiated. It is clear from this report that the Uranverein had arrived at broadly the same conclusions as the MAUD Committee in July 1941 and the National Academy review group four months later.
⁴
Within the space of just seven months, physicists in Britain, America and now Germany had all concluded that an atomic bomb was feasible in principle, and they had all determined a similar range for the mass of active material that would be required.

But whereas the MAUD Committee and National Academy conclusions galvanised British and American efforts, the Uranverein conclusions appear to have become lost in the noise of economic re-prioritisation, as the German military made ready for a war of attrition on the Russian front. In January both Harteck and Weizsäcker were called up. Heisenberg had to pull out all the stops, through personal contacts in the military, to restore their status as ‘indispensable’ contributors to the nuclear research effort, and therefore exempt from direct military service.