American Prometheus (58 page)

Oppenheimer’s behavior suggests he was unsure about his next step, but certain that it had to be a significant one. Part of him wanted to re-create the good years he had lived in Berkeley. And yet, increasingly comfortable with his postwar stature, he was also drawn by new ambitions. He temporarily resolved this conundrum by rejecting the offers from Harvard and Columbia in favor of Caltech’s. He could remain in California, while keeping open the option to return to Berkeley. In the meantime, he would spend many exhausting days shuttling aboard propeller-driven airplanes back and forth to Washington, D.C.

Indeed, on October 18, just a day after the awards ceremony in Los Alamos, Oppenheimer was back in Washington for a conference at the Statler Hotel. In the presence of a half dozen senators, Oppenheimer outlined in stark terms the perils to the country posed by the atomic bomb. Also in attendance was Henry A. Wallace, vice president during Roosevelt’s third term (1941–45), now serving as Truman’s commerce secretary. Seizing the occasion, Oppenheimer walked up to Wallace and said he very much wanted to talk with him privately. Wallace invited him to take a walk the following morning.

Walking with the former vice president through downtown Washington toward the Commerce Department, Oppie revealed his deepest anxieties about the bomb. He rapidly outlined the dangers inherent in the Administration’s policies. Afterwards, Wallace wrote in his diary that “I never saw a man in such an extremely nervous state as Oppenheimer. He seemed to feel that the destruction of the entire human race was imminent.” Oppie complained bitterly that Secretary of State Byrnes “felt that we could use the bomb as a pistol to get what we wanted in international diplomacy.” Oppenheimer insisted that this would not work. “He says the Russians are a proud people and have good physicists and abundant resources. They may have to lower their standard of living to do it but they will put everything they have got into getting plenty of atomic bombs as soon as possible. He thinks the mishandling of the situation at Potsdam has prepared the way for the eventual slaughter of tens of millions or perhaps hundreds of millions of innocent people.”

Oppenheimer admitted to Wallace that even the previous spring, well before the Trinity test, many of his scientists were “enormously concerned” about a possible war with Russia. He had thought that the Roosevelt Administration had worked out a plan to communicate with the Soviets about the bomb. This hadn’t happened, he suspected, because the British had objected. Still, he thought Stimson had a very “statesmanlike” view of the whole matter, and he referred approvingly to the secretary of war’s September 11 memo to President Truman which, he said, had “advocated turning over to Russia . . . the industrial know-how as well as the scientific information.” At this point, Wallace interrupted to say that Stimson’s views on this point had never even been introduced at a Cabinet meeting. Obviously disturbed to hear this news, Oppenheimer said that his scientists back in New Mexico were completely disheartened: “. . . all they think about now are the social and economic implications of the bomb.”

At one point, Oppie asked Wallace if he thought it would do any good for him to see the president. Wallace encouraged him to try to get an appointment through the new secretary of war, Robert P. Patterson. On this note, the two men parted. Wallace subsequently noted in his diary: “The guilt consciousness of the atomic bomb scientists is one of the most astounding things I have ever seen.”

Six days later, at 10:30 a.m. on October 25, 1945, Oppenheimer was ushered into the Oval Office. President Truman was naturally curious to meet the celebrated physicist, whom he knew by reputation to be an eloquent and charismatic figure. After being introduced by Secretary Patterson, the only other individual in the room, the three men sat down. By one account, Truman opened the conversation by asking for Oppenheimer’s help in getting Congress to pass the May-Johnson bill, giving the Army permanent control over atomic energy. “The first thing is to define the national problem,” Truman said, “then the international.” Oppenheimer let an uncomfortably long silence pass and then said, haltingly, “Perhaps it would be best first to define the international problem.” He meant, of course, that the first imperative was to stop the spread of these weapons by placing international controls over all atomic technology. At one point in their conversation, Truman suddenly asked him to guess when the Russians would develop their own atomic bomb. When Oppie replied that he did not know, Truman confidently said he knew the answer: “Never.”

For Oppenheimer, such foolishness was proof of Truman’s limitations. The “incomprehension it showed just knocked the heart out of him,” recalled Willie Higinbotham. As for Truman, a man who compensated for his insecurities with calculated displays of decisiveness, Oppenheimer seemed maddeningly tentative, obscure—and cheerless. Finally, sensing that the president was not comprehending the deadly urgency of his message, Oppenheimer nervously wrung his hands and uttered another of those regrettable remarks that he characteristically made under pressure. “Mr. President,” he said quietly, “I feel I have blood on my hands.”

The comment angered Truman. He later informed David Lilienthal, “I told him the blood was on my hands—to let me worry about that.” But over the years, Truman embellished the story. By one account, he replied, “Never mind, it’ll all come out in the wash.” In yet another version, he pulled his handkerchief from his breast pocket and offered it to Oppenheimer, saying, “Well, here, would you like to wipe your hands?”

An awkward silence followed this exchange, and then Truman stood up to signal that the meeting was over. The two men shook hands, and Truman reportedly said, “Don’t worry, we’re going to work something out, and you’re going to help us.”

Afterwards, the President was heard to mutter, “Blood on his hands, dammit, he hasn’t half as much blood on his hands as I have. You just don’t go around bellyaching about it.” He later told Dean Acheson, “I don’t want to see that son-of-a-bitch in this office ever again.” Even in May 1946, the encounter still vivid in his mind, he wrote Acheson and described Oppenheimer as a “cry-baby scientist” who had come to “my office some five or six months ago and spent most of his time wringing his hands and telling me they had blood on them because of the discovery of atomic energy.”

On this important occasion, the composure and powers of persuasion of the usually charming and self-possessed Oppenheimer had abandoned him. His habit of relying on spontaneity worked well when he was at ease, but, time and again, under pressure he would say things that he would regret profoundly, and that would do him serious harm. On this occasion he had had the opportunity to impress the one man who possessed the power to help him return the nuclear genie to the bottle—and he utterly failed to take advantage of the opportunity. As Harold Cherniss had observed, his facile articulateness was dangerous—a lethal two-edged sword. It was often a sharp instrument of persuasion, but it could also be used to undercut the hard work of research and preparation. It was a form of intellectual arrogance that periodically led him to behave foolishly or badly, an Achilles’ heel of sorts that would have devastating consequences. Indeed, it would eventually provide his political enemies with the opportunity to destroy him.

Curiously, this was neither the first nor the last time that Oppenheimer antagonized somebody in a position of authority. Again and again in his life, he showed himself capable of the greatest consideration; he could be patient, gracious and tender with his students—unless they asked him a patently foolish question. But with those in authority, he was often impatient and candid to the point of rudeness. On this occasion, Truman’s gross misunderstanding and ignorance of the implications of atomic weapons had prompted Oppenheimer to say something that he should have realized might antagonize the president.

Truman’s interactions with scientists were never elevated. The president struck many of them as a small-minded man who was in way over his head. “He was not a man of imagination,” said Isidor Rabi. And scientists were hardly alone in this view. Even a seasoned Wall Street lawyer like John J. McCloy, who served Truman briefly as assistant secretary of war, wrote in his diary that the president was “a simple man, prone to make up his mind quickly and decisively, perhaps too quickly—a thorough American.” This was not a great president, “not distinguished at all . . . not Lincolnesque, but an instinctive, common, hearty-natured man.” Men as different as McCloy, Rabi and Oppenheimer all thought Truman’s instincts, particularly in the field of atomic diplomacy, were neither measured nor sound—and sadly, certainly were not up to the challenge the country and the world now faced.

BACK ON THE MESA, no one thought of Oppenheimer as a “cry-baby scientist.” On November 2, 1945, a wet and cold evening, the former director returned to The Hill. The Los Alamos theater was again packed to its capacity to hear Oppie talk about what he called “the fix we are in.” He began by confessing, “I don’t know very much about practical politics.” But that wasn’t important, because there were issues to be faced that spoke directly to scientists. What has happened, he said, has forced us “to reconsider the relations between science and common sense.”

He spoke for an hour—much of it extemporaneously—and his audience was mesmerized; years later, people were still saying, “I remember Oppie’s speech. . . .” They remembered this night in part because he explained so well the welter of confused emotions they all felt about the bomb. What they had done was no less than an “organic necessity.” If you were a scientist, he said, “you believe that it is good to find out how the world works . . . that it is good to turn over to mankind at large the greatest possible power to control the world and to deal with it according to its lights and values.” Besides, there was a “feeling that there was probably no place in the world where the development of atomic weapons would have a better chance of leading to a reasonable solution, and a smaller chance of leading to disaster, than within the United States.” Nevertheless, as scientists, Oppenheimer told them, they could not escape responsibility for “the grave crisis.” Many people, he said, will “try to wiggle out of this.” They will argue that “this is just another weapon.” Scientists knew better. “I think it is for us to accept it as a very grave crisis, to realize that these atomic weapons which we have started to make are very terrible, that they involve a change, they are not just a slight modification. . . .

“It is clear to me that wars have changed. It is clear to me that if these first bombs—the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki—that if these can destroy ten square miles, then that is really quite something. It is clear to me that they are going to be very cheap if anyone wants to make them.” As a result of this quantitative change, the very nature of war had changed: Now the advantage rested with the aggressor, not the defender. But if war had become intolerable, then very “radical” changes were required in the relations between nations, “not only in spirit, not only in law, but also in conception and feeling.” The one thing he wished to “hammer home,” he said, was “what an enormous change in spirit is involved.”

The crisis called for a historical transformation of international attitudes and behavior, and he was looking to the experiences of modern science for guidance. He thought he had what he called an “interim solution.” First, the major powers should create a “joint atomic energy commission,” armed with powers “not subject to review by the heads of State,” to pursue the peaceful applications of atomic energy. Second, concrete machinery should be set up to force the exchange of scientists, “so that we would be quite sure that the fraternity of scientists would be strengthened.” And finally, “I would say that no bombs be made.” He didn’t know if these were good proposals, but they were a start. “I know that many of my friends here see pretty much eye to eye. I would speak especially of Bohr. . . .”

But if Bohr and most other scientists approved, everyone knew they were a distinct minority in the country at large. Later in his remarks, Oppie admitted that he was “troubled” by numerous “official statements” characterized by an “insistent note of unilateral responsibility for the handling of atomic weapons.” Earlier that week, President Truman had given a bellicose Navy Day speech in New York’s Central Park that seemed to revel in America’s military power. The atomic bomb, Truman had said, would be held by the United States as a “sacred trust” for the rest of the world, and “we shall not give our approval to any compromises with evil.” Oppenheimer said he disliked Truman’s triumphalist tone: “If you approach the problem and say, ‘We know what is right and we would like to use the atomic bomb to persuade you to agree with us,’ then you are in a very weak position and you will not succeed . . . you will find yourselves attempting by force of arms to prevent a disaster.” Oppie told his audience that he was not going to argue with the president’s motives and aims—but “we are 140 million people, and there are two billion people living on earth.” However confident Americans might be that their views and ideas will prevail, the absolute “denial of the views and ideas of other people, cannot be the basis of any kind of agreement.”

No one left the auditorium that night unmoved. Oppie had spoken to them on intimate terms, articulating many of their doubts, fears and hopes. For decades afterwards, his words would resonate. The world he had described was as subtle and complicated as the quantum world of the atom itself. He had begun humbly, and yet, like the best of politicians, he had spoken a simple truth that cut to the core of the issue. The world had changed; Americans would behave unilaterally at their peril.

A FEW DAYS LATER, Robert, Kitty and their two young children, Peter and Toni, climbed into the family Cadillac and drove to Pasadena. Kitty was particularly relieved to leave Los Alamos behind. But so, too, was Robert. Here on his beloved mesa he had achieved something unique in the annals of science. He had transformed the world and he had been transformed. But he could not shake a sense of brooding ambivalence.