The First War of Physics (57 page)

The meeting began on 16 December, and on the question of atomic energy Byrnes found the Soviets to be surprisingly co-operative. Molotov agreed to the establishment of a UN commission on atomic energy, to be proposed at the first session of the UN General Assembly scheduled for January 1946. Molotov insisted that the commission report to the UN Security Council, rather than the General Assembly itself. Byrnes agreed. Molotov probably figured that there was little to be gained either way. And the Soviets could exercise the right of veto over decisions by the Security Council.

On Christmas Eve, the banter that was begun in London continued over dinner at the Kremlin. Molotov proposed a toast to Conant, who had joined the meeting as Byrnes’ adviser on atomic energy, and suggested that after a few drinks perhaps they could explore the secrets Conant possessed. Perhaps, Molotov went on, if Conant had a bit of the atomic bomb
in his pocket he could bring it out. But as Stalin stood to drink the toast, he said: ‘Here’s to science and American scientists and what they have accomplished. This is too serious a matter to joke about. We must now work together to see that this great invention is used for peaceful ends.’ Molotov’s expression did not change.

The interim meeting concluded on 26 December with agreement on the preparation of Allied peace treaties with Italy, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Finland, the establishment of a Far Eastern Commission and an Allied Council for Japan, and the establishment of a UN commission for the control of atomic energy:

[T]he Commission shall make specific proposals: (a) For extending between all nations the exchange of basic scientific information for peaceful ends; (b) For control of atomic energy to the extent necessary to ensure its use only for peaceful purposes; (c) For the elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons and of all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction; (d) For effective safeguards by way of inspection and other means to protect complying states against the hazards of violations and evasions.

The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution establishing the UN Atomic Energy Commission on 24 January 1946.

The Acheson–Lilienthal report

Anticipating that the UN resolution would be adopted, in early January Truman called for a concerted effort to formulate American policy and a plan to move the resolution from a statement of intent to political reality. Byrnes established a committee and appointed an initially reluctant Acheson as chairman. Members of the committee included Groves, Bush and Conant.

Acheson complained that he knew nothing about atomic energy, and was prompted to form a Board of Consultants, to be chaired by David Lilienthal. Lilienthal was a lawyer who had in 1933 been appointed by
Roosevelt as one of three directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority, a federally-owned corporation set up to develop the economy of the Tennessee Valley, which had been particularly hard hit by the Depression. Lilienthal had gone on to become the authority’s chairman, and was known as ‘Mr TVA’ Oppenheimer was the only scientist invited to participate on Lilienthal’s board.

Lilienthal was greatly impressed by Oppenheimer. ‘He is worth living a lifetime just to know mankind has been able to produce such a being’, Lilienthal wrote effusively in his diary. ‘We may have to wait another hundred years for the second one to come off the line.’ Oppenheimer worked his now legendary charm. ‘Everybody genuflected’, noted Groves, acerbically. ‘Lilienthal got so bad he would consult Oppie on what tie to wear in the morning.’

As the only scientist on the board, Oppenheimer took responsibility for the education of the other consultants. He gave them a crash course on nuclear physics, drawing little stick figures on a blackboard to represent electrons, protons and neutrons. Together the consultants toured the Manhattan Project facilities and interviewed project scientists. They developed arguments and counter-arguments. It seemed to Oppenheimer that simply outlawing atomic weapons and establishing a system of inspections to police compliance was doomed to failure. The entanglement of civilian and military uses of atomic energy ran too deep.

His counter-proposal was to establish an Atomic Development Authority, an international organisation that would take sovereign ownership and responsibility for the entire atomic industry, from end to end, and develop it for peaceful purposes. The authority would own all the world’s uranium mines, the means of production and enrichment of uranium, all nuclear reactors and nuclear laboratories. In essence, the proposal was to nationalise the atomic industry, not just within one nation but across all nations, with public ownership vested in a ‘world government’ represented by the UN.

To make this work, it would be necessary to proliferate atomic technology across the world, establishing uranium mines, production facilities, reactors and laboratories in all nations that could support them. Any
nation seeking to breach the international agreement by wresting control of atomic facilities and materials within its territory would be confronted with a harsh reality. All other nations would have atomic facilities and materials of their own. The result would be a form of deterrence. This would not be deterrence derived from the shared mutual threat of atomic weapons, but deterrence derived from the shared mutual threat of the
means to produce
atomic weapons. In this sense, the agreement would be self-policing.

It was an astonishingly bold proposal, containing more than a whiff of scientific and technological socialism. Even more astonishing, Oppenheimer managed to persuade the Board of Consultants to accept it, including Charles Thomas, the Vice President of Monsanto Chemical Company, at the time a $120-million business.

With some relatively minor modifications, Oppenheimer’s proposal became the Acheson-Lilienthal report. The report was ready by 7 March 1946, and published on 28 March. It was preceded by the nuclear scientists’ own manifesto,
One World or None
, a ‘report to the public on the meaning of the atom bomb’. It contained an introduction by Compton and chapters by, among others, Bethe, Edward Condon, Einstein, Philip Morrison, Oppenheimer, Szilard, Urey and Wigner. Bohr provided a foreword. In the opening chapter, Morrison brought the full horror of atomic warfare home to the American public by projecting what he had seen at Hiroshima onto Manhattan:

The device detonated about half a mile in the air, just above the corner of Third Avenue and East 20th Street, near Gramercy Park … From the river west to Seventh Avenue, and from the South of Union Square to the middle thirties, the streets were filled with the dead and dying. The old men sitting on the park benches in the square never knew what had happened. They were chiefly charred black on the side toward the bomb. Everywhere in this whole district were men with burning clothing, women with terrible red and blackened burns, and dead children caught while hurrying home to lunch.

It was a portentous vision, designed to spur the public and their political representatives to greater effort on international controls.

The Acheson-Lilienthal report was, as Teller explained in the newlyfounded
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
, a ray of hope. When Bohr read it he was overjoyed. It embodied the essence of his ‘open world’ proposals and, in his opinion, offered the best hope for the future.

But other, darker, forces were building which would frustrate Bohr’s hopes. Frustrations in which Churchill would yet again play a significant role.

Cold War

If the Soviets were satisfied with the outcome of the December interim meeting of foreign ministers, Truman was not. He had been irritated by Byrnes’ failure to keep him informed of the discussions, and did not accept some of the foreign policy decisions that Byrnes had made. To secure Molotov’s agreement, Byrnes had accepted that there would be only minor changes to the governments of Romania and Bulgaria, whereas Truman had insisted on more radical changes. In August 1941 British and Soviet troops had invaded Iran in order to ensure the security of supply of Iranian oil to fuel Soviet forces fighting on the Eastern front. At the Tehran conference in November 1943, Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin had agreed to preserve Iran’s sovereignty and independence. In compliance with this agreement, Britain had withdrawn its troops at the end of the war. Soviet troops had remained, however. Byrnes had failed to gain any assurances from Molotov that these troops would be withdrawn.

Truman poured his ire into a letter to his Secretary of State. ‘Unless Russia is faced with an iron fist and strong language another war is in the making. Only one language do they understand – “How many divisions have you?” I do not think we should play compromise any longer.’ He closed the letter thus: ‘I’m tired [of] babying the Soviets.’

Opinion in Washington was beginning to harden. Stalin’s speech at the Bolshoi Theatre on 9 February 1946 was in part a reaffirmation of the ideological divide between Communism and monopoly capitalism, and
interpreted by some in Washington as little short of a declaration of war. On 22 February George Kennan, the Deputy Chief of Mission in Moscow, drafted a long telegram to Byrnes containing his assessment of the Soviet Union’s post-war outlook and its implications for American foreign policy. He was forthright:

[Soviet power is] impervious to logic of reason, and it is highly sensitive to logic of force. For this reason it can easily withdraw – and usually does when strong resistance is encountered at any point. Thus, if the adversary has sufficient force and makes clear his readiness to use it, he rarely has to do so. If situations are properly handled there need be no prestige-engaging showdowns.

Kennan’s telegram ran to over 5,000 words. At the time it was the longest telegram in State Department history. Byrnes thought Kennan’s analysis ‘splendid’.

On 5 March Churchill accepted an honorary degree at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. The ceremony took place in the college gymnasium. Truman, a native of Missouri, introduced him. Churchill rose to deliver his acceptance speech, broadcast on radio and by loudspeaker to 40,000 people who had assembled in Fulton to hear what he had to say.

His speech marked the beginnings of a Cold War rhetoric that would last for more than 40 years:

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia; all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow …

From what I have seen of our Russian friends and allies during the war, I am convinced that there is nothing they admire so much as
strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than for weakness, especially military weakness. For that reason the old doctrine of a balance of power is unsound. We cannot afford, if we can help it, to work on narrow margins, offering temptations to a trial of strength.

On the vexed question of the atomic bomb, Churchill had this to say:

It would nevertheless be wrong and imprudent to entrust the secret knowledge or experience of the atomic bomb, which the United States, Great Britain, and Canada now share, to the world organisation,
⁴
while it is still in its infancy. It would be criminal madness to cast it adrift in this still agitated and un-united world. No one in any country has slept less well in their beds because this knowledge and the method and the raw materials to apply it, are at present largely retained in American hands.

Churchill had warned Britain’s House of Commons repeatedly about the threat posed by German rearmament after Hitler had seized power in 1933, and now felt that the Americans needed a similar warning against the threat of Soviet power. He also still clung to the belief that the science and technology of the atomic bomb was a secret that could be kept.

Although Truman later denied it, Churchill had shared the content of his speech with him beforehand, and Truman had approved its tenor.

The climate for the proliferation of atomic weapons was now firmly established.

The arrest of Alan Nunn May

Beria did not take kindly to failures within his intelligence services. Gouzenko had feared for his life. He would later make melodramatic appearances on Canadian television, his head covered by a trademark
hood cut with eyeholes.
⁵
But Stalin forbade his assassination. ‘Everyone is admiring the Soviet Union’, Stalin said. ‘What would they say about us if we did that?’ It was nevertheless clear that somebody had to be punished.

Zabotin was recalled to Moscow in December 1945. Together with his wife, he boarded the SS
Alexander Suvarvov
bound for Murmansk, which left port clandestinely by night without complying with Canadian port regulations. Zabotin, his wife and son were sent to a labour camp in Siberia.

Gouzenko’s mother died in the Lubyanka prison. Anna’s mother, father and sister were sent to prison and her sister’s daughter – Anna’s niece – was sent to an orphanage.

On 3 February 1946 American journalist and broadcaster Drew Pearson, famous for his syndicated newspaper column, the ‘Washington Merry-go-Round’, finally broke the Gouzenko story. He informed his nationwide radio audience of the ‘recent’ defection in Canada of a Soviet spy and of his revelations of other spies in high places in Canada and America. The leak forced King to appoint a Royal Commission to investigate Gouzenko’s evidence and initiate proceedings against those accused of spying for the Soviets.

A further broadcast by Pearson on 10 February forced the Royal Commission to carry out raids and make a series of arrests five days later. King now made a public announcement, although he did not mention the Soviet Union. He suspected that the leak had come from Truman’s administration. But it was Hoover who had called Pearson on the morning of his first broadcast. Hoover was by now keen to press forward with pursuit of suspected spies in Washington, Harry Dexter White and Alger Hiss, and publicity about the Gouzenko case suited his purposes.