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The
Success of Terror "University
professors who are opposed to organizing, planning and directing research
after the manner of industrial laboratories because in their opinion
fundamental research is based on 'curiosity' and because great scientific
minds must be left to themselves have something to think about. A most important piece of research was conducted on behalf
of the Army by precisely the means adopted in industrial laboratories. And the result? An invention is given to the world in
three years which it would have taken perhaps half a century to develop
if we had to rely on prima donna research scientists to work alone. The internal logical necessities of atomic
physics and the war led to the bomb. A problem was stated.
It was solved by teamwork, by planning, by competent direction,
and not by a mere desire to satisfy curiosity." Indeed, the only objection to the use of the new weapon that found its way to the front of The New York Times in the first days after its use was a story under the heading "Vatican Deplores Use of Atom Bomb. Official Press Office Says the Weapon Has Created an Unfavorable Impression."[8] The New York Times went on to reprint part of the Vatican's Osservatore Romano editorial that deplored the development of the atomic bomb by reminding its readers about a story concerning Leonardo da Vinci: "He planned a submarine, but he feared that man would not apply it to progress, namely to the constructive uses of civilization, but to its ruin. He destroyed that possible instrument of destruction." The accusing finger was clearly pointing at the scientists involved — and to this day, it is generally they who are singled out when the popular mind tries to assess responsibilities in this case.[9] In
late November 1945, an opinion poll showed that only 5 percent of the
public was opposed to the combat use of the atomic bomb. Harry Truman, who made the decision to use it, shared with
the electorate the opinion that the bomb was a legitimate weapon. As
Truman wrote to a clergyman shortly after the Nagasaki explosion: "Nobody
is more disturbed over the use of atomic bombs than I am, but I was
greatly disturbed over the unwarranted attack by the Japanese on Pearl
Harbor and the murder of our prisoners of war.
The only language they seem to understand is the one we have
been using to bombard them. When
you have to deal with a beast, you have to treat him as a beast."[10] It is a capsule illustration of what Erik Erikson has called "pseudo-speciation," a process by which an "enemy" traditionally is deprived of membership in the human race proper, thus solving the problem of guilt, if only on the surface.[11] _____ 7
Quoted from the Report as reprinted
in The Project Physics Course Reader, Unit 6, The Nucleus (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971), p. 206. Edward Teller
maintained that he also was sympathetic to the aims of that group in
1945: "[In a letter
by Einstein in 1945] it was emphasized that one should not use the atomic
bomb except by way of demonstration.
I also was of the opinion at that time that this was correct. In my opinion, it would have been sufficient
to explode the bomb at a suitably harmless height above Tokyo....On
the other hand, it was Oppenheimer who quite explicitly recommended
the release of the atomic bomb."
(Translated from the interview "Professor Haber stellt vor:
Edward Teller," Bild der Wissenschaft
[October 1975], p. 106.) However,
the contemporaneous documentation, e.g., in the J. R. Oppenheimer papers
in the Library of Congress, appears to lead one to a rather different
conclusion. 8 The New York Times, 8 August 1945, p. 1. 9 This is obviously simpler to do in peacetime than in the middle of a war. The Vatican paper might have counterposed Leonardo's supposed action with the declaration of the Italian scientist Nicolo Tartaglia, who in mid-sixteenth century had kept his treatise on ballistics to himself — until the Turks advanced: "Today, however, in the sight of the ferocious wolf preparing to set on our flock, and of our pastors united for the common defense, it does not seem to me any longer proper to hold these things [scientific discoveries of use in warfare] hid, and I have resolved to publish them partly in writing, and partly by word of mouth, for the benefit of Christians so that all should be in a better state either to attack the common enemy or to defend themselves against him." 10
For passages from the Truman papers, see Barton J. Bernstein, Hiroshima
and Nagasaki Reconsidered: The Atomic Bombings of Japan and the Origins
of the Cold War, 1941-1945 (Morristown,
NJ: Silver Burdett Co., 1975).
Along the same lines is Dean Acheson's recollection about J.
Robert Oppenheimer and Truman:
"I accompanied Oppie into Truman's office.
Oppie was wringing his hands and said, 'I have blood on my
hands.' 'Don't ever bring that damn fool in here
again,' Truman told me afterward.
'He didn't set that bomb off.
I did. This kind
of sniveling makes me sick.'" (Newsweek, 20 October 1969, p. 71.) Similarly, when Niels Bohr obtained
an interview with Winston Churchill in 1944 and argued for the internationalization
of atomic energy as a way of avoiding a postwar arms race, Churchill
was so outraged that he ordered "inquiries should be made regarding
the activities of Professor Bohr, and steps taken to insure that he
is responsible for no leakage of information, particularly to the
Russians." Quoted
from Margaret Gowing, Britain and Atomic Energy, 1939-1945 (London: St. Martin's, 1964) in Bernstein, Hiroshima
and Nagasaki Reconsidered, p.
5. It is considered likely that Bohr might
have been interned if it had not been for Roosevelt's sympathy.
11 An analogous process that tends to work toward the same end might be called "pseudo-professionalization." It allows scientists and other "experts" not to oppose an insufficient political and sociological act or view, by regarding themselves incompetent to deal with the uses others make of their work.
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