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Main
characters in pictures and quotations
The Paternity of
the H-Bomb
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George Gamow:
“somewhat exaggerated faces of my good friends Edward Teller
and Stanislaw Ulam, who are known as the mother and father of
the H-bomb”
[Cartoon sketches from
George Gamow’s book: My World Line: An Informal Autobiography (New
York: Viking, 1970), p. 153.]
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Hans Bethe, a father of thermonuclear physics; Klaus
Fuchs, a grandfather of all H-bombs (courtesy of Klaus
Fuchs-Kittowski), and a sketch of a design for the H-bomb in
Fuchs’s 1948 intelligence report (as presented at the International
Symposium "History of the Soviet Atomic Project," Dubna, Russia, 1996).
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“In 1951, Teller discovered an entirely
new approach to thermonuclear reactions. <> the discovery was
largely accidental.”
“The main principle of radiation implosion
was developed in connection with the thermonuclear program and was
stated at a conference on the thermonuclear bomb, in the spring of
1946. Dr. Bethe did not attend this conference, but Dr. Fuchs did.”
“It is difficult to argue to what extent an invention is accidental:
most difficult for someone who did not make the invention himself. It
appears to me that the idea <> was a relatively slight
modification of ideas generally known in 1946. Essentially only
two elements had to be added: to implode a bigger volume, and, to
achieve greater compression by keeping the imploded material cool as
long as possible.”
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A fragment of a sanitized document “Policy
and Progress in the H-Bomb Program: A Chronology of Leading Events”
(prepared by the U.S. Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy and
dated January 1, 1953) mentions a Fuchs-von Neumann
patent (record) of May 28, 1946, its short description is deleted.
Fuchs’s espionage report of 1948 studied by G. Goncharov contained
quite a bit of detailed information including the tenfold compression
owing to radiation implosion.
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“ When President Truman decided to go ahead
with the hydrogen bomb in January 1950, there was really no clear
technical program that could be followed. This became even more evident
later on when new calculations were made at Los Alamos, and when these
new calculations showed that the basis for technical optimism which had
existed in the fall of 1949 was very shaky, indeed. The plan which then
existed for the making of a hydrogen bomb turned out to be less and
less promising as time went on. <> I am speaking of the interval
of from January 1950 to early 1951. <>
Finally there was a very brilliant discovery made by Dr. Teller. *** It
was one of the discoveries for which you cannot plan, one of the
discoveries like the discovery of the relativity theory, although I
don't want to compare the two in importance. But something which is a
stroke of genius, which does not occur in the normal development of
ideas. But somebody has to suddenly have an inspiration. It was such an
inspiration which Dr. Teller had *** which put the program on a sound
basis. <>
[until the spring of
1951] I was hoping that it might be possible to prove that
thermonuclear reactions were not feasible at all. I would have thought
that the greatest security for the United States would have lain in the
conclusive proof of the impossibility of a thermonuclear bomb. I must
confess that this was the main motive which made me start work on
thermonuclear reactions in the summer of 1950.
With the new *** (idea) [In transcript, footnote reads: “supplied
for clarity.”] I think the situation changed because it was then
clear, or almost clear - at least very likely - that thermonuclear
weapons were indeed possible.
<> Dr. Teller has a mind very different from mine. I think one
needs both kinds of minds to make a successful project. I think Dr.
Teller’s mind runs particularly to making brilliant inventions, but
what he needs is some control, some other person who is more able to
find out just what is the scientific fact about the matter. Some other
person who weeds the bad from good ideas. *** as soon as I heard
of Dr. Teller’s new invention, I was immediately convinced that
this as the way to do it, and so was Dr. Oppenheimer. I should mention
a meeting which took place in 1951, in June, at which Dr. Oppenheimer
was host. At this meeting Dr. Oppenheimer entirely and wholeheartedly
supported the program.<>
It is true certainly that a stroke of genius does not come entirely
unprepared and that you get ideas only on the subjects that you are
working on. If you are working on other subjects, let us say fission
weapons, you probably won’t have any inspiration about thermonuclear
weapons. It is true on the other hand that two quite important
suggestions or discoveries were made on thermonuclear problems during
the time when Los Alamos was not actively working on these. I cannot
name them in an unclassified session. <> I think it is quite
obvious that only when there is a concerted effort can there be the
atmosphere in which you can have big ideas.”
(Quoted from In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer: The
Security Clearance Hearing. Ed. Richard Polenberg (Cornell
University Press, 2001), p. 133-137.)
"I think it was neither a great achievement
nor a brilliant one. It just had to be done. I must say it was not
completely easy.… But I do believe that if … the laboratory with such
excellent people like Fermi and Bethe and others, would have gone after
the problem, probably some of these people would have had either the
same brilliant idea or another one much sooner…. [It] was just
necessary that somebody should be looking and looking, with some
intensity and some conviction that there is also something there."
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"It is true, of course, that Edward Teller is
the hero of the H-development. But it is equally true that a single man
cannot alone carry a job of that kind. A genius needs the support of
many other men and organosation.”
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“Carson [Mark] has shown me your article on
the history of the H-bomb and I would like to make some comments. Let
me say at first that I think that it is an excellent idea and I
consider it as a splendid exposition of much of the truth. Perhaps, due
to the unfortunate or even tragic, in a sense, publicity of the last
weeks, one good thing that is happening is that the truth is coining
out, slowly but surely.
Your article is excellent — if anything it contains a few
understatements of the case. (The well-known feature of the "big lie"
is that it imperceptibly forces everybody to adopt some of the
framework or terminology intended by the "enemies" and forces an
impression of "defense" on the situation which should be really
reversed.)”
“All the objects that now exist are variations on the same theme and
while they make things cheaper and bigger, there is no question of any
revolution in military application, but indeed the whole group is more
of the same thing stemming very directly from the fission bomb
development. An entirely different impression is being forced on the
public.”
“It seems to me that, with tremendous
modesty, you play down the very essential role of the actual scientific
work of developing the so-called ideas, the enormous number of
calculations, all the studies of the general physics of the processes,
the engineering planning, all combined with the necessity of predicting
and avoiding "side effects," anyone of which could ruin the success of
the device. This work which Carson and you have planned, directed and
executed is indeed much more important than the mere sketches of the
thing which, as we now know, are subject to terrific instabilities in
design. (An attempt is made by Edward to describe the Los Alamos part
as providing "hardware.") One proof for the vital importance of such
care is the success of the Livermore experiments [here Ulam implied the failure of the first
H-bomb designed at the Livermore]. Wouldn't it be a good idea to
give an inkling of the immensity of the project? The fantastic rapidity
with which it was brought to a successful conclusion by indicating the
vital importance of the work which Carson has done in this connection?
After all, the effort was essentially a cooperative one and its
planning is one of the most impressive examples of speed and success
that I know of in all the history of technology.
By the way, it seems to me it would be hard to exaggerate the
importance of the contribution made by Fermi in the decisive switch
from the original, hopeless approach towards opening one's mind for
the necessity of really different ideas.”
“Sometimes I wonder whether most of the story could not be summarized
as follows: Until early in 1951 there was nothing that looked, after a
more thorough analysis, at all promising. There was a great deal of
solid exploration going on -- and all the political noises or
machinations did not change a whit in this. Then, after some promising,
but different, directions were discovered, the thing was accomplished
with unbelievable rapidity. Whether all the propaganda and all the
misrepresentations, all the frantic noises accelerated or delayed the
discovery of the working method will not be argued here.”
“the crucial invention was made in 1951, by
Teller”
"It was not new physics. It's not to my mind
any such very great intellectual feat. It was partly chance. It could
have come a year earlier or two years earlier."
[Quoted from: Richard Rhodes, "Dark Sun. The making of the hydrogen
bomb", New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995, p. 468.]
“Everybody recognizes that Teller contributed
more ideas at every stage of the H-bomb program than anyone else, and
this fact should never be obscured.”
“Ulam felt that he invented the new approach
to the hydrogen bomb. Teller didn’t wish to recognize that. He couldn’t
bring himself to recognize it. He's taken occasion, almost every
occasion he could, not every one, to deny that Ulam contributed
anything. I think I know exactly what happened in the interaction of
those two. Edward would violently disagree with what I would say. It
would be much closer to Ulam's view of how it happened.”
Sakharov on the Soviet
H-bomb (0th, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd ideas):
 “The
task of Tamm's special group was to analyze the calculations of
Zeldovich’s team for a certain specific design of a thermonuclear
weapon, if necessary to correct and refine those calculations, and to
independently assess the whole project. I spent two months diligently
studying Zeldovich's reports and improving my meager knowledge of gas
dynamics and astrophysics (the physics of stars and the physics of a
nuclear explosion have much in common).”
“Two months later, I radically changed the direction of my research by
proposing an alternative design for a thermonuclear charge that
radically differed from the one pursued by Zeldovich's team in both the
physical processes and the main source of the energy released. I will
call this proposal the "1st Idea." Vitaly Ginzburg soon suggested an
important addition to my proposal, the "2nd Idea".
The main feature of our design, as compared to the Zeldovich team's,
was that it was evidently feasible; there were also some essential
engineering and technological differences. Our design was further
improved by the "3rd Idea," of which I was one of the main authors. The
"3rd Idea” was finally shaped after the first thermonuclear test
of 1953.
Back to 1948, Tamm supported my proposal from the very beginning; he'd
been always skeptical about the earlier approach. At his suggestion, I
visitted the Institute of Chemical Physics to meet with Zeldovich's
deputy, Alexander Kompaneyets. Kompaneyets did not accept my ideas
immediately, he mistrusted my calculations. A week later I spoke
directly with Zeldovich, who at once appreciated my proposal. It was
our second encounter; we'd first met at a seminar where the discovery
of a whole new family of elementary particles had been announced.”
“Now I think that the main idea of
the H-bomb design developed by the Zeldovich group was based on
intelligence information. However, I can’t to prove this conjecture. It
occurred to me quite recently, but at the time I just gave it no
thought. (Note added July 1987. David Holloway writes in "Soviet
Thermonuclear Development," International Security 4:3 (1979/80), p.
193: "The Soviet Union had been informed by Klaus Fuchs of the studies
of thermonuclear weapons at Los Alamos up to 1946. … His information
would have been misleading rather than helpful, because the early ideas
were later shown not to work.” Therfore my conjecture is confirmed!)”
“Apparently, several people in our
theoretical departments came up with the “3rd idea”
simultaneously. I was one of them. I think that I understood the main
physical and mathematical aspects of the “3rd idea” at a very early
stage. As a result, and also due to the respect I had earned by then,
my role in the acceptance and implementation of the “3rd idea”
was perhaps a decisive one. But the role of Zeldovich, Trutnev, and
several others was undoubtedly very great and perhaps they understood
and foresaw the prospects and difficulties of the “3rd idea” as
well as I”.
The
Realities of Illusory Worlds
Sakharov, explaining his mourning Stalin’s death in 1953:
“I already knew a great deal about the horrible crimes – the
arrests of innocent people, the torture, starvation and violence. I
couldn’t help but think of the guilty with indignation and disgust. Of
course, there was a lot I didn’t know and I didn’t put it all together
in one picture. Somewhere at the back of my mind was the idea induced
by propaganda that brutalities are inevitable during major historic
upheavals. As the saying goes, “When you cut wood, chips fly”. . . . On
the whole, I see that I was more impressionable than I would like to
be.
But what was primary to me was my feeling of commitment to the same
goal I assumed was Stalin’s – building up the nation’s strength to
ensure peace after a devastating war. Precisely because I had already
given so much to this cause and accomplished so much, I was unwittingly
– probably like any one else would in the situation – creating an
illusory world to justify myself.”
“I very quickly banished Stalin from that world.… But state,
country, and Communist ideals remained. It took years for me to
understand and feel how much substitution, speculation, deceit, and
lack of correspondence with reality there was in those concepts. At
first I thought, despite everything that I saw with my own eyes, that
the Soviet state was a breakthrough into the future, a kind of
prototype (albeit a still imperfect one) for all countries (such is the
power of mass ideology). Then I came to view our state on equal terms
with the rest: that is to say, they all have flaws – bureaucracy,
social inequality, secret police, … espionage and counterespionage, and
a distrust of the actions and intentions of other states. That could be
called the theory of symmetry: all governments and regimes to a first
approximation are bad, all peoples are oppressed, and all are
threatened by common dangers…. But then, in my dissident years I came
to the conclusion that we cannot speak about symmetry between a cancer
cell and a normal one. Yet our [Soviet] state is similar to a cancer
cell – with its messianism and expansionism, its totalitarian
suppression of dissent, the authoritarian structure of power, with a
total absence of public control in the most important decisions in
domestic and foreign policy, a closed society that does not inform its
citizens of anything substantial, closed to the outside world, without
freedom of travel or the exchange of information.”
“At about the same time that we Soviet
scientists were beginning our calculations, Robert Oppenheimer, then
chairman of the General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy
Commission, was trying to apply the brakes to the American H-bomb
program in the expectation that the USSR would then refrain from
developing thermonuclear superweapons of its own.
Oppenheimer's judgment was challenged by Edward Teller. He insisted
that only American military strength could restrain the socialist camp
from an expansion that would threaten civilization and democracy and
might trigger a third world war. That is why Teller believed it
necessary to speed development of an American H-bomb and continue
nuclear testing despite the genetic damage and other nonthreshold
biological effects that implied. (Later on, I was to object to his
position on testing.) And that is why he testified at the Oppenheimer
hearing. Teller has been ostracized ever since by many American
scientists, who consider his testimony and his overall position to have
violated ethical norms binding on the scientific community, as Freeman Dyson,
for one, makes clear in his memoirs.
What are we to make of the tragic conflict between these two
outstanding individuals, now that we can view it through the prism of
time? In my view, both men equally deserve respect. Each was sure that
truth was on his side and that he was morally obligated to go his way
to the end—Oppenheimer by behaving in a way that was later construed as
a breach of his official duties, and Teller by disregarding the
tradition of "good form" in the scientific community. As far as I know,
issues of principle were complicated by technical and policy questions.
Oppenheimer apparently believed (and had impressive evidence to back
his view) that the designs that had been concocted for a hydrogen bomb
were not promising. Teller believed that a reasonable scientific and
engineering solution would be found sooner or later; he may
already have had some idea of the eventual design; and he was, of
course, right in this respect.
The debate over their opposing stands continues to this day, but the
facts that have come to light about the state of affairs in the late
1940s strongly support Teller's point of view. The Soviet government
(or, more properly, those in power: Stalin, Beria, and company) already
knew the potential of the new weapon, and nothing could have dissuaded
them from going forward with its development. Any U. S. move toward
abandoning or suspending work on a thermonuclear weapon would have been
perceived either as a cunning, deceitful maneuver or as evidence of
stupidity or weakness. In any case, the Soviet reaction would have been
the same: to avoid a possible trap, and to exploit the adversary's
folly at the earliest opportunity.
Still, Oppenheimer's position was not meaningless. His assumption was
that it would be exceedingly difficult to build a hydrogen bomb, and he
hoped an American moratorium would lead the USSR to abandon further
research on the grounds that: "The Americans have failed, so let's not
waste our time. Even if we succeed, they'll catch up and pass us before
we know it, and we'll end up losers again." Oppenheimer surely realized
that for his plan to work, several conditions had to be met: consensus
within the American administration; skillful American diplomacy; Soviet
H-bomb research had to be at a point where the USSR would be ready to
call it quits (and this was probably not the case); and the United
States had to be willing to accept some risk. All this must be judged
in the context of the times: it was the period of maximum mutual
distrust—the Cold War, the Berlin blockade, soon the Korean War—and
Moscow enjoyed superiority in conventional arms, just as it does now
[in the 1980s].
Oppenheimer felt he had little hope of convincing his opponents that he
was right, and so he acted in a roundabout manner. He must have
realized that more conventional, seemingly safer policies were likely
to prevail; and in that case he was prepared to quit the game. He had
every moral right to do so, and this is indeed what happened.
I cannot help but feel deeply for and empathize with Oppenheimer, whose
personal tragedy has become a universal one. Some striking parallels
between his fate and mine arose in the 1960s, and later I was to go
even further than Oppenheimer had. But in the 1940s and 1950s my
position was much closer to Teller's, practically a mirror image (one
had only to substitute "USSR" for "USA," "peace and national security"
for "defense against the communist menace," etc.)—so that in defending
his actions, I am also defending what I and my colleagues did at the
time. Unlike Teller, I did not have to go against the current in those
years, nor was I threatened with ostracism by my colleagues. I had to
overcome some resistance on technical questions, but I was not without
support; the struggle for the "3rd idea" arose for different
reasons and was conducted in different circumstances than in Teller's
case.
How did these directions find expression in my life? This book is my
answer to that question.
If I am right in believing that the thermonuclear weapon model on which
Zeldovich, Kompaneyets, and their team were working in the 1940s and
early 1950s was the fruit of espionage, then Oppenheimer's case is
strengthened, at least in theory. It would then be plausible that if
the Americans had not initiated the whole chain of events, the USSR
would have pursued the development of a thermonuclear bomb only at a
much later date, if at all. A similar scenario has been repeated with
other weapons systems, including nuclear- powered submarines and MIRVs.
Now [1980s] isn't it once again time to stop and think before it's too
late? I have in mind SDI, the Strategic Defense Initiative.
However, it is clear now that the situation was already out of control
by the time the Teller-Oppenheimer dispute erupted, and neither the
USSR nor the United States could then have pulled back. We have been
building thermonuclear weapons ever since; but so far, at least, we
have avoided the abyss of a third world war.
Now, I would like to note that American colleagues of Teller seem
quite unfair (and even dishonorable ) in their condemnation: Teller
was, after all, taking a stand based on principle. The very fact that
he was willing to maintain a minority stance on an issue of such
critical importance should be viewed as evidence in his favor.”
“In some sort of crude sense which no
vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the
physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot
lose”
“Even Isidor Rabi,
a close friend, thought the words ill chosen: "That sort of crap,
we never talked about it that way. He felt sin, well, he didn't know
who he was." The incident inspired Rabi to say of his friend that "he
was full of too many humanities." Rabi knew Oppie too well to be
angry with him, and he knew that one of his friend's weaknesses was "a
tendency to make things sound mystical." ”
(Quoted from Bird, Kai and Martin J.
Sherwin, American Prometheus:
The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 2005), p. 388).
“It is not in our judgment of
ourselves or our own actions that I would reject moralism: it is rather
in our attitude toward the behavior of other peoples. What I question
is our ability to put ourselves, as a nation, in the place of these
other peoples and decide what is right or wrong in the light of their
standards and traditions, as they see them, or even in the eyes of the
Almighty. I regard the behavior of other societies as something the
morality of which I would prefer not to have to determine. I think it
is our business to study that behavior attentively, to measure the
intensity of the emotional forces behind it, and to take careful
account of the potency of its influence on international affairs; but I
feel we would do better not to attempt to classify it as right or
wrong, praiseworthy or reprehensible. We Americans have enough, it
seems to me, with our consciences and with the necessity, now upon us,
to reconcile an individualistic tradition with the centralizing
pressures of advanced technology.
It is for this that we are accountable as a body politic, not for the
decisions and solutions arrived by others.
Let us conduct our policies in such a way that they are in keeping with
our own character and tradition. This means, of course, that the moral
element, as we feel it, must be present”
(Quoted from Schweber, Silvan S., “J.
Robert Oppenheimer: Proteus Unbound,”
Science in Context 16 (2003), 219–242, p.
239).
“It was further reported that in the autumn
of 1949 and subsequently, you strongly opposed the development of the
hydrogen bomb; (1) on moral grounds, (2) by claiming that it was not
feasible, (3) by claiming that there were insufficient facilities and
scientific personnel to carry on the development and (4) that it was
not politically desirable.”
“… when you see something that is technically
sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it
only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was
with the atomic bomb. I do not think anybody opposed the making it;
there were some debates about what to do after it was made. I cannot
very well imagine if we had known in late 1949 what we got to know by
early 1951 that the tone of our report would have been the same.”
(Quoted from In the
Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer: The Security Clearance Hearing.
Ed. Richard Polenberg (Cornell University Press, 2001), p. 46-47.)
 Ulam on himself,
von Neumann, and Oppenheimer
"I began as a pure mathematician. In Los Alamos I met physicists and
other "natural" scientists, and consorted mainly, if not exclusively,
with theoreticians. It is still an unending source of surprise for me
to see how a few scribbles on a blackboard or on a sheet of paper could
change the course of human affairs."
"Johnny [von Neumann]
used to say that after the age of twenty-six a mathematician begins to
go downhill. When I met him he was just past that age. As time went on
he extended the limit, but kept it always a little below his age. (For
example, when near forty, he raised it to thirty-five.) This was
characteristic of his rather self-effacing manner. He did not want to
give the appearance of considering himself "in." He knew that
self-praise sounds ridiculous to others, and he would lean over
backwards to appear modest. I, on the contrary, always took pleasure in
boasting, especially about some of my own trivial accomplishments like
athletics or winning at games. Children boast quite naturally. In the
literature of antiquity, notably in Homer, heroes brag openly about
their athletic prowess. Scientists sometimes boast by implication when
they criticize or minimize the achievements of others."
“The
Oppenheimer Affair, which grew out of the violent hydrogen-bomb debate
- even though the animosity between Strauss and Oppenheimer had
personal and perhaps petty origins - greatly affected the psychological
and emotional role of scientists.
Oppenheimer's opposition to the development of the H-bomb were not
exclusively on moral, philosophical, or humanitarian grounds. I might
say cynically that he struck me as someone who, having been
instrumental in starting a revolution (and the advent of nuclear energy
does merit this appellation), does not contemplate with pleasure still
bigger revolutions to come.
Anatole France tells somewhere that one day in a park in Paris he saw
an old man sitting on a bench reading a news-marching in parade
formation and shouting revolutionary slogans. The old man became very
agitated, shaking his cane and shouting: "Order! Police! Police! Slop!"
France recognized the old man; in the past he had been a famous
revolutionary.
Oppenheimer had many unusually strong, interesting qualities, but in
some way he was a very sad man. The theoretical discussion which he
proposed of the so-called neutron star is one of his greatest
contributions to theoretical physics, but its verification with the
discoveries of pulsar stars, which are fast-rotating neutron stars,
came years after his death.
It seems to me this was the tragedy of Oppenheimer. He was more
intelligent, receptive, and brilliantly critical than deeply original.
Also he was caught in his own web, a web not of politics but of
phrasing. Perhaps he exaggerated his role when he saw himself as
"Prince of Darkness, the destroyer of Universes." Johnny [von
Neumann] used to say, "Some people profess guilt to claim credit for
the sin."
Many
accounts of these events have been written. Some are exaggerated or
distorted; others, like the official history of the AEC, are rather
objective. But none can be complete yet, and of course the events as
seen by the participants appear in different lights.”
“There is sadness in his account but no
bitterness. The greatest sadness is the personal sadness, when three of
his close friends and allies, Enrico Fermi, John von Neumann, and
Ernest Lawrence, die untimely deaths before their work is done.
Throughout his struggles he maintains his talent for friendship. Leo
Szilard, who disagreed violently with Teller about almost everything,
remained one of his closest friends.
The worst period of Teller’s life began in 1954 when he testified
against Oppenheimer in the hearing conducted by the Atomic Energy
Commission to decide whether Oppenheimer was a security risk. The full
transcript of Teller’s testimony is included in the book. One result of
Teller’s testimony was that a large number of his friends ceased to be
friends. The community of physicists that Teller loved was split apart.
The hearing had been instigated by Oppenheimer’s enemies in order to
demonize him and destroy his political influence. After the hearing, it
was Teller’s turn to be demonized. Oppenheimer and Teller both suffered
grievously from the quarrel, but the damage to Teller was greater. The
reviewer remembers meeting Bethe in Washington while the hearing was in
progress, shortly before Teller testified. Bethe was looking grimmer
than I had ever seen him. He said, “I have just now had the most
unpleasant conversation of my whole life. With Edward Teller.” Bethe
had tried to persuade Teller not to testify and had failed. That was
the end of a 20-year friendship. Bethe and Teller are now the last
survivors of the golden age. I was happy to read in Physics Today a review
of this book by Bethe, a generous review, emphasizing the warmth of
Teller’s character and letting old quarrels sleep.”
"Soon after Teller moved to Livermore he was
invited to testify at the Oppenheimer security hearings in Washington.
At the hearings he was asked whether he considered Oppenheimer to be a
security risk, and answered, “Yes.” For this the majority of
physicists, including many of his friends, never forgave him. The
estrangement caused Teller tremendous grief. The community of
physicists was split in two, and Teller became a symbol of the
division. At the time when this happened I was puzzled and shocked by
the violence of the reaction against Teller. To me it seemed that the
main question was whether the security rules should be applied
impartially to famous people and unknown people alike. It was a
question of fairness. If any unknown person had behaved as Oppenheimer
behaved, telling a lie to a security officer about an incident that
involved possible spying, he would certainly have been denied
clearance. The question was whether Oppenheimer, because he was famous,
should be treated differently. Should there be different rules for
peasants and princes? This was a question concerning which reasonable
people could disagree. I tended to agree with Teller that the rules
ought to be impartial. And I saw no reason why people who disagreed
with him should condemn him for speaking his mind. Teller’s
estrangement from the community of physicists became worse when three
of his closest friends, Enrico Fermi, John von Neumann, and Ernest
Lawrence, happened to die prematurely within a few years after the
Oppenheimer hearings. Each of them died in his fifties and should have
remained vigorously active for at least another 20 years. The loss of
all three made Teller even more isolated as he started his new life at
Livermore."
Kip S. Thorne on
Teller-Oppenheimer controversy, 1994
"On 2 July 1953, Lewis Strauss, a member of
the Atomic Energy Commission who had fought bitterly with Oppenheimer
over the crash program for the super, became the Commission's chairman.
As one of his first acts in power, he ordered removal of all classified
material from Oppenheimer's Princeton office. Strauss and many others
in Washington were deeply suspicious of Oppenheimer's loyalty. How
could a man loyal to America oppose the super effort, as he had before Wheeler's
team demonstrated that the Teller-Ulam invention would work? William
Borden, who had been chief counsel of Congress's Joint Committee on
Atomic Energy during the super debate, sent a letter to Edgar Hoover
saying, in part: "The purpose of this letter is to state my own
exhaustively considered opinion, based upon years of study of the
available classified evidence, that more probably than not J. Robert
Oppenheimer is an agent of the Soviet Union." Oppenheimer's security
clearance was canceled, and in April and May of 1954, simultaneous with
the first American tests of deliverable hydrogen bombs, the Atomic
Energy Commission conducted hearings to determine whether or not
Oppenheimer was really a security risk.
Wheeler was in Washington on other business at the time of the
hearings. He was not involved in any way However, Teller, a close
personal friend, went to Wheeler's hotel room the night before he was
to testify, and paced the floor for hours. If Teller said what he
really thought, it would severely damage Oppenheimer. But how could he
not say it? Wheeler had no doubts; in his view, Teller's integrity
would force him to testify fully.
Wheeler was right. The next day Teller, espousing a viewpoint that
Wheeler understood, said: "In
a great number of cases I have seen Dr. Oppenheimer act ... in a way
which for me was exceedingly hard to understand. I thoroughly disagreed
with him in numerous issues and his actions frankly appeared to me
confused and complicated. To this extent I feel that I would like to
see the vital interests of the country in hands which 1 understand
better, and therefore trust more. ... I believe, and that is merely a
question of belief and there is no expertness, no real information
behind it, that Dr. Oppenheimer's character is such that he would not
knowingly and willingly do anything that is designed to endanger the
safety of this country. To the extent, therefore, that your question is
directed toward intent, I would say I do not see any reason to deny
clearance. If it is a question of wisdom and judgment, as demonstrated
by actions since 1945, then I would say one would be wiser not to grant
clearance. [I
must say that I am myself a little bit confused on this issue,
particularly as it refers to a person of Oppenheimer’s prestige and
influence.]"
Almost all the other physicists who testified were unequivocal in their
support of Oppenheimer—and were aghast at Teller's testimony. Despite
this, and despite the absence of credible evidence that Oppenheimer was
"an agent of the Soviet Union," the climate of the times prevailed:
Oppenheimer was declared a security risk and was denied restoration of
his security clearance.
To most American physicists, Oppenheimer became an instant martyr and
Teller an instant villain. Teller would be ostracized by the physics
community for the rest of his life. But to Wheeler, it was Teller who
was the martyr: Teller had "had the courage to express his honest
judgment, putting his country's security ahead of solidarity of the
community of physicists," Wheeler believed. Such testimony, in
Wheeler's view, "deserved consideration," not ostracism. Andrei
Sakharov, thirty-five years later, came to agree.
Just for the record, I strongly disagree with Wheeler (though he is one
of my closest friends and my mentor) and with Sakharov. "
“Dr. BETHE advised he never had any reason to
suspect the subject of espionage, and further that subject never seemed
to be pro-Russian. To his knowledge, FUCHS never attempted to elicit
any confidential information from him. He described him as extremely
brilliant and as one of the top men in the world on atomic energy. ”
“The first Soviet test, in 1949, convinced
Teller that the time had come to develop the "super," the hydrogen
bomb. An acrimonious battle over whether to do this raged in Washington
and in scientific circles. Teller, Ernest Lawrence, and the
Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy favored the super bomb. The
civilian General Advisory Committee--which included Robert Oppenheimer,
the wartime director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, James Conant, who
had been the overall scientific leader of the Manhattan Project, Fermi,
and I. I. Rabi, a long time adviser to the government and Los Alamos,
firmly opposed it. With the revelation in late 1949 of Klaus Fuchs's
espionage, President Harry S Truman gave the go-ahead in January 1950.
Looking back 50 years later, it seems to me that neither side had a
strong argument. The policy of both the Soviets and the US was not to
fight a nuclear war but to deter one; hundreds, and later thousands, of
atomic bombs would have been sufficient; it seems to me that the H-bomb
was unnecessary. The strength of the bombs was not critical.
Indeed, deterrence was successful; the existence of the two arsenals
prevented the escalation of the cold war into a large-scale hot war.
Truman had no choice in the political atmosphere of the time. Had
Russia developed the H-bomb and the US not, he and the scientific
community that opposed it would have been considered traitors.
In 1954, the Atomic Energy Commission cancelled Oppenheimer's security
clearance. A hearing was held in April-May. At that hearing, many
scientists testified in favor of restoring clearance. Teller and a few
other scientists testified against it. When the decision came down
against Oppenheimer, not a surprise in the McCarthy era, the majority
of the scientific community blamed the witnesses they knew best,
particularly Edward Teller.
Teller felt exiled for the third time: He had been forced to leave
Hungary, then Germany; now a large portion of the scientific community
ostracized him. In addition, he soon lost three of his close scientific
friends: Fermi died in 1954, John von Neumann, a fellow Hungarian, died
in 1957, and Ernest Lawrence, his patron at Berkeley, died in 1958.”
Teller on
Fuchs, 1950, in a letter to Maria Goeppert-Mayer:
“You remember Klaus Fuchs? I never liked him
very particularly, but [my wife] Mici did. He was too reserved for my
taste although he was always very nice. He must have been living under
an incredible stress. Quite a few people here [at Los Alamos] are
furious at Fuchs. They feel personally insulted. I do not feel that
way. We should have learned what kind of a system the communist party
is and what kind of demands it makes on its members. Fuchs probably
decided when he was 20 years old (and when he saw Nazism coming in
Germany) that the communists are the only hope. He decided that before
he ever became a scientist. From that time on his whole life was built
around that idea.
People always do this: They underestimated the Nazis and they
underestimate now the communists. Then the disaster comes, and then the
same people who would not believe that trouble is ahead get very angry
at individual communists or individual Nazis.”
A half-century later, Teller described Fuchs as “a
very nice person, a highly intelligent person,” and
told an interviewer that: “I
could not disagree with his actions more than I do, yet he behaved as a
friend, and somehow I cannot think about it in very different terms.”
Teller on Communism, 1996, 1998:
“the events in the Soviet Union got an
emotional emphasis when my good friend, the excellent physicist, Lev
Landau, was jailed by Stalin. I had known him in Leipzig and Copenhagen
as an ardent Communist. I was pushed to the conclusion that Stalin’s
Communism was not much better than the Nazi dictatorship of Hitler.”
"
My second published paper in physics was a joint undertaking with my
good Hungarian friend, Laszlo Tisza. Shortly after our collaboration in
Leipzig he was arrested as a communist by the Hungarian fascist
government. He had lost his chance of obtaining an academic position
and I referred him, with my strong recommendation, to my friend Lev
Landau in Kharkov, Ukraine. A few years later Tisza visited me in the
United States. He no longer had any sympathy with Communism. Lev Landau
had been arrested in the Soviet Union as a capitalist spy! The
implication of this event was for me even more defining than the
Hitler-Stalin Pact. By 1940, I had every reason to dislike and distrust
the Soviets.”
Laszlo Tisza (1907-2009) and the list of those first who
passed the Teorminimum examinations in Lev Landau’s handwriting.
Tisza’s name is number 5 on the list.
(“Adventures
of a Theoretical Physicist,” Physics in Perspective, 2009):
“Two months after I defended my thesis I was arrested, and
although I was not a Party member I was sentenced to 14 months in jail.
In Hungary the Communist Party was illegal at that time, and any
Communist activity was heavily apprehended. After that it was out of
the question for me to obtain an academic position in Hungary. My
scientific career seemed at an end before having started. Yet Teller
remained the faithful friend. Although he had no sympathy with my
political views, he helped me to find a way out. <> Edward had
the idea that I ought to join Landau’s group at the Ukrainian
Physical-Technical Institute (UFTI) in Kharkov. Lev Davidovich Landau
had a marvelous reputation both for his research and for his method of
training <> I expressed to Landau my desire to join his group,
and he accepted me with a complete absence of formality. <> I
joined the UFTI in January 1935."
"In the first weeks of 1937 the circus was reopened at staff meetings
at the UFTI, where Landau was openly attacked as counterrevolutionary.
Landau was fed up with these increasingly virulent attacks. He went to
Moscow and asked for Kapitza’s help, who indeed invited him to join his
newly founded Institute of Physical Problems. <> However, Landau
was arrested in the spring of 1938 and was freed only a year later
thanks to the direct intervention of Kapitza.
Meanwhile in Kharkov there was a rash of arrests at the UFTI, among
others Alexander Weissberg, Fritz Houtermans, and Lev Schubnikow.
<> With Landau leaving, I had no reason to stay on; nor was I
welcome to stay. <> End of June 1937 I arrived in Budapest. "
" Just about three years had passed since my introductory meeting in
May 1934 at the UFTI. What a change from my innocent optimism to the
witnessing of total political corruption! Whereas I had no hesitation
to abandon all confidence in the regime, there was a long search ahead,
in the course of which I asked myself: what went wrong? I was unwilling
to confine all the blame to Stalin, and was intent to find the flaw in
the theory. It would take me years to deal with this puzzle."
"Back from Kharkov in Budapest at the end of June 1937, I got in touch
with my old friend Teller, who asked Leo Szilard to write to Fritz
London on my behalf. <> we left France in early February 1941
<>. Mid-March we sailed on a Portuguese ship to New York
<>. In April I got an invitation from the Tellers to be their
guest in Arlington, Virginia, where they just bought a picturesque
house in the woods. <> I stayed with the Tellers until the middle
of June, when they moved to Columbia University in New York, and then
to Chicago.”
The Oxford English
Dictionary
GULAG, n.
[a. Russ. GULAG,
acronym f. the initial letters of Glavnoe Upravlenie ispravitel'no-trudovykh LAGerey - Chief Administration for
Corrective Labour Camps.]
1. a. In the former Soviet
Union, the name of a department of the Soviet secret police (see N.K.V.D.
s.v. N II. 1) responsible between 1934 and 1955 for the administration
of corrective labour camps and prisons.
1946
V. KRAVCHENKO I chose Freedom xxiv. 405 The Central
Administration of forced labour camps, known as GULAG, was headed by
the N.K.V.D. General Nedosekin... I recall vividly an interview which I
arranged on Utkin's orders with one of the top administrators of GULAG.
1968 T. P. Whitney tr. Solzhenitsyn's First Circle p. x, All
the zeks at the Mavrino sharashka belonged, though they were not at the
time in hard-labor camps, to the realm of GULAG.
b. These camps and prisons
collectively, both under the N.K.V.D. and subsequently; a prison camp, esp.
one for political prisoners; hence transf., any place or
political system in which the oppression and punishment of dissidents
is institutionalized. Also in more general fig. use.
1975
T. P. Whitney tr.
Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipel. II. III. xviii. 468 It was
an accepted saying that everything is possible in Gulag. 1975
Business Week 26 May 12/1 (heading) An American in
the Gulag.
The word “GULAG” in NYTimes
1948. C.L. Sulzberger. Soviet Forced
Labor Held Economic Asset in Study. New York Times; June 30,
p. 6
The direct control of the
labor camps, and the workers' pool contained in them, rests in the
hands of a subsidiary body called GULAG, or Chief Administration for
Concentration Camps.
1948. Display Ad 31 -- No Title. New
York Times; Sep 8, p. 33
PLAIN
TALK'S journalistic
scoops include exposure of Russian kidnappings in the Berlin Zone as
far back as January, 1947; exposes of forced labor camps in the USSR,
postwar purge of Russian writers and composers and many other "first"
news stories.
5 ISSUES FOR $1. Plus a FREE
copyrighted Docu-Map of "GULAG" Slavery, Inc. showing
locations of forced labor camps in Soviet Russia today
1950. Harry Schwartz . Soviet Data Show
Slave Labor Role. New York Times ; Dec 17, p. 20
The N.K.V. D. construction target was
divided among three organizations.. The chief administration for
labor camps, Gulag, was
responsible for 2,615,000,000 rubles worth of building.
1953. Geza B. Grosschmid. Russia's Slave
Labor. New York Times; Jul 5, p. E6
When in July, 1934, the G. P.
U. was changed into the N. K. V. D., a new organ, the Chief
Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (GULAG) was organized.
Lev
Landau, prosocialist
prisoner of the Soviet state in 1938
and anti-Soviet Hero of Socialist
labor twenty years later
|
|
|
Landau, courtesy
of the KGB wiretapping in 1956-7:
"The Hungarian revolution
[October 1956] means that virtually
the entire Hungarian
population rose up against their oppressors, that is, against a small
Hungarian clique, but mainly against ours. … Ours stands in blood
literally up
to their waists. I consider what the Hungarians did the greatest
achievement."
"Our regime, as I know it
from 1937 on, is definitely a fascist regime, and it could not change
by itself in any simple way . . . Our leaders are fascists from head to
toe. They can be more liberal or less liberal, but their ideas are
fascist." |
|
|
A close friend of Lev Landau, Matvei
Bronstein, was born 1906, arrested August 6, 1937,
pronounced dead by Stalin’s initials February 3, 1938, and
executed February 18, 1938.
This 30-years-old theoretical physicist, a
pioneer of quantum gravity and cosmology, and author of wonderful
books on science for children, was one of the some forty thousands who
happened to be included in the so called “Stalin’s execution lists”. Stalin
signed the execution list with Bronstein’s name on February 3, 1938.
Two weeks later, there was a “trial” which lasted half an hour
(according to the KGB file) and was followed by the execution that same
day. It is clear that the Great Leader had no idea who Matvei Bronstein
was.
|
Vitaly Ginzburg on
Stalin, American guys, and Communism:
 Edward
Teller and Vitaly Ginzburg, 1992
“While I visited the US [in
the early 1990s] I saw a film on J. R. Oppenheimer and felt
bitterness. All the good guys, like Oppenheimer’s brother and others,
were lefties, and all of them believed that the U.S. should not make an
atomic weapon, that Russians were good guys and so on. At the same time
the bad guys, including security officers, understood the situation.
Now we know this. How Stalin might be given superiority?! This
scoundrel – I am convinced – would not hesitate to strike the West.”
“Quite a few well known and respectable writers and scientists
in the West supported the USSR, condoned, up to the second half of the
1940s, and some even longer, everything that its rulers, with Stalin at
the helm, were doing to the population. Suffice it to mention Romain
Rolland and Frederic Joliot-Curie in France.”
“My father was an engineer of the old generation, never a party member.
We had no one among our relatives or close friends who would go for
political activity or at least would be capable of comprehending the
real situation in the country. I was not personally acquainted with a
single person who suffered from Stalin's repression. I was surrounded
by communist banners, by prayers sung to the 'Great Stalin' and by the
information on the truly appalling feats and gambles of the fascist
side. We should not forget that the Soviet power had unquestionable
achievements as well. Suffice it to mention here the elimination of
illiteracy and unemployment, the absence - in the prewar decades - of
racial discrimination (and specifically of state-supported
anti-Semitism), the possibility to get education. Consequently, I am
not going to repent, even today, that in 1937, at 21 years of age, I
enrolled in the young communist league (komsomol). There was not a
shadow of career-making in it: non-party-members were allowed into
post-graduate courses of the physics department, and that was as far as
my plans stretched. Neither am I ashamed of joining (or rather becoming
a candidate to) the communist party in 1942. It happened in Kazan on
the Volga to which the predominant part of the Academy of Sciences of
the USSR was evacuated; that was the period when the German armies were
closing in on the Volga. I never tried to avoid mobilization, tried to
volunteer twice, and had no 'shield' from being drawn. However, there
must have existed some sort of obscure instruction: do not accept into
the army, without special reason, young scientists without previous
military training. Frankly speaking, this was a wise decision, proved
very beneficial after the war, when the destroyed industry was being
reconstructed and new technologies were emerging. An aside: I had never
occupied any party positions of any distinction whatsoever.”
“I should only remark that until the famous Khrushchev's revelation of
1956 I, like so many others, remained ignorant of the true role played
by Stalin in unleashing the now exposed outrageous atrocities. I am
very ashamed of this blindness of mine. The falling-off of scales was
so painful that I became very careless and soon attracted KGB's
attention. Some of our acquaintances began to avoid my and my wife's
company; we found out later that they were invited 'where one does not
dare to refuse invitation' and demanded to inform about me. The
menacing hand with the sward has weakened, however, and people, at
least of my station in life, were not thrown into jails or lunatic
asylums for mere loose talk among fellow Soviet citizens. The only
field in which the damage was done was the travel to scientific
conferences abroad. Using secrecy rules as a pretext, I was not allowed
abroad and lost a great deal from missing conferences to which I was
regularly invited. That the secrecy was a pretext was beyond doubt
since people who knew incomparably more about classified matters had
much greater freedom of travel”
Sakharov on
the Oppenheimer complex, 1988:
 (from
a dialogue with a writer Ales Adamovich, two years after Chernobyl
catastrophe)
Andrei Sakharov and
Edward Teller, 1988
Adamovich: The curse of lies
hangs over atomic energy. I suddenly remembered that you are the father
of our hydrogen bomb. How do you deal with that?
Sakharov: I’m not the only father, of course. It was collective
work, but no less terrible for that. Back then we were convinced that
the creation of first the atomic bomb (I did not participate in that)
and then the thermonuclear was necessary for world balance so that our
country could develop in peace and quiet without being under the
pressure of overwhelming superiority of the other side. To this day, I
cannot rule that out. We—I include the Americans in this—created a
weapon that gave humanity a peaceful breather. It is still continuing.
But I am convinced that this break is not indefinite. If the nuclear
confrontation continues on the monstrous level it has reached, no “word
of honor” will help.
Adamovich: We nonscientists have the illusion that physicists must
suffer from the Oppenheimer complex, the guilt syndrome. Is that so or
not?
Sakharov: That is an illusion. We console ourselves with the fact
that we are reducing the possibility of war.
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History of the project
(talks and articles)
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Left: Edward Teller (sitting), Arnold Kramish
(2nd from the left) and Soviet H-bomb veterans at a semi-closed
conference on the history of H-bomb at Livermore Lab, 1997. Two Heroes
of Socialist labor German Goncharov and Lev Feoktistov, and a nonheroic
historian of science G.Gorelik are the 4th, 2nd, and 1st from the
right.
(Courtesy of Thomas C. Reed)
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·
[Parallels Among Three
Perpendiculars: Andrei Sakharov, Edward Teller, and Robert
Oppenheimer], Institute for History of Science and Technology, Moscow,
May 31, 2001; P.L.Kapitsa Institute of Physical Problems, Moscow,
October 25, 2001
·
Paralleli mezhdu
perpendikulyarami: Andrei Sakharov, Edward Teller i Robert Oppenheimer
// Znanie - Sila, 2001, ¹9; VIET,
2002, ¹2, p.300-312
·
“A Russian Perspective on
the Father of the American H-Bomb,” Colloquium on the History of
Science and Technology at the University of Minnesota, April 19, 2002
·
“Circulating Top-Secret
Knowledge for the history of H-bomb,” 5th British-North American Joint
Meeting of the BSHS, CSHPS, and HSS, Halifax, Nova Scotia, August 7,
2004
·
Ottsy
vodorodnoy bomby // Priroda, 2006, ¹5, p.3-14.
·
Sekretnaya fizika i nauchnaya
etika v istorii vodorodnoi bomby // Priroda, 2007, ¹ 7
·
“A Russian-American
Perspective on the Fathers of the H-Bombs,” Boston Colloquium for
Philosophy of Science, April 24, 2006
·
“Edward Teller and
realities of illusory worlds,” Boston Colloquium for Philosophy of
Science, March 19, 2007
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