Bohr Gets Stiffed by Churchill, the Test Succeeds, and the Directive Is Issued
Truman approached Stalin when it was just the two of them and told Stalin, he reported, that the United States "had a new weapon of unusual destructive force." Stalin had showed little interest. He replied, Truman reported later, only that he hoped Truman "would make good use of it against the Japanese."
I have told the Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use it [the “special weapon”] so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. From Truman’s Potsdam Journal
Justice Frankfurter met with President Roosevelt in March 1944 and shared with him Niels Bohr’s ideas about what might be done to avoid a desperately perilous nuclear arms race. FDR had confessed himself to Frankfurter as “worried sick” about this business. He seemed to find Bohr’s ideas worth serious consideration. He said Bohr should run them by Winston Churchill.
We went through this last time.
Bohr was flown in a military airplane over to London to meet with Churchill. Churchill kept Bohr waiting for over a month. On May 16, he finally met with Bohr. For half of the hour that had been promised.
Bohr’s son Aage, also a physicist, attended this meeting. According to Aage, Churchill didn’t seem to have given any attention to what Bohr was proposing. He lectured them “like schoolboys,” said Aage. He made it abundantly clear that he had no interest in approaching the Soviets or cooperating with them in any way.
Bohr returned to the United States and reported the disappointment to Frankfurter. Frankfurter then suggested Bohr write down his ideas so Frankfurter could take them to FDR. Bohr did so in July. Frankfurter delivered the memo to FDR as soon as he got it.
On 26 August 1944, Bohr met with FDR. They talked for an hour and a half. Aage said FDR seemed taken with Bohr’s ideas. He told Bohr he shouldn’t be discouraged by Churchill’s response because Churchill would often come on strong at first and later come around.
What about the fact that if an approach to the Soviets were made you would be dealing with Joseph Stalin? Stalin was obviously a hard case. FDR thought Joseph Stalin might be enough of a “realist” to see the virtue of cooperating in an effort to control the terrible new weapons against which there would be no defense.
FDR said he had a meeting with Churchill scheduled for next month, September, again in Quebec. He said he would bring the matter up again and get in touch with Bohr afterwards.
The meeting in Quebec took place as scheduled. Afterwards, Churchill and FDR adjourned to FDR’s estate in Hyde Park, on the Hudson River. An “aide-memoire” about that meeting, dated September 18, written on“10 Downing Street” stationery and clearly by Churchill, says “the suggestion that the world should be informed regarding Tube Alloys with a view to an international agreement regarding its control and use, is not accepted.”
Obviously, FDR had made no headway with Churchill. Churchill had, if anything, hardened his position. He was not interested in seeking a new international relation. He was interested, he’d made clear earlier, in hanging on to the British Empire, though by now it seemed likely he could have some problems doing that after the war. Churchill might have thought that sharing a monopoly with the United States on the atomic bomb would help him hang on to the Empire.
Just speculation, of course.
Had Churchill known, “the world” had already been “informed” about “Tube Alloys.” That is, the Soviets knew about the British atomic bomb project and the Manhattan Project and knew they hadn’t been told by their allies about these undertakings.
Not long after the Manhattan Project was established, the Soviets had started an atomic bomb project of their own. Long before World War II was over, the nuclear arms race had begun.
Bohr never did hear back from FDR.
Bohr strongly suspected the Soviets knew about the work on an atomic bomb that we hadn’t told them about, and he knew the Soviets’ knowledge of that fact would make it harder to obtain their cooperation should an approach to them ever be made. After a successful test of the bomb, it would be that much harder. How could any approach to them after a successful test seem to convey anything but a message of “cooperate or else”?
The successful test of the implosion design took place on July 16, 1945, ten months after the meeting in Hyde Park, three months after the death of FDR. The secret of the bomb was still secret, officially anyway. It had been kept even from the people living downwind from the site of the Trinity test where the radioactive fallout would end up.
Our new President Truman was told about the success of the test while at a meeting in July in Potsdam, in what had been Germany, with Stalin and other leaders of the allies. Truman approached Stalin when it was just the two of them and told Stalin, he reported, that the United States "had a new weapon of unusual destructive force." Stalin had showed little interest. He replied, Truman reported later, only that he hoped Truman "would make good use of it against the Japanese."
Had the Soviets just given the U.S. permission to use the bomb in Japan? In any case, Chief of Staff General Marshall, who was with Truman in Potsdam, got in touch with the Pentagon.
On July 25, General Thomas Handy, Acting Chief of Staff of the Army while Marshall was in Potsdam, issued a directive from the Pentagon to Commanding General of the Army Strategic Air Forces Carl Spaatz that directed him to “deliver” any available atomic bombs on Hiroshima, Niigata, Kokura or Nagasaki at any time after August 3. Nagasaki had this day replaced Kyoto on the target list. Stimson had vetoed Kyoto as a target. He had honeymooned there and knew what a beautiful city it was.
The entry in President Truman’s Potsdam Journal for July 25 says:
I have told the Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use it [the “special weapon”] so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop that terrible bomb on the old capital or the new. He and I are in accord. The target will be a purely military one and we will issue a warning statement asking the Japs to surrender and save lives. I’m sure they will not do that, but we will have given them the chance.
Handy’s directive to Spaatz contained nothing about using the bombs “so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children.” General Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber that would drop the bomb on Hiroshima, told Robert Del Tredici1 that “The city was the target, period.” Stimson apparently hadn’t managed to get Truman’s orders to the field.
Even if he had—and Truman might not have known this—there would have been no way to restrict the effects of this weapon to a “purely military” target consisting only of “soldiers and sailors.” Because of the size of the yield of the bomb, “the city” and its inhabitants were the only possible target. Of this quite small nuclear weapon by current standards.
On August 6, an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Another three days later on Nagasaki.
Afterward, had we known, the Soviet Union became even more devoted to getting an atomic bomb of their own. Which they would have three and a half years later.
Without this weapon, the Soviets could have been forgiven for thinking, how were you going to keep the imperialists off you?
Forty-five years later, the United States and the Soviet Union would have 70,000 nuclear warheads between them. And submarine-based and land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles with which to deliver them.
Next: The Interim Committee Speaks
1 Robert Del Tredici, At Work in the Fields of the Bomb (1987), p. 162