Bohr Keeps Trying. It Goes Down Anyway.

Truth and trust (belief) go together. One cannot have trust in a society where there is no truth; and one cannot be true to a society in which there is no trust. That is of fundamental importance, since, as Confucius told his disciple Tzu-kung, for a stable society a ruler needs three things: weapons, food and trust. If he cannot hold all three, he should forgo weapons first, and food next; for ‘without trust we cannot stand.’ Iain McGilchrist, The Matter with Things, vol. 1, 2021, p. 385

Supreme Court Justice Frankfurter had met with FDR in March 1944, sixteen months before the successful test of the atomic bomb, and shared with him Niels Bohr’s ideas about what might be done to avoid a desperately perilous nuclear arms race after the end of World War II. FDR told Frankfurter he had been “worried sick” about this question. He seemed to find Bohr’s ideas worth serious consideration.

He said Bohr should run them by Winston Churchill.

Bohr was flown in a military airplane to London to meet with Churchill. Churchill kept him waiting for five weeks, finally meeting with Bohr on May 16 for half of the hour that had been promised. Bohr’s son Aage, a physicist, also attended this meeting. According to Aage, Churchill didn’t seem to have given any attention to what Bohr was proposing, let alone careful attention. He lectured them “like schoolboys,” said Aage, and made it 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 disappointing results of the meeting to Frankfurter. Frankfurter suggested Bohr write down his ideas so that Frankfurter could take them in that form to FDR. Bohr did this in July and Frankfurter took the memorandum to FDR soon after he received it.

Bohr was invited to meet with FDR on 26 August 1944. They talked for an hour and a half. Aage, Bohr’s son, was at this meeting too. FDR, said Aage, seemed taken with Bohr’s ideas. He told Bohr he shouldn’t be discouraged by Churchill’s response because Churchill would often take hard-core positions at first and come around later.

An approach to the Soviets would require an approach to Joseph Stalin, the dictator. FDR had met with Stalin at the Tehran Conference in November 1943 and the Yalta Conference in February 1945 and said he thought Stalin might be enough of a “realist” to see the virtue of cooperating in an effort to achieve international control of the new weapon and source of energy.

As long as the proposition were not presented to him as a matter of “cooperate or else.”

FDR told Bohr he had a meeting scheduled with Churchill for the next month, September. He would bring Bohr’s ideas up with Churchill at the meeting and report back to Bohr.

The meeting in Quebec between FDR and Churchill took place in September as scheduled. Afterwards, the two adjourned to FDR’s estate in Hyde Park, on the Hudson River. An “aide-memoire” about this 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.” “Tube Alloys” was the code name the British had taken for their work on the atomic bomb.

If he had tried, FDR had clearly made no headway with Churchill at the meeting in Quebec. Churchill seemed to have, if anything, hardened his position. He saw no reason to seek a cooperative relation with the Soviet Union.

Churchill was known to be interested in hanging on to Great Britain’s large Empire. At this point in the war, however, it was beginning to look as if the British Empire would be greatly diminished if not lost entirely after the war. Perhaps Churchill thought sharing a monopoly on the bomb with the United States would help him keep it going?

Had Churchill known, “the world” had already been “informed” about “Tube Alloys.” The Soviets had known about Tube Alloys and the Manhattan Project almost from their beginnings and knew they hadn’t been trusted with the knowledge of either one by their supposed allies.

In fact, had we known, which we didn’t, very soon after the Manhattan Project got going, the Soviets had started an atomic bomb project of their own. There weren’t yet any nuclear weapons in the world, but a nuclear arms race had begun.

Bohr suspected the Soviets knew about our work on an atomic bomb that we hadn’t told them about. He knew the Soviets’ knowledge of that fact would make it harder to obtain their cooperation should an approach to them be made. After a successful test of the bomb, it would be even harder. Let alone after a military use of it. How could any approach to them after a successful test or military use seem to convey anything but a message of “cooperate or else”? That would seem to be asking for submission, not cooperation.

Bohr never did hear back from FDR.

FDR died on April 12, 1945. On June 18, eight weeks after FDR’s death, a month before our successful test of an atomic bomb, Bohr came to Washington to try to see the Secretary of War and chair of the Interim Committee, Henry Stimson. Stimson declined to see him.

Bohr continued on to London, and waited.

The successful test of the implosion design took place on July 16, 1945, ten months after the meeting between FDR and Churchill in Hyde Park. The Manhattan Project was still top-secret in this country, with any information about it being kept even from the people living downwind from the site of the Trinity test who were sure to be harmed by radioactive fallout.

President Truman was told about the success of the test while at a meeting 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 that the United States "had a new weapon of unusual destructive force." Stalin had showed disappointingly 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 President Truman permission to use the bomb against Japan? In any case, Chief of Staff General Marshall, who was with Truman in Potsdam, went ahead and got in touch with the Pentagon.

On July 25, General Thomas Handy, Acting Chief of Staff of the Army in Marshall’s absence, issued a directive from the Pentagon to Commanding General of the Army Strategic Air Forces Carl Spaatz that directed him to “deliver” any available “special weapons” on Hiroshima, Niigata, Kokura or Nagasaki at any time after August 3. Nagasaki had just this day been added to the target list to replace Kyoto. The beautiful city of Kyoto had been removed from the target list by Stimson. He had honeymooned there before the war.

The entry in President Truman’s Potsdam Journal for July 25 says:

I have told the Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use it 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.

General Handy’s directive to Spaatz said 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 bomber that would drop the bomb on Hiroshima, told Robert Del Tredici that “The city was the target, period.”¹

Truman’s orders to Stimson hadn’t been delivered to the military commanders.

Even if they had been—and Truman might not have known this—there would have been no way to restrict the effects of the special weapon to a “purely military” target consisting only of “soldiers and sailors.” Because of the size of the yield of the weapon—this very small nuclear weapon by current standards—“the city” and its inhabitants were the only possible target. Period.

On August 6, the nuclear bomb that we had given the name Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima. Three days later a bomb we had named Fat Man—this one was like the Gadget that had been tested in Trinity on July 16—was dropped on Nagasaki. It was a third more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

When Bohr heard the news, he returned to his Institute in Copenhagen.

The Soviet Union now got down seriously to getting an atomic bomb of their own. Might they have been forgiven for asking themselves: without this bomb, how were they going to keep imperialists like Churchill off them after the war?

Four years later, in August 1949, they would have one. By then, we’d have more than 200.

We were way ahead in the nuclear arms race.

For what that was worth.

Next: It Has Gone Down: What Now? The Damage Report and the Smythe Report

1. Robert Del Tredici, At Work in the Fields of the Bomb (1987), p. 162