The First War of Physics (50 page)

In Tokyo, the Byrnes note had not helped to break the deadlock. Anami argued that they still had some power left to fight. Intercepted
radio messages again betrayed a determination to fight to the bitter end: ‘However, the Imperial Army and Navy are resolutely determined to continue their efforts to preserve the national structure – [one or two words missing] even if it means the destruction of the Army and Navy.’ On 13 August, Truman ordered the Army Air Force to resume conventional incendiary attacks on Japanese targets, as debate about the use of a third atomic bomb on Tokyo intensified.

Finally, on 14 August, the Emperor intervened once more. Hirohito spoke of ‘tolerating the intolerable’, and directed his ministers to draft an Imperial Rescript (a formal edict) accepting the terms of the Potsdam Declaration. The rescript acknowledged that: ‘The enemy now possesses a new and terrible weapon with the power to destroy many innocent lives and do incalculable damage.’ The Emperor made a recording of his speech so that it could be broadcast to the nation the next day. Army officers launched a coup attempt that evening and tried to seize the recording to prevent its broadcast. The coup failed, and Anami committed suicide. The message was broadcast on the morning of 15 August 1945.

The war was ended.

Nausea

On Tinian, the news of Japan’s surrender was received quite soberly. There was little celebration. But the physicists who had assembled and prepared the bombs for delivery were greeted as heroes. ‘There were an awful lot of guys who weren’t looking forward to landing on the Japanese beaches in October’, Serber wrote. ‘And there were about three million men whose main desire in life was to get back home. They thought we were great.’

News of the atomic bombings and their aftermath affected many Manhattan Project physicists. The bombs had helped to end the war, arguably saving the lives of many on both sides that would otherwise have been lost if Japan had been invaded. But for some physicists there was no denying the stomach-churning awfulness of the weapon they had helped create. Walking back from the celebrations at Los Alamos, Oppenheimer found one young physicist, perfectly sober, retching in the bushes.

‘I still remember the feeling of unease, indeed nausea,’ Frisch wrote, ‘when I saw how many of my friends were rushing to the telephone to book tables at the La Fonda hotel in Santa Fe, in order to celebrate. Of course they were exalted by the success of their work, but it seemed rather ghoulish to celebrate the death of one hundred thousand people, even if they were “enemies”.’

Frisch’s aunt, Lise Meitner, had been staying in a small hotel in Leksand, Dalecarlia, in central Sweden, when she heard news of the bombing of Hiroshima on 7 August. A journalist from the Stockholm newspaper
Expressen
had telephoned her for a reaction. She left the hotel and walked alone in the countryside for the next five hours.

Although some effects from exposure to radiation were anticipated by Manhattan Project scientists, Groves had dismissed as propaganda the initial reports of deaths from radiation poisoning following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But on 21 August the full horror of death by radiation poisoning was bought home directly to Los Alamos. Twenty-wfour-year-old physicist Harry Daghlian was working alone late at night on a variation of the Dragon experiment involving the use of blocks of tungsten carbide reflector surrounding a six-kilo plutonium bomb core. As he put the last brick in place, it slipped and fell into the centre. The core, now exposed to extra neutrons reflected by the brick, immediately went critical. The laboratory was bathed in the blue glow of ionised air as the apparatus sprayed a lethal dose of radiation.

Daghlian developed second-degree burns on his hands and chest. As the burns blistered and his hair fell out he developed a fever. Within 26 days of the accident he was dead.

The mood at Los Alamos changed. Physicists began to leave the project and return to academia. Some left physics for good. Oppenheimer himself returned to academic life shortly after a ceremony on 16 November 1945, at which Los Alamos was presented with a Certificate of Appreciation by the US Army.

In his acceptance speech, Oppenheimer had this warning: ‘If atomic bombs are to be added as new weapons to the arsenals of a warring world, or to the arsenals of the nations preparing for war, then the time will come when mankind will curse the name of Los Alamos and Hiroshima.’

¹
The
Indianapolis
was torpedoed on 30 July during its return to the Philippines. Only 317 of the 1,196 men on board were rescued. Whitetip sharks took many of the immediate survivors in wave after wave of attacks as they waited four days in the sea, an event memorably described by the character Quint in Steven Spielberg’s film of Peter Benchley’s
Jaws.

²
Churchill represented British interests at the Postdam conference, although he was about to suffer a shock defeat in the snap General Election he had called on 5 July. No doubt anticipating that a British victory in the war in Europe and Churchill’s own status as nothing short of a hero would make election of Churchill’s Conservative Party certain, the Conservatives had run a poor election campaign. The result, declared on 26 July – the day of the Potsdam Declaration – was a landslide victory for Clement Attlee’s Labour Party. The British electorate, heartily sick of war, favoured a political party they perceived to be more committed to managing the peace.

³
It appears that Niigata had been ruled out because of the weather.

Chapter 17

OPERATION EPSILON

April 1945–January 1946

‘I
wonder whether there are microphones installed here?’ Diebner asked.

Heisenberg laughed.

‘Microphones installed?’ he said. ‘Oh no, they’re not as cute as all that. I don’t think they know the real Gestapo methods; they’re a bit oldfashioned in that respect.’

The War Between Men and Women

In April 1945 it had fallen to Goudsmit to decide the fates of the captured German physicists. On his recommendation, a selection were to be interned. The reasons for their detention were never clearly stated. The Uranverein physicists had been targets for so long it no doubt seemed senseless to let them go free after all the effort that had been made to capture them. Goudsmit wondered if the Allies had spent more money searching for the German physicists than the Germans had spent on the whole of their nuclear programme.

Alsos and AZUSA had followed hard on the heels of the Allied armies into Italy, France and Germany. Heisenberg had been pursued across Europe, tracked down and confronted by an armed OSS operative in
Zurich with orders to assassinate him if the wrong signals were given. Many lives had been lost to deny the German physicists access to the heavy water they had needed for their research. The Allies had indeed paid a high price and there might yet be things that could be learned from the captured physicists, even, as Goudsmit suggested, ‘if it were only to convince the colleagues back home that our deductions were correct’.

And, of course, the physicists had to be kept out of Soviet hands.

It was not possible to intern them all, and Goudsmit wrestled with his selection. There was clearly nothing further to be learned from Bothe. Hahn had to be included because to omit the man who had discovered nuclear fission in 1939 would no doubt invite some severe criticism. From the documents Goudsmit had been able to review, it was clear that Weizsäcker and Wirtz had played key roles in the programme. Bagge and Korsching were junior physicists and their inclusion puzzled Weizsäcker at first, but Goudsmit reasoned that they had been involved in some novel research on isotope separation.

The most difficult choice was Laue. Early rumours of Laue’s involvement in the Uranverein had turned out to be unfounded – the Nobel laureate had never worked on the project. Goudsmit was aware of Laue’s brave, long-standing opposition to Nazi authority. ‘Here was a man who had virtually been on our side throughout the war,’ Goudsmit wrote, ‘who demanded the respect of his colleagues all over the world for his science as well as his personality. Such a man was indeed rare in Germany.’ Goudsmit elected to include Laue in the hope that he would be able to discuss the future of German physics with Allied scientists. Rather to Goudsmit’s dismay, Laue was treated no differently from his fellow captives.

Goudsmit watched as his six ‘prisoners’ were bundled off to Heidelberg. Their appearance reminded him of a cartoon from James Thurber’s
The War Between Men and Women
, in which a fierce female with a gun captures three sad, sorry-looking physicists.

From Heidelberg the six were transported to Rheims, France, escorted by Furman and guarded by soldiers armed with machine-guns. They were joined on 2 May by Major T.H. Rittner, assigned the task of babysitting the physicists by British intelligence with Groves’ agreement. Rittner had been
ordered to treat the physicists as ‘guests’ and ensure they were in contact with no one unless authorised by Perrin or Welsh.

From Rheims the group relocated to Versailles on 7 May. Rittner was disappointed to discover that his captives were to be held at a concentration camp at the Château du Chesnay, known colloquially as the ‘Dustbin’. As the end of the war in Europe was celebrated, he protested against the conditions and urged that alternative accommodation be found. Diebner and Heisenberg joined the group on 9 May. Two days later they relocated again, to considerably better accommodation at the Villa Argentina in Le Vésinet. Furman delivered Harteck to the group later that same evening.

Although they grumbled about their circumstances, and particularly about the limited contact they had with their families in Germany, the captive physicists settled into a routine. They worked in their rooms, sat sunbathing in the garden, developed a passion for physical exercise and organised colloquia among themselves on current topics in physics. Rittner arranged for books, technical journals and games to keep them amused.

When on 3 June they were advised that they were to relocate again, Laue protested. ‘That’s impossible!’ he declared, ‘Because I have my colloquium then.’ When asked if the colloquium could not be arranged for another time, Laue responded: ‘But could you not have the aeroplane come some other time?’

They moved to the Château de Facqueval, in Huy, Belgium, on 4 June. There was more grumbling. The physicists were growing increasingly concerned for the welfare of their families. News reports of the expansion of the Soviet occupation zone were particularly worrying for Diebner, whose wife and son in Stadtilm were now threatened. Diebner first declared his intention to escape, then threatened suicide. Heisenberg intervened. He argued that Diebner’s wife had worked with her husband on the uranium project and therefore knew too much for the Allies to risk her capture by the Soviets. Rittner was able to arrange for Diebner’s family to be moved to a safer location. Although Diebner was not a religious man, with the situation happily resolved he felt the need to express his relief by visiting church. Rittner took him to a mass the following Sunday. Diebner caused
something of a stir among the local churchgoers by turning up formally dressed, as though for a church parade.

Gerlach joined the group on 14 June, bringing the number of captive German physicists to ten. On 3 July they moved once more, this time to their final destination in England. As they made their approach by road from RAF Tempsford in Bedfordshire, Harteck recognised the cathedral in nearby Ely. He had once worked with Rutherford in Cambridge, and was familiar with the local countryside. In fact, they were headed for STS-61, the SOE’s country house known as Farm Hall, set in spacious grounds in the Cambridgeshire village of Godmanchester.

Jens Poulsson and his team of Norwegian commandos had stayed here in 1942, preparing for their operation against the heavy water plant at Vemork. The house was riddled with hidden microphones, and a team of translators stood ready to transcribe every overheard word into English as part of an intelligence-gathering operation codenamed Epsilon.