Community: A Look At Göttingen & Los Alamos

“What I do see more clearly now is the prime agent of victory. He who bears in his heart a cathedral to be built is already victorious. He who seeks to become sexton of a finished cathedral is already defeated. Victory is the fruit of love. Only love can say what face shall emerge from the clay. Only love can guide man towards that face. Intelligence is only valid as it serves love.”
-Antoine de Sainte-Exupéry

There is no doubt that the era of Nazi Germany sent ripples of shock and profound change throughout the whole world, but especially in Europe. Whole communities were torn apart, killed, tortured, or forced into exile. All across Europe from Greece to Poland to Denmark, Nazi Germany wrapped its tentacles around its prey. This destructive force in humanity fundamentally threatened and dismantled the very construct of humanity. The crisis and the distress it caused on the psyche of humanity can be seen throughout the literature of this time, which time and time again came back to this idea of community. The community of international physicists was no exception. Once a community based on the open exchange of ideas and knowledge beholden to no one except themselves, they became secretive, mistrusting, and controlled by government agendas. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote while flying reconnaissance missions for the French during World War Two, “Intelligence is only valid as it serves love.” By this he is saying that intelligence is only valid if it is guided by love in service of your community, i.e. the people you love and care about. Without a strong supportive international community these physicists lost their way. With government control over their research they no longer could trust or share with each other, and fueled by fear, they created the atomic bomb. Naively, they hoped the atomic bomb would usher in an era of peace and international cooperation and control over atomic research and energy. However, the reality of the situation was quite different. Actions motivated by fear, like violence, cannot bring peace. The era before Nazi Germany in Göttingen was the Golden Age of physics, physicists lived together in a community of openness and truth. However, with the rise of Nazism their community dissolved and though they tried to recreate it at Los Alamos, New Mexico, their fractured community was shrouded in secrecy, mistrust, and fear.
Göttingen

The nineteen twenties and early nineteen thirties in the little university town of Göttingen in Germany were a type of utopia for physicists like Robert Oppenheimer, James Franck, and David Hilbert, to name a few. In the words of Oppenheimer, the science at Göttingen was “the best to be found.” There they were respected and admired by not only their students, but the townspeople as well, and their lives revolved around the pursuit of knowledge. This pursuit was fueled by personal curiosity and love of knowledge and that was all. In Göttingen they were free to be open conduits of inspiration wherever, whenever, and with whomever. One night Fritz Houtermans, a Swiss physicist, was awakened in the middle of the night by a student throwing stones at his window, who had just resolved some contradictions in a new theory and needed Houtermans’ help with the calculations. Houtermans gladly worked on the calculations all night with his student. There was a natural spontaneity and genius that could not be contained constantly bubbling to the surface in Göttingen, and which could not be held within the University walls. Here, physics was as much a part of the town and its people as it was of the group of international physicists that flocked to the little town.
This was a place where residents proudly stated, “Here we only once had a demonstration by students. They marched out to the house of a famous physicist who had just arrived and gave him an enthusiastic welcome by chanting in the twilight, Planck’s quantum formula.” There was a great sense of cohesiveness and unity among the scientists and mathematicians during this time. Even the retired professors had a part to play, joining in on discussions and treated like princes by the community. It was not unusual for the well to do families of Göttingen to take in young physicists and provide them lodging; giving these transplants much needed domestic stability . In return these young physicists brought in a bit of the outside world and would often discuss their latest theories and problems with their generous hosts and hostesses. Everyone had a role to play in Göttingen, and each piece was essential to the survival and well being of the whole. Great satisfaction was taken in the work at Göttingen, not only by the international scientists who flocked to the town, but by its residents as well. Though everyone worked hard, there were often times of great merriment.
Celebrations and visitors were not uncommon during this time in Göttingen, as Max Born tells Albert Einstein in a letter dated July 15, 1925: “We have had many visitors again this term…There is going to be another rumpus tomorrow; it is the inauguration of Prandtl’s new hydrodynamics institute, with guided tour, official dinner and gala concert.” The scientists at Göttingen worked hard, but they also knew how to have a good time together. They were not simply men of science; they were also family men and friends. Born tells Einstein, “…in the first three days of our return we have already had two foreign visitors…Otherwise I spend my time reading, going for walks, playing music and occupying myself with the children. I am practising systematically and have, I think, made some progress.” These were certainly men of genius, but their talents and interests by no means were confined to physics.
Letters from Göttingen before the rise of the Nazi party are a wealth of information on the inner workings of this little community. The free flow of ideas and information from country to country, colleague to colleague, and friend-to-friend was quite a beautiful phenomenon. In a letter written on November 27, 1926, to Dr. Edwin Kemble of Harvard Oppenheimer writes, “Professor Born is publishing a paper on the Adiabatic Theorem, & Heisenberg on “Schwankungen [fluctuations].” Perhaps the most important idea is one of Pauli’s, who suggests that the usual Schroedinger ψ-functions are only special cases…I have been working for some time on the quantum theory of aperiodic phenomena.” There are many such letters and telegrams where physics was the main topic of discussion. Advice was solicited and given, theories explained, and updates on various colleagues’ research were freely given, all in the spirit of scientific inquiry and pursuit of understanding of the physical world around them.
Many of the young physicists in Göttingen were highly idealistic dreamers, who by the late nineteen twenties and early nineteen thirties saw political dangers up ahead in the not so distant future. Leo Szilard was one of those dreamers who prophetically predicted the German parliamentary system would not last much longer. In hopes of creating a system to take over once the parliamentary system collapsed, Szilard drafted in 1930 the mission statement for an organization he called “The Society of the Friends of the Bund” or “Der Bund” (The Federation). Szilard wanted to create a “closely knit group of people whose inner bond [was] pervaded by a religious and scientific spirit. The external frame into which such a group should grow would be the “Bund” itself.” “Der Bund”, which would have no particular inner structure or hierarchy, and would require sacrifice (mostly financial) and service in order to serve the community purpose. Szilard imagined an international exchange of students who would come together in Bund clubhouses to discuss issues and most importantly to learn to think for themselves and to formulate their own judgments before taking any sides on an issue. Open discussions and critical thinking for oneself was of paramount importance in Szilard’s Bund. The Bund was to foster an open society of free exchanges and a government guided by the will of the people. “Der Bund”, however, never materialized, and was not there to save Germany when it all came crashing down, fracturing society.
The rise of the Nazi party in the nineteen thirties brought many changes in Germany, and Göttingen was no exception. On April 7, 1933 The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service declared that, “the civil servants of non-Aryan descent must retire.” Those who had not already left, like Einstein, now made the exodus out of Germany. Many of the brightest and most gifted professors of Göttingen, including Franck, Eugene Wigner, Edward Teller, Wolfgang Pauli, and Szilard, were forced to leave as German policies made it clear they were no longer welcome. Friends and colleagues worked to find these men teaching positions safely outside the reach of The Reich, and American Universities offered many of these men teaching positions including Princeton (Einstein, Wigner, and John von Neumann), and Cornell (Hans Bethe), while others went to England (Szilard) or Copenhagen (Teller). When Hilbert, one of the few left in Göttingen after the purge, was asked by the new Minister of Education if the University suffered at the loss of the Jewish professors, he replied, “Suffered? No, it didn’t suffer, Herr Minister. It just doesn’t exist anymore!” Thus, the warm comforting womb that physics had been tenderly nurtured in was no more, and was thrust into a cold new world outside the protective walls of Göttingen.
In 1941 Werner Heisenberg and C.F. von Weizsäcker visited Neils Bohr at his Institute in Copenhagen, in what was to be the moment that expressed the complete change in the international community of physicists. What came out of that meeting has been a matter of contention ever since. Heisenberg, on request of Robert Jungk, sent him a letter for his book Brighter Than A Thousand Suns explaining what Heisenberg thought happened during this fateful event. Heisenberg’s letter maintained that he had tried to let Bohr know that Germany was not close to creating an atomic bomb but that Bohr had misunderstood him. Heisenberg lamented, “Although I tried subsequently to correct this false impression I probably did not succeed in winning Bohr’s complete trust, especially as I only dared to speak guardedly (which was definitely a mistake on my part), being afraid that some phrase or another could later be held against me.” For many years Bohr’s side of the story was unknown. Then in 2002, Bohr’s family released letters Bohr wrote but never sent to Heisenberg in response to Heisenberg’s letter published in Jungk’s book. While Heisenberg claimed that his memory was fuzzy about the meeting, Bohr said he remembered their conversation not only vividly, but also quite differently,
I also remember quite clearly our conversation in my room at the Institute, where in vague terms you spoke in a manner that could only give me the firm impression that, under your leadership, everything was being done in Germany to develop atomic weapons and that you said that there was no need to talk about details since you were completely familiar with them and had spent the past two years working more or less exclusively on such preparations.

It will never be known who remembered that fateful conversation correctly since there is no recording of it. What can be known though, is that there were no longer open and clear dialogues between men who were once friends and colleagues. Instead of understanding and cooperation, as Heisenberg claimed to have wanted, there was suspicion and confusion. This was indeed the chrysalis of the end. Heisenberg’s trip to Copenhagen has for this reason, lived on in infamy.
Los Alamos & The Manhattan Project

While many of the physicists left some, like Heisenberg, stayed. For a while the displaced scientists tried to hold onto the spirit that physics was born into. In Copenhagen there were two boarding houses popular with the physicists at Bohr’s Institute, which were run by two women, Fröken Have and Fröken Thalbitzer. One had picked up so much mathematics that she would join in and give her own opinions, while the other declared they should throw their “silly books [into the sea]…That’s where you learn to know nature! Not from dry, printed papers!” Physics was still an open forum to anyone who cared to listen, and physicists continued to publish their findings, but the memories of how they were treated in Germany would be ever present in their memories. As Hitler’s power rose, and as the physicists’ understanding of nuclear energy grew, so did the fear of the exiled physicists. Ironically enough, Szilard (whose Bund was based on truth and openness) and Teller, both feared the Germans would develop an atomic bomb, and both were proponents of voluntary secrecy. Szilard did not want physicists to keep publishing in fear that it would help the Germans develop an atomic bomb. On March 17, 1939 they convinced Enrico Fermi not to publish his Physical Review Papers, which were concerned with the possibility of nuclear chain reactions. However, Irène and Frédéric Joliot, published their papers on the same topic only weeks latter, sending a telegram to Szilard stating, “Having received your cable it has been decided to publish papers previously sent to Physical Review.” The Joliots were not alone in disregarding Szilard’s pleas for secrecy, Patrick Blackett in England and Bohr in Copenhagen were against secrecy. Bohr, who once told a young C.F. von Weizsäcker, “Physics is an honest trade…” , believed that an international community of complete openness and honesty were the cornerstones of physics. Openness and honesty are not only the cornerstones of physics, but of any healthy, thriving community.
Szilard’s attempts at self-imposed secrecy had failed, so he began looking to the United States govt. for help. At the insistence of Szilard and Fermi, Einstein wrote a letter to President Roosevelt in August 1939 stating that Szilard and Fermi’s work lead him to believe that, “it may become possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium by which vast amounts of power…would be generated. Now it appears almost certain that this could be achieved in the immediate future. This phenomena would also lead to the construction of bombs…” Roosevelt wrote back to Einstein telling him, “I found this data of such import that I have convened a Board consisting of the head of the Bureau of Standards and a chosen representative of the Army and Navy to thoroughly investigate the possibilities of…the element uranium.” The Uranium Committee was created in 1939 and gave Fermi a modest six thousand dollars to start experimenting with neutron absorption in graphite, and when the results came in it was decided by Dr. George Pegram that the results would not be published. Thus, the secrecy began. Over the course of several years Szilard and Fermi had many conversations on the ethics of secrecy, but little focus was put on the ramifications and the ethics of what would be born from their secrecy. In fact, the destruction and death that would surely follow the construction of atomic bombs was hardly touched upon. In June of 1940 the National Defense Research Council was set up under the chairmanship of Dr. Vannevar Bush, which absorbed the Uranium Committee and began the process towards a full-blown atomic weaponry operation. In mid September 1942, Lieutenant General Brehorn Somervell hammered the final nail in the coffin with the simple message to Leslie Groves, “The Secretary of War has selected you for a very important assignment, and the President has approved the selection.” And so, the community of physicists would never be the same.
Los Alamos

Los Alamos, New Mexico, the site for atomic research and bomb development (known as the Manhattan Project) during World War II, was under the control of the army through a contract with the University of California and was under the strictest of secrecy. The man in charge of this great undertaking was General Leslie R. Groves, a man with the will and energy to pull off such a feat. Groves’ objectives for the Manhattan Project included: keeping information from the Germans, Russians, and all other nations, and for that matter anyone who would interfere directly or indirectly (including Congress and different executive branches); and to operate on a “need-to-know basis by the use of compartmentalization.” Never before had a company, nation, or military pulled off such a large and successful job of compartmentalization, which entailed each person knowing only as much as they needed to know to do their job, and to “stick to their knitting” . Only Groves knew everything that went on at Los Alamos; not even Robert Oppenheimer, the director of Los Alamos knew everything that went on. In the beginning, not even the top physicists were allowed to speak to each other about their work. Right from the start this created tension between the physicists, who were use to open dialogues, and Groves. Under the pressure of Oppenheimer, Groves relented on this matter and the physicists were allowed to meet once a week for a scientific colloquium to solve hard problems. This, however, was only for the physicists, and did not apply to any other workers at Los Alamos, who did not know they were working on an atomic bomb. The environment at Los Alamos was a far cry from the complete honesty and openness of the early years.
The physicists may have had the freedom to talk to one another about their work, but it was confined to the lab. Wives, parents, children, and friends were not privy to what they were working on; in fact their whereabouts were unknown to anyone outside of Los Alamos. The scientists at Los Alamos would often call the security methods “Gestapo” in nature. Foreign born scientists and their families were not allowed to speak any language other than English in public, letters were censored, and phone calls were listened in on . In fact, censorship was so strict that McAllister Hull was not allowed to write S.W.A.K. (sealed with a kiss), a common acronym of the day, on the envelope addressed to his fiancé. Though few physicists knew what exactly they were signing up for they gave up their freedoms willingly, believing that Germany was close to developing an atomic bomb, and that it was of utmost importance to develop a bomb before the Germans. The physicists no longer had any contact with their colleagues in Germany, who similarly were under contract with their government, and had no way of knowing how the Germans’ research was developing.
The security and surveillance surrounding the Manhattan Project in fact went far beyond simply listening to phone calls and censoring letters. The scientists’ past were closely scrutinized and could be let go if a connection with communism was suspected. The physicist Robert Serber aptly put it, “If they had it their way, there wouldn’t have been anybody left.” Oppenheimer had to personally vouch for top scientists to protect them from being let go. The United States government also watched physicists who were not formally involved in the Manhattan Project. Niels Bohr, under the name Nicholas Baker, visited Los Alamos to help with data interpretation in January of 1944, and while there he spoke of the need of radical changes in international relations and the need to share control over nuclear energy. Roosevelt and Churchill dismissed Bohr’s suggestions and proceeded to have him and his son closely watched, which proved to be trickier than anticipated, as noted in a memorandum by Lieut. Colonel John Lansdale Jr. to Dr. Tolman on February 5, 1944,
Both the father and son appear to be extremely absent-minded individuals, engrossed in themselves, and go about paying little attention to any external influences. As they did a great deal of walking, this Agent had occasion to spend considerable time behind them and observe that it was rare when either of them paid much attention to stop lights or signs, but proceeded on their way much the same as if they were walking in the woods. On one occasion, subjects proceeded across a busy intersection against the red light in a diagonal fashion, taking the longest route possible and one of greatest danger.

Lansdale then asked Tolman next time the Bohrs were in town for him to give a “tactful suggestion…that they should be more careful in traffic.” The absent-minded wandering that was so characteristic in Göttingen was not particularly conducive to being watched and followed by the government.
To say that there was no community at Los Alamos would be a fallacy, since there was in fact a sense of community, mostly in part because of Oppenheimer. At Oppenheimer’s funeral in 1967 Bethe said, “Los Alamos might of succeeded without him, but certainly only with much greater strain, less enthusiasm, and less speed. As it was, it was an unforgettable experience for all the members of the laboratory. There were other wartime laboratories of high achievement…But I have never observed in any one of these other groups quite the spirit of belonging together…” Besides fighting for open discussions among scientists, Oppenheimer made sure that the families of the scientists felt at home as much as possible, and made sure the wives felt like they had an important part to play. Oppenheimer’s magnetic personality was a key factor in the success of the Manhattan Project. He was an exciting figure to be around, everyone wanted to be a part of his inner circle; he was charming and enormously impressive. When Dorothy McKibbins, Oppenheimer’s secretary, accepted her job at Los Alamos she did not know what Oppenheimer was doing nor did she care “if he was digging trenches to put in new road,” she had to be associated with him. This feeling was not exclusive to McKibbins; the scientists were drawn to Oppenheimer’s personality as well. Oppenheimer worked tirelessly to make sure Los Alamos was a community, however, this did not change the fact that it was miles away from the international community of the Göttingen days. The Los Alamos community was not open to outsiders and information was shared with very few within the community.
“The Reaction Has Begun…”

Few working on the Manhattan Project had stopped to consider what the full consequences of their research and efforts would mean for not only their community of physicists, but humanity as a whole as well. This systemic problem went back far before the United States government became involved. C.F. von Weizsäcker, reminiscing about a meeting with Bohr in 1932, noted that,
Here was a physicist, acknowledged to be great, who, unlike all other physicists I had come to know, did not dodge the painful consequences of his understanding. Others were very proud when they succeeded in proving something; but either they did not notice or did not know the meaning of what they had proved, or they invented an epistemology whose psychological purpose was not to notice it, or they split their life in two halves and in the other half they made music or something of that sort.

The knowledge that a nuclear chain reaction was possible was known since the early twentieth century. Physicists, however, dismissed considerations of the long-term ramifications, justifying their lack of action by stating it was too premature or that it simply wasn’t their job as scientists to consider such things. This thinking is terribly dangerous because once the wheels have been set in motion it is extremely hard to change course. Eventually the consequences of our actions will have to be dealt with and the longer that is delayed the worse off they usually become.
Yet at Los Alamos moral considerations were still put off. Joseph Rotblat was one physicist who decided to leave Los Alamos in 1944 when it appeared that the Germans did not have the capabilities to build an atomic bomb. To Rotblat the creation of an atomic bomb was no longer necessary, and therefore doing so would be reckless. In talking to other scientists before he left, Rotblat found that there were several different camps of thought on the matter. Some stayed because of scientific curiosity, others believed many American lives could be saved in Japan, still others simply stayed because they did not want to jeopardize their careers, but the most disturbing were the ones (whom Rotblat believed to be the majority) who did not care about the moral consequences. Whatever their personal reasons for continuing atomic development, it is quite apparent that little deep thought was given to the matter by the majority of scientists working on the Manhattan Project. Some of these scientists came from Europe where their neighbors and colleagues did not stand up for them or ask about the moral consequences of their persecution, and here they were, doing the same exact thing to their fellow man.
On July 16, 1945 the first atomic bomb was tested 35 miles (56 km) southeast of Socorro, New Mexico on the White Sands Proving Ground. This test was named Trinity. The reaction to the Trinity test was almost immediate. A celebration was organized after the successful atomic bomb test and it turned out to be a huge failure. Instead of joy, there was a great sense of ambivalence. Oppenheimer recalled that one usually cool-headed young group leader was vomiting in the bushes, and thought to himself, “The reaction has begun.” The proverbial bed had been made, and there was nothing in the world that could change that. These men of great minds, through their own fears and refusals to incorporate the rest of humanity into their scope of decision-making, not only let down their brothers and sisters, but themselves as well. This let down was not because they discovered how to create nuclear reactions, it was because they willingly gave up control and direction of their research. In October of 1944 Born wrote Einstein, “You are probably right in saying that it is more difficult for scientists than ordinary people to develop a conscience and a sense of right and wrong.” Right and wrong were not discussed by these men by and large before they proceeded to give up control of their work. It was not until the Trinity test that many scientists were forced out of the comfort of their ivory tower and began asking about right and wrong. The atomic bomb was no longer theoretical, it was disturbingly real, and it was their creation.
Shortly after the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima Los Alamos scientists, concerned about the misuse of atomic energy, created the Association of Los Alamos Scientists (ALAS). They drafted a statement expressing their concern and hope for an international system of control over atomic energy to avoid having an arms race. However, a government ban on public discussions of atomic energy kept the statement from being published. Oppenheimer, who was not part of the association, wrote to George Harrison, the aide to the Secretary of War, in September of 1945 expressing his concern saying, “I should wish to subscribe to the opinion of the scientists here that freer and more enlightened public discussions of the problems raised by atomic power and atomic weapons would itself be in the public interest, and should therefore like to encourage the Committee to approve the publication of the enclosed statement.” A revised version of the ALAS statement was finally published in October 1945 in The New York Times. However, their statement did little, if anything, to change the direction the United States government had decided to move in, and in fact, mattered very little, since their work was not their property. It was the property of the government. Pandora’s box had been opened, and no amount of hindsight, petitions, or discussions could put the lid back on it.
Szilard, arguably the man who turned atomic research over to the United States government, was also the one who worked tirelessly to bring transparency and international control to atomic energy. Szilard contacted many of his colleagues in hopes of presenting a united front in the fight for his goals, however some, like Edward Teller, were not inclined to support his efforts. Teller wrote Szilard in July of 1945 saying,
Since our discussion I have spent some time thinking about your objections to an immediate military use of the weapon we may produce. I decided to do nothing. I should like to tell you my reasons. First of all let me say that I have no hope for clearing my conscience. The things we are working on are so terrible that no amount of protesting or fiddling with politics will save our souls. This much is true: I have not worked on the project for a very selfish reason and I have gotten much more trouble than pleasure out of it. I worked because the problems interested me and I should have felt it a great restraint not to go ahead. I can not claim that I simply worked to do my duty. A sense of duty could keep me out of such work.

Teller was quite correct, there was nothing that could erase their terrible deeds, which he freely admitted he did not partake in for any reason other than his own personal interest. Teller also indicated that the development of atomic weapons was contrary to his duty. Teller did not explain to whom his duty was to, but regardless if it was to humanity, science, or his country, somehow he had failed his community. Though Teller had failed his duty, this did not seem to bother him much at all.
Apathy like Teller’s did not stop Szilard however from trying to “clear his conscience.” Szilard, along with the scientists James Franck, Donald Hughes, J.C. Stearns, Eugene Rabinowitch, Glenn Seaborg, and J. J. Nickson, drafted a report, known as the “Franck Report”, to the Secretary of War in June of 1945. They expressed their concerns about keeping the knowledge of nucleonics a secret, since other countries already had a basic understanding of it, and that it “would be foolish to hope that this can protect us for more than a few years.” This warning came true, as they had predicted, only a few years later. The report went on to say that an educated public would most likely abhor the idea of using an atomic bomb, much like they did not approve of using mustard gas to hasten the end of the war in Japan . If such an abhorrence were indeed real than it would have been wise to demonstrate the bomb to the world and renounce its military use and set up an international committee to regulate atomic energy. This was at best wishful thinking; the government had no desire or inclination to inform the American public, demonstrate the weapon to other countries, or to set up international controls. It was almost absurd for Szilard and these men to think the government would spend one billion dollars on a weapon and never use it. Perhaps they knew that it was a futile fight, but felt that they needed to try to ease their consciences. Szilard fought for over twenty years through congress, organizations, and different public figures to educate the public and for world peace. Szilard saw little fruit of his labor, and instead saw the realizations of his worst fears; The Cold War.
“The Invisible Slope of Love Liberates Man”

The idea of community was one that was inescapable during World War II. The very foundation of community was threatened all across Europe, with reverberations across the whole world. The physicists’ community of the Manhattan Project and Göttingen were indeed a type of microcosm of Europe, as all across the continent communities were being torn apart. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, a Frenchman who flew reconnaissance missions, was just one man who was affected by the war, but he expressed the confusion and pain of the collapse of society that many people were experiencing during World War II. France, like so many other communities, quickly fell apart after the German invasion amidst confusion and despair. Exupéry likened this to all the clocks having stopped working in France,
The war is that thing in which clocks are no longer wound up. In which beets are no longer gathered in. In which farm carts are no longer greased. And that water, collected and piped to quench men’s thirst and to whiten the Sunday laces of the village women-the water stands now in a pool flooding the square before the village church.

The clocks had not just stopped in France but everywhere that the cruel realities of war had touched. Life that had once seemed so simple and idyllic looking back through the lenses of World War II now was replaced by total chaos. Quite understandably, no one, including the physicists, could go on living their lives the way it had once been. The very foundations of civilization had been compromised.
The physicists had a thirst for knowledge; they wanted to know how the world around them worked. In this quest they did not necessarily see themselves as humans living on this planet with others. Instead they dissected the pursuit of nuclear fission from the whole. This was indeed a flaw, as Exupéry says, “When a woman to me seems beautiful, I have no words to say so. I see her smile, and that is all. Intellectuals take her face apart and explain it bit by bit. They do not see that smile. To know is not to prove, nor to explain. It is to accede to vision. But if we are to have vision, we must learn to participate in the object of vision.” The physicists could not see past the one little bit of information, and completely forgot to be a part of what they wanted to understand: the earth. In 1948 Born wrote, “We’ve really put our foot in it this time, poor fools that we are, and I am truly sad for our beautiful physics! There we have been trying to puzzle things out, only to help the human race to expedite its departure from this beautiful earth!”
The physicists were certainly in a difficult position when it became apparent in the nineteen thirties that nuclear fission was inevitable. If they had decided to keep the lines of communication open the information would have been available to anyone who had the resources to create an atomic bomb, including Hitler. However, soon after The Soviet Union obtained nuclear weapons, it became clear that neither the United States nor The Soviet Union would be able to use these weapons against each other due to mutually assured destruction. Mutually assured destruction is a doctrine of military strategy in which full-scale use of nuclear weapons by both sides in a conflict would result in both parties being destroyed. It is for this reason that a nuclear weapon has not been used since World War II. If the physicists kept their research open to all most likely both Germany and the United States would have built atomic bombs, and because of mutually assured destruction could not of used them against each other. The physicists that helped create the atomic bomb should have had faith in each other to responsibly handle the information they were discovering and risen to the enormous task they were creating. Without one country monopolizing the information a system of international control may have been possible under the guidance of the physicists.
The physicists working on atomic research allowed themselves to be dictated by fear, secrecy, and national governments, instead of guiding themselves and their work through truth, openness, and love. The consequences of the decisions they made in the years before and during Word War II are still being felt today across the world, as nuclear proliferation abounds. As the physicists’ community at Göttingen and internationally crumbled because of Nazi Germany they were forced into the real world where their work would have an impact on civilization as a whole. Some like Szilard whose Bund was based on truth and openness in theory, crumbled when it came time to implement these beliefs in “real time.” Szilard eagerly relinquished the rights to their intellectual property because he was afraid and did not trust his community of physicists to handle the research in the best interest of humanity. Ironically, the United States government did not handle their research in the way Szilard hoped they would have done. It was freely admitted by these men that they created the bomb for two reasons, first because they were afraid, and secondly, because they wanted to know how the world worked. Neither of these reasons are inherently bad or good. What is disturbing about them is the overall lack of consideration of what would come about because of these decisions. Most of these men did not take into account the billions of lives that would be affected by their actions until it was too late.

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