Tuesday, July 3, 1945. Don't use the Bomb.
The first draft of a letter by Manhattan Project scientists urging that the Atomic Bomb not be used was circulated. Hungarian physicist and biologist Leo Szilard was the scrivener.
This version was not sent, as a new one was worked on in order to secure additional signatures.
This is the second such example of such a letter, the other one from Robert Oppenheimer, that I've posted in recent days. Clearly something was really going on inside the Manhattan Project itself at this time, and what that was, was a debate on whether to use the bomb or not.
Frankly, the views expressed above comport with my own. Using the bomb was 1) a huge mistake, and 2) deeply immoral in how it was targeted.
It's interesting, however, that this debate broke out at this point.
That the atom could be split and that it could be done in such away that the massive release of energy would result in a huge blast had been known, albeit theoretically, for some time. The knowledge did not come about during the war itself, but before it.
The war, however, created an enormous imperative to work the physical problems of constructing a bomb out, in large part out of the fear the Axis would get there first.
The Western Allies, the Germans, and the Japanese all had atomic weaponry programs, although its typically forgotten that the Japanese were working on this as well. The German program was enormously feared.
The German program was also enormously hampered by Nazi racism, as it had the impact of causing Jewish scientists, such as the Hungarian Leo Szilard to flee for their lives. They weren't alone in this, however, as generally the highly educated class of men that were in the field of physics weren't really keen on fascism overall. Germany had some top flight scientists, of course, but many of the best minds in science in Europe had left or put themselves out of serious research work if they remained. Some of those who remained in Europe and were subject to the Germans somewhat doddled in their efforts in order to retard the advancement of the efforts.
Japan had a program, as noted, and it had some excellent physicists. Their problem here, however, was much like that of the Japanese war effort in chief. Japan was so isolated that it had nobody else to draw from.
In contrast, the US effort was nearly global in extent, as the US drew in all the great minds, in one way or another, who were not working for the Germans or Japanese, which was most of the great minds in the field.
At any rate, moral qualms about using the bomb didn't really start to emerge until very late in the war, and not really until after Germany had surrendered. Nearly everyone working on the Manhattan Project imagined it as producing a bomb to be used against Germany. Japan wasn't really considered.
And there's good reasons for that. For one thing, it was feared that Germany, not Japan, would produce a nuclear weapon and there was no doubt that Germany would use it if they did. Given that, producing a bomb, and using it first, had a certain element of logic to it. Destroy them, the logic was, before they can do that to us.
Working into that, it should be noted, was the decay in the resistance to the destructiveness of war that had started to set in during World War One. The US had gone to war, in part, over a moral reaction to the Germans sinking civilian ships. By World War Two there was no moral aversion to that at all and unrestricted submarine warfare was just considered part of war.
The Germans had also introduced terror bombing of cities during the Great War, engaging in it with Zeppelins. Long range artillery had shelled Paris in the same fashion. Between the wars it was largely assumed that cities would be targeted simply because they were cities, which turned out to be correct. The Germans had already engaged in this during the Spanish Civil War and would turn to during the Blitz, which the British would very rapidly reply with. By 1945 the US was firebombing Japanese cities with the logic it drove workers out of their homes, and crippled Japanese industry, which was correct, but deeply immoral.
By July 1945 there were really no more industrial targets left to bomb in Japan, although the bombing was ongoing. The only point of dropping an atomic bomb was to destroy cities, and the people within them.
That was obvious to the atomic scientists, but that had been obvious about using the bomb on Germany as well. Targeting would have largely been the same, and for the same purpose. Allied strategic bombing of Germany has actually halted before the German surrender, as there was no longer any point to it, although the concept the Allies had in mind would really have been to use the bomb earlier than the Spring of 1945. Indeed, had the bomb been available in very early 1945, there's real reason to doubt that the Allies would have used it on Germany, as Allied troops were on the ground and they were advancing.
Still, with all that in mind, there was a certain sense all along that Germany uniquely deserved to be subject to atomic bombs. Japan in this context was almost an after thought.
Everyone working on the bomb in the US was European culturally. To those of European culture the Germans were uniquely horrific, and to this day Nazi Germany is regarded as uniquely horrific. Many of those working on the Manhattan Project, moreover, were direct victims of the Nazis, with quite a few being both European and Jewish refugees. Contrary to what is sometimes claimed, by late 1944 people were well aware of what was going on in Nazi Germany and that the Germans were systematically murdering Jews.
The Japanese also were incredibly inhumane and horrific in their treatment of the populations they'd overrun, as well as of Allied prisoners of war. But the nature and extent of their barbarity really wasn't very well known. Indeed, much of it would not be until after the Second World War, at which time the information was suppressed for post war political reasons. At any rate, in July 1945, the scientists working on the Manhattan Project did not know of Japanese systematic horrors in China. Very few people did.
And the Japanese were scene, basically, as victims of their own culture, which was somewhat true. Japan had not been colonized by Europeans at all, making them the only nation in Asia to have that status. Therefore, European culture, and standards, had really not penetrated very much. Japan had adopted Western technology, but Western concepts of morality in war had not come in with it very much. To the extent that it did, it seemed to evaporate with the introduction of increasing authoritarianism in Japan after World War One.
But that wasn't really known to the scientific community.
It was, however, to the military community, which had been fighting the Japanese on the ground.
We'll discuss that in the context of the bomb in a later thread.
The point here is that by this time, many in the non military community, and some within it, who were aware that the Allies were about to produce an atomic bomb were now against using it.
And, indeed, it should never have been used.
Moscow radio announced that the body of Joseph Goebbels had been discovered in the courtyard of the Chancellery in Berlin.
Also in Berlin, the first U.S. troops arrived for occupation duty.
James F. Byrnes became United States Secretary of State.
The first civilian passenger car made in the United States in three years rolled off the assembly line of the Ford Motor Company in Detroit. The car was a 1946 Super DeLuxe Tudor sedan and was destined for Harry Truman.
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