Book Review : The Birth of an Atomic Standoff

The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes (Touchstone/ Simon & Schuster: $22.95 cloth, $12.95, paper; illustrated, 886 pages)

The invention of the atomic bomb may turn out to be our civilization’s most important event. Like all good epics, “The Making of the Atomic Bomb,” the history of this invention, is equal to its subject--in sweep, in tone, in detail and in its illumination of events and the forces and personalities that propelled them. It is a terrific book.

Beginning with Ernest Rutherford’s unraveling of the structure of the atom at the start of this century, Richard Rhodes skillfully weaves together the complex scientific, political and social history that in less than 50 years led to the devastation of two Japanese cities by atomic bombs, ending World War II and starting the nuclear age.

It is a story told with understatement, teeming with themes and subthemes, driven inexorably from the search for knowledge in physics laboratories to the annihilation of more than 100,000 people one warm August morning in 1945.

Inexorable. Reading this book, it is hard to see how things could have happened otherwise. Once the structure of the nucleus was uncovered and physicists found that enormous amounts of energy were bound up in it, it did not take long to realize that a weapon could be based on releasing that power. And once the idea existed, each nation feared that its enemies would get there first.

Still Haunts the World

Thus was born the nuclear logic that continues to haunt the world. It is based on the idea that if someone else has atomic bombs, you don’t want to be without them.

But it is not people who created this terrible state of affairs. The laws of physics did. “Science is sometimes blamed for the nuclear dilemma,” Rhodes writes on Page 784 of this 886-page tome. “Such blame confuses the messenger with the message. Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann did not invent nuclear fission (in 1939); they discovered it. It was there all along.”

Rhodes shows how in this century science became the handmaiden of war. Chaim Weizmann, a biochemist and Zionist who later became the first president of Israel, in 1914 developed a process for making acetone, which was needed in the manufacture of explosives. In exchange for his contribution to their war effort, the British government in 1917 issued the Balfour Declaration, which foresaw a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

“Weizmann’s experience was an early and instructive example of the power of science in time of war,” Rhodes writes. “Government took note. So did science.”

Leaving the politics and strategies aside, “The Making of the Atomic Bomb” is a history of atomic physics in the first half of the 20th Century, a spectacular tale in its own right. There were many physicists involved, and Rhodes brings them to life in well-drawn biographical sketches as each character comes on the stage. Of all of them, brilliant and complex men, J. Robert Oppenheimer remains at once the most fascinating and the most enigmatic. But even the bit players are fully limned.

Some of the scientists foresaw atomic weapons early on and tried to sound a warning. Leo Szilard was the first and foremost among them. He was so disturbed by his failure to head off the bomb that after the war he gave up physics and became a biologist.

Other guilt-ridden atomic scientists have turned their attention to arms control, with little success. The argument against them has always been the same: if these weapons can be made, the United States had better be sure that we make them, too. From this inescapable logic the arms race has progressed.

An Unexplored Issue

Yet, the one issue that Rhodes fails to explore is why the failure of the German atomic bomb program did not halt this country’s. The American race for the atomic bomb was driven by the knowledge that the Germans had a head start on fission, and if Adolf Hitler got the bomb first, the world would be enslaved.

But after the Allies defeated Germany and discovered that the Germans were nowhere near perfecting a bomb, work on the Manhattan Project continued nonetheless. By then, the numbing effect of war had taken hold. German and Japanese cities with no military significance were being firebombed with civilian casualties in the hundreds of thousands. The atomic bomb had developed a life and a rationale of its own.

“The Making of the Atomic Bomb” is not the first book on the subject (Lansing Lamont’s “Day of Trinity” told the story in 1965), but it is certainly the most comprehensive. While it contains some new information, that is not its strongest suit. Most of the book’s 57 pages of notes and 38 pages of bibliography point to published material.

Breathtaking Power

But it draws it all together with breathtaking power. To use an old cliche, I couldn’t put this book down--until I got to the 20 pages of quotes from survivors of Hiroshima, many of them children. Then I couldn’t help putting it down. A 6-year-old boy recalled:

“There were a whole lot of dead people. There were some who were burned black and died, and there were others with huge burns who died with their skins bursting, and some others who died all stuck full of glass. There were all kinds. Sometimes there were ones who came to us asking for a drink of water. They were bleeding from their faces and from their mouths and they had glass sticking in their bodies. . . . The details and the scenes were just like Hell.”