Atom bomb’s personal stories

Before the Fallout

From Marie Curie to Hiroshima

Diana Preston

Walker: 400 pp., $27

*

Perhaps the most obvious question historians ask is, “What happened?” Yet as British historian Diana Preston notes in her sixth book, “Before the Fallout,” another, more alluring question is “What if?” What if events and fates had unfolded differently? What stories might have been told then?

“Before the Fallout” tells the story of the atom bomb, exploring 50 years of scientific research starting with Marie Curie’s pioneering work on radium. Preston recounts how the discoveries of various individuals, prominent and obscure, in the first half of the 20th century culminated in that fateful display of atomic power on Aug. 6, 1945, as the bomb exploded over Hiroshima.

Because Preston is interested in how people, rather than institutions or systems, shape history, she is deeply concerned with issues of moral responsibility and the large-scale implications of one person’s actions -- a concern that makes this book far more compelling than it might have been. “History -- even the history of science -- is inherently about people,” she writes, “how they thought, what they did with their thoughts, and how they interacted with the individuals immediately around them and then with society and the greater world order.”

In the view of Robert Oppenheimer, whose name came to symbolize the conflict between national interest and personal conscience, a scientist was bound to pursue research to whatever end; he believed that “it is good to turn over to mankind at large the greatest possible power to control the world.” (Later, however, he would acknowledge a sense of guilt over his role in history.) The day after Hiroshima, the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romana, disputed the notion of pursuing intellectual curiosity regardless of consequences. It condemned the attack, pointedly juxtaposing the dropping of the bomb with Leonardo da Vinci’s decision to withhold the details of his submarine because he feared its misuse.

Preston notes that we continue to experience “the scientific, political, and moral fallout” of Hiroshima. The chilling words of a young mother in New York City, writing three days after Hiroshima and shortly before giving birth to her second son, could just as easily have come after Sept. 11: “Torturing regrets that I have brought children into the world to face such a dreadful thing as this, have shivered through me. It seems that it will be for them all their lives like living on a keg of dynamite which may go off at any moment.”

Hiroshima was not only the result of 50 years of scientific research, Preston writes, but 50 years of political and military turmoil. “Generations of scientists had contributed to that moment in physics,” she writes, yet the joy of scientific discovery became inextricably entwined with the turbulence of the world. In 1939 came the news that Germans had split the atom; President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Manhattan Project two years later. This meant that for Allied scientists, “what had for more than forty years been an open quest for knowledge became, almost overnight, a race between belligerent nations, working in secret.” For many scientists, the question of ethics was irrelevant: “Knowledge was neutral; the use to which politicians put it was the dilemma.”[5] Whichever view one took, many understood that having “won the race on behalf of the democracies was preferable to any other outcome.”

The story of the atom bomb -- inherently gripping, with its complex history and the horrific purpose to which it was put -- has often been told, but Preston proves that it is still worth telling, full of details left to reveal and critique. Her fascinating cast of characters is a familiar one: Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Ernest Rutherford, Niels Bohr, Robert Oppenheimer, Winston Churchill and Roosevelt, among others. Yet she imbues the epic drama with new insights and captures the naivete with which so many of the players worked.

Preston is a passionate historian who makes politics and physics equally accessible, illuminating the personalities, passions and fears of those involved. Her emphasis on personal responsibility is especially engaging: “In thinking about history,” she concludes, “but, above all, about the future, we should not depersonalize situations but remember our individual responsibility for them and the consequences for others.”

“Before the Fallout” is a narrative of relationships among countries, leaders, scientists, friends and enemies. Preston’s book may not be groundbreaking, but it’s a compassionate and worthy addition to the genre.

*

Carmela Ciuraru is the editor of six anthologies of poetry, including the most recent, “Motherhood: Poems About Mothers.”