[In Fact] Oppenheimer's True Feelings "If I Could Go Back to 1942, I Would Use the Atomic Bomb..." (Part 2)

Hitler Interested but Ignorant About Atomic Bomb
Subtle Rivalry Between Oppenheimer and Einstein
Not Free from Jewish Prejudice at Berkeley and Caltech
Strong Patriotism Shown in 1964 Geneva Lecture

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*Following

*Albert Speer was a close aide to Adolf Hitler and served as the Minister of Armaments and War Production in Nazi Germany. He said the following about Germany's atomic bomb development during World War II: "Adolf Hitler always asked me about the possibility of the atomic bomb. It was a matter difficult for his intellectual capacity to understand. He could not grasp the revolutionary nature of nuclear physics. Hitler and I attended about 2,200 meetings. Among them, the issue of nuclear fission came up only once, and that was mentioned very briefly. Hitler asked about the research prospects but held the view that there was little to gain from this matter. Professor Werner Heisenberg did not provide a clear answer to my question about whether a successful nuclear fission could definitely be controlled or if the chain reaction would continue as is. Hitler was not very pleased with the possibility that the land under his rule could turn into a burning star. Sometimes scientists joked about possibly setting the Earth on fire. However, he said it would undoubtedly take a long time, and he would not live to see it."

*H?kon Chevalier, a French literature professor and translator at Berkeley, remembered Robert Oppenheimer as follows: "He was tall but timid and passionate. His walking was strange. He walked clumsily, shaking his limbs a lot. His head was always slightly tilted to one side. One shoulder was higher than the other. The most peculiar feature was his hair. It was black and curly but thin. His nose was handsome and pointed. His eyes were surprisingly blue. They had a mysterious depth and intensity. Sometimes they appeared frank and friendly. Oppenheimer looked like a young Einstein. He also resembled a mature choirboy."

*Oppenheimer first met Jean Tatlock in the fall of 1936. They almost married at least twice. Tatlock was bright and passionate but compassionate and often depressed. Their relationship was a stormy sea. Oppenheimer recalled: "She confessed to me that she was a Communist. But she joined, left, and rejoined. Communism seemed not to provide what she was looking for. We both began meeting leftist friends, and I liked the new social connections." He liked the anti-Franco side of the Spanish Civil War and seasonal workers (Mexicans) in California. He learned communism from Friedrich Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach, and Karl Marx. However, he thought their tone did not suit his taste. "I never accepted the claims or theories of communists. They seemed illogical."

*Oppenheimer first met his brown-eyed wife Kitty in the summer of 1939 in Pasadena, California. Tatlock suffered heartbreak and reacted by marrying a young British doctor, Dr. Stuart Harrison.

*Oppenheimer said about Kitty: "Before meeting me, she was married to Joe Dallet, a man who died fighting in Spain. He was a Communist official. During their short marriage of one to two years, Kitty was also active as a Communist. When I first met her, she held her late husband in high regard. She had stopped all political activities. She felt disappointment and contempt that communism was far from the ideal ideology she once thought."

*Oppenheimer first met General Leslie Groves in October 1942 in Berkeley. They met at a luncheon hosted by the Berkeley president and exchanged conversations. General Groves thought Oppenheimer's intensive centralized research system was a good idea. He believed bomb design work should start immediately so that at least the United States would lead in one field. In selecting the right person to lead the project, leadership was the most important factor. He believed that only then could they continue sailing through even the roughest waves.

*General Groves assigned Major John Dudley the task of scouting a research site. He instructed that it should accommodate about 265 people, be at least 200 miles from the border, and be a basin surrounded by hills with some existing facilities west of the Mississippi. Major Dudley traveled around the American Southwest by plane, train, military jeep, and horseback. The first ideal site found was Oak, Utah. However, occupying this place would require relocating about thirty households and halting farming on a large area. The second recommended site was Jemez Springs, New Mexico. It was a deep valley on the western slope of the Jemez Mountains, 40 miles northwest of Santa Fe. Oppenheimer said it was satisfactory and beautiful in every way even before visiting. However, General Groves said, "This place won't do..." and trailed off. Oppenheimer advised, "If you go up this valley, there is a wide area and a school that could be used." It was the area with the Los Alamos school. After inspecting the surroundings, General Groves exclaimed, "This is it!"

*Scientists bet on the explosive power before the Trinity test. They wrote down various predicted yields, each putting in one dollar and choosing one. Teller predicted 45 kt, Bethe 8 kt, Kishakovsky 1400 t, and Oppenheimer 300 t. Ramsey cynically chose 0 t. Radiochemical analysis revealed the yield to be 18.6 kt. Isidor Rabi won.

*One bomb required ninety-six blocks of explosives.

*Rabbi, who watched the Trinity test from the base camp, recalled the moment as follows: "We were very tense and lying down early at dawn. A few streaks of golden light began to appear in the east. I could faintly see the person next to me. Those ten seconds felt the longest I have ever experienced. Suddenly, a huge flash appeared. It was the brightest light I had ever seen, or anyone had ever seen. It exploded, suddenly surged, and passed through me. It was a spectacle felt throughout the body. It felt as if it would last forever. Finally, the explosion ended, and we looked at the place where the bomb had been. There was a huge crater. It gradually grew and began to roll, then rose into the air. The momentary yellow flash changed to orange and green. It was threatening. It seemed to be coming toward me."

*Robert Serber risked losing his eyesight during the Trinity test to witness the initial stage of the crater. "At the moment of the explosion, I was looking directly at it with my eyes. At first, I saw yellow light. In an instant, it turned into a huge white flash. It was so intense that I completely lost my sight. (...) One second later, I regained my vision. And I was completely breathless at the size and grandeur of the tremendous explosion."

*Emilio Segr? imagined the end of the world during the Trinity test. "The most impressive thing was the overwhelming bright light. (...) I was startled by the new sight. Although I wore very dark glasses, I saw the sky flashing with an unbelievably bright light. (...) For a moment, I thought the explosion had set the atmosphere on fire. I knew it was impossible, but I thought the Earth was doomed."

*Enrico Fermi conducted an experiment to roughly estimate the bomb's yield during the Trinity test. "About 40 seconds after the explosion, the storm blew to where I was. I dropped small pieces of paper from a height of 1.8 meters to measure the distance they flew before and after the storm arrived. Since there was no wind at the time, I could accurately measure the distance the papers flew due to the storm. The papers fell about 2.5 meters away. I estimated the bomb's yield to be equivalent to 10,000 tons of TNT."

*Kenneth Bainbridge congratulated various people after the Trinity test's successful explosion. Later, he recalled: "I told Robert (Oppenheimer), 'Now we are all sons of bitches.' He told my daughter long afterward that it was the best greeting he received after the test."

*Rabi felt tired after the Trinity test but soon was overwhelmed with worry. "We were naturally very pleased with the successful test results. I still cannot forget the huge fireball. It rolled, and as time passed, it spread like a cloud. (...) Then it was blown away by the wind and disappeared. We exchanged congratulations for the first few minutes. But everyone soon felt a chill. It was not the dawn cold. It was a feeling born from thinking about my wooden house in Cambridge, my laboratory in New York, and the millions of people living around there. We were overwhelmed by the forces of nature we thought we understood."

*Oppenheimer recalled the Trinity test by quoting Hindu scriptures. "We waited until the storm passed and walked out of the shelter. It was a very solemn atmosphere. We knew the world would never be the same. Some laughed. Some cried. Most people were silent. A verse from the Hindu scriptures came to mind. Vishnu persuades the prince to fulfill his duty. He appears to the prince with many arms and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I believe others thought similarly in some way."

*Oppenheimer explained the Trinity test to an audience in a postwar lecture as follows: "When the first atomic bomb exploded at dawn in New Mexico, we thought of Alfred Nobel and his hope, the vain hope that dynamite would end wars. We also thought of the legend of Prometheus. We thought of the deep guilt about humanity's new power, reflecting that humans acknowledged evil and had known evil for a long time. We knew it was a new world. But we also knew better that the new thing (evil) itself had been in human life for a very long time, and all our means were rooted in it."

*After the Trinity test, the tower, a $20,000 crane, a shack, and steel pillars all vaporized and flew away. Only the concrete rebar in the bridge section remained, bent here and there. The asphalt road melted and fused as the sand melted, shining like green jade.

*Oppenheimer clearly felt a social responsibility. In a letter to President Truman, he wrote, "Physicists have committed a sin in the process of creating a new world." It meant that physicists at Los Alamos, unfamiliar with how to concretely use scientific knowledge, had interfered in a bad way at a decisive moment in human history.

*Oppenheimer faced great difficulties in the spring of 1949. His brother and some disciples were investigated on suspicion of engaging in anti-American activities due to their involvement with socialism or communism while working at a radiation research institute during World War II. Oppenheimer sent a letter to Grenville Clark seeking help. "This country is making the mistake of infringing on freedom of thought under the pretext of securing security in these difficult times. It is very worrisome."

*Oppenheimer first met Einstein at Caltech in January 1932. Three years later, he was invited as a visiting professor to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and reunited with him. He wrote his impressions at the time: "Princeton is like a mental hospital. It is desolate and utterly unworthy of its famous name. Einstein is a complete fool. (...) What am I supposed to do there? After a long conversation and waving hands, I was able to express my refusal and leave." The biggest reason for his aversion was the great difference in research style, views on quantum physics, and perspectives on the challenges of modern physics. Einstein acknowledged the tremendous success of quantum physics but did not think it was necessarily needed to help understand the physics world.

*Oppenheimer became close to Einstein in 1939 over concerns in the physics community. His main interest remained quantum physics and quantum field theory, but through relationships with Caltech astronomers, he began to look deeply into Einstein's research. Oppenheimer was very interested in the phenomenon of heavy stars exhausting nuclear energy and collapsing under gravity. In research with disciples George Volkoff and Hartland Snyder, they predicted 'black holes' using relativity theory. Einstein was hostile to black hole explanations based on relativity theory, convinced that singularities could not be interpreted using relativity. He also did not seriously consider the physical possibility of black holes. Oppenheimer showed no interest in old age either. However, they were the main pioneers who made the greatest impact on black hole research.

*As Einstein approached retirement from the Institute for Advanced Study, attention focused on who would fill the gap. Wolfgang Pauli and Oppenheimer were considered. Einstein and Hermann Weyl sent letters to professors recommending Pauli. "Pauli discovered fundamental aspects of physics such as the exclusion principle and electron spin analysis. Oppenheimer has not made such contributions."

*Einstein highly appreciated Oppenheimer's efforts in establishing the Acheson-Lilienthal report and preventing the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union. However, he could not understand why Oppenheimer tried so hard to get into government power circles.

*In the fall of 1947, when Oppenheimer became director and physics professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, he and Einstein became colleagues.

*When Einstein died on April 18, 1955, Oppenheimer published a tribute in the Princeton University newspaper a few days later. "He was the greatest person of the era, especially opening the golden age of physics from 1905 to 1925. We now live in the fruits of that era. Einstein made the world of quantum physics possible. (...) Through his special theory of relativity, we gained a new understanding of the universe and time. (...) Einstein created the most grand single theory in the scientific world, general relativity, opening a new perspective on the universality of gravity and the cosmos. Unlike most scientific discoveries, Einstein's general relativity still proves his genius." Oppenheimer also praised Einstein in the January issue of 'Reviews of Modern Physics' the following year. "He concentrated his mind to solve the characteristics of atoms at the most fundamental level. He wanted to create a unified field. Through relativity, he sought solutions to any problems related to electromagnetic phenomena. He tried to find solutions for partial cohesion of mass and electricity and apply parts explained by quantum theory to the atomic world. He worked to complete this program until his death." In private, he was somewhat different. He disparaged Einstein as hardly understanding modern physics and wasting time on unnecessary unification programs. He also complained that the Institute funded him for 25 years but produced no significant results. But he clearly respected Einstein deeply. This was confirmed in a 1965 interview with the French weekly 'L'Express.' "Of course, I respect him. I want to be like the young Einstein. That goes without saying."

*Einstein did not particularly need a community to root himself in. He was the opposite of Oppenheimer in temperament.

*Einstein declared several times that he was a socialist. He is said to have been influenced by Gustav Mayer and Joost Winteler.

*Oppenheimer was conscious of prejudice against Jews at Berkeley and Caltech. In a letter to the prominent nuclear physicist Charles Lauritsen, he wrote: "I have twice suggested to the school to hire Rabi. His presence would be a great strength for us. But there has been no response yet. Why is that? Is it because of budget shortages? Or because they cannot hire another Jewish professor? Or is it because he is not the right person?"

*Oppenheimer, who refused to be a member of the Jewish community, needed another community. So he devoted himself to political activities in the 1930s. He clung to patriotism to escape his Jewish identity. Despite many ups and downs, his belief that he was American never changed. His mission to make American physics the world's best during his Berkeley days in the 1930s is explained this way.

*At the Oppenheimer hearing, General Groves testified: "Dr. Oppenheimer served as my advisor and responded to my needs, but (...) he never told me what to do. (...) The responsibility for scientific decisions lies with us (General Nichols and myself)."

*At the same hearing, Rabi said: "It is very regrettable that Dr. Oppenheimer was stripped of his position. It should never have happened. (...) He was just an advisor. If you did not want to consult him, you simply did not have to. (...) Therefore, it is incomprehensible to treat Dr. Oppenheimer like this. (...) Thanks to Oppenheimer, we acquired a series of weapons including the hydrogen bomb. What more do you want? Shall I summon a mermaid?"

*In a 1964 Geneva lecture, Oppenheimer showed strong patriotism while conversing with the moderator. When asked, "Even if you looked at the world today, could you dare to conduct the experiment to make the atomic bomb?" he answered: "My role was, how should I say, just a kind of moderator who brought everyone's efforts together. Anyway, I think that would have been the case." "I want to ask from a slightly different angle. Assuming you already know the past 20 years and go back to 1942, would you still make the atomic bomb?" "I already answered 'yes.'" "Even knowing Hiroshima?" "Yes."

References: Silvan S. Wever, translated by Kim Young-bae, published by Sidaeui Chang, 'Einstein and Oppenheimer' (2013); Kai Bird & Martin Sherwin, translated by Choi Hyung-seop, published by Science Books, 'American Prometheus' (2010); John Lewis Gaddis, translated by Jung Cheol & Kang Kyu-hyung, published by Eco Livre, 'The Cold War History' (2010); Richard Rose, translated by Moon Shin-haeng, published by Science Books, 'Making the Atomic Bomb 1 & 2' (2003), etc.

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