LIFE and TIMES of the ATOMIC BOMB: Nuclear Weapons And
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Downloaded by [New York University] at 23:20 03 December 2016 LIFE AND TIMES OF THE ATOMIC BOMB Life and Times of the Atomic Bomb takes up the question of how the world found itself in the age of nuclear weapons – and how it has since tried to find a way out of it. Albert I. Berger charts the story of nuclear weapons from their origins through the Atomic Age and the Cold War up through the present day, arguing that an understanding of the history of nuclear weapons is crucial to modern efforts to manage them. This book examines topics including nuclear strategy debates, weapon system procurement decisions, and arms control conferences through the people and leaders who experienced them. Providing a chronological survey, Life and Times of the Atomic Bomb starts with the major scientific discoveries of the late nineteenth century that laid the groundwork for nuclear development. It then traces the history of nuclear weapons from their inception to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 and the reaction to them by key players on both sides. It continues its narrative into the second half of the twentieth century and the role of nuclear weapons throughout the Cold War, engaging in the debate over whether nuclear weapons are an effective deterrent. Finally, the closing chapters consider the atomic bomb’s place in the modern world and the transformation Downloaded by [New York University] at 23:20 03 December 2016 of warfare in an age of advanced technology. This clear and engaging survey will be invaluable reading for students of the Cold War and twentieth-century history. Albert I. Berger is Associate Professor of History and Peace Studies at the University of North Dakota. His previous publications include The Magic That Works: John W. Campbell and the American Response to Technology (1993) and Divided Germany during the Cold War, 1945–1962 (2001). This page intentionally left blank Downloaded by [New York University] at 23:20 03 December 2016 LIFE AND TIMES OF THE ATOMIC BOMB Nuclear Weapons and the Transformation of Warfare Albert I. Berger Downloaded by [New York University] at 23:20 03 December 2016 First published 2016 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2016 Albert I. Berger The right of Albert I. Berger to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Berger, Albert I. (Albert Isaac), 1947– author. Life and times of the atomic bomb / Albert I. Berger. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Atomic bomb–History. I. Title. UG1282.A8B46 2015 623.4’51190973–dc23 2015027349 ISBN: 978-0-7656-1985-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-7656-1986-0 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-72081-4 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by HWA Text and Data Management, London Downloaded by [New York University] at 23:20 03 December 2016 For Patricia … I cannot count or describe the many reasons Downloaded by [New York University] at 23:20 03 December 2016 This page intentionally left blank Downloaded by [New York University] at 23:20 03 December 2016 CONTENTS Acknowledgements ix Introduction 1 PART I Chain Reactions 5 1 The Science and the Scientists 1895–1933 7 2 The First Nuclear Arms Race 1933–1942 22 PART II Rapid Assembly 37 3 “One Grand Final Exam Day…” 1943–1945 39 4 “I Am Become Death” 58 Downloaded by [New York University] at 23:20 03 December 2016 PART III Two Scorpions in a Bottle 83 5 “Wasting Assets” 1945–1950 85 6 The Cross of Iron 1950–1962 102 viii Contents PART IV “We All Breathe the Same Air” 127 7 “Solution Unsatisfactory” 129 8 ANADYR 150 PART V The Weapon of the Weak 169 9 The Politics of Parity 171 10 Sweet Dreams and Suicide Machines 193 Epilogue 208 Index 214 Downloaded by [New York University] at 23:20 03 December 2016 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book has grown out of a course in the history of nuclear weapons that I have been privileged to teach at the University of North Dakota. I should first thank Bill Schwalm, theoretical physicist and my UND colleague, who recruited me to team-teach the course shortly after I arrived here in 1987. The University and its various components have contributed generously and consistently to support this book and the course upon which it is based, including several instructional development grants and funds for travel to museums and archives. All of us in the UND History Department benefit from the generosity of the Schulte Professional Development Fund, which supported travel for research in once top-secret government documents made available at the National Security Archive, in Washington, DC. The University itself supported this work with a year’s release from teaching responsibilities that allowed me to write most of this book. Bill Burr and the staff at the National Security Archive deserve special thanks for their longstanding efforts to make available to the public the documentary record of United States foreign and defense policy for the last half century and more. Some very good friends gave generously of their time and trouble to read and comment on this manuscript. Two of them, Tom Puckett, a fine and funny writer and my oldest friend, and Ty Reese, our department chair, read the Downloaded by [New York University] at 23:20 03 December 2016 entire project; Joe Fitzharris, Mike Jacobs, Jim Mochoruk, Dave Whalen, and David Wiener all read substantial portions of the manuscript and all of them contributed useful observations and comments of many kinds. Steve Drummond, then of M. E. Sharpe, was the first to see the possibilities of a book like this, and when the project moved (with all of Sharpe’s list) over to Routledge, Genevieve Aoki, Catherine Aitken, and Margo Irvin picked it up with sympathy, competence, and patience. The efforts of all the people who helped me made this a better book, and I thank them for that. They are, of course, innocent of any errors that remain. The responsibility for them is all mine. This page intentionally left blank Downloaded by [New York University] at 23:20 03 December 2016 INTRODUCTION The book you hold in your hands is a sketch (a bit more than a sketch in some appropriate spots) describing how the world found itself in the age of nuclear weapons—and how it has tried to find a way out of it. It is not a research monograph, but rather an effort at the synthesis (and some reinterpretation) of what some excellent historians have been writing, especially since the end of the Cold War. I have made fair use here of work by Alexandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, David Holloway, Richard Rhodes, Martin Sherwin and Kai Bird, and others. I have sometimes followed the story in different directions and come to different conclusions than they did, but their work, all of it quite accessible to a “general reader,” expands and illuminates what we know about this pivotal part of modern history. The first chapters of the story describe a relatively small group of like-minded men (and three women) and the academic community in which they lived, the things they learned, and the things they did in the first half of the 20th century. These people and the institutions where they worked represented the height of European scientific scholarship at a time when European scholarship was the dominant way of thinking. The discovery of radiation, the new understandings Downloaded by [New York University] at 23:20 03 December 2016 of how atoms work, Einstein’s special theory of relativity, were all part and parcel of 19th-century industrial capitalism—and of the imperialism (there is no other word for it) that carried European capitalism around the world. Yet the scientists of the new century persisted in believing (and acting in the belief) that they were a trans-national fraternity that pursued the truth by studying nature and standing apart from, standing above, politics and national rivalries. The international conflagrations of the new century subjected that belief to literal tests by fire culminating in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The second generation of this history belongs mostly to the men of power in the United States and the Soviet Union who thought that they 2 Introduction controlled nuclear weapons during their early, dangerous infancy. It was their job, their fate, to protect and advance their countries’ ideals and interests while, simultaneously, acting to keep an unprecedented conflict from destroying them and the rest of the world too. It also became their responsibility to manage a profound conflict in which two of the greatest truisms of military power had been transformed. Military superiority did not guarantee security in an age of nuclear weapons.