Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm
Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm
“Brittan thinks neutrality of Italy is assured” ha.
Thanks for all your efforts.
Are these old articles available online? Or are you actually going in the library every day and scanning them?
Just wondering, since there was no link provided.
9/20/39 - "HITLER TELLS ALLIES IT IS HIS PEACE OR A FINISH FIGHT"
10/7/39 - "HITLER DEMANDS HIS PEACE OR A WAR OF DESTRUCTION"
10/13/39 - "WAR IN EARNEST UNLESS U.S. ACTS, BERLIN SAYS"
10/21/39 - "BERLIN SAYS WAR IS ON TO THE FINISH"
Well, I'm glad we finally got that settled. I wonder if it is significant that "Berlin" has replaced "Hitler" as the proclaimer of doom.
21 October 1939
Back on October 11th Alexander Sachs, a Wall Street economist and longtime friend of FDR got with Roosevelt to discuss the letter written by Albert Einstein back on August 2nd. With him he brought a copy of a lecture by Francis Aston from 1936 titled "Forty Years of Atomic Theory" that had been published in 1938 as part of the Background to Modern Science collection. Sachs read the entire lecture to Roosevelt with emphasis on the last sentences that read:
Personally I think there is no doubt that sub-atomic energy is available all around us, and that one day man will release and control its almost infinite power. we cannot prevent him from doing so and can only hope that he will not use it exclusively in blowing up his next door neighbor.
Roosevelt got the point and proposed a committee headed by Dr. Lyman J. Briggs who was at the time the director of the Bureau of Standards. Along with him he added Army representative Lt. Colonel Keith F. Adamson and Navy representative Cmdr. Gilbert C. Hoover. Both men were ordinance experts. This was the "Advisory Committee on Uranium" set up that FDR references in his reply to Einstein on 19 October.
Briggs set the first meeting of the committee on October 21 in Washington. Sach proposed that they also invite some of the emigres who mostly were scientists that had fled Europe due to Nazi pressure. Brigs invited Merle Tuve who couldn't make it and sent Richard Roberts in his place. Enrico Fermi was still holding a grudge against the Navy and refused to attend. He allowed Hungarian physicist Edward Teller to attend and speak on his behalf. Also invited was Leo Szilard who had convinced Einstein to write the August letter in the first place.
So at the October 21st meeting there was:
Briggs - Director of Advisory Committee on Uranium
Sachs - Wall Street economist and FDR adviser
Adamson - Army
Hoover - Navy
And the scientists:
Szilard
Wigner
Roberts
Teller
In this meeting Szilard discussed the possibility of a sustained chain reaction and the potential destructive power of an uncontrolled one. He estimated that a potential uranium bomber would yield an explosive equivalent of 20,000 tons of TNT.
Of those present Teller, Wigner and Sachs(oddly enough) supported Szilard's position on the potential destructive power of a Uranium bomb while Robers was skeptical that this had really been proven and both military attaches showed their own degree of doubt and even hostility.
Cmdr Hoover was first to pose the question of funds when he asked Szilard how much money he needed to prove the theory of sustained chain reactions. Teller was quick to answer telling Hoover that they would need $6000 to purchase the graphite (Szilard would follow up on the 26th requesting $33,000 to get the graphite and fund the experiment).
Adamson had expected the conversation to lead to money and had the ensuing sparing match is described by Szilard:
He [Adamson] told us that it was naive to believe that we could make a significant contribution to defense by creating a new weapon. He said that if a new weapon is created, it usually takes two wars before one can know whether the weapon is any good or not. Then he explained rather laboriously that it is in the end not weapons which win wars, but the morale of the troops. He went on in this vein for a long time until suddenly Wigner, the most polite of us, interrupted him. [Wigner] said in his high-pitched voice that it was very interesting for him to hear this. He always thought that weapons were very important and that this is what costs money, and this is why the Army needs such a large appropriation. But he was very interested to hear that he was wrong: it's not weapons but the morale which wins the wars. And if this is correct, perhaps one should take a second look at the budget of the Army, and maybe the budget could get cut.
At this Adamson snapped back "you'll get your money!"
This was the beginning of what would become the Manhattan project and the invention of the atomic bomb. $6000 dollars and a committee. At this point they still hadn't proven Fermi's theory for last January that a chain reaction could be sustained. I met Edward Teller at his home in Stanford in 1999. His mind was just as sharp in his last years as they must have been back then. I asked him a lot of questions that day but now that I'm older I wish I could go back to that day. I would have asked better questions than what I did.
Alot of this material is referenced from The Making of the Atomic Bomb - by Richard Rhodes
The two block quotes are from that book on pages 314 and 317 respectively.
The Weekly Spectator denounced the lack of air attacks against Germany. That is interesting to note.
Where do you find this material? Thanks for your great posts.
Interesting little note about Udet, as well.