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Authors: David Halberstam
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young children were sleeping. Did he want them to grow up in a world with a hydrogen bomb? she asked. Still unsure of his decision, Bethe decided to talk with Oppenheimer and he went to Princeton the next day. Oppenheimer listened and handed him a letter from James Conant with a particularly devastating critique of the Super. By chance Victor Weisskopf was visiting Princeton that weekend, and the next day he and Bethe drove to New York together. Weisskopf, even more than Oppenheimer, was morally opposed to the Super. “Hiroshima was a blunder and Nagasaki a crime,” he had said after the explosion of the atomic bomb, and he had vowed never to work on nuclear weapons again. Weisskopf argued against Bethe’s fears of Soviet military and political hegemony. Even if the United States did not build the Super and the Soviets did, the Russians could not dominate the world, for the American stockpile of atomic weapons (two hundred at the time) remained a healthy deterrent. At the time, Weisskopf painted for Bethe a vivid picture of war with the hydrogen bomb, of “what it would mean to destroy a city like New York with one bomb, and how hydrogen bombs would change the military balance by making the attack still more powerful and the defense still less powerful,” Bethe later recalled. That night Bethe called Teller and said, “Edward, I’ve been thinking it over. I can’t come.” Teller was devastated. He gradually began to believe that there was a conspiracy against him and his bomb, and Oppenheimer was leading it. (“I have explained this to Teller many times,” Bethe said years later, “but he and others still blamed Oppenheimer for my not returning to Los Alamos.”)
Yet even as resistance among scientists to the Super increased, the American military was beginning to stir, particularly the Air Force, which from the start saw itself as the service charged withnuclear-weapon delivery, and which had no intention of letting the Soviets have a monopoly on this terrifying new weapon.
The political cast of characters, even within the Truman administration, was beginning to change as well. Lilienthal, a product of New Deal liberalism, was politically in decline. He was not merely sympathetic to Oppenheimer with regard to nuclear issues, he was dependent on him—so much so that Leslie Groves liked to joke that Lilienthal would consult Oppenheimer on which tie to wear in the morning. Others, less sympathetic, were on the rise—the most notable among them was Lewis Strauss, who would emerge in the coming decade as the most important political adviser on atomic-energy matters. Truman told Lilienthal that Strauss was coming to the AEC and mentioned only that he was a businessman who had saved $20 million and put it all in government bonds.
Strauss seemed the prototype of a Wall Street tycoon but was, in fact, a man of rather simple origins. He had never been to college. His father was a shoe salesman in Richmond, Virginia, and Lewis Strauss’s early days were spent in the same profession. He was nothing if not industrious, and by the time he was twenty he had saved $20,000, a considerable amount in those days. He had intended to go on to college. But in 1917, when he was twenty-one, his mother, who had been deeply affected by the suffering of ordinary people in Europe during World War One, heard that Herbert Hoover was going to head the relief effort to provide people with food. She suggested to her son that he go to Washington to help Mr. Hoover, and shortly thereafter Lewis Strauss did just that. “When do you want to start?” Hoover asked him upon hearing of his mission. “Right now,” Strauss answered. “Take off your coat,” Hoover said, and Strauss went to work, in pure Horatio Alger style. Within two years he became Hoover’s personal secretary. Later, he went off to work for Kuhn, Loeb, married the daughter of a partner, and in time made his fortune on Wall Street. He was an Orthodox Jew who prayed twice a
Yet even as resistance among scientists to the Super increased, the American military was beginning to stir, particularly the Air Force, which from the start saw itself as the service charged withnuclear-weapon delivery, and which had no intention of letting the Soviets have a monopoly on this terrifying new weapon.
The political cast of characters, even within the Truman administration, was beginning to change as well. Lilienthal, a product of New Deal liberalism, was politically in decline. He was not merely sympathetic to Oppenheimer with regard to nuclear issues, he was dependent on him—so much so that Leslie Groves liked to joke that Lilienthal would consult Oppenheimer on which tie to wear in the morning. Others, less sympathetic, were on the rise—the most notable among them was Lewis Strauss, who would emerge in the coming decade as the most important political adviser on atomic-energy matters. Truman told Lilienthal that Strauss was coming to the AEC and mentioned only that he was a businessman who had saved $20 million and put it all in government bonds.
Strauss seemed the prototype of a Wall Street tycoon but was, in fact, a man of rather simple origins. He had never been to college. His father was a shoe salesman in Richmond, Virginia, and Lewis Strauss’s early days were spent in the same profession. He was nothing if not industrious, and by the time he was twenty he had saved $20,000, a considerable amount in those days. He had intended to go on to college. But in 1917, when he was twenty-one, his mother, who had been deeply affected by the suffering of ordinary people in Europe during World War One, heard that Herbert Hoover was going to head the relief effort to provide people with food. She suggested to her son that he go to Washington to help Mr. Hoover, and shortly thereafter Lewis Strauss did just that. “When do you want to start?” Hoover asked him upon hearing of his mission. “Right now,” Strauss answered. “Take off your coat,” Hoover said, and Strauss went to work, in pure Horatio Alger style. Within two years he became Hoover’s personal secretary. Later, he went off to work for Kuhn, Loeb, married the daughter of a partner, and in time made his fortune on Wall Street. He was an Orthodox Jew who prayed twice a
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