Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Technology Books Media Book Reviews Science

The Making of the Atomic Bomb 298

Posted by chrisd from the smart-people-building-gadgets dept.
chrisd has taken time off from polls and posting to both read and review Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb. Read on for his impressions of the book, which he says is "not really a story about the men so much as the science they pursued."
The Making of the Atomic Bomb
author Richard Rhodes
pages 886 Pages
publisher Touchstone/Simon and Schuster
rating 5 out of 5 uh, somethings
reviewer Chris DiBona
ISBN 0684813785
summary How the bomb came to be.

Lansing Lamont's Day of Trinity was the first book I read about the Manhattan Project. In what turns out to be a decent if uncritical look at the pursuit of atomic weaponry, Lansing was given exclusive access throughout the life of the Manhattan Project. In reading the book you feel like you have a fly-on-the-wall view of the process of producing the first uranium and plutonium bombs.

Lamont's telling is a bit thin though, not going into the motivations of the scientists and only barely touching on the geopolitical situation at the time. This not to say that it is craven, but it is overly sympathetic and a bit too rah-rah about atomic weaponry and their usefulness.

In the book, Mr. Rhodes takes the time to explore the base motivations of the scientists. Ever wonder exactly what motivated Teller's bloodthirstiness? What inspired the scientists to continue driving toward the atomic prize even after the fall of Germany? Rhodes has spent the time researching exactly what made the major players tick.

This is all well and good, but probably the most enjoyable thing about the book is how it's not really a story about the men so much as the science they pursued. The book is not really about the bombs, either, but more the history of physics and physicists.

Always keeping the science accessible and exciting, he manages to explain concisely the process of discovery and experimentation and how the significant events of history affected both the project's progress.

The way that Mr. Rhodes tracks the movements of physicists from anti-semitic Germany to Los Alamos, Chicago and other centers of the nuclear arms program is especially compelling and lends keen insight into the motivations of the physicists involved.

One of the most important (and stomach churning) things about the book is how it shows how cheap human life became in the first half of the 20th century. I think that it is important, when considering the horror of dropping bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that people have the proper historical context before coming to one conclusion or another about the morality of the dropping of the bomb. This book gives that context.

This is not to say that this is a perfect book. Reaching as it does from the mid 1800s through to the dawn of Teller's super-bomb, the book's scope means that some discoveries and scientists don't get the in-depth coverage that Bohr, Szilard and Oppenheimer do, and he doesn't talk much at all about the espionage that surrounded nuclear development. Nor in my mind does he fully answer the question of why the scientists remained motivated to produce the weapons after Germany had been conquered.

Those caveats aside, this is a terrific book well worth checking out if you are interested in the birth of modern physics, the men and women behind it, or the most powerful weapon that has ever been used on humans.

You can purchase The Making of the Atomic Bomb from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

The Making of the Atomic Bomb More

The Making of the Atomic Bomb

Comments Filter:

  • Patriot Act (Score:3, Funny)

    by cybercuzco ( 100904 ) on Friday February 14, 2003 @10:33AM (#5302012) Homepage Journal
    Anyone who buys this book will probably get arrested under the patriot act, because the govt will think you want to know how to make an atomic bomb. God help the author.
  • Do you always talk about yourself in third person? :)

  • Smooth move /.! (Score:4, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Friday February 14, 2003 @10:36AM (#5302030) Homepage Journal

    I think this review was just an attempt at /.'ing Carnivore.

  • Very good book (Score:5, Informative)

    by gclef ( 96311 ) on Friday February 14, 2003 @10:38AM (#5302047)
    I read this a few years ago, and would absolutely recommend it to anyone interested in the history of the bomb.

    There are a lot of good things about it, but one of my favorites is the fact that the book is filled with direct quotes from letters, diaries, memos, etc from the people involved. You really get a good idea of what the people were actually thinking in their own words, not just the historical summary.

    One thing that surprises me about his review is that he mentioned the cheapness of life early on in the century, but doesn't mention the chapter on the effects of the bomb. One of the most powerful chapters in the book is amost nothing but direct quotes from interviews and diaries of folks who were in Hiroshima and Nagasaki when they were bombed. It's very powerful, and a good reminder of just what a nuke actually does to people.
    • Dark Sun [amazon.com] was the history of the hydrogen bomb. I greatly enjoyed his "Making of the Atomic Bomb", but didn't find "Dark Sun" quite as gripping a read. "Making of..." was perhaps more enjoyable to me both because of the context of the times and because of the tales of people such as Einstein, Fermi, Oppenheimer, et. al.

      By the way...it's a bit late for the review, isn't it? It made it to paperback in 1995 -- goodness knows when it was first published in hardback!
    • I agree -- the book was great, eps the chapter you mention. Equally great was the way it captured the reactions of the scientists to what they'd built and how it was being used. Feelings were mixed, the fact that their statements re: ethics of use came late in the building process was kind of indicative of the whole Promethean "build now, wonder what it's going to do to us later" way of doing things.

      not being luddite or anything, just saying -- and if being worried about nuclear bombs is too luddite, what can i say?

    • One of the most powerful chapters in the book is amost nothing but direct quotes from interviews and diaries of folks who were in Hiroshima and Nagasaki when they were bombed. It's very powerful, and a good reminder of just what a nuke actually does to people.

      I have been to Nagasaki and my lasting memory of the place is that the whole city seems to have devoted itself to worldwide peace. The millions of chains of folded origami figures (I was told these came from all over Japan) all over the city were quite a powerful symbol of peace.

      The atomic bomb museum in particular is a real eye-opener - quotes, video footage, writings and photographs. The sheer devastation of the bomb defies any kind of real description and I defy anyone to go there and not be affected in some way by it I shudder to think what these weapons are capable of today.

    • Re:Very good book/Cheapness of life (Score:5, Informative)

      by 0x69 ( 580798 ) on Friday February 14, 2003 @11:25AM (#5302453) Journal
      The cheapness of human life in WWII wasn't really related to nuclear weapons. The Allied Air Forces were firebombing "enemy" cities with conventional weapons long before Hiroshima. Objective: create blast-furnace-hot city-sized fires that left nothing but half-melted human bones amid the ash & rubble. Method: hundreds or thousands of bombers and an unlimited supply of incendiary bombs.

      The Japanese experts who looked over Hiroshima shortly after the A-bombing initially concluded that Uncle Satan had merely invented a bigger & badder conventional firebomb.

      It was only later, when nukes got bigger and far more plentiful, that "hit 'em with nukes" became meaningfully worse than "hit 'em with firebombing".
      • "The cheapness of human life in WWII wasn't really related to nuclear weapons. The Allied Air Forces were firebombing "enemy" cities with conventional weapons long before Hiroshima."
        Yes, and the reviewer unfortunately didn't make clear that this context is exactly what Rhodes provides in his book.
    • Well, I was going to go into that (very powerful) chapter, but in the end I decided not to, letting the cheapness paragraph stand in for it. It was meant to sort of cover that.

      Chris

  • ...and I have to agree with the reviewer. The book doesn't spend much time on the emotional or philosophical issues the people involved in developing the bomb were experiencing.

    I believe it was meant strictly as a factual account of how things progressed, who did what, etc. It definitely was interesting to see how physics was brought to the US and the fact the US was way behind in science before the biggest minds in Europe started coming over because of the war.

    All in all a good long read, sometimes too much detail in spots but iteresting nonetheless.
    • There's really no better work than Richard Feyman's "Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman".

      It might be hard to comprehend from our vantage point but, for the most part, people building the bomb really didn't *have* any emotional or philosophical issues. They had one of histories grandest scientific head rushes.

      Think about. Hell, until they had actually built and used the thing to them it was just bomb, but bigger. We were making lots and LOTS of bombs at the time.

      *Afterward* is a different story, after the work and the head rush were over and everyone could sit back and reflect on what God, and they, had wraught.

      Richard actually went into a deep depression for a while and didn't want to do physics anymore. There were a lot like him.

      But at the time they were doing it it was pretty much a grand adventure.

      KFG
      • Interestingly enough, Dr. Feynman also contends that all science stopped during the War and the Manhattan Project, and what went on at Los Alamos was mostly engineering. I find it interesting that chrisd reports on a book that delves into the science that was pursed. Perhaps this other book is a nice contrast of opinions between 2 people involved in the Project, both from completely different angles.

        I will agree with you, though, that Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman gives a fun, emotional, more personal account of what went on during those months at Los Alamos. If you're even remotely interested in this part of history, the few parts of the book that cover Feynman's experience are well worth the price of admission.
        • over the difference between science and engineering. This time I decided to just take the easy way out, for once.

          Feynman is basically correct in that assertion. Although Los Alamos and Schenectady were both somewhat exceptions to that rule. Feynman was a junior member of the team and was most involved with the engineering aspects, the true scientific aspects being handled by men such as Bethe and Oppy.

          Surely You're Joking actually shows a number of instances where real science was at question.

          (As an aside I live just a couple blocks from GE's Manhatten Project site and in a box somewhere I've got an A1 security clearance badge. It's just button, like any kid could whack out if he wanted to. I use it as a reminder of how times have changed)

          KFG
        • Richard Rhodes wouldn't disagree with Feynman's comments, I imagine. There were a bunch of details to work out - the theoretical people did a ton of work - but they weren't of applied science variety.

          They were doing a lot of modelling of phenonema in order to help them design elements like the exposive lenses that compressed the plutonium to critical mass.

          The end result wasn't the unknown, it was how to build a device to deliver the end result (and how to machine plutonium, or breed sufficient quantities of plutonium in the first place, or separate U235 from U238, etc)

          "engineering" but engineering done by many of the brightest physicists alive at the time.
  • Actually, this is a very good book. After reading Tom Clancy's The Sum Of All Fears I was interested in finding out 'just how difficult is it to make an atomic bomb?'

    I found this book at my local Half Prices Books store and picked it up cheap. It's an interesting read, and there is an awful lot of history involved that a majority of Americans don't know about.

    I highly recommend this book even though it's not a recent release.
    • If you're asking about building an improvised atomic bomb, it's not as easy as you think.

      The extreme precision needed to start a nuclear explosion means you'll need to break out the "Benjamins" big-time to get to the point of building such a device. There was actually serious concerns within the KGB whether the so-called suitcase nuke the Russians built for demolitions work would even work correctly given its design and the instability of fissile materials.

      • Suitcase Nukes (Score:3, Informative)

        by Mad Man ( 166674 )
        was Re:Wow, 8 year old book reviews! [slashdot.org]

        There was actually serious concerns within the KGB whether the so-called suitcase nuke the Russians built for demolitions work would even work correctly given its design and the instability of fissile materials.

        Cary Sublette, author of the Nuclear Weapons FAQ [enviroweb.org], has some info about "suitcase nukes" at http://nuketesting.enviroweb.org/hew/News/Terroris tBombIntro.html [enviroweb.org] (no space in "Terrorist", I'm not sure why it appears).

        This question leads to a set of interrelated topics. In the pages below I have collected a series of essays that treat different aspects of this question: the feasibility of terrorists building or acquiring nuclear devices; the claim that ex-Soviet suitcase nuclear bombs represent a real threat; the feasibility of suitcase nuclear bombs; and what is known about Osama bn Laden's efforts to acquire nuclear weapons.


        note: The Nuclear Weapons FAQ can be downloaded as a zip file from here [enviroweb.org].
        • What REALLY worries me is the fact that al-Qaeda may have been able to cart off a small number of Pakistani-made nuclear bombs from Pakistan's nuclear weapons program.

          And we're not talking an improvised nuclear device, either--we're talking a bomb that could fit inside a Chevy Surburban van and have a yield of around 10 kilotons, only slightly lower in yield than the Little Boy bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. Look at what Little Boy did to Hiroshima--most of the town was essentially flattened. Detonating such a device in the middle of any large American city will result in an immediate death tool that will reach well into six figures and a radiation poisoning lingering death tool that is just as big. (eek!)

  • How-to? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Dirtside ( 91468 ) on Friday February 14, 2003 @10:41AM (#5302073) Journal
    At first glance I thought this might be an O'Reilly book. Then I had to envision which animal would be on the cover. The answer, of course, was obvious.

    Godzilla.
    • Colophon

      The animal featured on the cover of Fat Man and Little Boy in a Nutshell is Godzilla.

      Godzilla was first observed swimming off the coast of Japan's Oto Island. At a height of 50 meters with a weight of 20,000 tons, Godzilla is widely considered the most famous of the giant lizard radioactive mutations. Successive encounters with Mechagodzilla during the 80's have forced the blue-green god into a near retirement. Godzilla is now rarely seen outside of Blue Oyster Cult reunion concerts.

      The cover layout was produced with Quark Xpress using the ITC LizardGod font.

    • I would have thought an American Bald Eagle would be more appropriate...
  • Though that one was 13 and change billion years ago.

  • "News" for Nerds... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Microsift ( 223381 )
    This book is almost 15 years old! I believe Rhodes won the Pulitzer Prize, National book award, and one other major award for this book. Anyway, why the book review now?

    (For those of you who will say it was published in 1995, that's for the paperback edition).

    By all means, read the book, but it's hardly news.

    • ... Stuff that matters.

      I suppose that should be in slashdot a review of the Lord of the Rings, even if was written a bit earlier than just 8 years ago. I suppose that not all book reviews are about books just published or about to be published. If the book is good, and the review add something to the community, should be ok.
    • Because, there wasn't one on slashdot before. I never knew of the book and it certainly doesn't hav ethe same popularity as say, the first book of harry potter. So it's not being talked about by anyone and everyone.. still.

      Let chrisd have has review and stop whining.

  • not just that... (Score:5, Informative)

    by lyapunov ( 241045 ) on Friday February 14, 2003 @10:47AM (#5302115)
    It also takes a look at the history and philosophy of the late 1800's that lead to the development of chemical weapons used in WWI, and how the atomic was the natural evolution of these events/ideas. This is the first book that I read about the atomic bomb that brings these things into light.

    I agree that the book does focus quite a bit on the science it also brings the scientist's lives to life.

    It also points out that there is a valley in Romania ? (i believe, it has been a couple of years since i have read this book) that has a huge density of nobel prize winnign scientists. He looks at the methods used in their elementary education that may have contributed to this one area producing a disproportionate amount of nobel laureates.

    All in all, I agree it is a wonderful book. I also recommended his book "Deadly Feasts" which takes a look at prion dieseases. Mad-cow is a prion disease. These are unique as the are a particular protein that can cause infections. David Brin references these in nifty ways in his book "Kiln People" - also a good read.
  • For me, the bomb is a really good case on the illegitamcy of democracy or at least the need to fix it up.

    6 years
    43,000 Employees
    2.2 billion dollars in a time of war
    7 installations
    operations in 19 states, including Canada
    the multinational marshalling of expertise

    All this was hidden from congress, the vice president, and many other high ranking gov. officials. It was strictly censored from the media as well.

    Once invented, the same companies that produced televisions were hired to manufactured the bomb for the government. I mean RCA, NBC, and General Electric.

    Of the 85,000 feet of film shot in Japan depicting the massive chaos and suffering the bomb inflicted, ZERO made it onto television because of a STRICT GOVERNMENT PRESS BAN until the 1980s.

    Production companies prefered to depict test explosions, especially at the beautiful Bikini Atoll (now non-existant).

    How can we make any claim that we live in a democracy?


    • How can we make any claim that we live in a democracy?

      The fact that Americans voted for the relevant President, Vice-President, and Congress. Do you have some other definition of "democracy"?

      And, more specifically, nobody claims that the United States is a democracy - it's a representative republic, and in representative republics important decisions tend to be made by the eponymous representatives.

    • Canada (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      isn't a state yet. They aren't scheduled for invasion until after Iraq, N. Korea, Libya and Cuba. Don't tell the Canadians, though.
      • France is on the list after Iraq (well, we may just let the Germans handle France, if they start behaving).

        And North Korea isn't scheduled for occupation until the rad count goes down by a couple of orders of magnitude.

    • Get over it (Score:5, Insightful)

      by siskbc ( 598067 ) on Friday February 14, 2003 @11:15AM (#5302332) Homepage

      First off, if this is a troll, good job, you got me...;)

      Of the 85,000 feet of film shot in Japan depicting the massive chaos and suffering the bomb inflicted, ZERO made it onto television because of a STRICT GOVERNMENT PRESS BAN until the 1980s.

      I want to see something regarding the press ban. If you mean that the government owned the footage and didn't release it, they're not obligated. If you mean supression of privately owned footage after the 50's, I want to see a source.

      All this was hidden from congress, the vice president, and many other high ranking gov. officials. It was strictly censored from the media as well.

      No shit it was. If you haven't noticed, Congress is about as secure with secrets as a gaggle of schoolgirls. They've gotten many of our operatives killed overseas by blabbing about classified material. So the fact that congress is off the distribution list for something as secret (well, supposedly) as the ATOMIC BOMB...well, duh. As for the media, you have GOT to be kidding. It was wartime. It was an experimental weapon. Yeah, it was concealed, as anything else would have been downright irresponsible.

      So, your beef is that EVERYTHING in a democracy should be absolutely open, with no secrets, right? Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way, nor should it. We vote for the people we theoretically trust to deal with such matters, or to appoint others who can. Naturally, it doesn't always work, but keeping atomic research secret during WWII was pretty much a necessity. I do believe, of course, that our government has FAR overused secrecy as a tool, too often to cover its own ass. But I don't at all believe that this was an example - you can find MUCH more egregious examples (where are those Kennedy files, anyway? No, the REAL ones, Mr. Warren...)

      Sorry, but war kind of necessitates secrecy. Otherwise, you tend to lose them.

      • I can understand keeping military operations secret, but the development of the most powerful technology to grace the earth? Using taxpayers money?

        i think you missed the point. Its not the bomb per se, its the ability of the government to do this anytime it pleases. If it can hide an operation this ENOURMOUS, then it can do pretty much as it pleases on any issue without a second thought of the people. Thats a big loophole, and it shows that democracy (ie elections by the people) does not equate to free and open government. Congress is merely an illusion and the government doesnt need it to do anything, including spend your money to kill people.

        • Re:Get over it (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Mononoke ( 88668 ) on Friday February 14, 2003 @12:00PM (#5302836) Homepage Journal
          Its not the bomb per se, its the ability of the government to do this anytime it pleases.
          It was wartime. Not just "I'm gonna show my Daddy I can kick Saddam's ass." wartime, but real defending-our-very-soil wartime. The rules necessarily have to apply differently during times like that.

          (Thus, the reason the current administration wants you to believe in an Iraq war, so they can play by the rules they want to play by, and not what is guaranteed by our Constitution.)

          You can't compare the WWII era with what is happening right now.

          • It was wartime. Not just "I'm gonna show my Daddy I can kick Saddam's ass." wartime,

            ...and thereby killing 100,000 [msn.com] or more iraquis. I guess that makes it a real war, doesn't it?

        • Re:Get over it (Score:4, Interesting)

          by siskbc ( 598067 ) on Friday February 14, 2003 @12:43PM (#5303274) Homepage
          No, I didn't miss the damned point, I simply don't care. Yes, the government can do this during any time of national crisis. No, they can't do it anytime they want, because the non-White House-occupying party in Congress gets cranky. And Congress, even the minority party, has enough power to totally screw the President if it wants (see the filibustered confirmation hearing of District Court judge nominee Daniel Estrada). So that's a deterrent.

          I'm GLAD the government has the ability to hide huge national secrets like the atomic bomb. If it couldn't, we might have had it used on us.

          There's a difference between free government and an open government. The Nazi government was kind of open, in the sense that if you weren't Arayan you knew you were screwed. Didn't make it free. Free means you can do what you want - open means you get to know what everybody else does.

          And for those who say that democracies have to be free, you're right. That's why there aren't any democracies, but a bunch of representative republics. The difference is subtle, but important here. We appoint people to make our decisions - not necessarily to tell us what all those decisions are.

          When it comes right down to it, it's impossible to simultaneously maintain a free, open, secure society. You can maybe pick two out of the three, but those two will compromise the third.

      • I want to see something regarding the press ban. If you mean that the government owned the footage and didn't release it, they're not obligated. If you mean supression of privately owned footage after the 50's, I want to see a source.

        Aren't they? God, you're such a sheep. If "the governmnent" owns the footage, then YOU own it. They're obligated unless they have a hugely important reason not to do so, not just to cover their asses. What do you get in exchange for your freedoms, their protection or their mistrust and irresponsibility?

        • Aren't they? God, you're such a sheep. If "the governmnent" owns the footage, then YOU own it. They're obligated unless they have a hugely important reason not to do so, not just to cover their asses. What do you get in exchange for your freedoms, their protection or their mistrust and irresponsibility?

          See, again, you're missing the whole "democracy is open, republic isn't" argument. I'm not a sheep because I understand both arguments and choose a bit of governmental secrecy - not because I don't want to know their secrets, but because I don't trust everyone they would be telling. I guess irresponsibility is in the eye of the beholder.

          As for footage, first, I'm waiting for a source. Second, for the first few years (even up to 10-15 years), seeing footage of the destruction pattern could actually help other countries (ie, USSR, our mortal enemy at the time - ugh) develop their own bomb. Think about it - if they see exactly how geography, buildings, and such affect the destruction pattern, it could help in planning a bomb. And if they had as much footage as was claimed, the footage was likely collected for development of our next-generation bombs. Remember, as grisly as it was, Hiroshima and Nagasaki presented the only full-scale tests of the bombs, and the only in urban settings (ie, more around than tumbleweed). Hell, why else did we take the film, if not for ruture bomb development - it sure as hell wasn't tourist shots!

          And for chrissake, it wasn't a secret what happened - the fatality statistics were fairly well-known - so there was no motive for cover-your-ass here.

          Also, when a government is concerned, never ascribe to malice what you can ascribe to beuracracy and incompetence.

          So before you go getting all conspiracy-theorist and Stallman on us (information wants to be free...), think about other possibilities. 1, that it was legitimately classified for reasons you don't necessarily understand. 2, that they forgot about it or lost it, or whatever. 3, that the correct 20 people didn't get around to signing off on it's public release.

      • I want to see something regarding the press ban. If you mean that the government owned the footage and didn't release it, they're not obligated. If you mean supression of privately owned footage after the 50's, I want to see a source.

        Google and ye shall receive. I did a search for "hiroshima footage" and the first link that came up was a CNN story [cnn.com] on footage that was buried in a film vault for decades. From the story:

        Months later, Japan's Allied occupiers ordered the film confiscated, branding its images a military secret. But a member of the Japanese film crew that filmed the aftermath made a copy and hid it in the film vault -- apparently fearing that Americans would destroy the original.

        Not necessarily a ban on reporting in the US, but definitely trying to keep documented footage from seeing the light of day.

    • Canada's a state? That's news to them, I'm sure. . .

      Oh, and incidentally: only the ignorant claim the United States is a democracy. A little education in American government makes clear, the United States is a representative republic.

    • operations in 19 states, including Canada

      I hope by "states" you mean nation-states or countries, because the last time I checked Canada wasn't a state. Although I'm afraid to think about what'll happen to Alberta once you guys really start running out of oil...
    • "operations in 19 states, including Canada"

      Um yeah, not to nit-pick, but Canada is a sovereign nation, larger than the US geographicaly, and a member of the G8. It not merely a U.S. state. ;)

  • There is one person prominent in the book (Score:4, Informative)

    by shoppa ( 464619 ) on Friday February 14, 2003 @10:50AM (#5302141)
    It is true that there isn't a whole lot about the scientists in Rhodes' book, it mostly concentrates on the science and engineering they're doing.

    But one person does feature prominently: General Leslie R. Groves, the military director of the project. There are a few other biographies that concentrate specifically on Groves: one by Robert Norris [amazon.com] and another by William Lawren [amazon.com]. But read Rhodes' book first before going into either of these.

  • This book was a Pultizer winner in 1988 for general non-fiction. I read it in the early 90's and enjoyed it. It is somewhat technical, but no so technical that the reader requires a degree in physics to enjoy it. It also covers the moral and political issues facing those involved with developing the bomb. Anyone interested in the history of the first half of the twentieth century will get value out of this book.

  • motivation and spies (Score:2, Interesting)

    by amunter ( 313014 )
    Nor in my mind does he fully answer the question of why the scientists remained motivated to produce the weapons after Germany had been conquered.


    I assume you are talking about why they remained motivated to produce the weapons after Germany was conquered, but before Japan was. The reason which was discussed in the book was that they had already spent a lot of money, and it had been decided by then that the concept would work. Because of the perceived usefullness of the thing to end what looked at the time to be a protracted war with the Japanese they kept going. Just because the initial motivation was as a foil for Germany, it didn't mean it was a bad idea after Germany was gone. Plus by that time the scientists were genuinely interested in the idea and really wanted to see it go boom after living in the desert on the top of a mesa for a few years.

    For the motivation after the end of World War II was over, you should read Rhodes' followup book, Dark Sun, The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb [barnesandnoble.com]. This book goes a lot more into the wholesale operation of Russia's espionage business here in the US after the war and details what was going on at Los Alamos while the Cold War was really building up steam.
  • Consult Richard Feynman's classic Surely you're Joking Mr. Feynman [amazon.com]. In this, for example, Feynman (working on the Manhattan project pre-doctorate) catches a ride to visit his sick wife from the man who would later be shown to be a Russian spy on the project. Awesome book, and required reading for geeks.
  • One of the most important (and stomach churning) things about the book is how it shows how cheap human life became in the first half of the 20th century.

    Uhhhh right. If you travel outside the US at all you would notice that life is still pretty cheap.

  • I could just go look this up, but I wanted real-time opinions. Someone answer me this: why did the United States drop two atomic bombs are civilian targets in Japan? I do not understand why Hiroshima and Nagasaki were targetted for these attacks. I do not understand how anything even remotely moral may be derived from this. Can I get some insight?
    • You might try reading Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire [amazon.com] to get some idea about what the military and politicians thought would have happened if we hadn't dropped the atomic bombs and had had to invade the home islands. Actually, there was a significant amount of discussion among the scientists, military and politicos about whether the bombs should be dropped on a city, exploded over Tokyo Bay or other uninhabited demonstration point. Rhodes' book goes into this as do most of the histories of the end of the war with Japan. Conventional attacks on Japan continued for about another week including some of the largest incendiary attacks of the campaign because it was still unclear that the Japanese would surrender in spite of the atomic bombs. Finally, there was a barely contained mutiny of hardcore zealots within the Japanese military who attempted to prevent the Imperial edict announcing the decision to surrender from being read. So even with the atomic bombings, there were those within the Japanese military who wanted to continue the fight. (Hint: try studying some history instead of just whining).
      • With the war in Europe over, Stalin ahd begun the process of occupying Japan. The dropping of the bomb was designed to initimidate Stalin. The dropping of a second bomb was to show we had a whole arsenal of the things and not just one. Stalin was quite serious about this - even spoke about re-taking Alaska. We knew Japan would surrender soon enough. We knew WWII was over, and the Cold War had begun.

        ...try studying some history instead of just whining...


        Yes, true manly men don't question their leaders using weapons of mass destruction. We worship the use of force. We glory in our opponent's destruction.

        • Would you be so kind as to provide ANY sort of citation of historical sources as a basis for your assertions.

          A few other details:

          Secret (at the time) sessions of the Potsdam conference (late July 1945) specifically addressed coordinating the entry of the Soviet Union into the fight against the Japanese. The conference was in session at the time the first (test) bomb was exploded at Alamagordo, New Mexico yet the planning for the Soviet's entry continued.

          The Soviets accelerated their schedule ahead of what they had promised at Potsdam and attacked on 8 August 1945 after news of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima became known. Far from being intimidated, Stalin attacked Japan to, "get in on the spoils."

          Most of the people in power in "the west" still thought that they could work with Stalin and the Soviets. The setting up of Soviet "puppet goverments" in eastern Europe didn't really get started until after the allies were in post-war disarmament (after Japan had surrendered).

          I think you'll find that each of these items is a well documented historical fact which would seem to indicate that the Cold War had not yet begun. Likewise, you will find the bibliography in "Downfall" to be very well done as far as citing sources indicating that the leadership of the time hardly believed that "...Japan would surrender soon enough." There are several other books on the subject but the one fact I like to cite is this: the U.S. military has not had to strike any additional "Purple Heart" medals since the end of World War II. The stocks they created for the expected casualties from the invaision of Japan have been more than sufficient for the Korean conflict, Viet Nam, etc. I would take this as indicationg that we didn't expect a "push over".
    • Other than the obvious demoralizing effect that it, hopefully, would have on the enemy, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were very lightly defended. Due to the preciousness of the two original bombs, the US did not want to risk flying the Enola Gay into whithering the AAA fire they would have encountered over most industrial and military targets. They were relatively convenient targets.

      Moral? Many thousands of American lives were saved by avoiding an invasion of mainland Japan. The Japanese started the fight. We finished it while trying to minimize our loss of life. Moral enough for me.
      • Actually, by the time the bombs were dropped, the Japanese had stopped firing at small flights of B-29s. These were usually photo-recon or weather flights and not worth opposing. If I remember correctly, there were about 10 cities on the target list and they had, to a great extent, been spared from the regular incendiary attacks that had destroyed most comparable sized Japanese cities. Also, as is pointed out elsewhere in this thread and is well known, Nagasaki was the secondary target; the primary was too obscured by cloud cover. Finally, the general consensus is that Nagaski was actually a poor target since the hilly terrain limited the blast effects of the bomb as compared to Hiroshima.

        I havn't read anything that says the target cities were chosen because they were lightly defnded.
      • Your explanation is incorrect. Hiroshima was picked because it was one of the few industrial cities that hadn't been wiped out by the earlier incindiery attacks.

        The problem was literally one of finding targets that were intact enough to demonstrate the bomb's power and to tangibly impact what little was left of Japan's industry.

        As far as the "thousands of American lives were saved" argument ... the evidence is strong that Japan would've surrendered beforehand if the Emperor's personal safety and ceremonial role in Japanese life were preserved. The US had rejected such offers but after the bombs were dropped did accept them. And note that Hirohito's son is Emperor yet today ...

        Generals Eisenhower and Marshall (the top dog) both opposed dropping the bomb on Japan, as Rhodes explains in the book (and as Ike wrote in his ghost-written autobiography)


    • Why is it moral? You'll have to answer that question on your own; I don't think it was. Why was it perceived to be moral? That would take a book, but there are three possible reasons I can think of, all of which should be seen as merely possibilities, not certainties:


      1. The concept of total war had become central to the way WWII was fought. Though a military theorist would no doubt disagree with my characterization, one could say that "Total war" means "civilians are military assets." This is in part due to civilian bombings in Europe, for instance, the (possibly accidental) bombing the first night over Coventry, and the Allied response in bombing civilian targets in Germany. None of the sides in WWII refrained from bombing civilian targets; and of course Germany did not refrain from executing civilians in their own country and in occupied territories who did not meet with their future plans (i.e., those who were nondesirables: Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, etc.).


      2. There was a wide-spread assumption that the kamikaze attacks toward the end of the war in the Pacific Theater were a foretaste of a wholly militarized civilian population contesting any US attempt to occupy Japan. Looking back on it today, it seems absurd, but it has to be remembered that in the 1940s many folks thought that "Orientals" had a different "mentality" than "Westerners," and that the Japanese were likely to in effect commit suicide in fighting an occupation rather than simply suffer defeat and get on with life. Remember that Japanese Americans were kept in concentration camps during the war: the idea that all people have certain common values simply didn't have the kind of hold on the imagination that it does today. While it is likely that resistance to an occupation would have been quite forceful, I think we nowadays realize that it would not have been the Iwo-Jima-style nightmare the US military planners thought it would be. So from the point of view of the Trinity folks, they were saving American occupying forces (and they were also perhaps saving Japanese civilians, whom they would have assumed would have died in far greater numbers in a violently contested occupation).


      3. On the other hand, in the 30 and 40s, people held the lives of other cultures cheap, and the more unlike a person was to oneself, the more cheaply one held that person's life. Perhaps racism. Is it likely that the bomb would have been used at the same point in the war against Germany if it had been ready? It's possible that it would have been. Obviously this idea conflicts with the idea that it was in part to protect Japanese civilians, but it may not be entirely mutually incompatible.


      Anyway, those are most of the arguments in a nutshell. I'd strongly suggest reading this book on the subject, and Heisenberg's War

    • Either in the book reviewed, or Downfall (mentioned earlier in this thread), there is a great line, to the effect of 'by 1945, we (the American people, Allies, etc) were so sick of the inhumanity of war, that we were willing to tolerate any inhumanity to make it end sooner.' (The actual quote is much more eloquent, and comes with great supporting material.)

      Based on my more than casual reading level about WWII and its end, I'd say that sums it up. The direct consequnces (lots of dead enemy civilians) seemed less bad than the potential consequences of inaction (a war that dragged on another three years in Japan, millions of Japanese and US casualties, etc.).

      It's really difficult, 60 years later, to fathom the effects of four or five years of total war on the decision making process.

      Downfall does make it clear, however, that a US invasion of Japan would have been a disaster in terms of Allied casualties, and Japanese civilian deaths. All of Japan's remaining defenses were targeted at the exact point where the US invasion would have hit, and further, the strategy of bombing cities was to be turned to bombing railheads, which would have totally destroyed the food distribution system in Japan, likely causing the starvation of much of the population.

    • why did the United States drop two atomic bombs are civilian targets in Japan? I do not understand why Hiroshima and Nagasaki were targetted for these attacks.

      Actually only Hiroshima was a civillian target. Although it contained some indistry that was useful to the war effort, it was no more important to the war effort than most other cities. Nagasaki however was the location of a major navel base and was primarily a military target.

      The intentional bombing of civillian populations, as opposed to killing civillians while bombing primarily military targets, was a common feature of the strategies adopted by all of the main participants in WWII. Arguably Germany started the practice in the Spanish Civil war, and continued it with the bombing of civilian populations in the Battle of Britain. The allies later perfected the tactics of population bombing with the development of firebombing tactics and nuclear weapons.

      At the time it was widely recognised that the outcome of a war depended less on what happened on any particular battlefield, and more on the economic power of each side. Thus the bombing of civillians, with the aim of reducing production capacity, was generally recognised as an acceptable strategy.
    • Because it was believed that the Japanese would fight to the last man, as had happened on Iwo Jima and elsewhere. American (and Japanese) casualties could have been truly appalling in a conventional invasion.

      IIRC, one of the targets - I think it was Nagasaki - was only bombed because of heavy cloud cover over the original target. In this respect its inhabitants were particularly unlucky.

  • Feynman (Score:2, Informative)

    by stevey ( 64018 )

    I haven't seen this book, but I'm gonna look out for it now.

    I really did enjoy reading Feynman's accounts of the time which are included in Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman [amazon.co.uk], his mentions focussed on the safety aspects of designing the storage facilities for the euranium.

  • Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Didion Sprague ( 615213 ) on Friday February 14, 2003 @11:12AM (#5302313)
    Rhodes wrote a fantastic sequel, too: "Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb."

    Dark Sun is even more fascinating -- and more ominous. The idea seemed to be in the 50s and 60s to keep making bigger and bigger bombs. Some of the photographs of the test shots are amazing.

    Also, if you're reading this stuff, by all means check out the play "Copenhagen" by Michael Frayn. It details a meeting between Bohr (a Dane) and Heisenberg (a German) in the middle of the war. The text is pretty engaging -- both for the questions it asks (Why did Heisenberg visit Bohr? Was he trying to figure out what Bohr new about the American atomic programs) and for the background it offers about the beginnings of atomic energy. Highly recommended.

    This is off-topic, but I add it because I find it fascinating: but one of the topics touched upon in 'Copenhagen' is the fact that the Germans, apparently, had constructed a reactor in Germany and where literally days away from activating it (without any safety precautions or control mechanisms) when the Allies came crashing through and destroyed it. Why this incident hasn't been made into a film -- even a crappy Bruce Willis/Stallone film -- is beyond me. It's absolutely fascinating -- the idea that the Allies may or may not have know about the reactor but were lucky enough to catch it just before it went live. The reactor was constructed at the bottom of a mountain in a deep cave. It's amazing, actually. Frayn touches upon it in his play when Bohr reminds Heisenberg -- like something straight out of a Bruce Willis movie, in fact -- that had they successfully activated the reactor, there was no mechanism to slow or even control the reaction. It could have conceivably gotten completely out of control. Absolutely frightning.
    • I must voice my disagreement. I don't feel that Rhodes captured the same excitement of fundamentally world-changing events. The first atomic bomb was revolution. Subsequent advances in power constituted evolution.

      As to the German program, it was certainly fascinating, but got coverage in both The Making of the Atomic Bomb and in Copenhagen. Essential reading for people interested in the atomic bomb or physics. Oh, and Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman was indeed most excellent. It is a genuinely entertaining look into the mind of a great modern genius.

      ----
      So a bar walks into a physicist -- oops! wrong reference frame.

      • Re:Dark Sun - not as good (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Friday February 14, 2003 @12:07PM (#5302894)
        The first atomic bomb was revolution. Subsequent advances in power constituted evolution.

        The first atomic bomb was 3 orders of magnitude larger than the largest conventional weapons.

        The biggest thermonuclear bombs were another 3 orders of magnitude larger than the first atomic bomb. The increase in capabilities was just as significant, but it's hard for people to absorb that because the pictures of the explosions lack scaling context and look superficially similar.

        Moving from being able to wreck a few cities with A-bombs to threatening the very existence of civilization itself (mosly through monumental releases of fallout and soot) seems revolutionary to me.

  • For Edward's side of the story, may I recommend reading "Memoirs - A twentieth-Century journey in science and politics" ISBN 0-7382-0532-X. This is his autobiography, which gives some remarkable insights into an incredible portion of our history.

    • Re:Edward Teller (Score:3, Interesting)

      by bastion_xx ( 233612 )
      Teller is about as whacked as they come.

      Eddy was one of the primary culprits that wanted to use nukes in major engineering efforts, such as creating waterways and such. To such ends, tons of radioactive material was taken from the Nevada Test Site up Alaska way. That and the blasts in Amchitka (5 MegaTON below ground test). Six months of my life were spent trying to monitor the dispersal of material up Barrow, AK. Not the best of times....

      My favorite Teller story is when he'd come visit us at LANL. We were working on the Edward Teller envisioned Stars Wars project. Every 6 months or so Ed would drop on by and land by helicopter in our parking lot. Between visits, a liquid hydrogen storage facility was erected and the parking lot closed / marked and not a landing site. Next visit, helicopter lands at the same place and a couple guys get out and spark up some ciggies. Safty Officer went fuggin crazy. Turned out Teller told them to disregard markings and land anyhow.

  • "Nor in my mind does he fully answer the question of why the scientists remained motivated to produce the weapons after Germany had been conquered." A little known fact was that the Japanese had been developing a nuclear device as well. In fact last year the plans for it were returned to the Japanese government from a Japanese Physicist's estate after he died. Also, some of the nuclear material that was confiscated from the Germans at the end of the European theater war was on a German submarine with japanese military officers bound for Japan. The Japanese had plans in development, and they had deals in the works to attain the needed fissile material. This confiscated material was then sent to the manhattan project to supplement the material generated for the devices that the US had been building. I have never read the discussed books, but have found that the Japanese nuclear program is alway ignored when these discussions bring up the fact that Post VE day the US continued development of the weapons. A reason for why alot of the atrocities conspired by the Japanese military were not headline news after the war like the Nuremburg trials is that the US made deals with the responsible officers of the Japanese military in which the US would recieve all of the data and matarials from the tests the US would consider too unethical to perform themselves, in exchange for immunity from prosecution for the alleged war crimes. The Japanese military nuclear program could very well have been lumped into the deal. Thus concealing a very real program.
  • Dark Sun, followup by Rhodes on hydrogen bomb

    The Manhattan Project, 1960's book, interesting read but not as detailed as Rhodes.

    Brighter than a Thousand Suns, wishy washy glorification of physicists and scientists working on bomb

    Military Uses of Atomic Energy, Glasstone for AEC, good but hard to find.

    The Curve of Binding Energy, Mcfee, excellent must read book on terrorist use of nuclear materials

  • Rhodes didn't discuss espionage much in "The Making of the Atomic Bomb", but his follow-up, "Dark Sun", discusses it extensively. (Its subjects are the Soviet nuclear program, and the development of the hydrogen bomb, which really can't be discussed in detail without going deeply into intelligence and counter-intelligence).

    It also takes a good hard look at the leadership of the Strategic Air Command, in the 1950s, which at times came close to advocating a preemptive nuclear strike...
  • Miniature video loops of the full-screen movies showing the atomospheric testing program can be viewed at this DOE website [doe.gov]

  • The value of life... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Alomex ( 148003 ) on Friday February 14, 2003 @11:43AM (#5302672) Homepage

    It is common to see judgments on the use of the atomic bomb from a "holier that thou" perspective and with full use of the benefit of hindsight.

    I don't envy Harry Truman. He had to make a choice between likely tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of GI lives if Japan was invaded or hundreds of thousand Japanase casualties if the bomb was used.

    It was a horrible, subhuman choice to make, which is what war makes us into.

    • Re:The value of life... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by mfrank ( 649656 )
      I don't think Harry Truman had to think too long about the decision, or that he loat any sleep over it. If he hadn't done it he would have been hung from the nearest lamppost by a mob when the people found out about the bomb.

      Another thing to consider: The USSR had just declared war on Japan at the time; if the war had gone on longer it's likely all of Korea would have been occupied by the Soviets, and likely a few other areas in the far east also.
  • Mayhap the reviewer needs to take a look at history for a bit.

    Prior to the modern era, human life was cheap. Incredibly cheap. Armies fought essentially by throwing "cannon fodder" at each other in a hope to win by overwhelming the other side's meat grinder. Industry fired employees for damaging the machines by getting thier limbs caught up in the gearworks--why not, the employees were by far less expensive than the machine!

    Quite simply, the farther back in time you go, back to the dawn of our civilization, the cheaper human life gets. The 20th century didn't "cheapen" human life--we put a value on it far above that of any other time in history.

    • Re:Human life became valueable, not cheap (Score:4, Insightful)

      by praksys ( 246544 ) on Friday February 14, 2003 @01:05PM (#5303509)
      Prior to the modern era, human life was cheap.

      True enough, but surely an over-simplification. In the 19th century you can find lots of examples where human life was not sufficiently valued, but it is very hard to find the sorts of extreme examples, of human life being treated as entirely disposable, that you can find in the 20th century.

      One of the really astounding features of attitudes towards the value of human life in the early 20th century is that even liberal democratic states often viewed their own citizens as disposable material. Consider the way that the British conducted war in WWI. Attrition was not just an accidental featrure of WWI, it was actually the strategy adopted by the British (and most other nations). Men would be flung at enemy defenses, just as artillery shells would be flung at the same defenses, until those defenses crumbled. The loss of human life was entirely acceptable, so long as the loss of human life on the other side exceeded the loss on your own side. Prior to WWI warfare had almost never reached such an extreme level of brutality, and had almost never produced such high casualty rates.

      That is just one example taken from the policies of a relatively enlightened nation. If you look at some of the other things that went on between 1900 and 1960 you can find far worse - from the industrialised extermination of the holocaust to campaigns of mass starvation in Russia and China.

      Attitudes towards the value of human life have had an up-and-down ride. I agree that the general trend has been up, but the first half of the 20th century marked a major departure from that trend.

    • Not at all. The cheapening of human life (and other life, really) is a product of industrialisation. It really is the rise of the machine.

      It's also one of the products of overpopulation. That has happened before, but never so commonly before the 20th century. In a small community, each individual life has a great impact. In an anonymous society that's no longer true.

      In fact the entire notion of a "value" to human life is a modern one. Think about it. At one time the life of a person (albeit where "person" was variously defined but often meant "male of the correct racial ancestry") wasn't something you'd compare to goods; people weren't a commodity. Nowadays they absolutely are. Cotter pin that prevents gas tank explosions? Too expensive a unit cost - we'll settle the lawsuits. There was a time when this wouldn't even have made sense. So the final reason why human life has become cheap is because of the notion that currency can be used to evaluate anything. Not just human lives but entire ecosystems.

      We still have vestiges of the older system of thought; murder is still held to be qualitatively different from property crime (though the attendant civil cases with cash damages will gradually erode that). But I don't think we'll see a return to that way of thinking until the end of money - and while I do think that's inevitable, it's probably gonna get worse before it gets better.
  • Where do you look if you want to just find a simple HOWTO doc? =P

  • ... is Robert Jungk's "Brighter than a Thousand Suns" [amazon.com] which is a little dated but a real page turner. As it gives a lot of room to the scientists' perspectives (both technical and ethical )it might be one especially for the slashdot reader
  • It's a great, involving book about truly horrible weapons. My favorite bit from the book is that early on Bohr is asked about what it would take to separate enough U-235 to make a bomb, and he said that you'd have to turn the entire country into a factory to do it.

    When given a tour of massive Oak Ridge and Hanford projects after production was under way, a Manhattan project scientist said "See! We did it!" And Bohr said, "well, yes, but you did turn the entire country into a factory..."

  • You wouldn't ask why he didn't discuss the espionage around atomic bomb development nor the motivation to continue development after the war in the first volume.

    Because much of "Dark Sun" is devoted to those two topics and to their effects on the Soviet nuclear weapons program and the Cold War.
  • I thought the Iraqis invented "WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION". So it was the fucking US all along, eh?
    Double standards.

Slashdot Top Deals

Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend. -- Theophrastus

Close