His country was the Nazis Bohr was shocked Teller retorted that he knew the Russian Communists better than his accusers did, since his mother and sister were suffering terribly in Hungary.A taste of Teller's brand of sardonic humour parries this charge: When Beria went to Stalin to tell him of the successful explosion of the Russian bomb, he asked the dictator what he should do. (He had been tipped off obliquely by Sir James Chadwick, Master of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, that there was a security leak, before Klaus Fuchs was uncovered.)Another charge was that Teller broke ranks among senior scientists who would otherwise have been unanimous against going ahead with the H-bomb. Because of the Chevalier case (involving the passing of secrets to the Soviets), he said he was in principle against giving loose clearance.Asked in 1954 if Oppenheimer should be given clearance, Teller said that, as far as intention was concerned, he did not believe Oppenheimer wished to betray the United States; as far as his actions and talk were concerned, he did not know, and he wished that the security of the country was in hands that he understood. In fact, it was, as Teller understatedly described it, "a somewhat involved story". Teller regarded Oppenheimer as a very complicated man, but as a "truly excellent leader; I liked and respected him".But, in the summer of 1945, Teller declined to sign a round-robin on the use of nuclear weapons (partly in the light of what had happened to Landau) He was called on that account to Washington. Actually, the decision was made by Harry Truman, Winston Churchill and nobody else.The second charge is that Teller "shopped" Robert Oppenheimer, director of the weapons laboratory at Los Alamos, when, at the time of the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings, the US Atomic Energy Commission held an inquiry after he was accused of being an agent of the Soviet Union. The first charge is that he was responsible for the decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In fact, alone among the scientists, he wanted to explode the Los Alamos device 10,000 metres above Tokyo Bay, to let the Emperor and eight million Japanese see the device before having to use it in earnest.
Charge and counter-defence can only be deployed in necessarily truncated form. The fact that Landau could be sent to Siberia, and his life endangered, made an indelible impression on Teller.The charges made against Teller's conduct are legion. During his time at Leipzig, he became extremely close to Lev Landau, the Nobel prizewinning Leningrad physicist, who in the middle 1930s was an ardent Communist (constantly teasing Teller about the democratic system). Had Heisenberg been his own self - he never made a mistake - those blunders would not have happened!Teller concluded that Heisenberg had deliberately sabotaged the German bomb, and both from knowing his character, and from the evidence of the secret tapes made by the British authorities at a farm in England between 6 and 10 August 1945, when interned German scientists discussed among themselves Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Teller was keen to work with former German colleagues.His attitude to the Russians was altogether different. I hope our friends in the US will not succeed either." Heisenberg told Bohr and the German authorities that one could not use carbon, and one had to use heavy water That was a big mistake Heisenberg allowed the graphite used to be very impure That was an even bigger mistake. Outside in the garden, Heisenberg said, "I'm working on nuclear experiments; I hope they do not succeed. Heisenberg, assuming there were bugging devices in Bohr's house, said, "I'm working hard for my country." His country was the Nazis Bohr was shocked. Inevitably Teller, who had a horror of simplification to the point of distortion, retorted: It's not uncomplicated. In 1940, when the Germans overran Copenhagen, Niels Bohr, who was half-Jewish, thought he was destined for a concentration camp. Heisenberg, with some courage, as he was himself suspected of being anti-Nazi, went to Copenhagen to see Bohr, his old teacher, at his house, provided by Karlsbad, the beer manufacturers. I went along as his chauffeur." In truth, it was the 31-year-old Teller who galvanised Szilard to galvanise Einstein to make full use of his prestigious access to FDR.I asked Teller in 1994 what his considered opinion was on the delicate question of Heisenberg and the German bomb. This he did: the US began on their own programme in 1941.As Teller's self-deprecating humour put it: "Leo Szilard was a wonderful and ingenious man who could do anything - except drive a motor car. |
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