The Birth of the Bomb

The book opens with the affairs leading up to World War II. Jews in German controlled lands fell under many new restrictive laws including one not often cited in American history books which required all Jewish held accounts to be transferred to special accounts under the control of the Minister of Economic Affairs. Reparations amounting to millions of Deutsch Marks for the murder of an official at the German embassy in Paris were to be skimmed from all Jewish accounts.

Under the heavy weight of Nazi controlled Germany, many affluent and well educated Jews left for other parts of Europe, England, and the USA. Some specific names the author wished to pick out of those leaving for England included Rudolf Peirls, Franz Simon, Dr. Kurti, Dr. Kuhn, Max Born, and Otto Frisch.

Against the backdrop of Jewish persecution the story of Dr. Hahn and Professor Lise Meitner played out. Professor Meitner, a Jewish physicist from Vienna, along with Dr. Hahn, the director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry, were the first to realize that they had split a uranium atom. Because of progressively stricter laws regarding Jewish professors, Professor Meitner was forced to flee to Sweden before the research was complete. Dr. Hahn, requiring a top-notch theoretician, called upon the exiled Meitner to solve the final pieces of the fission puzzle.

Frederic Joliot-Currie, the head of the French team which first grasped the potential of a nuclear weapon and atomic reactor was also introduced. His team did much of the earliest theoretical research and experimentation related to atomic energy and the bomb.

The British government, seeing all-out war on the horizon and with the inkling of an idea of how important nuclear research might become, attempted to secure the uranium supplies in the Belgian Congo in May of 1939. They were not successful in securing the ore but did succeed in alerting the Belgians to remain vigilant.

Chapter 2: First Failures

The French team, proceeding along with their research, takes out the first five patents on a nuclear bomb and reactor. The issue of prior patents resurfaces several times during the development of the bomb project in Britain.

Soon, the French are joined in their research by Britain and Germany. Germany’s entry was played down as a half-hearted attempt with little chance of success. Britain’s effort was cast in the best of lights.

The British project found a home in the Committee for Scientific Survey of Air Defense, also known as the Tizard Committee after the man who ran it. Because of the secretive nature of RADAR and other vital national defense projects, only British scientists were allowed to participate. In fact, natural born British scientists were completely drawn away from such theoretical fields as nuclear weapons to the secret national defense projects. However, because of the secretive nature of these projects, non-native scientists were left largely in the cold and with little to do. This allowed these non-native researchers and theoreticians to spend some time thinking about the potential for an atomic bomb.

Initial thoughts are that an atomic bomb is impossible due to the difficulty of separating U235 from U238.

Chapter 3: Second Thoughts

The French team, still hard at work on the theory behind the bomb, makes the first critical mass calculations. Their best guess is 40 tons.

As the summer winds down and professors get ready to head back to their university labs, war breaks out in Europe. In Britain, many arrangements were made in the lead-up to the war to have scientists automatically transfer to key war-time positions. Now, with the start of the war, scientists are reshuffled into new positions and new research.

As was mentioned in the previous chapter, only British physicists were affected by these new assignments. The non-native physicists were able to occupy themselves with the bomb. Of particular note were Peierls and Frisch.

Initially, everyone thought of the bomb as just another weapon to be used against armies according to the conventional rules of war. No one thought that it would be used against civilian targets. The author touches upon this basic misunderstanding of the weapon repeatedly throughout the book.

Research into the bomb was spurred on by the fear that the Germans and maybe even the Italians were far ahead on nuclear research specifically to develop a weapon. The descriptions of what a dictatorship is capable of in terms of raw effort filled many pages. The general consensus seemed to be that if the Germans or Italians put their minds to it, a bomb would quickly become a reality.

The 10^th of April, 1940 went down as an important date in nuclear history. It marks the first time that a government sponsored committee met to discus the development of a nuclear weapon in any country in the world. That honor goes to Britain.

Chapter 4: France Wins the Heavy Water

The French team, progressing rapidly with their research, decided that heavy water was the best route to go for further atomic research. Enlisting the help of Lieutenant Jacques Allier, the team managed to secure all of Norsk Hydro’s heavy water supply. It was smuggled by Allier and his associates from Norway to the UK via airplane. The undercover French military officers and their cargo of heavy water proceeded by train down the length of Britain and finally across the channel by boat with their precious cargo.

Chapter 5: Search for the Bomb

In yet another first for the world, Britain is the first to install a committee with government funding to conduct research on the atomic bomb. The Thomson Committee, as its known, was setup in April 1940 with a modest startup fund.

This chapter also introduced another, more famous committee. The Maud committee was founded. Several theories behind the naming of the committee were proposed including a few which proved that the name was rather poorly chosen regardless of where it originated.

Overshadowing all other events in the realms of Britain, the Battle of Britain raged on in the skies above London. Scientists in some circles began worrying about “dirty bombs” and thus began testing some of the craters left behind in London to make sure that Germany wasn’t trying to contaminate London with radiation.

As the war progressed and Belgium came under threat, the Belgian Congolese ore was quietly spirited away to safer locations, eventually ending up in two warehouses in New York City.

Another first for Britain was mentioned in this chapter: Klaus Fuchs, the atomic spy. He was only mentioned one or two other times in the book in spite of the large role he played in sharing atomic secrets with the Russians.

In addition to everything else going on in this chapter, a British research team began investigating gaseo
us barrier diffusion material. Initial ideas included hammering wire gauze flat to make very fine holes and beating gold mesh in the same manner. Neither method worked. Various techniques used in lithography were also investigated. One, in fact, proved quite promising.

Chapter 6: The French Team Reaches Britain

This chapter was occupied entirely with the escape of the French scientists from a quickly crumbling free France. Most of the scientists, all of the heavy water, and their radium sample made it to Britain safely. A notable exception was Joliot-Curie who stayed behind to fight against the Nazis as part of the French Underground. He came to head the group and even went so far as to build bombs and other weapons for the effort in a laboratory adjacent to a Nazi research lab. The author implies that, had he been taken to Britain, work on the bomb might have progressed much faster.

Chapter 7: A Plan for the Bomb

The Battle of Britain continued through this chapter with bombs raining down on London every night. Against the sounds of bomb blasts, plans for security and secrecy were discussed. Ruses and counterintelligence were implemented to throw the Germans off.

Klaus Fuchs was once again mentioned in this chapter in relation to the security restrictions placed on all foreign-nationals within Britain that were not lifted for nuclear scientists specifically to keep German spies from suspecting anything was in the works. Restrictions went as far as to prohibit foreigners from owning bicycles or traveling without special permit.

This chapter marked the turning point from people asking the question of if the bomb could be built to if it should be built. At this stage the concern was not the effects of the bomb but, rather, the expense and manpower drain during the particularly dark days of the Battle of Britain.

Another first for Britain, via the remnants of the French team, now installed at Cambridge, was the first hard set of calculations and experiments showing that a nuclear reactor would work.

Chapter 8: The Bomb and the Boiler

The effort in Britain now split into two distinct tasks: the “bomb” and the “boiler”. The bomb was, naturally, a uranium bomb while the boiler was a nuclear reactor that also could be used to create the newly discovered element plutonium which could also be used to create a nuclear weapon. It was decided that most war-time work would focus on the bomb as the boiler would take longer to produce and was not immediately a weapon. Another strike against the boiler came as scientists at the time had never seen enough plutonium in one place to adequately measure its chemical properties. Perhaps if they had, the boiler would have been pursued more readily.

An interesting side note in this chapter comes from the naming of element 94, plutonium. The author claims that the name was chosen independently in both Britain and America at roughly the same time.

In yet another first for Britain, the various committees start to involve industry, specifically Imperial Chemical Industries, in the industrialization of the project. The race for the bomb moved out of the laboratory and into the factory first in Britain. Imperial Chemical Industries pursued, along with the scientists, gaseous diffusion barrier technology. Moving away from initial attempts using wire gauze and mesh, the British effort focused on lithographic processes used in photo printing in newspapers to literally print new hole patterns.

One first that Britain clearly would like to forget came in the thoughts of transferring parts of the project to Canada or the United States. There was talk of transferring development work of the boiler to ICI in the UK and DuPont in America to allow private industry to develop the power applications of the reactor.

In what could be described as the high point of the British effort, the Maud Report is issued. The author states that this was the first time that any official report said the bomb would work.

Chapter 9: The Other Side of the Hill

The German effort to build the bomb was never far from British scientists’ minds. The British scientists attempted to track the movement of German scientists by scrutinizing German scientific papers, lectures, and journals. The security apparatus of Britain also attempted to discover if, in fact, Germany was working on the bomb. Some of the officers involved stated that it was an almost impossible task to definitivel
y prove that the Germans were not working on the bomb. The allies would not know until the end of the war that Germany had not developed its own bomb.

One successful British intelligence effort in this chapter came in the form of the destruction of the heavy water production cells at Norsk Hydro and the loss of the last Norsk Hydro stocks of heavy water bound for Germany.

With the loss of the heavy water, Germany’s bid for the bomb failed. The author continued on to say that the German effort progressed no farther than efforts in Britain in 1939 and in general belittled German efforts.

Chapter 10: The British Decision

This chapter sees the British reach a decision point in their effort. Four questions surface which will define the extent of British involvement for the rest of the war.

Should the bomb be built?

Should the reactor be built?

Should the reactor be built by private industry or the government?

Should the Americans be involved?

It was decided that the bomb should be built out of fear of a German bomb and of the fear that it would be the only way to retake the continent in the event that America didn’t enter the war and Russia fell to Germany. An outright offensive on Nazi-controlled Europe by the then-lone Britain would have been suicidal without the aid of the bomb or the Americans.

The reactor, after some hesitation, would be pursued but not as an immediate weapon of war or power source for World War II. In spite of initial commitments by both the government and private industry, the responsibility of reactor development would stay firmly within government hands.

In what was to become the death-knell for British ownership of the bomb, the British effort linked up with the American effort and began preparing for the transfer scientists and research to America.

Chapter 11: The Americans Take Over

A previously hesitant America was suddenly launched into all-out war by the bombing of Pearl Harbor. This event also marked the real kickoff of the American bomb project. Soon, the American project would vacuum up most of the allied nuclear physicists and scientists.

Before the bulk of British atomic research and development was transferred to America, Britain had one more first. The first prototype diffusion plant was built in Wales in the early days of 1942. It was connected to a poison gas factory to mask its true intent. Britain, however, was soon to loose its nuclear research monopoly.

British scientific teams began streaming to the American project in 1943. Many of the foreign scientists were hurriedly rushed through the naturalization process and often times only received their new British passports as the boarded ships for America. American customs officials were often times suspicious of the incoming British nuclear scientists due to their brand new passports and non-English accents.

Initially Britain and America went in on the bomb project as equal partners with information and decision making supposedly flowing in both directions. Soon, however, even Churchill recognized that Britain was being shut out of major decisions and was not receiving the full picture. In the end, the decision to drop the bomb was made by America largely without British input in spite of several previous agreements that both countries would have to approve of the use of atomic weapons.

The author stated that the reason for Britain being muscled around was the sheer size of the American effort. In Britain, the scientists had decided to pursue the uranium bomb rather than plutonium. In America both were pursued at the same time. America had the distinct advantage and used it to her advantage against Britain.

This chapter also sees the daring escape of Bohr from Denmark to the UK via a boat ride to Sweden and a harrowing airplane flight to Scotland. Once Bohr learned of the development of the bomb he proposed that the details of the bomb should be shared with the Russians as soon as possible. Other scientist also took up his calls of scientific openness with the Russians. Bohr soon went on to America to consult on the developmen
t of the bomb.

Work on the first atomic pile outside of the United States began in Canada as a joint project between the USA, Britain, and to a lesser extent, Canada. It was portrayed as mainly a British endeavor.

Chapter 12: The End Product

The bomb suddenly was realized in all its horror over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945. The word was roughly and irreversibly shoved into the atomic age. In Britain many did not understand why the bomb had been dropped on Japan when the Japanese atomic program clearly had come to nothing. The author went to great lengths to explain the difference between firebombing and dropping an atomic bomb on a city in spite of a similar number of casualties and devastating effects.

After Japan was bombed, the Americans quickly rolled out several press releases claiming credit for the development of the bomb. This caught Tube Alloys, the official code name given to the group charged with developing atomic weapons for Britain, by surprise. Tube Alloys issued their own press statement several days later trying to set the record straight. Unfortunately for British ego, most of the world ignored Britain’s contribution to the bomb.

The author puts forth the claim that, had America not entered the war and show interest in the bomb, the bomb would have been built by Britain in Canada with minimal American help. Even with the prize of the first bomb going to America, the author found many other reasons to be proud of Britain.

The book closes with British scientists returning to their labs to resume work on a purely British bomb. The last paragraph sums up many peoples’ concerns of the bomb and of scientific research: the dilemma of ensuring that ideas are used in the best way possible, responsibly, and only after due thought to the consequences. It clearly was not a new problem but, with the dawn of the atomic age, it suddenly took on a new urgency.

Tie-ins

Our Textbook

The links between Richard Rhodes’ book, “The Making of the Atomic Bomb,” and Ronald W. Clark’s “The Birth of the Bomb,” are many and obvious. The first ten chapters of Rhodes book are largely dedicated to the early efforts of the Germans, the French, and the British. References to further British involvement are peppered throughout the later parts of Rhodes’ book.

For instance, the Maud report weighed heavily on the full-scale launch of the atomic bomb project in America. The first demonstration of fission in Germany by Hahn started the whole process and the work of many scientists from Britain on the Manhattan project proved invaluable. Also, the first nuclear spy, Klaus Fuchs, came to the project via Britain. All of these events were emphasized in Rhodes’ book and, for the most part, also emphasized in Clark’s book.

The Movies

One obvious tie-in comes in the form of the movie, “Hitler’s A-Bomb,” on the destruction of Norsk Hydro and the German heavy water stocks. It expanded Clark’s few paragraphs on the subject into a full made-for-tv movie on the subject complete with historic reenactments and computer simulations of events as they would have happened.

The rest of the movies had little tie-in with Clark’s book.

Analysis and Commentary

Eurocentric

The first thing that struck me about this book was its Eurocentric attitude. Atomic research in America was only cursorily mentioned while the efforts in France and especially Britain were given center stage.

Anglocentric

Not surprisingly, the author was very anglocentric in his writing. He constantly was
pointing out firsts for Britain as a sport announcer would call out goals, baskets, or touchdowns in a competitive sporting event. I didn’t find anything particularly wrong with this approach to relaying the story of the atomic bomb project but in the end this book can only stand in connection to another, more comprehensive book on the overall allied effort to build an atomic weapon. Were this read in absence of knowledge of the American effort, a person would get the impression that Britain did everything short of actually building and dropping the bomb.

One thing I found rather interesting was the allusions to Klaus Fuchs’s spying activities. Rather than take credit for one of the biggest security breaches during World War II, it was only mentioned in passing and without noting any role played by Britain aside from Fuchs’s connection with the British atomic effort. It is an understatement to think that perhaps the author only wishes to show Britain in a positive light.

Pomp and Circumstance

In fact, it seems that the entire point of this book was to recast the development of the atomic bomb from a primarily American affair to a European and primarily British affair. While true that the Germans did discover fission and the French were the first and largest on the early research scene, Britain’s roll is highly overemphasized. This text was almost surely devoured by the British public eager for something to be proud of as Britain quickly lost her empire throughout the mid 20^th century.

In light of the loss of Empire, this book makes much more sense. Britain had just lost Nigeria to independence and would loose Sierra Leon and Tanganyika the same year this book was published. A short time later the bulk of the remaining British colonies in Africa would find themselves free from British rule and the British would find that they lacked an empire of which to be proud.

Much Ado About Nothing?

An open question in my mind remains. How truly significant was the British contribution to the development of the first atomic weapons? This book clearly puts the onus on Britain and her physicists and scientists. Other texts generally place most of the contributions to the atomic bomb on the shoulders of the Americans. Clearly, America invested the manpower and resources to build the infrastructure and work out the details of atomic weapons. There is some doubt in my mind whether or not Britain, with the help of Canada, would have been able to fully unlock the secrets and weaponize the bomb.

Certainly, had Britain and her Empire remained the only power checking Nazi expansionism, the British would have aggressively pursued bomb research and development but would they have had enough men, enough money, and enough resources? After the war the answer was yes with the first British atomic weapon being tested in 1952. In light of the first soviet atomic bomb test in 1949, it seems that Britain, armed with nearly the same information as the USSR, should have been able to produce the bomb faster. Perhaps, as the author outlined in chapter 3, the dictatorial aspects of the USSR allowed for a quicker completion of atomic research than in the more democratic and open Britain.

Bottom Line

This book did exactly what it was supposed to. It showcased British developments that lead to the first atomic bomb. It helped boost British moral during the swift decline of the empire. Finally, it put a decided European and British spin on the birth of the atomic bomb.

References

Rhodes, Richard. (1986). The Making of the Atomic Bomb

Clark, Ronald W. (1961). The Birth of the Bomb. London: Phoenix House LTD.

“Hitler’s A-Bomb: Greatest Raids of World War II.” The History Channel.

The Birth of the Bomb

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