Bomb: The Race to Build—and Steal—the World's Most Dangerous Weapon

Nonfiction | Book | Middle Grade | Published in 2012

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4-Epilogue

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Themes

The Race to Build a Bomb

The driving force in Bomb is not simply the process of developing the weapon but the urgency behind those efforts. With the discovery of uranium fission in 1938, physicists around the world quickly realized that this could lead to a super-bomb that could win the war brewing in Europe. While both sides planned invasions and counter-attacks, scientists rushed to complete a single weapon that could make all the other battles unimportant.

While the situation likely would have led to an arms race regardless, the nature of this particular conflict raised the stakes. America and Britain correctly guessed that Nazi Germany was working on an A-bomb: They had requisitioned a uranium mine in Czechoslovakia, and they seemed preoccupied with a heavy-water plant in Norway that was vital to their research. Given Hitler’s aspirations towards world domination and obvious disregard for human life, getting the bomb first became an existential matter (Japan also had a bomb program and imperial designs, but a lack of uranium hampered its research). Meanwhile, the Soviet Union craved such a weapon to push back German invaders and perhaps to brandish at the US after the war ended.

This is the backdrop against which research into nuclear weapons unfolded. Although Sheinkin’s account of the war does reference actual combat—most notably, the Norwegian resistance fighters who, backed by British military assets, sabotaged Germany’s heavy-water supply, effectively ending the German atomics project—most of the work’s tension and conflict center on the work going on behind the scenes. Everyone wanted a bomb as fast as possible. The Soviets, who had few available resources, were so desperate that they resorted to spying on their own allies to learn how atomic bombs work. Even those who were “winning” the race—the US and British scientists—didn’t know for certain that they were in lead, thanks to the uncertainties of wartime. Therefore, they continued at the fastest pace possible. Blessed with many German scientists who escaped the Nazis, the Manhattan Project moved forward rapidly. At Los Alamos, researchers worked day and night six days a week to speed up the program, but the progress was never fast enough for General Leslie Groves, who decided, “[W]e had to assume that the most competent German scientists and engineers were working on an atomic program with the full support of their government” (116).

Even the war’s end didn’t stop the race. America’s new rival, the Soviet Union, got its hands on bomb-making information and began to build its own weapons. Though the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the US is long over, the weapons from that era still exist and continue to threaten life on Earth; meanwhile, many more nations have developed their own weapons. Thus, the nuclear arms race, begun in the heat of war in 1939, continues.

Trust and Suspicion in Wartime

World War II took place during a time of mixed loyalties among scientists. Many working in America and England sympathized with Marxism, an anti-capitalist philosophy, and a few found no problem with helping the Communist Soviet Union as they fought Nazi invaders. Spying is, by its nature, hard to detect, and US officials had to remain alert to the possibility that Soviet agents were infiltrating the Manhattan Project. Their suspicions often fell on the wrong people; resentment and anger clouded the work of otherwise loyal Americans, and the high stakes of nuclear armament complicated straightforward ideas of patriotism.

In Sheinkin’s account, Oppenheimer is the prime example of this mistrust. Oppenheimer had flirted with Communism during the late 1930s and attended discussion groups led by Communists. When the US joined the war effort and he was picked to lead the Manhattan Project’s science division, Soviet agents did in fact target him, hoping he would pass along information that might help the Russians build a bomb with which to defeat Hitler. One of the agents who tried to glean information from Oppenheimer was a colleague, UC Berkeley literature professor Haakon Chevalier, leader of the Communist discussion group that Oppenheimer visited. Oppenheimer turned Chevalier down flat: Despite his political leanings, he was loyal to America. However, his hesitation to report his friend to Groves increased suspicions among US government officials that Oppenheimer was a traitor.

Groves vouched for Oppenheimer, who eventually presented the US with an atomic weapon. The conclusion of the war did not put a stop to the US government’s suspicions, however, in part because Oppenheimer became an outspoken critic of nuclear armament. The situation reveals the complexities of ideals of loyalty in wartime, especially when weapons as devastating as atomic bombs become involved. In Oppenheimer’s eyes, the US weapons program constituted a threat to all of humanity—the American people included. This perspective was at odds with US policy, which increasingly viewed stockpiling nuclear weapons as a safeguard against war.

Ironically, this idea of mutually assured destruction had been Ted Hall’s rationale for disloyalty. While suspicion focused on Oppenheimer, Hall—as well as Los Alamos scientist Klaus Fuchs and Army machinist Sergeant David Greenglass—quietly passed information to the Soviets. They believed the Russian argument that, as a war ally, the Soviet Union should be privy to the latest information on high-tech weaponry, if only to defeat the invading German army. The spies did, however, complete their work on the atomic bomb so that it could be deployed against the US and Soviet Union’s common enemies. Everyone involved in the Manhattan Project, from US and British workers to Soviet spies, wanted to defeat Nazi Germany and therefore wanted the bomb project to succeed.

Most of the spies were eventually found out, and some—especially the Rosenbergs, go-betweens for the Soviets—received severe punishments. Nevertheless, some of those who worked on the bomb project—especially Oppenheimer—found their efforts to protect the US tainted by suspicion for the remainder of their lives.

Pride and Guilt Among the Weapon Makers

In focusing on the scientists who built the atomic bomb, Sheinkin explores the mixed feelings that the breakthrough evoked. The researchers felt a desperate need to build an atomic bomb before Germany could do so; furthermore, as scientists, they were eager to be on the cutting edge of developments in nuclear physics. So busy did they become with the complex calculations and designs for the weapon that it was not until they detonated one at the Trinity test that they began to realize the terrible danger their device presented to the world at large.

Six years of hard effort by tens of thousands of workers led to the Trinity test, where a plutonium bomb was detonated to tremendous effect on July 16, 1945. Oppenheimer’s team was elated, but soon they realized that the sheer immensity of the explosion meant that wars would become much more devastating: “We knew the world would not be the same” (185). The use of atomic weapons in actual combat only deepened these misgivings. As the B-29 bomber Enola Gay circled the mushroom cloud rising from Hiroshima, the co-pilot thought, “My God, what have we done?” (197). On hearing details of the devastation, one Los Alamos scientist threw up. Even those indirectly involved in the weapons’ development and deployment were affected. Otto Hahn, who had discovered uranium fission and worked on the Germans’ atomic bomb program, briefly contemplated suicide for his role in creating these terrible weapons. Einstein later declared that “annihilation of any life on earth has been brought within the range of technical possibilities” (232).

In Sheinkin’s account, Oppenheimer becomes the spokesman for these regrets, making several trips to Washington to warn against nuclear proliferation. His pleas fell on deaf ears; Truman responded with “disgust” to Oppenheimer’s remark that he felt he had “blood on [his] hands” (217), apparently feeling his scruples had no place amid the realities of modern warfare. However, it’s unclear whether the pragmatic approach to nuclear armament that the US adopted was any safer than the disarmament that Oppenheimer advised. In 1949, the Soviet Union began production of its own atomic weapons. The resulting arms race generated tens of thousands of nuclear devices that cast a shadow over the future of humanity and solidified the making of the atomic bomb as one of the world’s great moral dilemmas.