by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, 2005
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
Mesmerizing, enthralling book. I read it because the movie, Oppenheimer, was based on this book. The book is 591 pages long. It took me almost 6 weeks to read it. The movie follows the book closely, but the book is so much more detailed (of course) and helps to explain much of what was going on in the movie.
Without J. Robert Oppenheimer, I don’t think the Atomic Bomb would have been built. He organized the building of it from start to finish, even picking the location of Los Alamos, the place in New Mexico where he managed 1000 people and got it done, from inception to use, in 2 years (1943 to 1945). He was an amazing man. This book covers his entire life. From privileged youth to painful death from throat cancer. He was born April 22, 1904, to Jewish immigrant father and artist mother, in New York, NY. He died at the age of 62 on February 18, 1967, in Princeton, NJ.
This book is so well-written that I feel a closeness to Oppenheimer, and such respect and sympathy for him. He was almost destroyed because of the enmity of one man, Lewis Strauss. Oppenheimer made a fool of him publicly and Strauss never forgave him and looked for opportunities to destroy him. He almost did, in 1954, with a completely bogus hearing based on one conversation Oppenheimer had in 1943 in his kitchen (the Chevalier Affair), and Oppenheimer’s prior allegiance to communists in the 1930s, when the US was in the midst of a depression and his graduate students could not find work. He helped out causes that helped these poor graduate students, and he helped the poor, and he also helped financially the soldiers fighting against fascism in Spain. All these things were when he thought Communism was good, as did many, many people. That was the kind of Communism he supported. He was never a card-carrying member of the Communist party. And he became anti-communist when he saw what Russia became under Lenin’s, and then Stalin’s, Communism; murderous dictatorships.
At any rate, Lewis Strauss was bent on destroying Oppenheimer and nearly did. Another reason Strauss came up with to try and destroy Oppenheimer was Oppenheimer’s reluctance and disapproval of building the “Super” bomb. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which were bombed using the atom bomb he orchestrated the building of at Los Alamos, there were scientists that wanted to build the “Super” bomb – the thermonuclear bomb, 1000 times more lethal than the atom bomb. Oppenheimer knew it could be built but didn’t want it to be built. He advocated instead, using the smaller nuclear bombs as tactical weapons, and also being completely open with USSR and the world as to the science in hopes of preventing a nuclear arms race. The powers that were in charge wanted the Super and got it, and we had a nuclear arms race for decades, amassing thousands of bombs and spending trillions of dollars.
This book is an excellently written, deep-dive into J. Robert Oppenheimer. He was a heavy smoker from an early age. He was charismatic. He was loved and hated. He was a physicist. He was intense. His wife, Kitty, was an alcoholic. They drank a lot. He made delicious martinis. After his hearing, in which he loses his security clearance, he and Kitty and daughter, Toni, start living on St. John for months every year. The hearing is eventually shown to be the sham it was, and Robert F. Kennedy is going to present him with the Fermi Prize but Kennedy was shot and killed in November 1963. President Lyndon B. Johnson awards him the prize instead. Also, in 1959, Strauss was nominated to be commerce secretary by President Eisenhower, but Strauss lost by a vote of 49-46, because of the sham of the Oppenheimer case. Then Senator Robert F. Kennedy, was one of three to vote against Strauss’ confirmation, once they found out what really went on in that hearing.
So, Oppenheimer is vindicated, sort of. He conducts himself admirably throughout this ugly, hateful trial. This is presented extremely well in the movie. The actor who played Oppenheimer, Cillian Murphy, looks and acts like Oppenheimer. He won the Oscar for Best Actor.
But, the trial/hearing ages Oppenheimer. He never really recovers. He eventually gets throat cancer and undergoes lots of radiation treatments. He dies of it. Kitty drops his whole urn with his ashes in the Caribbean Ocean off the coast of St. John.
Martin J. Sherwin was awarded the contract to write this biography in 1979. He thought he would be able to write it in 5 years. The volume of material on Oppenheimer was immense. He spent 6 years just going from one thing to another; interview to interview; 10,000 pages from the FBI alone; archives, letters, memorandums, documents. Finally, 25 years later, in 2005, and with the help of Kai Bird, the book was published. It is excellent! I’m so glad they made a movie about it. There is one thing in the movie that was not in the book, though. The movie shows Lewis Strauss, played so extremely well by Robert Downey, Jr., watching Oppenheimer and Einstein having a conversation together, leaving Strauss behind, ignoring him. Strauss thinks the two are talking about him. He carries this grudge throughout and it is one of the reasons he so wants to destroy Oppenheimer. The movie ends revealing the conversation to be about something to do with physics, nothing about Strauss. This whole conversation is not mentioned anywhere in the book. But there is plenty of other fuel for the fire, for the hatred and enmity of Strauss towards Oppenheimer. Strauss was ugly, bitter, unforgiving, hateful, vengeful, and used his power for evil. Wayne said the movie wanted to show how paranoid Strauss was, that the whole thing was a creature of Strauss’s insecure imaginings.
Here are some of the interesting parts of the book:
pg. 79 – quantum physics, quantum mechanics, explains our physical world, and many inventions came from it: computers, nuclear power, genetic engineering, lasers (for CD players and bar-code scanners).
pg 166: Oppenheimer, in January, 1939, learns that two German chemists have split the uranium nucleus into two or more parts. He thinks that is impossible, but his fellow scientist, Alvarez, repeats the experiment and invites Robert to view it. Robert, in less than 15 minutes, sees the possibilities – to generate power or make bombs.
Pg. 176: Scientists in 1941 were afraid the Germans would come up with the bomb first. By then, Nazi Germany was a force and Oppenheimer dearly wanted to defeat them.
Pg. 185: General Groves took charge of the bomb project on September 18, 1942. It was called the Manhattan Project. Oppenheimer impressed Groves so much, Groves made him director. Oppenheimer suggested building the lab in a remote area. Groves thought Oppenheimer was a genius.
Pg 196, the Chevalier Affair: Robert’s good friend, Haakon Chevalier, a Communist, is visiting with Robert and Kitty in the kitchen of their Eagle Hill (Berkeley) home in the winter of 1942-1943. Chevalier tells Robert that a man named Eltenton would like to pass information to the Russians regarding what Oppenheimer is working on. Oppenheimer says no way, he’d have nothing to do with that, it was treason. Conversation over, except Robert brings it up years later to the FBI and it takes on a life of its own and is used by Strauss a decade later to try and bring Oppenheimer down.
Pg. 207: The site of Los Alamos was built from the ground up starting late 1942, with hopes of scientists living there beginning March 1943.
Pg. 210: From March 1943 to summer 1945, Los Alamos grew from a hundred people to 6000 people.
Pg. 212: Oppenheimer tells his friend and fellow-scientist, Rabi, that the bomb must be built before the Nazi’s build one.
Pg. 239: There was a feeling by some scientists of wanting to help Russia, because they were our allies and were bearing the brunt of fighting the Nazi’s at that time.
Pg. 243: On August 25, 1943, Robert tells a Lt. Lyall Johnson, in Berkeley, about the possibility of a man named Eltenton trying to get scientists to give Russia info on the bomb. That Lt. tells his boss, Colonel Pash, and they get Oppenheimer to return and have bugged the room. Oppenheimer tells them a “cock and bull” story about two or three scientists being approached. The story comes back to haunt him 10 years later.
All throughout the book: J. Robert Oppenheimer loved New Mexico. He went there to visit a college buddy one summer and fell in love with it. He eventually bought a little ranch, Perro Caliente. Some day, I’d like to see Dorothy McKibbin’s home on Old Santa Fe Trail. She built it in 1936 and it has thick adobe walls, carved Spanish doors, and a wraparound porch. Her house was a refuge for Oppenheimer and others while working at Los Alamos.
Pg. 268: The race to build an atomic bomb started in earnest in 1941. That was two years after Germany had discovered nuclear fission in 1939.
Pg 288: In early 1945, Oppenheimer realized the bomb might lead to the world living in perpetual fear, but that it might also be the instrument that ended all war.
Pg. 290-291: Franklin Roosevelt died unexpectedly on April 12, 1945. Oppenheimer had put his faith in Roosevelt that the bomb they were creating would usher in a better world. Unfortunately, Harry Truman took over the presidency, and he pretty much screwed up everything from the get-go. Page 291 describes the bombing of Tokyo with napalm: 100,000 people were killed and 15.8 square miles of the city. Fire bombing continued in Japan until all but 5 of Japan’s cities were razed and hundreds of thousands of civilians killed. It was designed to destroy a nation. On April 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler committed suicide and Germany surrendered. The scientists of Los Alamos thought they were too late.
Pg. 307: The test of the first bomb took place on July 16, 1945, in the early morning after a huge storm cleared.
Pg. 315: The first bomb was dropped over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, by the B-29, Enola Gay.
Pg. 337: J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI wire-tapped Oppenheimer to try and get proof he was a Communist. They amassed 1000 pages a year for 8 years and never proved it.
Pg. 349: On July 1, 1946, we exploded the fourth atomic bomb on Bikini Atoll and totally destroyed it. By this time, Oppenheimer was against the building of the Super bomb and knew that the bombing of Japan was against an “enemy that was essentially defeated.” Oppenheimer advocated openness among nations in all things nuclear. He was still a leader but he wasn’t listened to by the powers that be – Truman, mainly. Truman called Oppenheimer a “cry-baby scientist.”
Pg. 380: Oppenheimer is director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where scientists, including Einstein, get to work in peace. Einstein admires Oppenheimer but they are never really friends. Oppenheimer embraced quantum theory but Einstein never did. Einstein pushed “unified field theory,” defending, “the good Lord against the suggestion that he continuously rolls the dice.”
Pg. 401: Oppenheimer makes a fool of Strauss publicly. In early June 1949, Oppenheimer testifies to the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy. The issue was the export of radioisotopes for purposes of research in foreign laboratories. The commissioners had voted for it by 4 to 1. Lewis Strauss was the dissenting vote. He thought they could be used for dangerous purposes. Oppenheimer was aware of how Strauss felt and disagreed. He told the Committee that, “…you cannot use these isotopes for atomic energy. You can use a shovel for atomic energy; in fact, you do. You can use a bottle of beer for atomic energy. In fact, you do.” Those who knew what was going on, knew he just made Strauss into a fool. Strauss had a look of hatred on his face, David Lilienthal recalled.
Pg. 404: Robert’s younger brother, Frank, was a brilliant physicist and a Communist. The FBI destroyed him and no one would give him a job. He was blacklisted. He couldn’t leave the country to take jobs he was offered in other countries because he was refused a passport by the Department of State, nor could he get a job in America. He had been blacklisted. He moved to Pagosa Springs, Colorado, where he and his wife became cattle ranchers.
Pg. 416: The Soviet Union exploded an atomic bomb in Khazakhstan on August 29, 1949.
Pg. 422: In 1949, Oppenheimer and other scientists object to the building of the “Super” bomb. The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were equivalent to 15,000 tons of TNT. The Super, a thermonuclear bomb, would be equivalent to 100 million tons of TNT. It would be a weapon of genocide.
Pg. 429: The USA in 1950 started building up their nuclear arms. By the end of the decade, we went from 300 nuclear warheads to nearly 18,000 nuclear weapons. “Over the next five decades, the United States would produce more than 70,000 nuclear weapons and spend a staggering $5.5 trillion on nuclear weapons programs.” Truman started it all and Oppenheimer and Kennan and Rabi were outraged, disgusted. I. I. Rabi said he never forgave Truman. Oppenheimer spoke out against the way the Hydrogen Bomb decision was made – in secret and without public debate or honest analysis of consequences. (From another website, the Hydrogen Bomb is the super bomb, also the thermonuclear weapon.)
Pg. 433: Oppenheimer spoke out against using nuclear power for energy, also against nuclear powered planes and battleships.
Pg. 444: In 1951, Oppenheimer is shown an Air Force war plan which called for obliterating Soviet cities on a scale that shocked him. He thought the leaders of the Air Force were insane, basically calling for wide-scale murder and genocide.
Pg. 450: Oppenheimer objected to the test of the H-Bomb. But the US went ahead anyway and tested one in October 1952 that ‘vaporized’ the island of Elugelab. It was a 10.4 megaton thermonuclear bomb.
Pg. 465: Oppenheimer is strongly objecting to the secrecy of the nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union and is advocating ending the secrecy and to start discussing the consequences of nuclear war with the American people. He was not liked, especially by the powers that be including Lewis Strauss. However, Eisenhower was the new president and he agreed. He said, “atomic weapons strongly favor the side that attacks aggressively and by surprise. This the United States will never do; and let me point out that we never had any of this hysterical fear of any nation until atomic weapons appeared on the scene.”
Pg. 545: Henry DeWolf Smyth, the only man to vote to restore Oppenheimer’s security clearance after the humiliating hearing, was so determined to set down the facts, he reviewed all of the transcripts and reports and then wrote each night until midnight for weeks until he had his dissent completely written. Then the majority opinion (against Oppenheimer) was completely re-written and rather than give up, he started at 7:00 p.m. the night of June 28th and wrote all night long and delivered his dissenting opinion by the deadline the next day at ten in the morning. What a guy! This dissenting opinion and the majority opinion were released to the press.
Pg. 547: The transcript of the hearing would eventually destroy Strauss. It shows the “corruption of justice during the McCarthy period.” Scientists and journalists wrote to support Oppenheimer. They were outraged by what had happened in this so-called hearing.