The Advisors Oppenheimer Teller And The

Superbomb Herbert F York download

https://ebookbell.com/product/the-advisors-oppenheimer-teller-
and-the-superbomb-herbert-f-york-51943068

Explore and download more ebooks at ebookbell.com

Here are some recommended products that we believe you will be
interested in. You can click the link to download.

The Complete Family Office Handbook A Guide For Affluent Families And
The Advisors Who Serve Them Kirby Rosplock

https://ebookbell.com/product/the-complete-family-office-handbook-a-
guide-for-affluent-families-and-the-advisors-who-serve-them-kirby-
rosplock-34528168

Bullish Thinking The Advisors Guide To Surviving And Thriving On Wall

Street 1st Edition Alden Cass

https://ebookbell.com/product/bullish-thinking-the-advisors-guide-to-
surviving-and-thriving-on-wall-street-1st-edition-alden-cass-4586940

The Spiritual Advisors Of Kerala Cn Nimal

https://ebookbell.com/product/the-spiritual-advisors-of-kerala-cn-
nimal-47087314

The New Wealth Management The Financial Advisors Guide To Managing And
Investing Client Assets Harold Evensky Stephen M Horan Thomas R
Robinson

https://ebookbell.com/product/the-new-wealth-management-the-financial-
advisors-guide-to-managing-and-investing-client-assets-harold-evensky-
stephen-m-horan-thomas-r-robinson-48782196
Stalins Economic Advisors The Varga Institute And The Making Of Soviet
Foreign Policy Kyung Deok Roh

https://ebookbell.com/product/stalins-economic-advisors-the-varga-
institute-and-the-making-of-soviet-foreign-policy-kyung-deok-
roh-50228774

Stalins Economic Advisors The Varga Institute And The Making Of Soviet
Foreign Policy Kyungdeok Roh

https://ebookbell.com/product/stalins-economic-advisors-the-varga-
institute-and-the-making-of-soviet-foreign-policy-kyungdeok-
roh-11201368

Marine Advisors With The Vietnamese Provincial Reconnaissance Units

19661970 Andrew R Finlayson

https://ebookbell.com/product/marine-advisors-with-the-vietnamese-
provincial-reconnaissance-units-19661970-andrew-r-finlayson-2360620

Kazakstan 19932000 Independent Advisors And The Imf 1st Edition

Professor Dr Lutz Hoffmann

https://ebookbell.com/product/kazakstan-19932000-independent-advisors-
and-the-imf-1st-edition-professor-dr-lutz-hoffmann-4526866

Ineffective Habits Of Financial Advisors And The Disciplines To Break

Them A Framework For Avoiding The Mistakes Everyone Else Makes 1st
Edition Moore

https://ebookbell.com/product/ineffective-habits-of-financial-
advisors-and-the-disciplines-to-break-them-a-framework-for-avoiding-
the-mistakes-everyone-else-makes-1st-edition-moore-6654304
The Advisors
 Stanford Nuclear Age Series

General Editor, Martin Sherwin

ADVISORY BOARD

Barton J. Bernstein,
David Holloway, and Wolfgang K.H. Panofsky
 The Advisors
OPPENHEIMER, TELLER, AND
THE SUPERBOMB

Herbert F. York

With a historical essay by

Hans A. Bethe

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Stanford, California
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
Copyright© 1976 by the Board ofTrustees of the
Leland Stanford Junior University
First published by W. H. Freeman and Company, 1976
Reissued by Stanford University Press in 1989 with an
updated Epilogue and the addition of Appendix II,
"Observations on the Development of the H-Bomb,"
by Hans A. Bethe.
Printed in the United States of America
LC 88-62671
ISBN 0-8047-1713-3 (alk. paper)
ISBN 0-8047-1714-1 (pbk)
Last figure below indicates year of this printing:
98 97 96 95 94 93 92 91 90 89
 The Stanford
Nuclear Age Series

Conceived by scientists, delivered by the military, and adopted

by policymakers, nuclear weapons emerged from the ashes of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki to dominate our time. The politics, diplo-
macy, economy, and culture of the cold war nurtured the nuclear
arms race and, in turn, have been altered by it. "We have had the
bomb on our minds since 1945," E. L. Doctorow observes. "It was
first our weaponry and then our diplomacy, and now it's our
economy. How can we suppose that something so monstrously
powerful would not, after forty years, compose our identity? The
great golem we have made against our enemies is our culture, our
bomb culture-its logic, its faith, its vision."
The pervasive, transformative potential of nuclear weapons was
foreseen by their creators. When Secretary of War Henry L.
Stimson assembled a committee in May 1945 to discuss postwar
atomic energy planning, he spoke of the atomic bomb as a "revo-
lutionary change in the relations of man to the universe." Believing
that it could mean "the doom of civilization," he warned President
Truman that this weapon "has placed a certain moral responsibility
vi The Stanford Nuclear Age Series

upon us which we cannot shirk without very serious responsibility

for any disaster to civilization."
In the decades since World War II that responsibility has weighed
heavily upon American civilization. Whether or not we have met
it is a matter of heated debate. But that we must not fail and,
moreover, that we are also responsible for preparing the next
generation ofleaders to succeed, can hardly be questioned.
Today, nearly half a century into the nuclear age, the pervasive
impact of the nuclear arms race has stimulated a fundamental re-
evaluation of the role of nuclear armaments and strategic policies.
But mainstream scholarly work in strategic studies has tended to
focus on questions related to the development, the deployment,
and the diplomacy of nuclear arsenals. Such an exclusively mana-
gerial focus cannot probe the universal revolutionary changes
about which Stimson spoke, and the need to address these changes
is urgent. If the academic community is to contribute imagina-
tively and helpfully to the increasingly complex problems of the
nuclear age, then the base of scholarship and pedagogy in the
national security-arms control field must be broadened. It is this
goal that the Stanford Nuclear Age Series is intended to support,
with paperback reissues of important out-of-print works and origi-
nal publication of new scholarship in the humanities and social
sciences.

Martin]. Sherwin
General Editor
 Contents

Foreword by the General Editor ix

Preface xi
Chapter ONE
Introduction 1
Chapter TWO
The American Program to 1949 13
Origins 13
The Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory 15
Work on the Super, 1942-1949 20
Chapter THREE
The Soviet Program to 1949 29
The Soviet A-Bomb 31
The Role of Espionage 36
Peter Kapitza and the Bomb 37
Chapter FOUR
The Debate over the Superbomb 41
First Reactions 41
The GAC' s Conclusions 46
The Views of the AEC Commissioners 56
The Pro-Superbomb Scientists 62
Truman's Decision 65
Chapter FIVE
The Superbomb Programs 75
The American Program 75
The Soviet Program 87
viii Contents

Chapter SIX
The GAC's Advice in Retrospect 94
A Comparison 94
Some Conjectures 96
The GAC' s Advice on the Super 103
Truman's Actions 104
Technical Predictions in the Report 106
The GAC' s Advice on the Booster
Program 108
The GAC' s Advice on the Fission
Weapons 109
Chapter SEVEN
Other Consequences 111
The Ad Hoc Special Studies 111
The Lawrence Livermore Laboratory 121
The Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons 135
The Oppenheimer Case 137
Epilogue-1988 145
Appendix I The GAC Report of
October 30, 1949 153
Appendix II Observations on the Development of
the H-Bomb by Hans A. Bethe 183
Notes 185
Index 197
 Foreword by the
General Editor

Stanford University Press is proud to initiate the Stanford Nuclear

Age Series with the publication of Herbert York's The Advisors:
Oppenheimer, Teller, and the Superbomb. This innovative study
of the secret debate between the advocates and opponents of the
hydrogen bomb that erupted in September 1949, after the unex-
pected discovery that the Soviet Union had broken the U.S.
nuclear monopoly, unravels a history dominated by strong-minded,
influential people: nuclear physicists J. Robert Oppenheimer and
Edward Teller, Atomic Energy Commissioners David Lilienthal
and Lewis Strauss, Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson, and
Secretary of State Dean Acheson, to name but a few.
A classic case of the politics of nuclear weapons procurement,
York's study provides a major example of how the nuclear arms
race was woven into the fabric of the cold war.
Beginning with a review of the history of American and Soviet
nuclear weapons programs, York carefully questions the validity
of the charge that Oppenheimer's opposition to the H-bomb un-
dermined national security. Arguing that the General Advisory
Committee (GAC) of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was
correct in its estimate that the "extreme dangers to mankind
X Foreword by the General EdHor

inherent in the proposal [to develop the H-bomb] wholly outweigh

any military advantage that could come from this development,"
York makes it clear that the debate over the H -bomb was between
"hawks" and "superhawks"; in the winter of 1949-50, the "doves"
were on the wing.
An important clarification in The Advisors is that the Soviets did
not win the race for a practical H-bomb on August 12, 1953, as the
Soviets and some Americans claimed. The device exploded that
day (known in the United States as "Joe-4") did involve thermonu-
clear reactions, but it was by no means a superbomb. The Soviets
did not achieve that until November 23, 1955, long after the U.S.
tests of the first "wet" superbomb in November 1952 and a series
of"dry," easily deliverable versions in the spring of 1954.
But what would have happened to the strategic balance of
nuclear forces if President Truman had followed the recommen-
dation of the GAC to forswear the development of the hydrogen
bomb while accelerating the development and improvement of
the less powerful atomic weapons?
To answer this question, York marshals his scientific and histor-
ical talents to provide an innovative counterfactual historical anal-
ysis. He begins by assuming a world in which the Soviets clandes-
tinely worked to develop the superbomb despite American efforts
to reverse the arms race. After comparing the "most probable" and
"least plausible" consequences that could have occurred with the
actual testing programs of the two nations, he concludes: "Ameri-
can national security did not require the initiation of a high-priority
program to develop the super." Moreover, the GAC members
were right, and for the right reasons. Their estimates of the
strategic situation were accurate.
Thus, despite the chill that the Soviet atomic born b added to the
atmosphere of the cold war-and the domestic pressures to re-
spond by developing the superbomb-York believes that Presi-
dent Truman should have taken the advice of the GAC and seized
upon the potential development of the H -bomb as an opportunity
to renew negotiations for the international control of atomic
energy. While York admits that the chances of succeeding were
small, he insists that the risks were small, too. On the other hand,
the consequences of not taking small risks for arms control were,
and are, enormous.
September 1988 Martin Sherwin
 Preface

Germany invaded Poland and started World War II just two weeks
before I entered the University of Rochester in September 1939.
Ever since then, my professional life has been dominated by the
nuclear arms race.
During my sophomore and junior years, my physics professors,
including Lee A. DuBridge and Victor Weisskopf, began to dis-
appear one by one into secret war laboratories. After my own
accelerated graduation in May 1943, I too left for the University
of California Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley, where we were
engaged in the separation of uranium isotopes. The director of
the laboratory was Ernest 0. Lawrence, and my immediate boss
was Frank Oppenheimer. Frank's older brother, J. Robert Op-
penheimer, was at that time establishing a laboratory at Los
Alamos, New Mexico, where the isotopes we were separating
would, two years later, be fabricated into history's first atomic
weapon.
For the next quarter century, with only a very brief respite
following the end of World War II, I participated directly and
centrally in the nuclear arms race.
In 1951 I was a participant in Operation Greenhouse at Eniwe-
tok when the very first thermonuclear experiments were con-
xli Preface

ducted, and I was subsequently (1952-1958) the first director of

the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory where much of the work
to exploit those early results was carried out. Later, just after
Sputnik and during the height of the "missile gap" crisis, I was
briefly the first chief scientist of the Advanced Research Projects
Agency (1958) and then for a longer period the first director of
Defense Research and Engineering (1958-1961).
In addition to these full-time activities, I also have served on
many of the advisory committees that helped mold American plans
and policies during the most dynamic phases of the arms race.
Among the most crucial were the several "Von Neumann" com-
mittees (1953-1956), which helped to mold the mainstream U.S.
missile and rocket programs, the President's Science Advisory
Committee (1957-1958 and 1964-1968), and the General Advisory
Committee on Arms Control and Disarmament (1962-1969). Rich-
ard Nixon's acceptance of my formal resignation from this last
committee in April 1969 ended my twelve years of direct service
to the executive branch of the U.S. government. Since then I
have continued to testify occasionally before congressional com-
mittees on matters relating to the arms race, and I have actively
participated in a number of closely connected nongovernmental
organizations designed to influence the course of events at the
interface between technology and public affairs, including the
Federation of American Scientists and the international Pugwash
movement.
In 1969, I wrote a book which summarized my views about
the course of the arms race during the prior quarter century and
my judgments about what is portended for the future. It is called
Race to Oblivion: A Participant's View of the Arms Race (Simon
and Schuster, New York, 1970). In the last chapter I concluded;

Our unilateral decisions have set the rate and scale for most of
the individual steps in the strategic-arms race. In many cases we
started development before they did and we easily established a
large and long-lasting lead in terms of deployed numbers and types.
Examples include the A-bomb itself, intercontinental bombers,
submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and MIRV. In other instances,
the first development steps were taken by the two sides at about
the same time, but immediately afterward our program ran well
Preface xiii

ahead of theirs both in the development of further types and

applications in the deployment of large numbers. Such cases include
the mighty H-bomb and, very probably, military space applications.
In some cases, to be sure they started development work ahead
of us and arrived first at the stage where they were able to com-
mence deployment. But we usually reacted so strongly that our
deployments and capabilities soon ran far ahead of theirs and we,
in effect, even here, determined the final size of the operation.
Such cases include the intercontinental ballistic missile and, though
it is not strictly a military matter, manned space flight.

In making such assertions I do not charge that the United States

bears the major part of the blame for the existence of either the
cold war or the technological arms race; in my view the respon-
sibility for these is widely shared among the major powers of
the world. However, I do believe that the United States has
pursued policies which caused the technological arms race to
advance at a substantially faster pace than was really necessary
for America's own national security. The reasons for this are not
that American leaders have been less sensitive to the dangers of
the arms race than the leaders of other countries, nor that they
are less wise or more aggressive. Rather, the reason is that the
United States is richer and more powerful, and its science and
technology are more dynamic and generate more ideas and inven-
tions of all kinds, including ever more powerful and exotic means
of mass destruction. In short, the root of the problem has not
been maliciousness, but rather a sort of technological exuberance
that has overwhelmed the other factors that go into the making
of overall national policy.
This book is about one of those particular instances: the devel-
opment of the H-bomb, or the superbomb as it was then called.
It is an especially important instance because it is one of the
relatively few cases where those who explicitly tried to moderate
the nuclear arms race came within shouting distance of doing
so.
It seems clear that if humanity is to survive, those who seek
first to slow and stop the arms race and then to reverse it must
succeed before there is too much more technological "progress"
of the kind described in this book. Understanding earlier cases
xiv Preface

where the voices of moderation almost succeeded may contribute

to hastening the day when they really will.
During the preparation of this work I have talked and corre-
sponded with many of the people mentioned herein, including
Luis W. Alvarez, Hans Bethe, Norris E. Bradbury, Harold Brown,
Lee A. DuBridge, J. Carson Mark, K. D. Nichols, Edward Teller,
and Stanislaw Ulam. The Atomic Energy Commission's official
historian, Richard G. Hewlett, has been of great help, and so
have three graduate students in history here at the University
of California, San Diego: Daniel Melcher, Gregory Grebb, and
Renee Leap. I thank all of them for their cooperation, but, of
course, I am solely responsible for what follows.

May 1975 Herbert F. York

The Advisors
 Chapter ONE

Introduction

In 1948 Czechslovak Communists carried out a coup in the

shadow of the Red Army and replaced the previous government
of that country with one subservient to Moscow. Also in 1948,
the Russians unsuccessfully attempted to force the Western allies
out of Berlin by blockading all land transport routes to the city.
In early 1949 Mao Tse-tung's People's Liberation Army captured
Peking and soon after established the People's Republic of China.
Taken together these and similar but less dramatic events were
generally perceived in the West as resulting in the creation of
a monolithic and aggressive alliance stretching the full length
of the Eurasian continent, encompassing almost half the world's
people, and threatening much of the rest. Then, in the fall of
1949, the Soviets exploded their first atomic bomb and ended
forever the brief American nuclear monopoly. Coming as it did
at a time when virtually all Americans saw the cold war as rapidly
moving from bad to worse, this event was seen as a challenge
that demanded a reply. The immediate challenge being nuclear,
an especially intensive search for an appropriate response was
conducted by American nuclear circles.
2 Chapter ONE

Most proposed responses involved substantial but evolutionary

changes in current American programs: expand the search for
additional supplies of ore, step up the production of weapons,
adapt nuclear weapons to a broader range of delivery vehicles
and end uses, and the like. One proposal was radically different.
It called for the fastest possible development of the so-called
superbomb, or hydrogen bomb. This bomb was based on an entirely
new and as yet untested principle, and was estimated to be one
thousand or more times as powerful as the atomic bombs that
had marked the end of World War II. Work on the theory of
the superbomb had already been going on for seven years, but
it had never had a very high priority, and so far it had yielded
no practical result. A number of scientists and politicians endorsed
the proposal, but for years Edward Teller had been and still
remained its leading advocate.
The General Advisory Committee (GAC) of the Atomic Energy
Commission (AEC) reviewed all of these proposals. The commit-
tee, which was chaired by Robert Oppenheimer, agreed that the
United States ought to accelerate both the production and devel-
opment of atomic bombs generally, but concluded that it should
forgo the development of the superbomb.
A brief, intense, highly secret debate resulted.
The opponents of the superbomb argued that neither the posses-
sion of a super weapon nor the initiation of its development was
necessary for maintaining national security and that under such
circumstances it would be morally wrong to initiate the develop-
ment of such an enormously powerful and destructive weapon.
In essence, they argued that the world ought to avoid the develop-
ment and stockpiling of the superbomb if at all possible, and
that America's forgoing it was a necessary precondition for per-
suading others to do likewise. Furthermore, they concluded that
the relative status and dynamism of American nuclear technology
were such that the United States could safely run the risk that
the Soviet Union might not practice similar restraint and would
instead initiate a secret program of its own.
The advocates of the superbomb contended that the successful
achievement of such a bomb by the Soviets was only a matter
of time, and so at best our forgoing it amounted to a deliberate
Introduction 3

decision to become a second-class power and at worst it was

tantamount to surrender to the dark forces of world communism.
They added that undertaking its development was morally no
different from developing any other weapon.
Even though the two main protagonists, Robert Oppenheimer
and Edward Teller, knew each other well, the debate did not
take the form of a direct confrontation between them. Instead,
each in his own way and with his own group of allies sought
to persuade higher authorities to his particular point of view.
Oppenheimer did so by very effectively using the several formal
and direct channels provided by his membership on major official
advisory committees. Teller had no such formal channels, but he
did have several good friends and admirers in high places who
arranged for him to present his ideas and opinions to higher
authorities on a purely personal basis. Both men possessed brilliant
but qualitatively different intellects, and both had charismatic
personalities. Oppenheimer was able quickly to analyze and un-
derstand complex situations, and to synthesize a wide spectrum
of separate ideas and concepts into an overarching scheme. Teller,
a brilliant inventor of new ideas, had a special way of tirelessly
and relentlessly turning over in his mind questions that, for what-
ever reason, bothered or intrigued him.
In several important ways, the two men and their backgrounds
were much alike. Both were theoretical physicists, and within
physics their particular fields of interest overlapped. Both had
cultural and political interests that went well beyond the confines
of their principal vocations. They were of the same generation
(Oppenheimer was less than four years older than Teller) and
both were born into affluent and cultured Jewish families. Both
made exceptionally strong impressions on people they came into
close contact with, from students to presidents, and these impres-
sions could be either positive or negative.
In other important respects, they were different. Oppenheimer
was born and raised in America. Originally apolitical, the anti-
Jewish horrors of the Hitler regime awakened his social conscience,
and the militant opposition of the Communists to nazism and
fascism, which became particularly evident during the Spanish
civil war, brought him into close contact with various American
4 Chapter ONE

left-wing groups. Although never a member of the Communist

party himself, many of his friends, some of his students, his wife,
and his younger brother were at one time or another. As a result
of his great store of knowledge and his high intelligence, he could
be extremely persuasive in a discussion or an argument, whether
in a seminar room or at a congressional hearing, but he was often
arrogant and he could make cutting and even cruel remarks about
those who disagreed with him and their views. Over the years,
the list of people who had felt the almost physical force of his
disdain came to include a number of people in high and influential
positions. The most important of them for the purposes of this
history was Lewis L. Strauss, a member of the AEC during the
debate over the superbomb and its chairman at the time of Op-
penheimer's final downfall.
Teller was born in Hungary shortly before World War I broke
out, and he was raised there in circumstances that caused him
to be acutely aware of the Russian army as a military threat
(Hungary and Russia were enemies with a long common border
during World War I) and the Communist party as a political
threat (there was a briefly successful Communist regime in Hun-
gary in 1919). He came to America in 1935, part of the intellectual
migration that resulted from the spread of Hitlerism across the
face of central Europe. Some of his relatives remained in Hungary,
however, and years later, while the events described in this book
were going on, he often expressed concern over their situation
under the new Communist regime that had just recently been
reestablished there in the shadow of Soviet military power. Like
Oppenheimer, his knowledge and wit made him extremely per-
suasive, and his arguments were also sometimes tinged with arro-
gance, but he never to my knowledge made cutting or cruel
comments. Moreover, in any serious discussion or debate, whether
in a classroom, a congressional hearing, or simply face-to-face
with one other individual, Teller usually exuded a sort of boyish
enthusiasm which, coupled with a typically central European
charm and even diffident manner, favorably impressed most peo-
ple, especially politicians and statesmen, and predisposed them
to believe what he was telling them. Over the years since he
began dealing in the political arena (that is, since shortly after
Introduction 5

the end of World War II) he has built up a substantial list of

warm admirers in high places, some of whom regard him with
an almost religious awe.
In January 1950 President Harry S. Truman resolved the debate
in favor of the proponents of the superbomb. Two years and nine
months later the United States exploded the first superbomb,
code-named Mike, at Eniwetok Atoll. It yielded ten megatons
of explosive energy, which was the amount that had long been
predicted, just about a thousand times as much as the bomb which
had killed a hundred thousand people at Hiroshima seven years
before. Three years and a few weeks after Mike, the Soviets
exploded a somewhat smaller superbomb in central Asia.
The rapid and successful development of the superbomb (or
super as it came to be called) was not the only way in which
the arms race was accelerated by the complex web of events
and decisions that started from the first Soviet atomic explosion
and ended with Truman's decision. In addition, this web of in-
teracting events resulted in a large proliferation of both numbers
and types of ordinary nuclear weapons, in the establishment of
a second U.S. nuclear weapons laboratory in 1952, and in the
removal of Oppenheimer's security clearance in 1954 on the
grounds that he was a security risk.
The side in the weaker formal position won the debate. Largely
as a result of this peculiar situation, soon after Truman's de-
cision some of Oppenheimer's enemies initiated attempts to
remove him from all positions of influence over nuclear affairs.
These attempts were ultimately successful. In late 1953, he was
officially charged with being a security risk and his remaining
clearances were summarily canceled. Oppenheimer denied the
charge, and in the spring of 1954 a special security hearing was
held to decide the matter. The final result was that the charge
was upheld. This hearing in particular has attracted a great deal
of attention in the intervening years, and there are many excellent
studies of it as an object lesson in political morality and as an
example of the effect of grossly exaggerated notions of the role
of secrecy in maintaining national security. In my view one of
the best of these studies is Philip Stem's The Oppenheimer Case.
This book has quite a different purpose. It examines in some
6 Chapter ONE

detail the intellectual content of the debate itself. It places partic-

ular emphasis on the technical and strategic elements of the GAC's
advice, and judges its sonndness both by comparing its techno-
logical predictions with what actually occurred and also by es-
timating what would have happened if Truman had followed it
and contrasting that with what did actually happen. In doing
so, I confine myself largely to the question of how the nuclear
balance would have been affected over the course of the next
half decade or so. In that restricted case, the technological facts
that constrain the various possible alternative worlds are relatively
few in number and by now well enough known so as to make
it possible to determine in retrospect what the most favorable,
the most likely, and the worst plausible alternative worlds actually
were. To summarize what follows, my conclusions are that the
GAC's advice was basically sonnd, its predictions were remarkably
close to the mark, and the nuclear balance would not have been
in serious danger of being upset had we followed it. The 1954
persecution of Oppenheimer and the official finding that he was
a security risk cannot, therefore, be ex post facto justified even
on the purely practical gronnds that his advice was so dangerous
and his influence so great that his complete removal from the
advisory system was necessary for national security reasons.
On the other hand, in this book I do not attempt to work out
how the overall course of the cold war might have changed had
Truman followed the GAC's advice. There the alternatives are
far too many and too diverse for me to attempt to assess them.
Nor do I attempt to bring out all of the manifold influences acting
on Truman at the time he made his decisions. There were many
matters besides those which were brought out by either Oppen-
heimer and his allies or Teller and his, and I cannot, therefore,
fully assess on the basis of the material presented in this book
what Truman might have perceived his real options to be. I can.
however, say with certainty that when Truman rejected the GAC's
advice, we all missed (as the GAC's report put it) one of the
rare "opportunit[ies] of providing by example some limitation
in the totality of war and thus limiting the fear and arousing the
hopes of mankind."
In all of this, I have not gone deeply into the underlying
personalities or motives, but I have tried to provide a necessary
Introduction 7

minimum of background information about who the principals

were, and I have briefly mentioned what I knew (and did not
know) at the time and what was going on in my own mind at
a few key junctures. I have concentrated on the arguments and
the events and I have tried to analyze their interrelationships
in sufficient depth to bring out the causal relationships among
them. In the course of doing so, I have not only described both
the American and Soviet superbomb programs, I have also fol-
lowed up some of the lesser known, but still important, con-
sequences that flowed from the American determination to re-
spond adequately to the first Soviet bomb, including the prolif-
eration of weapons and the creation of the second laboratory.
I knew personally nearly all of the principals in these events,
though not at all equally well. I had a close teacher-student
relationship with Lawrence that stretched over fifteen years, I
worked as a colleague of Edward Teller for eight years, I took
graduate physics courses from Robert Oppenheimer, and I met
frequently with Norris Bradbury and Lewis Strauss. I participated
in some of the most important and most relevant events, and
I watched some of the others from a front-row seat.
I had joined Lawrence's laboratory in 1943 in its work on the
preparation of the nuclear explosives used in the Hiroshima bomb.
After the war, I remained at Berkeley as a graduate student, and
gained my Ph.D. in 1949 for work I did using the facilities and
equipment of the same laboratory. When the first Soviet bomb
exploded, I was just beginning a career in basic research. At the
time the debate over the superbomb was actually going on, I
was almost completely unaware of it, but very soon after it was
resolved I was, as will be described below, gradually drawn into
the center of the superbomb program and many of the other
programs and projects that came out of the same nexus of events.
Even so, this book is not in any important sense a memoir.
I have used my familiarity with the people and my direct knowl-
edge of most events only as a starting point for the preparation
of this history. By far the largest part of the factual information
in what follows is drawn from or based on documentary material,
and most of the rest comes from recent conversations with several
of the surviving principals. Only a few items, none of them essen-
tial to the story, are based solely on my own memory of events.
8 Chapter ONE

Much of the most important documentary material has become

available only very recently. Foremost among this material is the
full report of the GAC's 1949 deliberation on the superbomb.
Except for some very brief extracts which appeared in the records
of the 1954 Oppenheimer hearing, the report only became declas-
sified in 1974, and even then a few strictly technical data were
still omitted. The full report, less these minor deletions, is pre-
sented as Appendix I of this book. Other recent documents essen-
tial to this study are two biographies of Igor V. Kurchatov
(the scientific director of the Soviet program), one by P. As-
tashenkov and one by Igor N. Golovin (a scientific colleague of
Kurchatov's), published in Moscow in 1967 and 1969, respectively;
a very heavily censored version of the report of the 1946 confer-
ence on the super, released in 1971; a brief technical history of
the early thermonuclear program released in 1974, but written
in its original version in 1954 by Carson Mark with full access
to the original research documents; and Stanislaw Ulam's Adven-
tures of a Mathematician (1976). in which he gives his recollections
about these events. Older essential documents are Teller's The
Legacy of Hiroshima; the official transcripts of the Oppenheimer
hearing; the two official AEC histories, The New World by Hewlett
and Anderson, and A History of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commis-
sion by Hewlett and Duncan; and some papers in the E.O. Law-
rence archives released in the 1960's but unnoticed at the time.
There is, I think, only one truly central technological fact in
all this that still remains secret, and that is the precise nature
of the Teller-Ulam invention of 1951. From the point of view
of understanding what happened, it is less than ideal to omit it,
but I agree with the security officials of the five thermonuclear
powers (U.S.A., U.S.S.R., U.K., France, and China) that this partic-
ular detail should remain as restricted as possible in its circulation.
Moreover, I believe that even without it, a sufficiently complete
and coherent story can be put together to make it possible to
understand both what did actually happen and what might have
been.
The history that emerges from a careful examination of the
newly available information is in a number of important aspects
quite different from that which has previously made its way into
American folklore.
Introduction 9

The following is a summary of some of the new elements that

are explained more fully in the following chapters. Even those
who are quite familiar with the prior available literature on the
subject will find some important surprises here.

• At the time the GAC wrote its October 1949 report, there
were not one but two importantly different thermonuclear pro-
grams under way at the Los Alamos laboratory. One of these
was the so-called booster program, which had as its main practical
objective improving the efficiency of fission bombs. The other
was the "super" program, which had as its objective producing
a weapon having a power at least a thousand times greater than
that of the then standard nuclear bomb. The full report makes
it clear that the GAC strongly endorsed the former as being
potentially very useful and only opposed the latter as being mur-
derous to a degree far beyond that which could be justified even
within the intellectual framework that took a large stock of nuclear
weapons as being absolutely essential for national security. Thus,
the GAC did not, as is sometimes charged, try to stop "the progress
of science" or the acquisition of new knowledge about thermo-
nuclear processes. They only tried to stop, or at least delay, what
they took to be a particularly horrendous and uncalled-for appli-
cation of such new knowledge.
• The full report shows that the GAC was realistic about what
might flow from a decision on our part to forgo the development
of the super. At no point do its authors imply that following
their advice would prevent the development of the super by
someone else. Rather, they clearly recognize the simple fact that
our forgoing the super was a necessary precondition for persuading
others to do so and they correctly estimated that our then current
and planned nuclear capability was such that our doing so would
not entail any substantial risk of upsetting the current balance
of nuclear power. Far from being naive, the minority addendum
to the report makes it clear that the committee considered the
possibility that the Russians might even go so far as to make
an agreement on the super and then renege on it secretly.
• The GAC report did not at all espouse what would be called
in now current terms a "dovish" line. It is true that most of the
members in varying degrees did favor some effective form of
10 Chapter ONE

nuclear arms control; and two of the members, Robert Oppen-

heimer and I. I. Rabi, were earlier the authors and promoters
of the particular set of ideas that eventually came to constitute
the heart of the Baruch plan. However, in the absence of any
effective agreements they also strongly favored maintaining and
improving sufficient nuclear power to guarantee fully our national
security. They therefore endorsed a series of proposed AEC actions
which were designed to produce more and better nuclear weapons
and to prepare for the use of these weapons in a broader set
of military situations. In retrospect these actions were certainly
not less, and were probably substantially more than the actual
situation as we now know it called for. As Gilpin 1 later put it,
the internal debate over the super was between "the finite con-
tainment school" and the "infinite containment school." Or, in
today's terms the argument was between moderates and hawks,
or perhaps between hawks and superhawks. No full-fledged doves,
or what Gilpin calls members of the "Arms Control School" were
involved for the simple reason that none of them had the necessary
clearances.
• In the past, much significance has been attached to the first
Soviet thermonuclear explosion in August 1953. The Soviets have
called it the "first-in-the-world hydrogen bomb" and most Western
political, historical, and technical writers have accepted their
statement at face value and have assumed that the Soviets in
some important sense "won" the "race" for super. The discussions
of the U.S. and the Soviet program presented in this book make
it clear that this was not the case and that the United States
was at all times well ahead of the Soviet Union in the development
of the super. In particular, the August 1953 Soviet explosion was
of a device which was no more powerful than the largest prior
U.S. fission explosion and only something like three to five percent
as powerful as the first American thermonuclear explosions, both
of which had taken place nearly a year earlier. Moreover, the
August 1953, Soviet device was not based on design principles
(like the Teller-Ulam invention of 1951) which lead directly to
the construction of bombs of indefinitely large size. In short it
was not a super; the first Soviet super-like device came only in
late 1955, three years after the United States had first experi-
Introduction 11

mentally verified the basic ideas that made the very large hydrogen
bomb practical. Since the U.S. and the Soviet program followed
different paths to the same ultimate goal, it is not possible to
say exactly in years how far ahead the United States was, but
the lead was always very substantial, and a reasonable under-
standing of the nature of this lead can be derived from the details
presented below in chapters 5 and 6 (and hence, without knowing
exactly what the Teller-Ulam invention is).
• The first Soviet A-bomb and the U.S. determination to react
to it led by a somewhat complex path to the creation of a second
American nuclear weapons laboratory at Livermore, California,
and hence eventually to a doubling of the size of the American
nuclear weapons development program. Some of the elements
of the story of how this happened have been presented before,
but the history given here, while brief, is more comprehensive.
This particular episode, like the history of the super itself, can
be seen as an illustration of just how what Secretary of Defense
McNamara called technological momentum can determine the
course of the arms race. The possibilities that welled up out of
the technological program and the ideas and proposals put forth
by the technologists eventually created a set of options that was
so narrow in the scope of its alternatives and so strong in its
thrust that the political decision makers had no real independent
choice in the matter.
• In the course of presenting its case, the GAC made a number
of predictions about some of the properties of the super, and
about the path which a program to develop it would follow. While
not perfect, they are remarkably accurate considering the difficul-
ties inherent in making them.
• The main body of the GAC report makes a plea for lowering
as much as possible the barriers of secrecy that surrounded the
whole process of deciding what to do about the super. This same
plea was echoed over and over in statements made by other
scientists in this same context, and Oppenheimer returned to it
often in subsequent articles and speeches. The committee recog-
nized that certain technical details should be kept "secret," but
they felt a very large part of what they were discussing could
be made available without endangering the national security. They
12 Chapter ONE

obviously felt very strongly that such momentous decisions affect-

ing all mankind should not be made by a tiny elite in-group
exclusively privy to all of the relevant facts, even though in this
case they were themselves included in it.
 Chapter TWO

The American Nuclear Program

to 1949

Origins

Nuclear energy was discovered by Henri Becquerel in France

in 1896. He found, largely by accident, that ores containing
uranium emitted a form of radiation that could penetrate several
layers of opaque paper and fog a photographic emulsion. It was
soon realized that enormous amounts of energy were locked up
in the nuclei of atoms, amounts of energy exceeding those released
in ordinary chemical processes by a millionfold.
For the next forty years, scientists in many countries worked
to elucidate the process. In brief, they found that nuclear energy
was being very slowly released by the nuclei of ten or so naturally
occurring radioactive elements, but that absolutely nothing that
they tried had any discernible effect on the rate or on the amount.
Then in the 1930's, progress in the field greatly accelerated. In
France, Frederic Joliot-Curie discovered artificial radioactivity.
In England, James Chadwick discovered the neutron. In Italy,
Enrico Fermi used the neutron to explore nuclear processes. And
in America, Ernest Lawrence developed the large particle accel-
erators, or "atom smashers," that enabled nuclear research to ad-
vance even more rapidly.
14 Chapter TWO

Finally, in December of 1938, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann

in Germany discovered the process known as uranium fission. That
process can be initiated by a single neutron striking a uranium
nucleus. When the process occurs, an enormous amount of energy
is released and two or three new neutrons are emitted. Each of
these new neutrons can, under just the right conditions, repeat
the process, and so an explosive chain reaction can result.
Nuclear physicists all over the world quickly recognized that
this discovery could, for the first time, make it possible for man
to influence the rate of release of nuclear energy, and to produce
either enormous explosions or electric power, depending on just
how fast the chain reaction developed.
As a result, in early 1939, leading scientists in Britain, France,
Germany, Russia, and the United States focused their attention
on the newly discovered process, and began to carry out experi-
ments designed to explore the unprecedented possibilities inherent
in it. Then in September 1939, the Nazi armies began to roll,
and the whole situation underwent another major change. The
rather small French program was first transferred to Britain, and
then in due course to Canada. The somewhat larger British pro-
gram prospered long enough to produce results which convinced
the government of the possibilities involved, but then at that point,
under the influence of the German aerial bombardment and the
press of other more immediate tasks, part of it was transferred
to Canada, and the remainder went to the United States where
it was melded into the American effort. The Russian program,
which never involved more than some tens of people, was com·
pletely stopped when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in
the spring of 1941. It was revived on a modest scale about two
years later, but it did not come to fruition until long after World
War II ended. (The Russian program is described in detail in
the next chapter.) The German program never got off the ground.
Not only had German science been decimated and thrown into
a chaotic state by the expulsion and imprisonment of the Jewish
scientists, but the belief that the war would be very short and
political factionalism prevented what remained from doing any-
thing much. Only in the United States, then still isolated by the
broad Atlantic from the European violence, and with its scientific
The American Nuclear Program 15

capacity greatly augmented by the influx of refugees, did the

program to exploit the new discoveries have a chance to prosper
and produce practical results.
On the basis of much intervening exploratory work in the United
States and Britain, on December 6, 1941, the day before the attack
on Pearl Harbor, Vannevar Bush, who was Franklin D. Roosevelt's
chief scientific aide, signed a report declaring the atomic bomb
to be feasible and recommending a crash program for its develop-
ment. During the first half of 1942, while exploratory nuclear
experiments continued at a number of different sites, detailed plans
were worked out for organizing the work on the bomb itself,
and in the latter half of the year, the Manhattan project was
formally instituted and got under way. The main research center
for the program was established in early 1943 on an isolated mesa
at Los Alamos, New Mexico.

The Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory

The Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory was operated under a

contract from the U.S. Army to the University of California. The
director was Robert Oppenheimer, previously a professor of theo-
retical physics at the University's Berkeley campus. Other major
nuclear research programs were established at the radiation labo-
ratory in Berkeley under the direction of Ernest Lawrence, at
Columbia University under Harold Urey and John Dunning, at
the University of Chicago under Arthur Compton, and at the
University of Iowa under Frank Spedding. These other institutions
worked mainly on questions relating to the production of the
basic nuclear explosive materials (U-235 and plutonium), while
the Los Alamos laboratory worked on the means for actually
making a bomb out of these materials.
The scientific teams recruited for these programs were quite
unlike anything ever seen before in terms of both the talents and
the numbers of the people making them up. The leaders of Ameri-
can nuclear physics and other relevant sciences, accompanied by
their most promising students, flocked to the new research centers.
A smaller but singularly talented group of refugee scientists, who
16 Chapter TWO

had fled from the Hitler terror that had been building up in Europe
over the past several years, joined them; and so did a special
team from Britain that had been officially sent over to participate
in the American program[IV At its peak, the total effort devoted
to the project, measured in terms of the rate of dollar expenditures
as percent of gross national product, even exceeded slightly the
maximum rate experienced during the Apollo Lunar flight pro-
gram of the 1960's.
The Los Alamos laboratory, which was the largest and most
remarkable of all the atomic research centers, in only two years
succeeded in developing, designing, and building two different
kinds of fission weapons, one using U-235 as its nuclear explosive,
and the other using plutonium. The design of the U-235 bomb
was based on particularly simple and straightforward principles,
and as a result, it was used to destroy Hiroshima on August 6,
1945, without a prior test of whether or not it would work. The
plutonium bomb was based on more novel design principles, and
it was consequently secretly tested in New Mexico in July before
being exploded over Nagasaki on August 9. 2 The two explosions
in Japan together killed well over 100,000 people, and played
a major part in precipitating the formal surrender of Japan that
ended World War II.
When the war ended, most of the scientists on the remote Los
Alamos mesa, just like the troops scattered throughout the world,
returned "home" to the universities and laboratories from whence
1 Numbers in brackets refer to source notes in the back of the book.

"The design of all varieties of fission bombs is based on the remarkable fact
that if a mass of fissile material in excess of the amount known as the "'critical
mass" (some tens of pounds) is somehow assembled all in one solid piece, it will
promptly and automatically explode with great violence. Hence, the basic design
simply involves a means for taking an assemblage of subcritical shapes and pieces,
and suddenly reassembling it in a single, dense, supercritical piece. The Hiroshima
bomb involved the so-called gun design, in which a gun-like device fired a U-235
projectile into a cavity in another piece of the same material; separately they
were subcritical, together they were supercritical. For reasons beyond the scope
of this hook, this method does not work with plutonium. In that case, the so-called
implosion method has to be used. In that method, a subcritical assemblage of
plutonium is completely surrounded by a large mass of high explosive, the high
explosive is ignited at many points on its outside surface simultaneously, and
a powerful shock wave converges inwards on the plutonium. The resulting "implo-
sion" of the plutonium causes it to be suddenly reformed into a dense, supercritical
mass that promptly produces a violent nuclear explosion which exceeds by thou-
sands of times the implosion needed to initiate it.
The American Nuclear Program 17

they came. Many of them had been able to find occasional chinks
of time to think about what they would do "after the war" and
had generated some ideas they were especially anxious to explore
further.
Robert Oppenheimer was among those who left Los Alamos
with the intention of resuming a career in the academic world.
At first he divided his time between two simultaneous appoint-
ments as Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of
California in Berkeley and at the California Institute of Technol-
ogy in Pasadena, but shortly after (1947) he left California al-
together to become director of the Institute for Advanced Study
at Princeton, New Jersey. In addition, and much more important
in the present context, from the end of the war until 1952 Op-
penheimer spent a very large part of his time and nervous energy
on a nominally part-time basis helping to work out the details
of America's postwar nuclear programs and policies. He was one
of the principal authors of the so-called Baruch plan, he was
chairman of the principal scientific advisory committee to the
newly created AEC, and he served on many other standing and
ad hoc committees in other branches of the government, including
the Department of Defense, the State Department, and the White
House. This remarkable web of interconnected advisory posts,
in combination with his great intellectual power and the special
mystique that surrounded him as a result of his having directed
the central part of the atomic bomb program, made him by far
the most influential nuclear scientist in America during the imme-
diate postwar period.
Some members of the wartime Los Alamos staff, for various
reasons, chose to stay, or, at least, were willing to give serious
consideration to staying. Some of them liked the location on the
high bright desert mesa, others were intellectually interested in
the problems they were working on and wanted to see some of
the investigations and ideas carried further, and still others re-
sponded to the first chill winds of the cold war and were motivated
to continue their work on atomic weapons for that reason. And
no doubt some others, including those who had been caught up
in work at Los Alamos as their first professional job after leaving
graduate school, simply did not have a good "home" to go back
to and did not receive any interesting offers of new employment.
18 Chapter TWO

The situation at Los Alamos at war's end was further compli-

cated by a pervasive air of uncertainty as to the intentions of
the government. It was clear that the overall national management
of the program would change hands, but there was much con-
troversy over the form that the new management would take.
Indeed, it was to take sixteen months from the end of the war
until the newly created civilian AEC took over from the army.
In the meantime General Leslie R. Groves did his best to assure
those who were willing to consider staying that the laboratory
and its program had a future, but it was clear to all that he
was only expressing his personal views.
In view of all this, it is remarkable that the laboratory survived,
and most of the credit must go to Oppenheimer's successor: Norris
E. Bradbury. Bradbury was a Berkeley Ph.D. with some experience
as a physics professor at Stanford before the war. He was assigned
(as a naval officer) to Los Alamos in July 1944. On Oppenheimer's
advice, Groves appointed him director of the laboratory in October
1945, and he continued in that post until his retirement in 1970.
Edward Teller, who had been one of the members of the
Theoretical Division during the war, was among those who
seriously considered staying, and Bradbury invited him to take
over the direction of the Theoretical Division on a permanent
basis. In response, Teller proposed that there be twelve[2] nuclear
weapons tests per year and made Bradbury's acceptance of his
proposal a condition of his staying. Bradbury regarded that testing
rate as entirely unrealistic and Teller left Los Alamos for the
University of Chicago, where a number of other wartime intel-
lectual leaders also gathered. As it turned out, test rates did not
regularly reach a level of twelve per year until 1955 in the United
States, by which time there were two active nuclear weapons
laboratories, and they did not reach this level in the U.S.S.R. until
1957. No other country has ever tested more than a few each
year.
The laboratory recovered slowly but steadily from the postwar
exodus. Bradbury reported[3] that there were only eight theoretical
physicists on the staff in 1946. This number increased to twelve
by the end of 1947, fourteen in 1948, twenty-two in 1949, thirty-
eight in 1950 (after the H-bomb acceleration), and fifty in 1953.
The American Nuclear Program 19

The efforts of this small group were, however, augmented by

frequent visits, sometimes lasting for months, by many of the
wartime leaders, including Teller, Bethe, Von Neumann, and
Fermi.
The total laboratory staff during this early postwar period
totaled about 1200 persons. 3 The laboratory not only carried out
research and development whose purpose was to improve the
atomic bombs but also continued for several years to refine pluto-
nium and uranium, to produce high explosive detonators, and to
participate in various other manufacturing activities.
The postwar weapons research program of the laboratory had
two main objectives. One objective was the improvement of atomic
bombs, or fission bombs as they might be more correctly labeled.
The other was the exploration of an entirely different type of
nuclear energy based on fusion processes, also known as thermo-
nuclear reactions. It is this latter process that provides the energy
of the superbomb.
The objective occupying by far the largest part of the staff
was the improvement of fission bombs. The goals at first were
not very imaginative; they were mainly concerned with improving
reliability and safety, and increasing the efficiency of fissile ma-
terials by further development of the implosion method. And this
was a satisfactory program from the point of view of the military
users who continued to think only in terms of delivery by large
strategic aircraft such as the B-29 that carried the bombs to
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was only several years later that they
began to think seriously of delivery by other means, such as
missiles, torpedos, and artillery, which created firm requirements
for greatly reduced dimensions and weights. Finally, in 1948, the
laboratory conducted the first weapons tests whose purpose was
to improve on the design of the wartime bomb. 4 This test series,

3 This number does not include housekeeping staff and guards, who were hired

by the Zia Corporation. It is therefore not directly comparable with figures for
other laboratories, which usually include such persons.
• An early operation, called Crossroads, was conducted at Bikini in 1946, but
its objective was the evaluation of the effects of existing bombs rather than their
improvement.
20 Chapter TWO

known as Operation Sandstone, was conducted by Joint Task Force

Seven in April and May at Eniwetok Atoll, whose natives had
been evacuated for the purpose. Since in addition to the AEC's
interest in improved weapons designs there was a strong military
interest in weapons effects and since a very large logistic effort
was required in connection with such an overseas operation, a
joint AEC-Defense Department organization, known as Joint Task
Force Seven, was formed for the purpose. The task force com-
mander was General John E. Hull, the test director was Navy
Captain James S. Russell, and the scientific director was Darol
Froman of the Los Alamos staff. There were three test explosions,
ranging in yields from 18 to 49 kilotons. 5 The tests evidently
did result in substantial improvements in the efficiency of use
of fissile material. By making use of new designs based on these
experiments, the commission reported, "[itl would now be ahle
to produce more weapons than had been required in the schedule
which the Joint Chiefs of Staff had prepared late in 1947[4]."
The success of the Sandstone tests also boosted morale at Los
Alamos and helped to garner further support for the laboratory
in Washington. As a result, the construction of a new laboratory,
located nearby on South Mesa, was authorized as a replacement
for the wartime facilities that were still being used. The test
operation was also a success from an administrative point of view,
and the mixed military-civilian, joint-task-force style of operation
became a permanent method of conducting overseas atomic weap-
ons tests.

Work on the Super, 1942-1949

In addition to research intended to improve fission weapons, the

Los Alamos laboratory throughout its entire history has also con-
ducted research on methods for releasing energy through the fusion
process. In this process, the nuclei of two very light atoms (usually
isotopes of hydrogen) combine to form a heavier nucleus (usually
a helium nucleus). It is this combining, or fusing, of nuclei that
5 The Hiroshima explosion was 13 kilotons and the Nagasaki explosion was 21

kilotons.
The American Nuclear Program 21

gives the process its name. Because this particular nuclear process
will only take place at extraordinarily high temperatures-tens
of millions of degrees-it is also called a thermonuclear reaction,
and because the nuclear w,eapons that derive most of their energy
from fusion processes use various forms of hydrogen as their fuel,
they are frequently called hydrogen bombs.
Early in this century it was recognized that the stars-including
the sun-probably derived their enormous output of energy from
some nuclear process. In the thirties, Hans Bethe worked out the
details of just how this might actually come about through a
somewhat complex set of thermonuclear processes which could
take place under the conditions of exceedingly great pressures
and enormously high temperature believed to prevail in the center
of stars. 6 These conditions were so utterly different from any yet
attained or then projected on earth, that no one at the time thought
seriously about producing such reactions here. However, with the
advent of the atomic bomb, the prospects were dramatically
altered. In the center of an exploding fission bomb, temperatures
substantially exceeding 100,000,000 degrees are produced, and
so at least one of the conditions necessary for igniting a thermo-
nuclear reaction under the control of man seemed to be within
reach.
According to Edward Teller, Enrico Fermi in early 1942 asked
him, "Now that we have a good prospect of developing an atomic
bomb, couldn't such an explosion be used to start something similar
to the reactions in the Sun?[S]." Specifically, Fermi had in mind
reactions involving deuterons, the nuclei of a relatively rare but
naturally occurring heavy form of hydrogen. As we now know,
and as Fermi then speculated, at temperatures of the order of
one hundred million degrees (actually much hotter than the inte-
rior of the sun) deuterons react explosively with each other in
the fusion process, producing helium and huge amounts of energy.
Compared to ordinary chemical processes such as burning oil or
coal, the amount of energy produced by an equal weight of
reactants is about ten million times larger. And even compared
to the process of uranium fission, the energy per unit weight is

6 In 1967, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for this work.
22 Chapter TWO

nearly three times greater. Teller reports that "after a few weeks
of hard thought, I decided that deuterium could not be ignited
by atomic bombs." Shortly after, in the summer of that same
year, Robert Oppenheimer gathered a small group 7 of theoretical
physicists at Berkeley to discuss atomic bombs and to lay out
a program for the projected new laboratory at Los Alamos. By
this time, Teller's views had shifted, and he and Emil Konopinski
presented more optimistic calculations to this group. The group
then discussed the hydrogen bomb at length, along with many
other questions concerning the uranium bomb. During these dis-
cussions the idea of using tritium as well as deuterium was first
suggested. Tritium is a still heavier form of hydrogen (having
three times the normal weight) which does not normally occur
in nature. It was well known, however, that tritium could be
produced artificially by causing neutrons to react with lithium.
We now know that a fifty/fifty mixture of tritium and deuterium
reacts about one hundred times as rapidly as does pure deuterium.
Thus, when Los Alamos was established, the exploration of the
super was among the original objectives. However, because the
development of fission bombs turned out to be more difficult than
expected, their development demanded and received virtually the
full attention of the laboratory. Only a relatively small group,
under Teller's direction, put in much effort on the super during
the war.
In the spring of 1946, a group of those who had remained
at Los Alamos after the postwar exodus, augmented by some
visitors from among the wartime group, again took up the study
of how thermonuclear reactions might be produced on the earth.
This study soon branched along two quite distinct lines with very
different basic objectives. One such line of research had the com-
paratively easy objective of igniting a relatively small mass of
thermonuclear fuel by means of the energy produced in a relatively
large fission explosion. As we shall see in chapter 5, the United
States successfully accomplished this objective in 1951, and the
Soviet Union did so in 1953. This particular objective later became
7 Other members of the group were Hans Bethe, Stanley Frankel, Emil Kono-

pinski, Eldred Nelson, Robert Serber, and J. Van Vleck.

The American Nuclear Program 23

important in connection with a process known as "boosting" or

the "booster principle." These terms "refer to the notion of using
a fission bomb to initiate a small thermonuclear reaction with
the possibility that . . . the neutrons from this reaction might
increase the efficiency of the use of the fissile material." 8 This
means that in certain circumstances there can be a synergistic
interaction between the fission and fusion reactions that can
substantially increase the efficiency of the fission reaction.
The other line of thermonuclear research had the very much
more difficult objective of igniting a very large-in fact, indefi-
nitely large-mass of thermonuclear fuel by means of a relatively
small fission explosion. From the beginning, the goal of this line
of research was the design of a superbomb that would yield, in
round figures, an explosion a thousand times as large as that of
a nominal fission bomb. The United States produced an explosion
of this much more difficult type in 1952, and the Soviet Union
did so in 1955.
A report on the status of our understanding of thermonuclear
processes as of the spring of 1946 was issued on June 12, 1946.
It was entitled "Report of Conference on the Super." A very
heavily censored version of this report was declassified in 1971
for use in connection with litigation concerning priorities in the
development of electronic computers[6].
Among the thirty-one persons who were listed as having partici-
pated in the conference, some, such as Emil Konopinski, Lothar
Nordheim, George Placzek, Robert Serber, Edward Teller, and
John Von Neumann, were already widely recognized for their
8 The authors of a summary report of the work done on the super during the

war were E. Teller, E. Konopinski, S. Frankel, H. Hurwitz, R. Landshoff, N.

Metropolis, and A. Turkevich. Boosting was mentioned in passing in L. L. Strauss,
Men and Decisions, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, and alluded to
in a press conference by Norris Bradbury given at Los Alamos in 1954. Boosting
and the research behind it have recently been discussed in some detail in Carson
Mark, A Short Account of Los Alaroos Theoretical Wark on Themwnuclear Weapons,
1946-1950, LA-5647-MS, Los Alamos, N.Mex., 1974. This last report also mentions
another 1946 idea known as the TX-14. This is another approach to the problem
of igniting very large masses of thermonuclear fuel. Since there is no way to
make clear here how its details differ from those of the so-called classical super,
and since there are no political or strategic distinctions among these two and
yet other variants of superbombs, I ignore it here.
24 Chapter TWO

work in basic science.9 Three members of the wartime British

"team" at Los Alamos also attended, including Dr. Emil Klaus
Fuchs who, as it was later learned, was passing on what he knew
to the Russians. The only participant from the armed services
was Colonel Austin R. Betts, who later became director of the
AEC's Division of Military Applications (1960-1964). Of all the
attendees, only five continued on at Los Alamos as regular full
time members of the Theoretical Division's staff. These were Rolf
Landshoff, Carson Mark, Frederick J. Reines, R. D. Richtmyer,
and Stanislaw Ulam.
The report concluded that "the detailed design submitted to
the conference was judged on the whole workable. In a few points
doubts have arisen concerning components of this design. These
doubts have been discussed above. In each case, it was seen that
should the doubts prove well-founded, simple modifications of
the design will render the model feasible." As we now know,
the optimism expressed in their conclusion was unwarranted, and
the doubts that were raised turned out to be very well-founded
indeed. Overcoming the difficulties behind these doubts required
a new invention, which did not come along until another five
years had passed, rather than the "simple modifications of the
design" that the report predicted.
At the end of the report, the conferees noted that "The under-
taking of the new and important Super Bomb Project would
necessarily involve a considerable fraction of the resources which
are likely to be devoted to work on atomic developments in the
next years. A statement of the potentialities of the super as a
weapon, and an estimate of the cost of answering, in practice,
the questions still unsolved, have been included. But we feel it
appropriate to point out that further decision in a matter so filled
with the most serious implications as is this one can properly
be taken only as part of the highest national policy."
For the next several years, work on the super progressed rather
slowly, and involved a relatively small number of persons. AI-
9 lt is interesting to note that one of these men, Placzek, had visited the U.S.S.R.

in the late thirties to ascertain whether or not central European refugee nuclear
physicists could find suitable positions there. He is reported to have found the
atmosphere most uncongenial.
The American Nuclear Program 25

though as reported above the number of fully qualified physicists

and mathematicians in the theoretical group increased steadily
after the middle of 1946, it was sometime in 1949 before there
were even as many as twenty; and only a portion10 of their effort
could be reserved exclusively for studying the super. This small
group carried out calculations designed to elucidate the behavior
of the existing theoretical designs and at the same time tried to
discover more promising variations. In addition to this central
theoretical work, experimental measurements were made in order
to determine the details of the various reactions involved. During
those same years, most of the experimental scientists and engineers
at the laboratory were engaged in work intended to produce
·further improvements in and better understanding of fission bombs.
The work on fission was, of course, useful not only as an end in
itself; it was also an essential preliminary to the later successful
development of the hydrogen bomb.
There were other more fundamental reasons the work on the
superbomb went slowly during the 1946-1948 period. The ideas
that did exist, the so-called classical super and the alarm clock[7],
were, as Oppenheimer later put it, "singularly proof against any
form of experimental approach[8)." In the case of fission bombs,
there were several good methods available for investigating the
bulk behavior of fissile material on a laboratory scale. These
included observations of the properties of fast reactors and just
momentarily critical bomb-like assemblies, and highly instru-
mented experiments in which ordinary uranium was imploded
by chemical explosives. Such laboratory observations, when com-
bined with a growing body of theory, made it possible to predict
fairly reliably the performance of a new fission bomb before it
was actually built and tested. In the case of thermonuclear bombs,
there were no known ways to investigate the reaction process
in bulk in th~ laboratory. The only way to study the fusion process
in even a small mass of fuel was to subject it to the extreme
heat and enormous energy output of a full-scale nuclear explosion.
Such experiments are very difficult and expensive, and for that
1°Carson Mark, director of the LASL Theoretical Division from then until 1973,

estimates that nearly one half of the division's effort was devoted to the super
in the 1946-1949 period.
26 Chapter TWO

reason Bradbury insisted that the theorists should have some

reasonably clear ideas of where they were going before any such
experiments were planned. Nowadays, theoretical calculations
conducted with the aid of high-speed electronic computers provide
an effective alternative to experiments, but the very small capacity
of such machines as were then available did not permit calculations
using mathematical models that were anywhere near realistic. Con-
sequently, they always produced ambiguous and uncertain results.
In the meantime, work on the reverse state of affairs, that is,
on the problem of how to ignite a small amount of thermonuclear
fuel by means of a large fission explosion, was making headway.
One particular application of this work was called the "booster
principle," a means of increasing the efficiency of fission weapons
already mentioned above. According to Carson Mark, such possi-
bilities were recognized at least as early as 1946. In the summer
of 1948 a detailed study of a design incorporating the boosting
principle was made, and a full-scale test of a device of this type
was put on the list of test explosions to be made in the next
overseas test operation, then already being planned for 1951. These
studies were carried out by Marshall Rosenbluth and John Reitz
under the general direction of Teller. By the fall of 1948, the
most promising approaches to the problem had been identified,
and almost all aspects of the problem had been studied before
the first Russian test in 1949. In January 1950, a specific experi-
mental model was selected, and in late October the last details
of the design were frozen. It had been recognized all along that
a test of the booster type of device was not only interesting as
an end in itself, but that it would also provide an opportunity
to explore experimentally some of the key phenomena involved
in thermonuclear burning.
By mid-1949, work on the super itself presented a very mixed
picture. On the one hand, a steadily accumulating body of theoret-
ical calculations, made using such methods and data as were
available, began to make it appear likely that the classical super
of the early forties either would not work at all, or if it could
be made to work it would require very large amounts of the
extremely expensive artifically produced hydrogen isotope tritium.
There was, moreover, at that time no really promising alternative.
The American Nuclear Program 27

On the other hand, by that time the details of the deuteron-

deuteron and the deuteron-triton reactions were becoming better
known, fairly good estimates of the reaction rate as a function
of temperature and density were possible, and the various mech-
anisms for heating and cooling a reacting mass of light elements
were becoming well understood. In addition, it was realized that
several different thermonuclear fuel combinations were possible:
pure deuterium, deuterium plus varying amounts of tritium, and
lithium deuteride in which the lithium was either the naturally
occurring form, or was lithium especially enriched in the light
isotope of atomic weight six (Li6 ). 11 Moreover, computing de-
vices and computing techniques advanced to the point where it
began to appear to be possible to make more definitive calcula-
tions of different kinds of thermonuclear devices, and there had
been further progress in the theory and design of fission weapons.
The net situation was, as Teller summarized somewhat later
when he was trying to enlist support for a high-priority program,
one in which "We still don't know if the Super can be built,
but now we don't know it on much better grounds[9]."
The result was that a number of theorists outside Los Alamos,
Teller among them, found the prospects for further work on the
super at Los Alamos sufficiently attractive and promising to cause
them to join on a full-time basis the small group already working
there under the direction of Carson Mark, the Theoretical Division
leader. (Teller, Von Neumann, and some others from the wartime
staff had continued to participate in the Los Alamos laboratory
program by consulting two to three months in each of the inter-
vening years.) Thus, when the first Soviet explosion in August
1949 ("Joe 1") provided a powerful political stimulus to expand
and accelerate the thermonuclear program, the situation was ripe
for doing so.
Whether or not the effort put into the superbomb during the
1946-1949 period was adequate and appropriate was the subject
of a very acrimonious debate that went on for many years thereaf-
ter. Teller, who always contended it was not, wrote in 1962 that
"If the Los Alamos Laboratory had continued to function after
Hiroshima with a full complement of such brilliant people as
Oppenheimer, Fermi and Bethe, I am convinced that someone
28 Chapter TWO

would have had the same idea much sooner-and we would have
had the hydrogen bomb in 1947 instead of 1952[10]." Norris
Bradbury, the laboratory director from 1945 to 1970, held the
contrary view. In 1954 he said,

We would have spent time lashing about in a field in which we

were not equipped to do adequate computational work. We would
have spent time exploring by inadequate methods a system which
was far from certain to be successful- I cannot see· how we could
have reached our present objectives in a more rapid fashion [than)
the mechanism by which we went[ll).

We will return to this particular point later.

11 Tritiurn is normally produced by the reaction neutron plus lithium six yields

tritium plus helium, L~ + N~H3 + He'. There are two possible ways to bring
about this reaction on a large scale. One is to cause it to take place in a reactor,
in which case the tritium is later chemically separated from the lithium and
mixed with deuterium in the required concentration. Alternatively, the reaction
can be caused to take place in situ in a hydrogen bomb using lithium deuteride
(a grayish saltlike solid) as its fuel. In that case, when two deuterons react, they
can• produce a neutron, and that neutron can in turn react with lithium six to
produce a triton. The triton then very quickly reacts with another deuteron and
in that reaction produces yet another neutron which can repeat the cycle. This
cycle can also proceed along several alternative routes. For instance, the "first"
neutron could have originated in a nearby fission event in uranium or plutonium.
In another alternative, the very high energy neutron produced in the
triton-deuteron reaction can readily cause fission even in U-238 if any happens
to be nearby. (The use of LiD in thermonuclear weapons is discussed by John
Foster in the Encyclopedia Americana, 1971, Vol. 20, p. 522.) The basic idea
of using this complex chain-like process was, to my knowledge, already known
at Los Alamos in the summer of 1947, and may well have come up at least
a year before that. Natural lithium contains only 7.4% Li8 • If the proportion
of this isotope is increased by artificial means, the whole process obviously goes
much faster. However, such enrichment is, by normal chemical industry standards,
very expensive, and like other large-scale isotope separation processes, it requires
a very substantial initial capital investment.
 Chapter THREE

The Soviet Nuclear Program

to 1949

The announcement of the discovery of fission in Germany in 1939

caused great excitement among nuclear physicists in the U.S.S.R.,
just as it did in all Western countries. Soviet work in nuclear
physics[ I] was on a more modest scale than in Germany, England,
France, and the United States, but the quality of the work that
was done was comparable. And while direct personal contacts
between Soviet and other scientists were severely limited, the
circulation of scientific journals from outside was not seriously
impeded and the significance of the new discoveries was recog-
nized as quickly there as elsewhere. It is reported that in 1939
Igor Tamm, a leading Soviet physicist, remarked to a group of
students, "Do you know what this new discovery means? It means
a bomb can be built that will destroy a city out to a radius of
maybe ten kilometers[2]." As elsewhere, physicists in Russia began
to make measurements and calculations intended to elucidate the
new discoveries and to determine under exactly what conditions,
if any, a chain reaction would take place. One product of Soviet
research on this subject was the discovery of spontaneous fission,
30 Chapter THREE

an exceedingly rare event, by G. N. Flerov and Petrzhak, 1

working under the general direction of Igor Kurchatov. A cable-
gram describing this discovery was sent to the American scientific
journal Physical Review, which published it in its July I, 1940,
issue (p. 89). According to Igor Golovin[3] (a professional colleague
of Kurchatov who authored an excellent biography of the latter),
the complete lack of any American response to the publication
of this discovery was one of the factors which convinced the
Russians that there must be a big secret project under way in
the United States.
The invasion of the Soviet Union by the Nazis in June 1941
brought most work in nuclear physics to a halt as scientists and
technicians were drafted into the army or mobilized to do other
work of more immediate value, such as the development of radar
and making ships safe against magnetic mines.
But work on uranium was not entirely forgotten. At an interna-
tional "anti-Fascist meeting" of scientists in Moscow, on October
12, 1941, Peter L. Kapitza, one of the leaders of Soviet physics,
in commenting on what scientists could do to help the war effort
said in part, "In recent years a new possibility-nuclear energy-has
been discovered. Theoretical calculations show that, if a contem-
porary bomb can for example destroy a whole city block, an atomic
bomb, even of small dimensions, if it can be realized, can easily
annihilate a great capital city having a few million inhabitants[4]."
Some months later Flerov, who had been following the foreign
literature on the subject, wrote to the State Defense Committee,
"no time must be lost in making a uranium bomb." He wrote
similarly to Kurchatov, explaining the reasoning behind his con-
clusion. In the meantime, according to Golovin, the Soviet govern-
ment had come into possession of information showing that urgent
top secret work on atomic bombs was in progress in both the
United States and Germany. The government turned to a group
including Abram Joffe and Peter Kapitza to ask whether the

1 ln 1946 Flerov and Petrzhak were awarded the Stalin Prize for this discovery.
The Soviet Nuclear Program 31

U.S.S.R. could and should also mount a program in the field. The
net result was the initiation of a program under the direction
of Kurchatov in February 1943. 2

The Soviet A-Bomb

During the war years, the Soviet program did not come close
to matching the U.S. Manhattan project. The number of physicists
involved was said to be about twenty, and the total staff at the
main laboratory was only fifty persons altogether. Even so, they
did experiments and made theoretical calculations concerning the
reactions involved in both nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors,
they began work designed to lead to the production of suitably
pure uranium and graphite, and they studied various possible
means for the separation of the uranium isotopes.
At the Potsdam Conference, in July 1945, Truman told Joseph
Stalin about the U.S. A-bomb program for the first time. According
to Truman[5], "I casually mentioned to Stalin that we had a new
weapon of unusual destructive force. The Russian Premier showed
no special interest. All he said was he was glad to hear it and
hoped we would make good use of it against the Japanese."
Soviet Marshall Zhukov later wrote that after Truman's casual
announcement Stalin called him and Soviet Foreign Minister V.
M. Molotov aside and said, "They simply want to raise the price.
We've got to work on Kurchatov and hurry things up[6]." Ap-
parently the word was passed at once to Kurchatov, for Golovin
confirms that Kurchatov and his closest associates did learn of
the Alamogordo test before the Hiroshima attack took place.
The explosion of the three American atomic bombs in close
succession removed all the lingering doubts about the feasibility
and desirability of building nuclear weapons and was, without
doubt, the most important intelligence datum in the possession
of the Soviets. The Smyth report[7], which described the U.S.
2 He was joined by I. K. Kikoin, Ya. B. Zeldovitch, A. I. Alikhanov, G. N. Flerov,
YIL Ya. Pomeranchuk, B. V. Kurchatov (Igor Kurchatov's brother), I. I. Gurevich,
G. Ya. Schchepkin, Yu. B. Khariton, M.S. Kozodaev, V. P. Dzhelov, L. M. Nemenov,
and V. A. Davidendov.
32 Chapter THREE

program, was issued in the United States within days after the
first explosions over Japan and was very widely circulated-thirty
thousand copies in the first Russian printing-in the U.S.S.R. very
soon thereafter.
As a result the Soviet government immediately took measures
designed to expand and accelerate their efforts. An engineering
council was set up under the chairmanship of Boris L. Vannikov.
Vannikov, whose role Arnold Kramish (an American authority
on the early Soviet program) compares with that of General
Groves, was a Soviet army general who had been People's Com-
missar of Munitions during the war. Kurchatov and M. G. Per-
vukhin, commissar of the Chemical Industry, were appointed
Vannikov's deputies. The council was made up of engineers,
industrial managers, and scientists, including A. I. Alikhanov, I.K.
Kikoin, A. P. Vinovgradov, Abram Joffe, and A. A. Bochvar.
Another man who was to play a major role was Colonel General
Avraamy Zavenyagin of the NKVD (the secret police). He, inter-
estingly enough, was not only involved with administration and
security, but evidently pitched in on the technical work itself,
apparently being directly involved in the preparation and final
assembly of the first Soviet bomb. Many of the problems the
Russians faced and overcame were the same as those which the
American project had faced earlier: production of adequately pure
uranium and graphite in sufficient amounts, unexpected differences
between the behavior of large high-power production reactors
and the smaller pilot plant version, determining the chemical and
physical properties of plutonium from exceedingly small sam-
ples-first produced in a cyclotron and then later by the first
low-power graphite uranium reactor, the production of U-235
by gaseous diffusion, and the design of a chemical explosives
system for imploding plutonium in order to achieve a supercritical
mass. Among those who worked on the industrial problem involved
was Vassily Emelyanov, a metallurgist who built tanks during
the war, and who later (in the fifties and sixties) very frequently
represented the Soviet Union in international atomic circles.
The Russians first achieved a chain reaction on Christmas Day
1946, in a graphite uranium lattice that apparently was much like
Fermi's reactor in Chicago. That reactor, known as the F-1,
The Soviet Nuclear Program 33

apparently still exists today on the site where Kurchatov and his
colleagues put it together more than a quarter of a century ago[8].
The first production reactor apparently began to work satis-
factorily in the fall of 1948 after first creating some difficult
problems for the designers that may have been much like those
that the United States had to overcome during the war. Finally,
on August 29, 1949, the Soviets exploded their first atomic bomb
in Asia near Semipalatinsk. The following excerpt from Golovin
gives the Soviets' own view of this event and their perceptions
about how it fitted into the general scheme of things:

The creators of all the weapons components gathered on the test

site. With their own hands, the directors-physicists and engi-
neers-brought the parts up to the requisite level of reliability.
Work went on around the clock.
Kurchatov and Zavenyagin personally directed all the prepara-
tions on which the success of the test depended. Both could some-
times be seen on the spot of the future explosion, sometimes where
the bomb components were being assembled, and sometimes in
the concrete laboratory bunkers.
At last the bomb was assembled under the tireless direction of
Kurchatov and Zavenyagin. Finally, it was lifted up onto the metal
tower where it was to be exploded.
The test was successfully carried out on August 29, 1949 in the
presence of the Supreme Command of the Soviet Army and Govern-
ment leaders.
When the physicists who had created the bomb saw the blinding
flash, brighter than the brightest sunny day, and the mushroom
cloud rising into the stratosphere, they gave a sigh of relief. They
carried out their duties. No one became frightened like the physi-
cists in the U.S.A. who had gathered from everywhere and had
made the weapon for the army of a country that was foreign to
many of them and whose government used it against the peaceful
populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The Soviet physicists knew they had created the weapon for
their own people and for their own army which was defending
peace. Their labor, their sleepless nights, and the huge effort that
had constantly increased in the course of those past years had not
been in vain: they had knocked the trump card from the hands
of the American atomic diplomats[9].
34 Chapter THREE

Within days, the radioactive debris from the explosion was

picked up by U.S. aircraft equipped specifically for the purpose.
These aircraft were available and on station largely because of
special efforts by Lewis Strauss, then a member of the AEC, and
especially sensitive to and worried about what the Soviets might
be doing. On September 23, President Truman announced the
explosion of the bomb that came to be known as "Joe 1" (for
Joseph Stalin):

We have evidence that within recent weeks an atomic explosion

occurred in the U.S.S.R.
Ever since atomic energy was first released to man, the eventual
development of this new force by other nations was to be expected.
This probability has always been taken into account by us ....
The recent development emphasizes once again, if such emphasis
were needed, the necessity for that truly effective, and enforceable
international control of atomic energy which this government and
a large majority of the United Nations support.

(Truman, as he said later, simply could not bring himself to believe

"those asiatics" could built something as complicated as an atomic
bomb. He made David Lilienthal, Robert F. Bacher, and the other
members of the special committee appointed to study the evi-
dence, personally and individually sign a statement to the effect
they really believed the Russians had done it[10].)
On September 25, 1949, the Soviet news agency TASS replied
to Truman's announcement and other stories in the Western press
with a classic statement that typifies the secrecy and obfuscation
with which the Soviets cloaked even the obvious in the last Stalin
years:

In the Soviet Union, as is known, building work on a large scale

is in progress-the building of hydroelectric stations, mines, canals,
roads, which evoke the necessity of large-scale blasting work with
the use of the latest technical means.
Insofar as this blasting work has taken place frequently in various
parts of the country, it is possible this might draw attention beyond
the borders of the Soviet Union.
A~ for the production of atomic energy, TASS considers it neces-
sary to recall that already on November 7, 1947, minister of Foreign
Random documents with unrelated
content Scribd suggests to you:
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the
Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the
collection of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the
individual works in the collection are in the public domain in the
United States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright
law in the United States and you are located in the United
States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from copying,
distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative works
based on the work as long as all references to Project
Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope that you will
support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting free
access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™
works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for
keeping the Project Gutenberg™ name associated with the
work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement
by keeping this work in the same format with its attached full
Project Gutenberg™ License when you share it without charge
with others.

1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also
govern what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most
countries are in a constant state of change. If you are outside
the United States, check the laws of your country in addition to
the terms of this agreement before downloading, copying,
displaying, performing, distributing or creating derivative works
based on this work or any other Project Gutenberg™ work. The
Foundation makes no representations concerning the copyright
status of any work in any country other than the United States.

1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project

Gutenberg:

1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other

immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must
appear prominently whenever any copy of a Project
Gutenberg™ work (any work on which the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” appears, or with which the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed,
viewed, copied or distributed:

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United

States and most other parts of the world at no cost and
with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it,
give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project
Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United
States, you will have to check the laws of the country
where you are located before using this eBook.

1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is

derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of
the copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to
anyone in the United States without paying any fees or charges.
If you are redistributing or providing access to a work with the
phrase “Project Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the
work, you must comply either with the requirements of
paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use
of the work and the Project Gutenberg™ trademark as set forth
in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is

posted with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and
distribution must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through
1.E.7 and any additional terms imposed by the copyright holder.
Additional terms will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™
License for all works posted with the permission of the copyright
holder found at the beginning of this work.

1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project

Gutenberg™ License terms from this work, or any files
 containing a part of this work or any other work associated with
Project Gutenberg™.

1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute

this electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1
with active links or immediate access to the full terms of the
Project Gutenberg™ License.

1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form,
including any word processing or hypertext form. However, if
you provide access to or distribute copies of a Project
Gutenberg™ work in a format other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or
other format used in the official version posted on the official
Project Gutenberg™ website (www.gutenberg.org), you must,
at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a copy,
a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy
upon request, of the work in its original “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or
other form. Any alternate format must include the full Project
Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.

1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,

performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™
works unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or

providing access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™
electronic works provided that:

• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive
from the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the
method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The
fee is owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark,
but he has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty
 payments must be paid within 60 days following each date on
which you prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your
periodic tax returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked
as such and sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation at the address specified in Section 4, “Information
about donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation.”

• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who

notifies you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt
that s/he does not agree to the terms of the full Project
Gutenberg™ License. You must require such a user to return or
destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
Project Gutenberg™ works.

• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of

any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in
the electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90
days of receipt of the work.

• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.

1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project

Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different
terms than are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain
permission in writing from the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, the manager of the Project Gutenberg™
trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3
below.

1.F.

1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend

considerable effort to identify, do copyright research on,
transcribe and proofread works not protected by U.S. copyright
law in creating the Project Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these
efforts, Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, and the medium
on which they may be stored, may contain “Defects,” such as,
but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or corrupt data,
transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual property
infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be
read by your equipment.

1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except

for the “Right of Replacement or Refund” described in
paragraph 1.F.3, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation, the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark,
and any other party distributing a Project Gutenberg™ electronic
work under this agreement, disclaim all liability to you for
damages, costs and expenses, including legal fees. YOU AGREE
THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT
EXCEPT THOSE PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE
THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY
DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE LIABLE
TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL,
PUNITIVE OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE
NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you

discover a defect in this electronic work within 90 days of
receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) you
paid for it by sending a written explanation to the person you
received the work from. If you received the work on a physical
medium, you must return the medium with your written
explanation. The person or entity that provided you with the
defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu
of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.
If the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund
in writing without further opportunities to fix the problem.

1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set

forth in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’,
WITH NO OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.

1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied

warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this
agreement violates the law of the state applicable to this
agreement, the agreement shall be interpreted to make the
maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by the applicable
state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any provision of
this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.

1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the

Foundation, the trademark owner, any agent or employee of the
Foundation, anyone providing copies of Project Gutenberg™
electronic works in accordance with this agreement, and any
volunteers associated with the production, promotion and
distribution of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, harmless
from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, that
arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you
do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project
Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or
deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any Defect
you cause.

Section 2. Information about the Mission

of Project Gutenberg™
Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new
computers. It exists because of the efforts of hundreds of
volunteers and donations from people in all walks of life.

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the

assistance they need are critical to reaching Project
Gutenberg™’s goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™
collection will remain freely available for generations to come. In
2001, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was
created to provide a secure and permanent future for Project
Gutenberg™ and future generations. To learn more about the
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and how your
efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 and the
Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.

Section 3. Information about the Project

Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-
profit 501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the
laws of the state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status
by the Internal Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or
federal tax identification number is 64-6221541. Contributions
to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation are tax
deductible to the full extent permitted by U.S. federal laws and
your state’s laws.

The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500

West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact
links and up to date contact information can be found at the
Foundation’s website and official page at
www.gutenberg.org/contact
 Section 4. Information about Donations to
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation
Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without
widespread public support and donations to carry out its mission
of increasing the number of public domain and licensed works
that can be freely distributed in machine-readable form
accessible by the widest array of equipment including outdated
equipment. Many small donations ($1 to $5,000) are particularly
important to maintaining tax exempt status with the IRS.

The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws

regulating charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of
the United States. Compliance requirements are not uniform
and it takes a considerable effort, much paperwork and many
fees to meet and keep up with these requirements. We do not
solicit donations in locations where we have not received written
confirmation of compliance. To SEND DONATIONS or determine
the status of compliance for any particular state visit
www.gutenberg.org/donate.

While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states

where we have not met the solicitation requirements, we know
of no prohibition against accepting unsolicited donations from
donors in such states who approach us with offers to donate.

International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot

make any statements concerning tax treatment of donations
received from outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp
our small staff.

Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current

donation methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a
number of other ways including checks, online payments and
credit card donations. To donate, please visit:
www.gutenberg.org/donate.

Section 5. General Information About

Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could
be freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose
network of volunteer support.

Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several

printed editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by
copyright in the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus,
we do not necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any
particular paper edition.

Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
facility: www.gutenberg.org.

This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™,

including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new
eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter to hear
about new eBooks.
Welcome to our website – the perfect destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. We believe that every book holds a new world,
offering opportunities for learning, discovery, and personal growth.
That’s why we are dedicated to bringing you a diverse collection of
books, ranging from classic literature and specialized publications to
self-development guides and children's books.

More than just a book-buying platform, we strive to be a bridge

connecting you with timeless cultural and intellectual values. With an
elegant, user-friendly interface and a smart search system, you can
quickly find the books that best suit your interests. Additionally,
our special promotions and home delivery services help you save time
and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Join us on a journey of knowledge exploration, passion nurturing, and

personal growth every day!

ebookbell.com