Command and Control

The threat of accidents had increased during the past decade, as nuclear weapons became more numerous, more widely dispersed — and vastly more powerful. In the fall of 1949, American scientists had engaged in a fierce debate over whether to develop a hydrogen bomb, nicknamed “the Superbomb” or “the Super.” It promised to unleash a destructive force thousands of times greater than that of the bombs used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While those weapons derived their explosive power solely from nuclear fission (the splitting apart of heavy elements into lighter ones), the hydrogen bomb would draw upon an additional source of energy, thermonuclear fusion (the combination of light elements into heavier ones). Fission and fusion both released the neutrons essential for a chain reaction — but fusion released a lot more. The potential yield of an atomic bomb was limited by the amount of its fissile material. But the potential yield of a thermonuclear weapon seemed limitless; it might only need more hydrogen as fuel. The same energy that powered the sun and the stars could be harnessed to make cities disappear.

The physicist Edward Teller had devoted most of his time during the Manhattan Project to theoretical work on the Super. But the problem of how to ignite and sustain fusion reactions had never been solved. After the Soviet Union detonated an atomic bomb in August 1949, Teller began to lobby for a crash program to build a hydrogen bomb. He was tireless, stubborn, brilliant, and determined to get his way. “It is my conviction that a peaceful settlement with Russia is possible only if we possess overwhelming superiority,” Teller argued. “If the Russians demonstrate a Super before we possess one, our situation will be hopeless.”

The General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission discussed Teller’s proposal and voted unanimously to oppose it. Headed by J. Robert Oppenheimer, the committee said that the hydrogen bomb had no real military value and would encourage “the policy of exterminating civilian populations.” Six of the committee members signed a statement warning that the bomb could become “a weapon of genocide.” Two others, the physicists Enrico Fermi and Isidor Rabi, hoped that the Super could be banned through an international agreement, arguing that such a bomb would be “a danger to humanity… an evil thing considered in any light.”

David Lilienthal, the head of the AEC, opposed developing a hydrogen bomb, as did a majority of the AEC’s commissioners. But one of them, Lewis L. Strauss, soon emerged as an influential champion of the weapon. Strauss wasn’t a physicist or a former Manhattan Project scientist. He was a retired Wall Street financier with a high school education, a passion for science, and a deep mistrust of the Soviet Union. At the AEC, he’d been largely responsible for the monitoring system that detected the Soviet atomic bomb test. Now he wanted the United States to make a “quantum leap” past the Soviets, and “proceed with all possible expedition to develop the thermonuclear weapon.”

Senator Brien McMahon, head of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, agreed with Strauss. A few years earlier, McMahon had been a critic of the atomic bomb and a leading opponent of military efforts to control it. But the political climate had changed: Democrats were under attack for being too “soft on Communism.” The Soviet Union now loomed as a dangerous, implacable enemy — and McMahon was facing reelection. If the Soviets developed a hydrogen bomb and the United States didn’t, McMahon predicted that “total power in the hands of total evil will equal destruction.” The Air Force backed the effort to build the Superbomb, as did the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project and the Joint Chiefs of Staff — although its chairman, General Omar Bradley, acknowledged that the weapon’s greatest benefit was most likely “psychological.”

On January 31, 1950, President Truman met with David Lilienthal, Secretary of State Dean Acheson, and Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson to discuss the Superbomb. Acheson and Johnson had already expressed their support for developing one. The president asked whether the Soviets could do it. His advisers suggested that they could. “In that case, we have no choice,” Truman said. “We’ll go ahead.”

Two weeks after the president’s decision was publicly announced, Albert Einstein read a prepared statement about the hydrogen bomb on national television. He criticized the militarization of American society, the intimidation of anyone who opposed it, the demands for loyalty and secrecy, the “hysterical character” of the nuclear arms race, and the “disastrous illusion” that this new weapon would somehow make America safer. “Every step appears as the unavoidable consequence of the preceding one,” Einstein said. “In the end, there beckons more and more clearly general annihilation.”