Sold – Einstein Worries That Mankind Will Not Survive the Nuclear Age He Helped Create

Scientists in the 1930s, using machines that could break apart the nuclear cores of atoms, confirmed Einstein’s formula E=mc². They found that the release of energy in a nuclear transformation was so great that it could cause a detectable change in the mass of the nucleus. In August 1939, nuclear physicists came to Einstein, not for scientific but for political help. The fission of the uranium nucleus had recently been discovered. A long-time friend, Leo Szilard, and other physicists realized that uranium might be used for enormously devastating bombs, and they had reason to fear that Nazi Germany might construct such weapons. Einstein, reacting to the danger posed by Hitlerism, had already abandoned his strict pacifism and now signed a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, warning him to take action. The U.S. initiated a nuclear program called the Manhattan Project, and over the course of six years, from 1939 to 1945, more than $2 billion was spent on it. Atomic bombs were built, and one was tested successfully on July 16, 1945. In August 1945, bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, causing extraordinary damage and loss of life.

I think the people will have to learn the hard way; I mean those of them who will survive.

But that destruction was just part of the horrors of nuclear weapons, as the fallout and radiation from a bomb had even more wide-spread and long-term consequences. People realized that in the event of a nuclear war, for the first time, the earth could be made largely uninhabitable and its population virtually wiped out. Many of the bomb’s creators regretted their work. Isidor Rabi felt that the equilibrium in nature had been upset as if humankind had become a threat to the world. Robert Oppenheimer quoted a fragment from the Bhagavad Gita. “I am become Death,” he said, “the destroyer of worlds.” Einstein considered the writing of his letter to Roosevelt the one great mistake of his life. In May 1946 he became chairman of the newly formed Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, joining its drive for international and civilian control of nuclear energy. He recorded fund-raising radio messages for the group, sent letters on its behalf, and wrote a widely read article on its work.

Meanwhile, in the wake of World War II, the Cold War developed into a continuing state of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Soviet Union and the powers of the Western world, particularly the United States. The Soviets remained in occupation of much of Eastern Europe, contrary to Western expectations, and in 1948 the confrontation escalated when the Soviets added Czechoslovakia to their orbit of satellite states and instituted the Berlin Blockade. In 1949 the Soviet Union successfully tested a nuclear bomb, making it a nuclear power as well. Then in June 1950, the Korean War broke out. The United States fell into a frenzy of anti-communism, anger and paranoia, and that same year Senator Joseph Carthy emerged as the most visible public face of widespread fears of Communist subversion at home. He was noted for making claims that there were large numbers of Communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers inside the United States federal government and elsewhere. People like Einstein who counseled peace and disarmament were subject to accusations, and countless other innocent parties were denounced and ruined by McCarthyism. Einstein was horrified and discouraged at the turn the U.S. had taken.

In 1950, Walter Bishop created a “Connecticut Plan” proposal for peace and sent it to 150 world leaders. Most did not respond, but Einstein did. Typed Letter Signed on his blind-embossed Princeton letterhead, Princeton, N.J. September 13, 1950, to Bishop, decrying the fever pitch of the moment and wondering whether mankind could saved. “I have read your article and I agree fully with your opinions. What I do not know is the way how to convince enough influential people and to induce them to act conformingly. I have tried repeatedly to preach reason as long as the passions were not so hot as they are now. I think the people will have to learn the hard way; I mean those of them who will survive. You should visit people who must be convinced or who are able enough to find means to change this state of madness which holds the nation in its grip.” This letter appears to be unpublished and unknown as no copy could be located in the Einstein Archives at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University.

That Albert Einstein, the most widely recognized and respected scientist in the country, could not figure out how to reach the nation’s leaders, tells everything about conditions prevailing at that time.