Better a Shield Than a Sword: Perspectives on the Defense and Technology

by Edward Teller

A controversial scientist offers personal reflections on physicists such as Einstein, Szilard, and Fermi, views of the events at Los Alamos and the Oppenheimer affair, and his stance on arms control and nuclear policy

257 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1987

About the author

Of all the scientists who worked on the U.S. nuclear weapons program none have led more controversial a career than Edward Teller. Described by one Nobel Prize winner in physics as "one of the most thoughtful statesmen of science," and by another as "a danger to all that's important," Teller was recognized by most of his colleagues as being one of the most imaginative and creative physicists alive. But at the same time, his single-minded pursuit of the hydrogen bomb, and his autocratic style alienated many of the scientists he worked with.

The man who would one day be known as the father of the hydrogen bomb in the U.S. was born into a Jewish family on January 15, 1908 in Budapest, Hungary. He grew up during a particularly turbulent time in Hungarian history. Following a briefly successful communist regime in 1919, the country was ruled by a virulently anti-semitic fascist dictator, Nicholas Horthy.

The political upheavals meant the young Teller was only too happy to leave his homeland in 1926 to study in Germany. In 1930 he got his PhD in theoretical physics from the University of Leipzig. Although he accepted a research post in 1931 following his graduation, Teller realized that Hitler's rise to power meant that he should leave Germany as soon as he could. Many years later he told his biographer that "the hope of making an academic career in Germany for a Jew existed before Hitler came and vanished the day he arrived."

In 1935 Teller emigrated to the United States to take up a teaching position at George Washington University. His first years in the U.S. marked a new phase of his career: His postdoctoral research had been in quantum mechanics; at George Washington University, he would begin a very productive collaboration with Russian emigré George Gamow in nuclear physics. At the outbreak of the Second World War, scientists became aware that the nucleus of a uranium atom could be split releasing enormous amounts of energy. It began to seem feasible that this energy could be used to create a weapon of unprecedented power. Teller was among the first scientists recruited to work on the Manhattan Project that was working to develop such a bomb.

It was Italian-born physicist Enrico Fermi who first got Teller thinking about an H-bomb. In September 1941, before the United States had even built an A-bomb, he suggested to Teller that an atomic bomb might heat a mass of deuterium (an isotope of hydrogen) sufficiently to ignite a thermonuclear reaction. In the summer of 1942, when Teller joined a group of distinguished physicists who were brainstorming about a design for the atomic bomb, he diverted much of the discussion to the feasibility of a superbomb. Teller travelled to California with his old friend Hans Bethe who remembers that even on the way out to Berkeley Teller was already thinking about the super: "Teller told me that the fission bomb [atomic bomb] was all well and good and, essentially, was now a sure thing.. He said that what we really should think about was the possibility of...the hydrogen bomb."

Shortly after Teller arrived at the newly established weapons laboratory in Los Alamos, his obsession with the H-bomb caused tensions with other scientists, particularly Bethe. Bethe remembers that "he declined to take charge of the group which would perform the detailed calculation on the implosion and since the theoretical division was very shorthanded it was necessary to bring in new scientists to do the work that Teller declined to do."

Teller left Los Alamos at the end of the war, returning to the University of Chicago. But when the Soviet Union conducted its first test of an atomic device in August 1949, he did his best to drum up support for a crash program to build a hydrogen bomb. Teller argued that a superbomb was essential to the very survival of the U.S., "If the Russians demonstrate a super before we possess one, our situation will be hopeless." Truman eventually agreed, calling for a hyd

Reviews

[Ahmed Azeez · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Because of my beliefs in action, I have obtained what I did not desire and lost one of my great joys. I gained a dubious form of fame. Once, on a television show, seconds before the end of the broadcast, an unexpected question was put to me: ‘‘How do you want to be remembered?’’ My prompt and honest answer was and remains: ‘‘I do not want to be remembered.’’ As a result of acting on my beliefs, I lost what I wished to retain: friendly fellowship with many of my fellow scientists. The merits of the friendships I retained with people who do not quarrel over a belief lead me to suspect that I may have gained in friendship more than I lost.”

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Edward Teller was a physicist at Los Alamos when the atomic bomb was developed in World War II. He was active following the war in convincing the government to build a fusion bomb, and he became the prime theorist in the hydrogen bomb project. Teller was always active in the political-scientific arena. He allowed his scientific reputation to be used by conservatives who advocated an ever-increasing buildup of nuclear bombs in the 1960's and gave damaging testimony which led to the revocation of the security clearance of his old boss and colleague, Robert Oppenheimer. He was director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. In that assignment, he influenced a then-governor Ronald Reagan to believe the same American technological leadership which built the first nuclear bomb could develop a shield to protect America from a possible future nuclear attack from Russia.

"Better a Shield Than a Sword" is a collection of essays, speeches and writings of Teller's from the decades prior to publication of the book. As such, they are interesting glimpses into the mind of this scientific genius, but there is nothing really new in the book that had not been made public before. Perhaps the most interesting concerned Teller's early life in Hungary and his escape from Nazism, leading to his coming to America and working on the bomb. He gives insight into the evolution and development of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, slanted by his oft-stated opposition to earlier test-ban treaties and to the SALT agreements. He professes to have admired the man he threw under the bus, Oppenheimer.

This book was written when Reagan was President. Teller was an active supporter of Reagan's confrontational defense policies with the Russians. Reagan, at this time, was pushing SDI, or Star Wars, based on Teller's shield theories, even at the expense of jeopardizing progress with the Russians on nuclear proliferation negotiations. Teller's rationale was simply: if everyone has a shield, a sword may never have to be drawn from its sheath. Simple enough, but the effects were huge on the paranoid Russians, who saw a new arms race based on the need to counter any American advances in a Strategic Defense Initiative. Reagan stuck to defending SDI at all costs, which was especially wasteful in terms of time which could have been productively used toward non-proliferation talks, because SDI was never more than theory; there had not even been the beginning of actual laboratory research into its efficacy. Teller, in this book, provides no new detail to clarify the workings of a shield program.

Teller's political/scientific legacy may not be admired by everyone, but he is worth a read for the insights provided by one of the pioneers of the atomic age. He loved his adopted country and worked hard to make the world a safer place to live, according to his defense policy beliefs. This is an interesting addition to the collection of the reader of atomic history.