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The First War of Physics: The Secret History of the Atom Bomb, 1939-1949
An epic story of science and technology at the very limits of human the monumental race to build the first atomic weapons. Rich in personality, action, confrontation, and deception, The First War of Physics is the first fully realized popular account of the race to build humankind's most destructive weapon. The book draws on declassified material, such as MI6's Farm Hall transcripts, coded soviet messages cracked by American cryptographers in the Venona project, and interpretations by Russian scholars of documents from the soviet archives.
Jim Baggott weaves these threads into a dramatic narrative that spans ten historic years, from the discovery of nuclear fission in 1939 to the aftermath of 'Joe-1,’ August 1949's first Soviet atomic bomb test. Why did physicists persist in developing the atomic bomb, despite the devastation that it could bring? Why, despite having a clear head start, did Hitler's physicists fail? Could the soviets have developed the bomb without spies like Klaus Fuchs or Donald Maclean? Did the allies really plot to assassinate a key member of the German bomb program? Did the physicists knowingly inspire the arms race? The First War of Physics is a grand and frightening story of scientific ambition, intrigue, and a tale barely believable as fiction, which just happens to be historical fact. 32 black-and-white illustrations
Jim Baggott weaves these threads into a dramatic narrative that spans ten historic years, from the discovery of nuclear fission in 1939 to the aftermath of 'Joe-1,’ August 1949's first Soviet atomic bomb test. Why did physicists persist in developing the atomic bomb, despite the devastation that it could bring? Why, despite having a clear head start, did Hitler's physicists fail? Could the soviets have developed the bomb without spies like Klaus Fuchs or Donald Maclean? Did the allies really plot to assassinate a key member of the German bomb program? Did the physicists knowingly inspire the arms race? The First War of Physics is a grand and frightening story of scientific ambition, intrigue, and a tale barely believable as fiction, which just happens to be historical fact. 32 black-and-white illustrations
576 pages, Hardcover
First published March 31, 2006
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1300 people want to read
About the author
Jim Baggott
23 books147 followersJim Baggott completed his doctorate in physical chemistry at the University of Oxford and his postgraduate research at Stanford University.
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October 16, 2018
The mushroom cloud and radiation fallout over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are forever seared into human conscience. Close on its heels, the world watched with bated breath as the Cold War antagonists built up their nuclear arsenal which was capable of destroying the entire civilization many times over. However, even with all their ideological disagreement with capitalism, the Soviet Union didn’t help proliferate nuclear weapons in the world. This was to change when the weapon reached the so-called rogue states. When Pakistan made the bomb with centrifuge designs stolen by Abdul Qadeer Khan from Germany, the world was again put on tenterhooks. They have already sold the secrets to North Korea, Iran and Libya. A theocratic state like Pakistan, which upholds terrorism as an instrument of state policy, is extremely vulnerable to leakage of nuclear material and it is only a matter of time before Islamic terrorists get hold of it from a pliant Pakistani military. Civilized societies can only shudder at the thought of these deadly weapons finding their way into the cache of the numerous mujahideens and suicide squads out there, always in the ready to kill indiscriminately in the name of Allah. In that respect, this book which narrates the story of the atom bomb is quite relevant today. The anxiety and fear of the people towards the end of World War II is still palpable. Jim Baggott is a British science writer with interests in science, philosophy and science history. He has authored many books and is a regular contributor to New Scientist magazine.
The book is structured into four parts – the mobilization of nuclear scientists from across the world following the outbreak of war, early frustrations and progress of weapon design, use of atom bombs in war and origins of the Cold War associated with Soviet nuclear tests. First light on nuclear secrets was shed in pre-war Germany. Otto Hahn discovered nuclear fission in 1938. Frisch and Meitner established the theoretical framework for its materialization. Germany under Hitler quickly realized the potential of fission to produce a weapon of immense destructive power and subsequently banned the export of uranium. This rang the alarm bells across the Atlantic. Einstein wrote a secret letter to President Roosevelt in 1939, advising him about the plausibility of ‘extremely powerful bombs of a new type’. Nuclear research began with fervent interest on both sides of the ocean. America obtained the services of all notable scientists fleeing war-torn Europe and kick started the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos under Robert Oppenheimer. Germany responded with the formation of Uranverein (Uranium Club) under Werner Heisenberg. But Germany was constrained by lack of resources and raw materials. Its Norwegian source of heavy water was under constant attacks and sabotage by the Allies. The manpower for the research job was selected on the basis of Aryan racial purity which was doomed to fail from the start. Even with technical knowhow from Paris, which came under German occupation in 1940, they could not catch up with America. By June 1942, Germany secretly dropped the work on bomb design. This was not known to the Americans. Or, if they had known it, they chose to ignore it. There was concern in the US that instead of an explosive device, Germany might still go for a weapon that rained radioactive material in an area.
The book contains a few detailed descriptions of the nuclear processes that led to production of fissile material. Either Uranium-235 or Plutonium could be used to make a bomb. It was not an easy laboratory task to produce the material. Electromagnetic separation and purification of U-235 required magnets 250 feet long. Their construction exhausted America’s supply of copper. The US Treasury loaned 15000 tons of silver to complete the windings. The magnets were so powerful that it pulled the nails of men’s shoes and hairpins of women workers. The army immediately took control of the project. With the introduction of formal management structures, bureaucracy increased. The scientists were really fish out of water when communication between them was restricted for secrecy. Compartmentalization of various areas of the research ensured that only a few people could have an overall view of the game. Baggott describes in some detail the first above-ground testing of the bomb called Trinity and the bombardment of the two unfortunate Japanese cities. Kyoto was dropped from the target list as it was Japan’s ancient capital city and a major cultural centre. The bombers had to fly 2500 km from Tinian Island in the Pacific to drop the A-bombs. An attempt was aborted on 1 August 1945 due to bad weather. It is chilling to read that the planes turned away from the city of Kikuri at the last minute due to poor visibility and instead flew to Nagasaki and dropped the bomb.
Anyone following the progress of World War II would quickly discern the defeat of Japan in front after front in the Asia-Pacific region. It was only a matter of time before they would have been convincingly routed. Why then did the US use atomic bombs against them? Baggott does a great job in answering this important historical question. Even though Japan was in the jaws of defeat, it prized its honour as a nation above all else. An unconditional surrender, as demanded by the Potsdam Declaration, was hence unacceptable to them. Japanese militarists wanted to fight to the finish, as demonstrated by kamikaze suicide pilots who flew warplanes. If the war could be ended a little earlier, countless American lives could have been saved. Even as late as 21 July 1945, Shigenori Togo – the belligerent foreign minister – was adamant to continue the fight and declared that “even if the war drags on and it becomes clear that it will take much more bloodshed, the whole country as one man will pit itself against the enemy in accordance with the Imperial Will so long as the enemy demands unconditional surrender”. The Battle of Okinawa earlier in 1945 served to remind the Allies of the ferocious battle that lay ahead for the conquest of the Japanese home islands. 12,500 Americans and 100,000 Japanese were killed in that single battle. Large scale firebombing of cities were killing thousands of Japanese civilians each day, but the Emperor and his regime was blind to the suffering of its people. In this scenario, the US wanted to create a psychological impression with an A-bomb. Besides, Stalin was itching for a share in the action on his eastern border and was to declare war on Japan by 15 August. This would have inevitably led to Soviet territorial claims in the Pacific region. Above all else, a staggering $2 billion were spent on the nuclear research effort and America literally wanted a ‘bang for its buck’. Tens of thousands of people were killed in the two nuclear strikes, but it should be remembered that the first incendiary attack on Tokyo had killed more people than that. In any case, it forced the Japanese to realize the folly of continuing the war and to surrender unconditionally just five days later.
A good chunk of the book is dedicated to the story of treachery on the part of scientists with communist affinities who had worked in the Manhattan Project. Klaus Fuchs was a senior researcher while Theodore Hall and David Greenglass were two crucial contributors to the engineering design. All three of them handed over top-secret documents to Soviet agents which saved the Russian nuclear program several years of wasted research and millions of rubles. Oppenheimer himself was under the watch for a considerable time. These people were attracted to communist ideology during their student days and were totally ignorant of what life was like in the Soviet Union that was touted as a Marxist’s heaven. As the truth slowly began to dawn, they broke links with the spy ring. It is strange that none of them wanted to flee to the safety of USSR even when it was clear that the security agencies were shadowing their every move. Evidently, they valued a few years of imprisonment in the UK or the US far more than an impoverished and intellectually oppressive lifetime in the Soviet Union. Igor Kurchatov, the director of the Soviet program, found his life much easier with the wealth of data flowing in from Los Alamos. The spy racket was exposed with the defection of Igor Gouzenko, a cipher clerk in the Ottawa embassy of the USSR to the West immediately after the conclusion of the war.
The book is easy to read and very entertaining. But its immense size of nearly 500 pages presents a daunting task for the reader. The author could have easily condensed it to, say, 300 pages without losing the punch or fraying the verve. This vast real estate permits Baggott to list the names of each officer who took part and got killed in the clandestine raids on Vemork plant in Norway which supplied heavy water to the Uranverein. Such detailed coverage of a fringe effort is unwarranted. The book’s portrayal of the German physicists’ astonishment on hearing about the Hiroshima attack is an eye opener for those working in scientific research. The Germans considered themselves to be at the head of their profession and didn’t entertain the slightest notion that others could do it better in America. They had no knowledge of the American program and naively assumed that since the German program failed, the Americans also must have bitten the dust. When the news was broken to them, their illusory world of superiority was shattered and the rude sense of awakening exhibited the pitfalls of overconfidence of the scientists who should always have kept an open mind.
The book is highly recommended.
The book is structured into four parts – the mobilization of nuclear scientists from across the world following the outbreak of war, early frustrations and progress of weapon design, use of atom bombs in war and origins of the Cold War associated with Soviet nuclear tests. First light on nuclear secrets was shed in pre-war Germany. Otto Hahn discovered nuclear fission in 1938. Frisch and Meitner established the theoretical framework for its materialization. Germany under Hitler quickly realized the potential of fission to produce a weapon of immense destructive power and subsequently banned the export of uranium. This rang the alarm bells across the Atlantic. Einstein wrote a secret letter to President Roosevelt in 1939, advising him about the plausibility of ‘extremely powerful bombs of a new type’. Nuclear research began with fervent interest on both sides of the ocean. America obtained the services of all notable scientists fleeing war-torn Europe and kick started the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos under Robert Oppenheimer. Germany responded with the formation of Uranverein (Uranium Club) under Werner Heisenberg. But Germany was constrained by lack of resources and raw materials. Its Norwegian source of heavy water was under constant attacks and sabotage by the Allies. The manpower for the research job was selected on the basis of Aryan racial purity which was doomed to fail from the start. Even with technical knowhow from Paris, which came under German occupation in 1940, they could not catch up with America. By June 1942, Germany secretly dropped the work on bomb design. This was not known to the Americans. Or, if they had known it, they chose to ignore it. There was concern in the US that instead of an explosive device, Germany might still go for a weapon that rained radioactive material in an area.
The book contains a few detailed descriptions of the nuclear processes that led to production of fissile material. Either Uranium-235 or Plutonium could be used to make a bomb. It was not an easy laboratory task to produce the material. Electromagnetic separation and purification of U-235 required magnets 250 feet long. Their construction exhausted America’s supply of copper. The US Treasury loaned 15000 tons of silver to complete the windings. The magnets were so powerful that it pulled the nails of men’s shoes and hairpins of women workers. The army immediately took control of the project. With the introduction of formal management structures, bureaucracy increased. The scientists were really fish out of water when communication between them was restricted for secrecy. Compartmentalization of various areas of the research ensured that only a few people could have an overall view of the game. Baggott describes in some detail the first above-ground testing of the bomb called Trinity and the bombardment of the two unfortunate Japanese cities. Kyoto was dropped from the target list as it was Japan’s ancient capital city and a major cultural centre. The bombers had to fly 2500 km from Tinian Island in the Pacific to drop the A-bombs. An attempt was aborted on 1 August 1945 due to bad weather. It is chilling to read that the planes turned away from the city of Kikuri at the last minute due to poor visibility and instead flew to Nagasaki and dropped the bomb.
Anyone following the progress of World War II would quickly discern the defeat of Japan in front after front in the Asia-Pacific region. It was only a matter of time before they would have been convincingly routed. Why then did the US use atomic bombs against them? Baggott does a great job in answering this important historical question. Even though Japan was in the jaws of defeat, it prized its honour as a nation above all else. An unconditional surrender, as demanded by the Potsdam Declaration, was hence unacceptable to them. Japanese militarists wanted to fight to the finish, as demonstrated by kamikaze suicide pilots who flew warplanes. If the war could be ended a little earlier, countless American lives could have been saved. Even as late as 21 July 1945, Shigenori Togo – the belligerent foreign minister – was adamant to continue the fight and declared that “even if the war drags on and it becomes clear that it will take much more bloodshed, the whole country as one man will pit itself against the enemy in accordance with the Imperial Will so long as the enemy demands unconditional surrender”. The Battle of Okinawa earlier in 1945 served to remind the Allies of the ferocious battle that lay ahead for the conquest of the Japanese home islands. 12,500 Americans and 100,000 Japanese were killed in that single battle. Large scale firebombing of cities were killing thousands of Japanese civilians each day, but the Emperor and his regime was blind to the suffering of its people. In this scenario, the US wanted to create a psychological impression with an A-bomb. Besides, Stalin was itching for a share in the action on his eastern border and was to declare war on Japan by 15 August. This would have inevitably led to Soviet territorial claims in the Pacific region. Above all else, a staggering $2 billion were spent on the nuclear research effort and America literally wanted a ‘bang for its buck’. Tens of thousands of people were killed in the two nuclear strikes, but it should be remembered that the first incendiary attack on Tokyo had killed more people than that. In any case, it forced the Japanese to realize the folly of continuing the war and to surrender unconditionally just five days later.
A good chunk of the book is dedicated to the story of treachery on the part of scientists with communist affinities who had worked in the Manhattan Project. Klaus Fuchs was a senior researcher while Theodore Hall and David Greenglass were two crucial contributors to the engineering design. All three of them handed over top-secret documents to Soviet agents which saved the Russian nuclear program several years of wasted research and millions of rubles. Oppenheimer himself was under the watch for a considerable time. These people were attracted to communist ideology during their student days and were totally ignorant of what life was like in the Soviet Union that was touted as a Marxist’s heaven. As the truth slowly began to dawn, they broke links with the spy ring. It is strange that none of them wanted to flee to the safety of USSR even when it was clear that the security agencies were shadowing their every move. Evidently, they valued a few years of imprisonment in the UK or the US far more than an impoverished and intellectually oppressive lifetime in the Soviet Union. Igor Kurchatov, the director of the Soviet program, found his life much easier with the wealth of data flowing in from Los Alamos. The spy racket was exposed with the defection of Igor Gouzenko, a cipher clerk in the Ottawa embassy of the USSR to the West immediately after the conclusion of the war.
The book is easy to read and very entertaining. But its immense size of nearly 500 pages presents a daunting task for the reader. The author could have easily condensed it to, say, 300 pages without losing the punch or fraying the verve. This vast real estate permits Baggott to list the names of each officer who took part and got killed in the clandestine raids on Vemork plant in Norway which supplied heavy water to the Uranverein. Such detailed coverage of a fringe effort is unwarranted. The book’s portrayal of the German physicists’ astonishment on hearing about the Hiroshima attack is an eye opener for those working in scientific research. The Germans considered themselves to be at the head of their profession and didn’t entertain the slightest notion that others could do it better in America. They had no knowledge of the American program and naively assumed that since the German program failed, the Americans also must have bitten the dust. When the news was broken to them, their illusory world of superiority was shattered and the rude sense of awakening exhibited the pitfalls of overconfidence of the scientists who should always have kept an open mind.
The book is highly recommended.
January 8, 2015
Workmanlike, decent overview of the dawn of the atomic age. Not as comprehensive as the two Rhodes books covering the atomic bomb and the hydrogen. My quibbles arose from the attempt to structure the story as the titular "war" between the groups of physicists. While the fear of a nazi bomb may have been what spurred the creation of the Manhattan Project, it's very clear early on that its a one sided affair and shifts focus to the Soviet espionage efforts. This is presented in a straightforward manner that's informative if not wholly entertaining. A "recommend" for those new to the subject matter, but if you want a deep dive, go with either/both of the Rhodes works, Dark Sun or The Making of the Atomic Bomb
October 3, 2023
super well written and comprehensive - i feel like i learned a ridiculous amount which was helped by the fact i wasn’t bored. despite the high word count baggott managed to be consistently engaging whilst never sacrificing thoroughness - i specifically appreciated the attention to detail when recounting the attacks on the vemork heavy water plant which i’d never even heard of
October 23, 2020
Pretty darn good. Dragged a bit toward the end but very interesting.
August 25, 2020
“This book is my attempt to answer these and many other questions through a popular, accessible account of the race to build the first atomic bombs, centred on the individual stories of the physicists directly involved.”
A worthy goal, but Baggott failed to deliver. Great material, poor presentation. Didn’t know England had a nuclear weapon program in World War Two? Or Canada? Those are among the surprises.
‘Yes, it would be possible to make a bomb,’ Bohr declared, ‘but it would take the entire efforts of a nation to do it.’
Lots of direct quotes from those involved. How close were the Germans? Were they even trying? Did Hitler accelerate research in the West by hounding talent out of Germany. Did that same talent become a conduit through which western secrets were shared with Stalin?
“It is one of the great ironies of the first war of physics that, at precisely the moment the German atomic bomb project formally ceased to exist, the palpable fear of a German atomic weapon that had continued to build in Britain and the United States was about to be translated into action.”
Many typos of the OCR scanning sort, but the worst errors are the obscure construction requiring much backtracking and re-reading.
“The opportunity to halt what would soon become a madness of atomic weapons proliferation quietly slipped away. The simple truth was that international control appeared to suit nobody.”
An agenda-driven polemic. Baggott’s opinions are loud and clear. Maybe it’s me, but it seems these days more authors are foisting their opinion on others in the guise of objective truth.
“The fear remains. If the time for protest has ended, the time for vigilance has not.”
A worthy goal, but Baggott failed to deliver. Great material, poor presentation. Didn’t know England had a nuclear weapon program in World War Two? Or Canada? Those are among the surprises.
‘Yes, it would be possible to make a bomb,’ Bohr declared, ‘but it would take the entire efforts of a nation to do it.’
Lots of direct quotes from those involved. How close were the Germans? Were they even trying? Did Hitler accelerate research in the West by hounding talent out of Germany. Did that same talent become a conduit through which western secrets were shared with Stalin?
“It is one of the great ironies of the first war of physics that, at precisely the moment the German atomic bomb project formally ceased to exist, the palpable fear of a German atomic weapon that had continued to build in Britain and the United States was about to be translated into action.”
Many typos of the OCR scanning sort, but the worst errors are the obscure construction requiring much backtracking and re-reading.
“The opportunity to halt what would soon become a madness of atomic weapons proliferation quietly slipped away. The simple truth was that international control appeared to suit nobody.”
An agenda-driven polemic. Baggott’s opinions are loud and clear. Maybe it’s me, but it seems these days more authors are foisting their opinion on others in the guise of objective truth.
“The fear remains. If the time for protest has ended, the time for vigilance has not.”
November 27, 2021
Book: The First War of Physics: The Secret History of the Atom Bomb, 1939-1949
Author: Jim Baggott
Publisher: Icon Books (2 July 2015)
Language: English
Paperback: 576 pages
Item Weight: 489 g
Dimensions: 20 x 14 x 4 cm
Country of Origin: India
Price: 399/-
Little Boy plummeted approximately six miles in forty-three seconds.
It exploded 1,890 feet above Hiroshima, about 550 feet southeast of directly over the Aioi Bridge. By then, the Enola Gay was six miles away, flying as fast as her engines could take her.
The shock wave smashed into the plane nine miles east of Hiroshima. The B-29 shuddered and groaned. The crew shouted, wondering if the Enola Gay would break apart in midair…. All hell broke loose ….
The catastrophe was to repeat again ….
A seaside city, Nagasaki was home to 253,000 people.
Fat Man exploded 1,890 feet above the city. The plutonium core generated the force of 21,000 tons of TNT—one and a half times greater than Little Boy.
The weapon missed the aiming point by almost two miles, but the damage was catastrophic.
Some 40,000 people perished instantaneously. Another 70,000 would die from radiation-related injuries and infirmity. The bomb destroyed a three-mile area and more than a third of the city’s 50,000 buildings.
In a stroke of poetic justice, the munitions plant that manufactured the torpedoes used at Pearl Harbor was obliterated.
This book tells us the back story of the bomb.
Evidently, the bomb was created by some of the world’s finest physicists, many of them Nobel laureates – physicists who, only a few years before, had been leading a sequence of revolutions in theoretical science and shaking the very reinforcements of Man’s perception of physical realism.
But how did these men become such extremely significant military resources in a war that was to redefine the very meaning of barbarity, a war that was to recalibrate what it means to be heartless?
How did these other-worldly ‘eggheads’ find themselves centre-stage in such a performance of gallant enterprise, disruption, spying, counter-espionage, murder and dreadful obliteration that it now seems hardly believable as fiction?
How did they come, in the words of J. Robert Oppenheimer, to know ‘peccadillo’?
This book is the author’s effort to respond to these and many other questions through an accepted, reachable explanation of the race to build the first atomic bombs, centred on the individual stories of the physicists openly involved.
The book spans 10 momentous years, beginning with the detection of nuclear fission in early 1939 and closing shortly after ‘Joe-1’, the first Soviet atomic bomb test in August 1949.
These were men such as Niels Bohr, Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, Richard Feynman, Otto Frisch, Klaus Fuchs, Werner Heisenberg, Yuli Khariton, Igor Kurchatov, Oppenheimer, Edward Teller, and many, many more.
Diverted from their academic obsessions by the biggest military quarrel in human history, they became intensely embroiled in the biggest of human dramas.
They found themselves drawn inexorably into a project to build the world’s most awful weapon of war, a weapon judged to be ‘practically irresistible’ at a time when the world was threatened by the darkest evil.
The book is organised in four parts:
1) Part I covers the mobilisation of nuclear physicists around the world following the outbreak of war in September 1939 and early work on atom bomb and reactor physics.
2) Part II recounts the early frustrations and progress in weapon design, the development of bomb and reactor materials in Germany, Britain and America, the spectacular sabotage of the heavy water plant at Vemork by Norwegian commandos, and the establishment of the Soviet espionage operation codenamed ENORMOZ.
3) In Part III the book addresses the direct involvement of Allied scientists in the hunt for their German counterparts in war-torn Europe following the D-Day landings, the successful Trinity test at Alamogordo in New Mexico, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the reactions of the captured German scientists on hearing of the Allied success.
4) Finally, Part IV describes the origins of the Cold War, the acceleration of the Soviet atomic programme, proliferation of weapons technology, the Venona project, the unmasking of Soviet spies, and the first successful Soviet test in August 1949.
The book concludes with an extended epilogue which attempts to tie up many of the loose ends, describing the American and Soviet H-bomb programmes and the Cuban missile crisis which brought the world to the very perimeter of catastrophe.
Much recommended.
Author: Jim Baggott
Publisher: Icon Books (2 July 2015)
Language: English
Paperback: 576 pages
Item Weight: 489 g
Dimensions: 20 x 14 x 4 cm
Country of Origin: India
Price: 399/-
Little Boy plummeted approximately six miles in forty-three seconds.
It exploded 1,890 feet above Hiroshima, about 550 feet southeast of directly over the Aioi Bridge. By then, the Enola Gay was six miles away, flying as fast as her engines could take her.
The shock wave smashed into the plane nine miles east of Hiroshima. The B-29 shuddered and groaned. The crew shouted, wondering if the Enola Gay would break apart in midair…. All hell broke loose ….
The catastrophe was to repeat again ….
A seaside city, Nagasaki was home to 253,000 people.
Fat Man exploded 1,890 feet above the city. The plutonium core generated the force of 21,000 tons of TNT—one and a half times greater than Little Boy.
The weapon missed the aiming point by almost two miles, but the damage was catastrophic.
Some 40,000 people perished instantaneously. Another 70,000 would die from radiation-related injuries and infirmity. The bomb destroyed a three-mile area and more than a third of the city’s 50,000 buildings.
In a stroke of poetic justice, the munitions plant that manufactured the torpedoes used at Pearl Harbor was obliterated.
This book tells us the back story of the bomb.
Evidently, the bomb was created by some of the world’s finest physicists, many of them Nobel laureates – physicists who, only a few years before, had been leading a sequence of revolutions in theoretical science and shaking the very reinforcements of Man’s perception of physical realism.
But how did these men become such extremely significant military resources in a war that was to redefine the very meaning of barbarity, a war that was to recalibrate what it means to be heartless?
How did these other-worldly ‘eggheads’ find themselves centre-stage in such a performance of gallant enterprise, disruption, spying, counter-espionage, murder and dreadful obliteration that it now seems hardly believable as fiction?
How did they come, in the words of J. Robert Oppenheimer, to know ‘peccadillo’?
This book is the author’s effort to respond to these and many other questions through an accepted, reachable explanation of the race to build the first atomic bombs, centred on the individual stories of the physicists openly involved.
The book spans 10 momentous years, beginning with the detection of nuclear fission in early 1939 and closing shortly after ‘Joe-1’, the first Soviet atomic bomb test in August 1949.
These were men such as Niels Bohr, Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, Richard Feynman, Otto Frisch, Klaus Fuchs, Werner Heisenberg, Yuli Khariton, Igor Kurchatov, Oppenheimer, Edward Teller, and many, many more.
Diverted from their academic obsessions by the biggest military quarrel in human history, they became intensely embroiled in the biggest of human dramas.
They found themselves drawn inexorably into a project to build the world’s most awful weapon of war, a weapon judged to be ‘practically irresistible’ at a time when the world was threatened by the darkest evil.
The book is organised in four parts:
1) Part I covers the mobilisation of nuclear physicists around the world following the outbreak of war in September 1939 and early work on atom bomb and reactor physics.
2) Part II recounts the early frustrations and progress in weapon design, the development of bomb and reactor materials in Germany, Britain and America, the spectacular sabotage of the heavy water plant at Vemork by Norwegian commandos, and the establishment of the Soviet espionage operation codenamed ENORMOZ.
3) In Part III the book addresses the direct involvement of Allied scientists in the hunt for their German counterparts in war-torn Europe following the D-Day landings, the successful Trinity test at Alamogordo in New Mexico, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the reactions of the captured German scientists on hearing of the Allied success.
4) Finally, Part IV describes the origins of the Cold War, the acceleration of the Soviet atomic programme, proliferation of weapons technology, the Venona project, the unmasking of Soviet spies, and the first successful Soviet test in August 1949.
The book concludes with an extended epilogue which attempts to tie up many of the loose ends, describing the American and Soviet H-bomb programmes and the Cuban missile crisis which brought the world to the very perimeter of catastrophe.
Much recommended.
April 10, 2015
I've read lots of books about the Manhattan Project, and one each on the German and Japanese efforts to develop atomic weapons, but this book brings those threads together in one place. If you only read one book about the US effort, I recommend Richard Rhodes' authoritative The Making of the Atomic Bomb instead, but if you have time for two, this is the other one you should look into.
January 22, 2023
Wow! Everything they're wrtiting On The cover is true: 'Rich in personality, action, confrontation and deception'. A great read!
March 30, 2025
before i checked this book out from the library, i looked at the reviews on here first and didn’t expect much, but weirdly felt like some felt too highly critical. as a starting point, i’ve read multiple books about the bomb and nuclear weapons, reactors, and physics in general, including the one that always gets mentioned— the making of the atomic bomb by richard rhodes.
even so i have found a lot of things to learn from this book, and what was “repetitive” was still displayed in a refreshing, frequently witty light that i didn’t mind learning again. objectively speaking, i found this book to include a lot more information about the soviet and german bomb projects that has been missing from a lot of the “general” books about the bomb, including rhodes’ two. i assume part of this is also because of the transcripts from farm hall being declassified in 1992, although i find rhodes to be lacking on the german bomb/reactor project.
therefore i will more directly have to disagree with the reviews saying this has nothing to add, it portrays the other bomb projects as being on the same scale (i assume this person did not finish the book as the author makes clear over and over that this was NOT the case), and that the author is too opinionated on his stance on morality (he stays as objective as he can be until the epilogue, and even so every single book i’ve ever read on the bomb has been very clear on how unnecessary, arrogant, and individualistic a lot of choices surrounding nuclear weapons are— again, including richard rhodes).
i think this is a great book and found it to be a sort of mini mix of rhodes’ two, bastard brigade by sam kean, and a book on the soviet program that i haven’t read yet. it’s a great “starter” book that i would recommend to anyone interested in the bomb project, and almost wish i had read this first before the others.
even so i have found a lot of things to learn from this book, and what was “repetitive” was still displayed in a refreshing, frequently witty light that i didn’t mind learning again. objectively speaking, i found this book to include a lot more information about the soviet and german bomb projects that has been missing from a lot of the “general” books about the bomb, including rhodes’ two. i assume part of this is also because of the transcripts from farm hall being declassified in 1992, although i find rhodes to be lacking on the german bomb/reactor project.
therefore i will more directly have to disagree with the reviews saying this has nothing to add, it portrays the other bomb projects as being on the same scale (i assume this person did not finish the book as the author makes clear over and over that this was NOT the case), and that the author is too opinionated on his stance on morality (he stays as objective as he can be until the epilogue, and even so every single book i’ve ever read on the bomb has been very clear on how unnecessary, arrogant, and individualistic a lot of choices surrounding nuclear weapons are— again, including richard rhodes).
i think this is a great book and found it to be a sort of mini mix of rhodes’ two, bastard brigade by sam kean, and a book on the soviet program that i haven’t read yet. it’s a great “starter” book that i would recommend to anyone interested in the bomb project, and almost wish i had read this first before the others.
January 15, 2021
It’s difficult to imagine the research which must have gone into this book, and yet it’s all drawn together in a way which elevates the stories beyond a mere recitation of facts.
Baggott focuses more on the people than the Physics, so this might not suit those looking for a purely scientific review. This gives more space however to explore the impulses and implications of the work which came to shape so much in the subsequent decades, and which exemplifies the destruction that was (rightly or wrongly) justified by the fight for “good”.
Baggott focuses more on the people than the Physics, so this might not suit those looking for a purely scientific review. This gives more space however to explore the impulses and implications of the work which came to shape so much in the subsequent decades, and which exemplifies the destruction that was (rightly or wrongly) justified by the fight for “good”.
June 26, 2019
So good. I'm looking forward to jumping into Rhodes' version eventually, which is supposedly more comprehensive than this one.
Shout out to Baggott for including a time line and a list of key characters. Absolute lifesaver.
Shout out to Baggott for including a time line and a list of key characters. Absolute lifesaver.
July 16, 2015
This book covers the development of the atomic bomb from the point of the first “what if?” theoretical thought about nuclear fission up until present day. The author does not just look at America’s race to develop the bomb but also reviews what was happening in Germany, Britain, Canada, the USSR and elsewhere.
Divided into four sections the book covers the recruitment of nuclear physicists as World War 2 begins and the status of early nuclear research in all countries. This is followed by a review of the difficulty of obtaining materials and the first attempts to create an atomic pile or critical, self-sustaining nuclear reaction. The author takes us on an interesting side trip to discuss the sabotage of the heavy water plant in Norway which the German’s were counting on in their atomic bomb program. If you have read the books Assault In Norway by Thomas Gallagher, The Real Heroes of Telemark: The True Story of the Secret Mission to Stop Hitler's Atomic Bomb by Ray Mears or Skis Against the Atom by Knut Haukelid or have seen the movie The Heroes of Telemark, you know this story. Having read and seen all of the above, Baggott does a great job of summarizing that stories place in the development of the atomic bomb.
Part 3 of the book discusses the search for German nuclear scientists after the D-Day landings and the development and testing of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos and its devastating use in Japan at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The last part of the book discusses the beginnings of the Cold War, espionage related to the atomic bomb, the development of the hydrogen bomb and the scientists attitude and thoughts on what they have unleashed.
The author does a great job of bringing to life the many real-life scientists, engineers, soldiers and spies in this story, including: Fermi, Bohr, Heisenberg, Oppenheimer, Groves, Fuchs, Teller, Szilard, Sakharov, Rosenberg, and many others.
While this book may sound like a dry topic to many, if you have an interest in World War 2, the development of the atomic bomb, or the beginnings of the Cold War, I believe that you will find it an entertaining and elucidating read.
Divided into four sections the book covers the recruitment of nuclear physicists as World War 2 begins and the status of early nuclear research in all countries. This is followed by a review of the difficulty of obtaining materials and the first attempts to create an atomic pile or critical, self-sustaining nuclear reaction. The author takes us on an interesting side trip to discuss the sabotage of the heavy water plant in Norway which the German’s were counting on in their atomic bomb program. If you have read the books Assault In Norway by Thomas Gallagher, The Real Heroes of Telemark: The True Story of the Secret Mission to Stop Hitler's Atomic Bomb by Ray Mears or Skis Against the Atom by Knut Haukelid or have seen the movie The Heroes of Telemark, you know this story. Having read and seen all of the above, Baggott does a great job of summarizing that stories place in the development of the atomic bomb.
Part 3 of the book discusses the search for German nuclear scientists after the D-Day landings and the development and testing of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos and its devastating use in Japan at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The last part of the book discusses the beginnings of the Cold War, espionage related to the atomic bomb, the development of the hydrogen bomb and the scientists attitude and thoughts on what they have unleashed.
The author does a great job of bringing to life the many real-life scientists, engineers, soldiers and spies in this story, including: Fermi, Bohr, Heisenberg, Oppenheimer, Groves, Fuchs, Teller, Szilard, Sakharov, Rosenberg, and many others.
While this book may sound like a dry topic to many, if you have an interest in World War 2, the development of the atomic bomb, or the beginnings of the Cold War, I believe that you will find it an entertaining and elucidating read.
June 19, 2010
Picked this book up while incredibly bored when I was stuck for two days at the Omaha airport. Am very glad I did. This is a well-written book detailing the development of the atomic bomb.
As a science geek who recently took a quantum physics class, I was amazed at the number of names I recognized. Pretty much every famous physicist from that era (memorialized in their named equations, methods) makes a cameo in the book and was somehow involved with bomb development.
The book also does a remarkable job of clearly (assuming you have a science background to begin with) describing the physics of fission, fusion, and weapon design. Now I finally understand why the bombs dropped on Japan were called "fat man" and "little boy" (a function of their triggering mechanism and thus size/shape), why uranium-235 is so important versus uranium 238, etc. The book also describes the complexity of the motivations and morality of developing a nuclear bomb, and also using them on Japan.
If you love science and history, I'd highly recommend this book.
As a science geek who recently took a quantum physics class, I was amazed at the number of names I recognized. Pretty much every famous physicist from that era (memorialized in their named equations, methods) makes a cameo in the book and was somehow involved with bomb development.
The book also does a remarkable job of clearly (assuming you have a science background to begin with) describing the physics of fission, fusion, and weapon design. Now I finally understand why the bombs dropped on Japan were called "fat man" and "little boy" (a function of their triggering mechanism and thus size/shape), why uranium-235 is so important versus uranium 238, etc. The book also describes the complexity of the motivations and morality of developing a nuclear bomb, and also using them on Japan.
If you love science and history, I'd highly recommend this book.
October 6, 2022
I had consumed a fair amount of leading and trailing info on the development of the A bomb during WWII; but Baggott's use of declassified info to tie and interweave small caveats of history into the bigger picture, makes this book one of the best narrations on the subject.
It provides context to the chronological events that took place from 1939-49 and the challenges faced during development of the Atomic Bomb - It also surprisingly reads like a spy thriller, which for a book dealing with history and science dev is a first, at least for me and I thoroughly loved every bit of it.
Will definitely keep tabs on other titles written by the same writer - highly recommended!
It provides context to the chronological events that took place from 1939-49 and the challenges faced during development of the Atomic Bomb - It also surprisingly reads like a spy thriller, which for a book dealing with history and science dev is a first, at least for me and I thoroughly loved every bit of it.
Will definitely keep tabs on other titles written by the same writer - highly recommended!
December 22, 2021
Šita eina į topus. Knyga, kurioje pagrindinius vaidmenis atlieka Fizikos studijų metu vadovėliuose sutikti veikėjai. Išsamus pasakojimas nuo pat pirmos minties apie branduolių skilimą iki epilogo apie Kubos krizę.
September 16, 2024
A passable history of the race for the atomic bomb.
February 2, 2016
How close did Hitler come to an atomic bomb? The disturbing answer is “a lot closer than you might think.”
The received story of German nuclear development in World War II goes something like this. Hitler and the Nazis didn’t even come close to developing an atomic bomb. They lost many of their brilliant scientists anyway because they were Jewish and fled to Britain or America because of Nazi persecution. Those German scientists who remained were way behind their counterparts in Britain and the U.S. in understanding nuclear reactions . They were in any case half-hearted about working on a bomb for Hitler and soft-pedalled, leading the Nazis to think the project was unachievable. They lacked the industrial muscle to separate s Uranium 235 on an industrial scale (like the Manhattan project) and didn’t even manage to build a working nuclear reactor. Their half-hearted efforts were hampered and eventually were over-run by allied bombing and the D-Day invasion of Europe.
This is in some ways a comforting narrative – one that is much easier to deal with than trying to envisage London or New York after a nuclear explosion, and Britain and the U.S. on their knees begging Hitler for mercy. But how accurate is it? A 2009 book by Dr Jim Baggott, Atomic: the first war of physics, examines in detail the race to develop nuclear weapons by Britain, Germany, the U.S. and the Soviet Union, based on declassified documents and captured German archives and tells a fascinating story – one that is some important respects very different from the received view.
Many German Jewish scientists did seek refuge in Britain and America. But those that stayed behind were first rate minds and included many scientists who had made the initial discoveries about nuclear fission. Indeed, in its infancy, nuclear fission was very much a German science.
Nuclear fission was discovered in April 1939 by Otto Hahn and his assistant Fritz Strassman. Both continued to work at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute throughout the war on nuclear chemistry, though neither worked specifically on a nuclear weapon. Werner Heisenberg, Germany’s most illustrious physicist was appointed by the Wermacht to run the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, which they took over, and lead nuclear research.
The idea that all or most of these scientists were covertly anti-Nazi is a discovery that many of them made after the war when they were in Allied hands. For example, In 1941, with Germany master of all western Europe, Heisenberg told Nils Bohr (a Dane) “How important it was that Germany should win the war . . . the occupation of Denmark, Norway, Belgium and Holland was a sad thing but as regards the countries in eastern Europe it was a good development because these countries were not able to govern themselves.”
While some of the German scientists might have been averse to mass killings, the fact is that most if not all of them saw the highest good of Europe in a German victory and German hegemony.
In the first months of the war, German scientist formed the Uranverein – the “Uranium Club” – and set out to explore whether nuclear fission could be used either for energy in a reactor, or in a weapon, or both. All three teams of scientists working on the question – Britain, U.S. and Germany – reached remarkable agreement within months of each other.
It was understandably Britain – alone and under attack from the Luftwaffe – that reached the conclusion that a bomb was possible a few months before the others. In July 1941, the British MAUD committee reported that “The committee considers that the scheme for a uranium bomb is practicable and is likely to lead to decisive results in the war.”
American policy-makers received a similar report from Nobel laureate Arthur Compton in November. Compton estimated that, with access to a uranium-heavy water reactor running at 100,000 kilowatts for two months, the Germans could have enough plutonium for six atomic bombs by the end of 1942. It was this galvanised the U.S. into action.
That the Germans in fact lagged behind was to some extent down to luck. Both British and German scientists realised at an early stage that the uranium fuel in a reactor would need to be surrounded by a “moderator” to slow down neutrons so that they could cause fissions to take place, and that the most suitable material would be either graphite or heavy water.
Of these two, graphite was far easier to produce and handle but one British scientist, Leo Szilard, realised early on that the graphite would have to be of extreme purity or it would not work. The Germans tried graphite but failed to spot that its effectiveness was negated by minute impurities caused by the manufacturing process. They thus dropped graphite and turned to heavy water – rare and costly to produce, difficult to handle and available to them only through the Norsk Hydro factory in occupied Norway. Their new interest in this plant tipped off the Allies that they were researching nuclear fission and caused SOE repeatedly to sabotage heavy water production, setting German research back significantly. If they had stuck to graphite, they probably would not have shown their hand to the Allies and they would have accelerated their programme forward by many months – perhaps to a fully operational reactor.
But if they had bad luck over their choice of moderator, the Germans had (unintended) good luck on another crucially important front.
There are two ways to make a fission bomb. The first is to separate the radioactive isotope Uranium 235 from common Uranium for use as the bomb core (the Hiroshima bomb was a uranium device). The second is to use plutonium as the bomb core (as in the bomb dropped on Nagasaki.)
Separating enough U235 for a bomb is a long, complex, arduous and costly industrial process, usually done by passing uranium in the form of a highly reactive and toxic gas, uranium hexafluoride, through hundreds of individual centrifuges. It was setting up and managing this colossal industrial endeavour in secret that was the great achievement of the Manhattan project.
Producing Plutonium is much simpler, because it is a by-product of the reactions taking place in the core of a uranium reactor. Because it is chemically distinct from uranium it is easy to separate out in pure form – no need for complex industrial scale separation plant. Pure plutonium is twice as reactive to neutrons so you only need a piece the size of a grapefruit to make a bomb.
However, plutonium was a brand new element at the time. It wasn’t even given a name until Glen Seaborg called it plutonium in 1941 and was simply referred to as element 94. Because it was so new and its properties poorly understood, it wasn’t taken up by the British and Americans as their primary aim. It was merely an afterthought, once they had got a reactor going successfully.
Because the Germans, on the other hand, had only small quantities of heavy water available, they were compelled to focus all their attention on producing a reactor, rather than building a bomb. But this meant that -if they succeeded – they would automatically have access to plutonium for a weapon, instead of enriched uranium. They would, in fact, have won the race by quite a distance.
The final question is perhaps most fascinating of all. If Hitler had acquired a plutonium bomb in 1944, what exactly would he have done with it?
His main strategic aim in the west was to defeat the allies so he could carry out his eastern plan to occupy the lands of the soviet union unhindered. He had no strategic wish to crush Britain and its empire – indeed, he had long dreamed of an “Aryan” partnership. He would probably have hesitated to destroy London. It is more likely that he would have demonstrated his nuclear capacity to the Allies by destroying a target that to him was unimportant and for whose inhabitants he cared nothing.
Where this would have been is anyone’s guess, but the mind boggles at the possibilities. Moscow? But this would leave the capital of the new German eastern empire contaminated. Paris? But this would destroy a favourite playground for German officers. New York? This seems a more likely target. America would have been powerless to retaliate and would have been relegated to minor status for generations. The war would have been ended overnight and Hitler free to carry out his plans.
The received story of German nuclear development in World War II goes something like this. Hitler and the Nazis didn’t even come close to developing an atomic bomb. They lost many of their brilliant scientists anyway because they were Jewish and fled to Britain or America because of Nazi persecution. Those German scientists who remained were way behind their counterparts in Britain and the U.S. in understanding nuclear reactions . They were in any case half-hearted about working on a bomb for Hitler and soft-pedalled, leading the Nazis to think the project was unachievable. They lacked the industrial muscle to separate s Uranium 235 on an industrial scale (like the Manhattan project) and didn’t even manage to build a working nuclear reactor. Their half-hearted efforts were hampered and eventually were over-run by allied bombing and the D-Day invasion of Europe.
This is in some ways a comforting narrative – one that is much easier to deal with than trying to envisage London or New York after a nuclear explosion, and Britain and the U.S. on their knees begging Hitler for mercy. But how accurate is it? A 2009 book by Dr Jim Baggott, Atomic: the first war of physics, examines in detail the race to develop nuclear weapons by Britain, Germany, the U.S. and the Soviet Union, based on declassified documents and captured German archives and tells a fascinating story – one that is some important respects very different from the received view.
Many German Jewish scientists did seek refuge in Britain and America. But those that stayed behind were first rate minds and included many scientists who had made the initial discoveries about nuclear fission. Indeed, in its infancy, nuclear fission was very much a German science.
Nuclear fission was discovered in April 1939 by Otto Hahn and his assistant Fritz Strassman. Both continued to work at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute throughout the war on nuclear chemistry, though neither worked specifically on a nuclear weapon. Werner Heisenberg, Germany’s most illustrious physicist was appointed by the Wermacht to run the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, which they took over, and lead nuclear research.
The idea that all or most of these scientists were covertly anti-Nazi is a discovery that many of them made after the war when they were in Allied hands. For example, In 1941, with Germany master of all western Europe, Heisenberg told Nils Bohr (a Dane) “How important it was that Germany should win the war . . . the occupation of Denmark, Norway, Belgium and Holland was a sad thing but as regards the countries in eastern Europe it was a good development because these countries were not able to govern themselves.”
While some of the German scientists might have been averse to mass killings, the fact is that most if not all of them saw the highest good of Europe in a German victory and German hegemony.
In the first months of the war, German scientist formed the Uranverein – the “Uranium Club” – and set out to explore whether nuclear fission could be used either for energy in a reactor, or in a weapon, or both. All three teams of scientists working on the question – Britain, U.S. and Germany – reached remarkable agreement within months of each other.
It was understandably Britain – alone and under attack from the Luftwaffe – that reached the conclusion that a bomb was possible a few months before the others. In July 1941, the British MAUD committee reported that “The committee considers that the scheme for a uranium bomb is practicable and is likely to lead to decisive results in the war.”
American policy-makers received a similar report from Nobel laureate Arthur Compton in November. Compton estimated that, with access to a uranium-heavy water reactor running at 100,000 kilowatts for two months, the Germans could have enough plutonium for six atomic bombs by the end of 1942. It was this galvanised the U.S. into action.
That the Germans in fact lagged behind was to some extent down to luck. Both British and German scientists realised at an early stage that the uranium fuel in a reactor would need to be surrounded by a “moderator” to slow down neutrons so that they could cause fissions to take place, and that the most suitable material would be either graphite or heavy water.
Of these two, graphite was far easier to produce and handle but one British scientist, Leo Szilard, realised early on that the graphite would have to be of extreme purity or it would not work. The Germans tried graphite but failed to spot that its effectiveness was negated by minute impurities caused by the manufacturing process. They thus dropped graphite and turned to heavy water – rare and costly to produce, difficult to handle and available to them only through the Norsk Hydro factory in occupied Norway. Their new interest in this plant tipped off the Allies that they were researching nuclear fission and caused SOE repeatedly to sabotage heavy water production, setting German research back significantly. If they had stuck to graphite, they probably would not have shown their hand to the Allies and they would have accelerated their programme forward by many months – perhaps to a fully operational reactor.
But if they had bad luck over their choice of moderator, the Germans had (unintended) good luck on another crucially important front.
There are two ways to make a fission bomb. The first is to separate the radioactive isotope Uranium 235 from common Uranium for use as the bomb core (the Hiroshima bomb was a uranium device). The second is to use plutonium as the bomb core (as in the bomb dropped on Nagasaki.)
Separating enough U235 for a bomb is a long, complex, arduous and costly industrial process, usually done by passing uranium in the form of a highly reactive and toxic gas, uranium hexafluoride, through hundreds of individual centrifuges. It was setting up and managing this colossal industrial endeavour in secret that was the great achievement of the Manhattan project.
Producing Plutonium is much simpler, because it is a by-product of the reactions taking place in the core of a uranium reactor. Because it is chemically distinct from uranium it is easy to separate out in pure form – no need for complex industrial scale separation plant. Pure plutonium is twice as reactive to neutrons so you only need a piece the size of a grapefruit to make a bomb.
However, plutonium was a brand new element at the time. It wasn’t even given a name until Glen Seaborg called it plutonium in 1941 and was simply referred to as element 94. Because it was so new and its properties poorly understood, it wasn’t taken up by the British and Americans as their primary aim. It was merely an afterthought, once they had got a reactor going successfully.
Because the Germans, on the other hand, had only small quantities of heavy water available, they were compelled to focus all their attention on producing a reactor, rather than building a bomb. But this meant that -if they succeeded – they would automatically have access to plutonium for a weapon, instead of enriched uranium. They would, in fact, have won the race by quite a distance.
The final question is perhaps most fascinating of all. If Hitler had acquired a plutonium bomb in 1944, what exactly would he have done with it?
His main strategic aim in the west was to defeat the allies so he could carry out his eastern plan to occupy the lands of the soviet union unhindered. He had no strategic wish to crush Britain and its empire – indeed, he had long dreamed of an “Aryan” partnership. He would probably have hesitated to destroy London. It is more likely that he would have demonstrated his nuclear capacity to the Allies by destroying a target that to him was unimportant and for whose inhabitants he cared nothing.
Where this would have been is anyone’s guess, but the mind boggles at the possibilities. Moscow? But this would leave the capital of the new German eastern empire contaminated. Paris? But this would destroy a favourite playground for German officers. New York? This seems a more likely target. America would have been powerless to retaliate and would have been relegated to minor status for generations. The war would have been ended overnight and Hitler free to carry out his plans.
August 27, 2019
If I didn't know this story was the real thing I would think it was some made up spy thriller. Seriously, the story of the atom bomb is a real page turner- can't believe I didn't know more about it before. It starts with ominous fission discoveries by German physicists living in the shadow of Nazi Germany, continues with a bunch of good old fashioned American elbow grease (and paranoia, another oh so American trait), and ends with the whispery tentacles of the Cold War and the new state of uneasy mutual deterrence that continues until today. There are a bunch of excellent spy and sabotage plots thrown into the middle for good measure (I say that flippantly, but the lives lost are a very sad element of this indeed).
The most interesting themes of the book ended up being the philosophical and moral shades of feeling experienced by the scientists themselves in the wake of their colossal invention. Once WW2 ended and the terrifying figure of Hitler fizzled from the horizon, scientists were left clutching their horrifying invention in their hands and wondering what they had done. War provided a good excuse for letting the genie out of the bottle, but the rapid escalation of the hydrogen bomb, etc, after the conclusion of the war had nothing to do with Hitler. Some of the scientists chose to calm their consciences by leaking atomic secrets to the Soviets, reasoning that they were leveling the world playing field. Others attempted to become involved (unsuccessfully) in politics, hoping to create one world governance of atomic power. As far as I can see, none ultimately managed to completely overcome their conscience. Oppenheimer's words on this dichotomy are often powerful:
"We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita: Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." I suppose we all thought that, one way or another."
It is perhaps foreseeable that once developed at such great cost the bomb had to be used, and once used it could never be used again (barring some doomsday scenario). In some ways it is ironic- life under the shadow of atomic power is more peaceful than has ever perhaps before been seen in humanity. Once the consequences of war become too great, we must finally learn to live in an uneasy peace.
Of particular interest:
-the whole subplot involving heavy water at the Vemork plant in Norway
-Heisenburg's weird and contradictory actions as chief physicist in Nazi Germany
-the various motivations behind the surprisingly wide network of Soviet spies. It is easy to forget the early idealism behind communist sympathizers.
-Anytime Stalin is described as having a "temper tantrum"
The most interesting themes of the book ended up being the philosophical and moral shades of feeling experienced by the scientists themselves in the wake of their colossal invention. Once WW2 ended and the terrifying figure of Hitler fizzled from the horizon, scientists were left clutching their horrifying invention in their hands and wondering what they had done. War provided a good excuse for letting the genie out of the bottle, but the rapid escalation of the hydrogen bomb, etc, after the conclusion of the war had nothing to do with Hitler. Some of the scientists chose to calm their consciences by leaking atomic secrets to the Soviets, reasoning that they were leveling the world playing field. Others attempted to become involved (unsuccessfully) in politics, hoping to create one world governance of atomic power. As far as I can see, none ultimately managed to completely overcome their conscience. Oppenheimer's words on this dichotomy are often powerful:
"We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita: Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." I suppose we all thought that, one way or another."
It is perhaps foreseeable that once developed at such great cost the bomb had to be used, and once used it could never be used again (barring some doomsday scenario). In some ways it is ironic- life under the shadow of atomic power is more peaceful than has ever perhaps before been seen in humanity. Once the consequences of war become too great, we must finally learn to live in an uneasy peace.
Of particular interest:
-the whole subplot involving heavy water at the Vemork plant in Norway
-Heisenburg's weird and contradictory actions as chief physicist in Nazi Germany
-the various motivations behind the surprisingly wide network of Soviet spies. It is easy to forget the early idealism behind communist sympathizers.
-Anytime Stalin is described as having a "temper tantrum"
August 5, 2025
قرأت من أكثر من عامين كتاب الواقع الكمي لجيم باجوت، من ترجمة صديقي أحمد سمير سعد، وأعجبني بشدة، لكن هذه المرة الوضع مختلف. يختلف هذا الكتاب الضخم عن تجربتي السابقة مع جيم باجوت لأسباب عديدة، أهمها تصنيف الكتاب، وهذا ما سأحاول لفت الانتباه إليه.
فضلًا عن أهمية الموضوع الحيوية، إلا أن طريقة المعالجة هي أهم في هذا الكتاب.
هذا كتاب علمي لأنك تقرأ فيه تفاصيل علمية تتعلق بطريقة صنع القنبلة الذرية وتطور الأسلحة النووية لاحقًا.
هذا كتاب تاريخي لأنه يقص عليك قصة تاريخية، استنادًا إلى مستندات ومراجع تاريخية، وموضوع القصة عن تطوير صناعة القنبلة الذرية الأولى، ويتعرض إلى تفاصيل الحرب العالمية الثانية.
هذا كتاب سياسي لأن الموضوع من بدايته إلى نهايته يدور في دهاليز السياسة ودوائر صنع القرار.
هذا كتاب ينتمي بشكل من الأشكال إلى كتب الجاسوسية، لأنه يعج بالجواسيس، لكنهم هنا جواسيس وعلماء!
خلطة وحبكة مميزة حقًا استطاع جيم باجوت أن يتناول فيها الموضوع من نواحي عديدة، وبتفاصيل كافية... وثيقة تاريخية تتناول تفاصيل علمية وشخصيات تاريخية وحروب جاسوسية.
شخصيًا صُدِمت من مدى لا أخلاقية عدد لا يُستهان به من رجال العلم. شعرت في أحيان كثيرة أنهم أدنى من المستوى العادي. طبعًا الكتاب يعرض كل المبررات التي دفعتهم إلى ما فعلوه، فحبكة الموضوع من البداية تعتمد على اكتشاف علماء ألمان إمكانية الانشطار، الأمر الذي وصل إلى مسماع الإنجليز والأمريكيين، فبدأوا سباقًا رهيبًا من أجل استباق الألمان في صنع السلاح الذري. وفي نهاية الرحلة يكتشف الأمريكيون الذين سخّروا إمكانات هائلة من أجل صنع هذا السلاح المميت أن الألمان كانوا بعيدين تمامًا عن النجاح في صنعه.
المبررات معروضة، ومع ذلك قد لا يصدق القارئ عينه من فرط لا أخلاقية وسذاجة العاملين في هذا المشروع الذري.
فوضى مريعة وجد فيها علماء الفيزياء أنفسهم، وتدميرية مخيفة صنعوها بأيديهم. لكن الخطوات التي وصلت بهم إلى هذا الوضع معروضة تفصيلًا، وبقدرة على الإقناع.
أود أيضًا أن أشير إلى الطباعة الجيدة من حيث حجم الصفحة المريح والصور والإخراج الفني.
الترجمة سلسة جدًا... لا أتذكر إن عبارة استوقفتني أثناء القراءة.
أهنيء أحمد سمير سعد ودار آفاق على هذا المشروع الضخم والصعب والمهم. وأرشح لكم هذا الكتاب بقوة، لأن القارئ لا يستطيع كل يوم العثور على هذه الخلطة العلمية السياسية التاريخية بسهولة... كتاب متفرد.
فضلًا عن أهمية الموضوع الحيوية، إلا أن طريقة المعالجة هي أهم في هذا الكتاب.
هذا كتاب علمي لأنك تقرأ فيه تفاصيل علمية تتعلق بطريقة صنع القنبلة الذرية وتطور الأسلحة النووية لاحقًا.
هذا كتاب تاريخي لأنه يقص عليك قصة تاريخية، استنادًا إلى مستندات ومراجع تاريخية، وموضوع القصة عن تطوير صناعة القنبلة الذرية الأولى، ويتعرض إلى تفاصيل الحرب العالمية الثانية.
هذا كتاب سياسي لأن الموضوع من بدايته إلى نهايته يدور في دهاليز السياسة ودوائر صنع القرار.
هذا كتاب ينتمي بشكل من الأشكال إلى كتب الجاسوسية، لأنه يعج بالجواسيس، لكنهم هنا جواسيس وعلماء!
خلطة وحبكة مميزة حقًا استطاع جيم باجوت أن يتناول فيها الموضوع من نواحي عديدة، وبتفاصيل كافية... وثيقة تاريخية تتناول تفاصيل علمية وشخصيات تاريخية وحروب جاسوسية.
شخصيًا صُدِمت من مدى لا أخلاقية عدد لا يُستهان به من رجال العلم. شعرت في أحيان كثيرة أنهم أدنى من المستوى العادي. طبعًا الكتاب يعرض كل المبررات التي دفعتهم إلى ما فعلوه، فحبكة الموضوع من البداية تعتمد على اكتشاف علماء ألمان إمكانية الانشطار، الأمر الذي وصل إلى مسماع الإنجليز والأمريكيين، فبدأوا سباقًا رهيبًا من أجل استباق الألمان في صنع السلاح الذري. وفي نهاية الرحلة يكتشف الأمريكيون الذين سخّروا إمكانات هائلة من أجل صنع هذا السلاح المميت أن الألمان كانوا بعيدين تمامًا عن النجاح في صنعه.
المبررات معروضة، ومع ذلك قد لا يصدق القارئ عينه من فرط لا أخلاقية وسذاجة العاملين في هذا المشروع الذري.
فوضى مريعة وجد فيها علماء الفيزياء أنفسهم، وتدميرية مخيفة صنعوها بأيديهم. لكن الخطوات التي وصلت بهم إلى هذا الوضع معروضة تفصيلًا، وبقدرة على الإقناع.
أود أيضًا أن أشير إلى الطباعة الجيدة من حيث حجم الصفحة المريح والصور والإخراج الفني.
الترجمة سلسة جدًا... لا أتذكر إن عبارة استوقفتني أثناء القراءة.
أهنيء أحمد سمير سعد ودار آفاق على هذا المشروع الضخم والصعب والمهم. وأرشح لكم هذا الكتاب بقوة، لأن القارئ لا يستطيع كل يوم العثور على هذه الخلطة العلمية السياسية التاريخية بسهولة... كتاب متفرد.
February 11, 2019
The first war of physics
Baggott, once an academic chemist and now a science writer, seems particularly prescient in his book given that news has just indicated that the US is withdrawing from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty with the Soviet Union that was established in 1970.
Baggott’s long look at how nuclear proliferation was established is engaging and informative. While I have read other books on Oppenheimer and on the Atomic Bomb (most notably Rhodes’ The Making of the Atomic Bomb”) and the more recent “The Girls of Atomic City”, Baggot’s book adds to the conversation. While he covers some of the territory of the Making of the Atomic Bomb (and none of the territory of the Girls of Atomic City), this is less about the science than it is about the politics, personalities and the progress. Baggot answers the question just how did we get to the non-proliferation treaty of 1970 and who was involved (and to some extent the why of both of these)? And, he answers the questions pretty thoroughly by providing a tri-fold view of atomic progress from the perspective of the Russians, the Germans and the Anglo Alliance. It is a factual book and Baggot is careful not to make assumptions or draw conclusions for which there is limited evidence. The book relies extensively on direct quotes.
He also provides an interesting look at how the various spies worked on the Manhattan project and how they were eventually caught, the attempts to bomb the heavy water plant in Norway, Heisenberg’s own work on the atomic bomb in Germany and the Soviet progress that was apparently aided and abetted by the Manhattan project spies.
The book is structured chronologically and is generally easy to follow, but there is a lot going on and a lot of people involved. He provides a very useful timeline in the back as well as a glossary of all the main participants.
Baggott, once an academic chemist and now a science writer, seems particularly prescient in his book given that news has just indicated that the US is withdrawing from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty with the Soviet Union that was established in 1970.
Baggott’s long look at how nuclear proliferation was established is engaging and informative. While I have read other books on Oppenheimer and on the Atomic Bomb (most notably Rhodes’ The Making of the Atomic Bomb”) and the more recent “The Girls of Atomic City”, Baggot’s book adds to the conversation. While he covers some of the territory of the Making of the Atomic Bomb (and none of the territory of the Girls of Atomic City), this is less about the science than it is about the politics, personalities and the progress. Baggot answers the question just how did we get to the non-proliferation treaty of 1970 and who was involved (and to some extent the why of both of these)? And, he answers the questions pretty thoroughly by providing a tri-fold view of atomic progress from the perspective of the Russians, the Germans and the Anglo Alliance. It is a factual book and Baggot is careful not to make assumptions or draw conclusions for which there is limited evidence. The book relies extensively on direct quotes.
He also provides an interesting look at how the various spies worked on the Manhattan project and how they were eventually caught, the attempts to bomb the heavy water plant in Norway, Heisenberg’s own work on the atomic bomb in Germany and the Soviet progress that was apparently aided and abetted by the Manhattan project spies.
The book is structured chronologically and is generally easy to follow, but there is a lot going on and a lot of people involved. He provides a very useful timeline in the back as well as a glossary of all the main participants.
October 23, 2017
In reading this I realised how difficult it must be to write a popular science book. It needs to be able to appeal to those previously ignorant of the subject as well as able to hold its own with more informed readers.
I feel this did both really well. It is detailed but not complicated. It also features a lot of quotes from the actual people involved which helps ground it and with its credibility.
It also gives details outside of the subject to help a reader with the timeframe. It is an enjoyable and informative read that most people could pick up and a lot of people could learn something from.
I feel this did both really well. It is detailed but not complicated. It also features a lot of quotes from the actual people involved which helps ground it and with its credibility.
It also gives details outside of the subject to help a reader with the timeframe. It is an enjoyable and informative read that most people could pick up and a lot of people could learn something from.
June 14, 2023
Well researched and informational, covering a broad scope. However, the writing style is very dry. It's almost just a list of names, dates and short facts. A single book of smaller scope or multiple books highlighting specific topics, groups or projects would have been a more enjoyable option. Great resource though.
October 15, 2017
One one hand I learned some tidbits tat I was unaware of before, but on the other hand the book goes into so much detail that it becomes exhausting.
It's amazing to look back and see the hold Communist ideology hand on people considering what we now know about it's implementation.
It's amazing to look back and see the hold Communist ideology hand on people considering what we now know about it's implementation.
February 16, 2019
A British part of the story
This is a British version of history of atomic weapons — with detailed description of spy games, European/German perspectives, and more. Quite complementary to the US versions of what happened in the Manhattan Project.
This is a British version of history of atomic weapons — with detailed description of spy games, European/German perspectives, and more. Quite complementary to the US versions of what happened in the Manhattan Project.
July 2, 2019
Świetna książka opisująca historię stworzenia broni atomowej. Szkoda tylko że nie ma polskiego tłumaczenia. Obowiązkowa pozycja dla wszystkich zainteresowanych historią fizyki jak i drugą wojną światową.
July 11, 2018
Comprehensive! Carefully, though, track your islands through this vast ocean of details!
June 13, 2022
Good book very Interesting
November 12, 2022
I found myself skimming but I enjoyed the reactor power levels, the physics, the alternative enrichment technologies and the spying.
Want to read
September 7, 2024Recommended by Greg Shepherd
March 26, 2018
This book is outstanding. Anyone wanting a readable introduction to nuclear physics, the development of nuclear weapons and the espionage and moral questions surrounding the subject could not find a better place to start. The book opens with the early discoveries in sub atomic particle physics that lead to the realisation that there was a tremendous amount of energy bound up in atoms followed by the thought that large releases of explosive energy have potential military application. I like to think of science as somehow better than the rest and the unifying element in human exploration and discovery. However science has clearly historically been at the epicentre of discovery and innovation of the tools of war and more often spurred on by the never ending demand for bigger and better weapons. Baggott tells the story as parallel and overlapping chapters as Germany, America, Russia and Britain rush to develop their own edge in the race to apocalypse. Undoubtedly the allied effort benefited from the German campaign of terror which led many leading physicist to flee mainland Europe with many joining the allied war effort (once questions of their status as enemy aliens had been dealt with). In fact it is interesting to wonder how far, or how much slower, the project would have got without the refugee input. Germany would undoubtedly have done better had it not hounded and murdered many of its leading scientists. It is interesting to learn how little progress was made, especially as the fear of an advanced German weapons programme drove the allied effort. Also interestingis the dynamic within the Anglo-American effort in which the British were effectively frozen out of much of the detail and became reliant upon the same atom spies who so assisted the impressive Soviet weapons programme. In the detailed telling of the story it is hard not to sympathise with the American decision to freeze out Britain given the arrogant initial British attitude towards the US and the short but untenable lead originally enjoyed by the British. While enjoying extensive access to material from espionage activities of Soviet intelligence the Russian effort to develop their own atomic programme and catch up with the Western allied effort is nothing short of heroic given the condition in the USSR at the time. It is also interesting to learn of the degree to which Soviet science already had developed the basics and continued to develop Soviet versions using intelligence to test and confirm their own work. The enthusiasm and determination of the Soviet physicists seems to have been on a par with their Western colleagues including their view that such weapons were essential for their country's security. Clearly towards the end of the war their was a concerted Western effort to deny the Russians any spoils from a supposed German programme by targeting suspect facilities for carpet bombing and snatching scientists thought to be active on the programme. The book winds down with the development of the extremely destructive fusion bomb and some of the moral questions that began to occupy scientists minds after the bombing of Japan and as bombs became bigger and better (and while some military and political figures enthusiastically advocated nuking the USSR into a pile of smouldering radioactive rubble while the West was ahead). The book has a very helpful timeline, list of key characters, extensive notes and a good index (all of which I found useful in keeping on top of this fast moving tale). Baggots impressive tome reads like a thriller and I rarely put it down. Easily in my pile of top recommended reads,.
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