Fallout
Conspiracy, Cover-Up and the Deceitful Case for the Atom Bomb
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- USD 7.99
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- USD 7.99
Descripción editorial
Between December 1943 and August 1944, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill ignited the Cold War, a superpower rivalry that would dominate the world over half a century, by building an atomic bomb and excluding their Russian allies. Peter Watson tells the pulse-pounding story of how two atomic physicists tried to counter this in two very different ways. While Niels Bohr sought to convince President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill to share their nuclear knowledge with Joseph Stalin, nuclear scientist Klaus Fuchs, a German Communist emigre to Britain, was leaking atomic secrets to the Soviets in a rival attempt to ensure parity between the superpowers. Neither succeeded in preventing the World War II allies from unleashing the atom bomb on the world.
Fallout proves that the atomic bomb was not needed, and was made as a result of a series of flawed decisions. The Americans did not tell the UK that the atomic research was compromised by Soviet spies; the British did not tell the Americans that in 1943 they knew for sure that Germany did not have a nuclear bomb program. Neither country admitted to the scientists developing the bomb that it would never be used to counter the (non-existent) German nuclear threat. Had the scientists known, many of them would have refused to complete work on the bomb.
This story shows how politicians fatally failed to understand the nature of atomic science and, in so doing, exposed the world needlessly to great danger, a danger that is still very much with us.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Unprecedented scientific breakthroughs, World War geopolitics, and the birth of the Cold War serve as the backdrop to this thorough history of the atomic bomb from journalist and historian Watson (The Modern Mind). Watson posits that "by not acting as allies, the Allies kick-started the nuclear arms race we inherit today" and outlines how various actors kept various pieces of important information from others: the U.S. hid from its scientists the Germans' lack of nuclear arsenal and from the British that Soviet spies were aware of the American research. Alongside well-known scientists such as Niels Bohr, Werner Heisnberg, and Karl Fuchs, Watson brings into the spotlight critical yet lesser-known actors, such as Austrian scientific publisher and spy Paul Rosbaud, who worked undercover for England. The book's strongest section juxtaposes Bohr's efforts to share information through official channels with the more illicit efforts of physicist-spy Fuchs to inform the Russians of nuclear developments; the idea that nuclear transparency was essential to maintaining peace was pervasive in some diplomatic and scientific circles. The question of whether the atomic bomb was even needed to win the war recurs throughout. Watson's speculations about the potential knock-on effects of a non-nuclear end to WWII feel a little overstated. However, he writes about quantum physics and scientific developments in an accessible way that even the uninitiated will appreciate.
