War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Bertrand Goldschmidt, 1986 [1]

Do you want me to tell you my name? Yeah, just so we have it. I am Bertrand Goldschmidt. And during the war years, you were briefly, if you could just describe what you were doing at the beginning of the war, what you were doing professionally. So just for our own reference. I am the last man that Marie Curie, the Discoverer of Radium, had a few months before a death in 1933, and I made a PhD as a chemist at the Curie Laboratory just before the war. And I was lucky enough to be able to see without participating in any way at the Discoverer because, as you know, the Discoverer of Fishen is the consequence of the discovery of artificial radioactivity, which was done by Irene Curie, the daughter of Marie Curie and her husband Friedrich Julio.

This was done in 1944 and 1944, and they got the Nobel Prize next year for the discovery. From that discovery on, Fermi and his colleagues in Rome studied if one could make artificial radio elements by bombarding natural substances, natural elements with neutrons. And he found out that usually one made an element which was the next in the periodical classification. And he had the idea to see what would happen if one bombarded uranium, which was the heaviest and the 90 second and last element of this classification of elements from their weight, the first one being the hydrogen, the last one being the uranium. So he thought one would be able to produce radioactive, twin radioactive isotope of the element following the 90 second, but in reality he found a mixture of radio elements and he's nobody in his team work chemist.

And so he abandoned the work, which was taken over by a team in Berlin, Otto Hahn and Lisa Meitner, who were two old timers of radioactivity that had worked together since the beginning of the century. And they were able to identify quite a number of radioactivity elements further than uranium. When they worked to arrive in Paris, Malam Jolier and Curie, one of the co-discoverers of radioactivity, thought they were wrong. And she tried to show they were wrong and identify only one of these elements and she gave free identities, different of the ones given by the Germans. Each time she changed her mind, but each time she irritated more the Germans because they believed they were right. But this contradiction of Malam Jolier finally put the Germans on the right track and that's how by this competition and collaboration between a team in Paris, a team in Rome and another one in Berlin,

Fischen was discovered in December 1938, exactly very three months after the Munich crisis and eight months before the beginning of the war. I mean this is one of the most extraordinary coincidence in the story of civilization, because Schullfischener had been discovered a few years earlier, perhaps Hitler would have found the bomb the first. And Schullfischener had been discovered only a few months later, the bomb wouldn't have been ready to finish the war. And one can't visualize what would be a world where the bomb hadn't been tried and probably would have been tried either during the Korean War or perhaps when the Russian would have tried to invade the whole of Europe or to conquer the whole of Europe. Nobody can know what would be the world if the bomb had been found only six months or nine months after the end of the war.

That's good, close up please. Yeah, that is an incredible coincidence, politics and science. I'm going to ask you again, we're getting a slightly different shot here. In the 30s, people were investigating the nature of the atom, bombarding various elements with neutrons. In the interest of pure science, they were not looking for atomic weapons. Naturally not, but one of the men, the first men who understood what was radioactivity, the phenomena of radioactivity, was an Englishman called Saudi. And already in 1908, when he understood that radioactivity was an internal phenomena, a disintegration of the atoms, spontaneous disintegration of the atom, he had the idea that there was tremendous amounts of energy in the nucleus of the atom.

He also thought that this could produce radioactive bombs and it also could produce energy very cheaply. And this is 1908. And the first known science fiction writer, H.G. Wells, got inspired from the publication of Saudi was giving conferences all over the world. And he wrote a book called The World Said Free, where he, and this was written in 1913, when he's predicts the discoverer artificial radioactivity in December 33 and it took place in February 34, he predicts a nuclear war where cities are going to be destroyed by radioactive bombs. He predicts it in 56. And then after that, there's a peace conference in Italy, the lake majority. And after that, there's an idyllic world where there's no more wars because of the consequences of that terrible nuclear war.

And where everybody has a happy life because energy costs nothing and people travel in nuclear planes. And so all that had been, was a science fiction. People knew that if one was able to reach this, the energy inside the nucleus of the atom, there would be tremendous potentialities. And a man like Zilla, who had such an important role, as you know, it's Zilla who was a man who really alerted the first President Roosevelt by the intermediary of Einstein. Zilla had even taken secret patents in 1934, not on Uranium, but on possible chain reaction to produce energy and always he was thinking of weapons. So it wasn't quite novel, but it was something which one thought it would be one day possible, but the invention which would render it possible, the discover official was only made in December 38. So in the 30s, there was lots of international collaboration, before the secrecy started to...

Yes, because fundamental science was completely open. And it was a race. And even in the first months, following the discover of vision, the publications, one would bring the... For instance, Jolio, with two colleagues called Halban and Kovarsky, were the first to prove that when the phenomenon of vision produces, produced by a neutron, the bursting of the atom produces more neutrons. And Kovarsky went to carry to bring the letter at the plane, at the airport of Le Bourget, because there was a publication, very known, called Nature, which published every week, the issue, and published always things which were of actuality. So he bought the publication to the airport, and it was published in Nature, and the week afterwards, Fermi and Zilar produced the same results, but they had one by week. So it was completely open.

Naturally, in those days, as I was telling you, Zilar was always seeing things in advance. Zilar was obsessed by the rise of Hitler and Nazism. Zilar wrote Jolio, in saying, if there's more than one neutron produced in vision, there's a possibility of chain reaction. This would probably allow us to produce tremendously dangerous weapons, and these weapons would still be more dangerous in the hands of certain countries, which he meant naturally Germany. And his letter is the first time one mentions what one calls today non-proliferation, because non-proliferation means that the weapons are less dangerous in the hands of the countries who have them, than in the countries who haven't got them yet. Would you like me to give shorter sentences?

I think we'll try for so much shorter responses. Could you tell what was the controversy in the late 30s about whether or not to publish results of research that was going on both in the United States and in Europe? I wouldn't say there was a controversy. You see, Zilar took on himself to write the Jolio and suggest that we should stop publishing. And Jolio thought it was completely impracticable, because who would be sure that the days, the Germans, the Italians, everybody had been involved in this history, and to have all scientists renowned seem to him completely impracticable, especially in fundamental science. Where publication had always been completely open. But himself, Jolio, after a few months, when he realized that all this was going to pass from the laboratory to tremendous applications, either production of energy or explosives, then he was the first.

He was also really not the publisher, and he took secret patents in May 39, so about three months after Zilar's letter that he refused to buy it. Can I ask you again just to make sure we have it in a nice and usable piece? When Zilar wrote to Jolio to request that he stopped publishing, what was Jolio's reaction? Jolio's reaction was that it was impracticable, because if he had stopped, nothing proved that the British, the Germans, or the Italians, or whatever laboratory would stop publishing. It seems that it was impossible to obtain a worldwide renunciation to publication.

Let's go to the wider shot, please. At the start, when the war started, what were the French thinking about wartime possible applications of atomic fission? The patents that Jolio took in May 39, so nearly five months before the start of the war, concerned both the production of energy and a possible explosive. But by the time the war started, Jolio had the feeling, and the Germans fortunately had the same feeling, that it would be easier to produce energy in a control way than an explosion and an uncontrollable way. They were aiming towards a submarine engine, but they always had in the back of their mind that an explosion was possible, but less easily.

Why did the British come to the opposite conclusion? The British came to the opposite conclusion, because of the brilliant work done by Frisch, who, by the way, was the nephew of Lee's mightner, who had discovered fission with Arn, and Rudolf Piers, both Jewish refugees, who had left Germany for England. They made a memorandum, proving that perhaps one kilo of you, to verify you could have an explosion of a tremendous power. Just keep that frame. I'm going to ask you again to respond a little more briefly. At the same time, the French and Germans decided that a controlled reaction was more possible. I'm going into the fact that Frisch was related to Mayn, and all that. Just say briefly that Piers and Frisch came to the opposite conclusion, because...

I think the first who had the idea that it could be possible, and possibly in a limited number of years, to produce an explosive which would have a tremendous power, was Piers and Frisch in Britain, by the way, to German Jewish refugee scientists. If you don't mind, I'm going to ask again, if you could start just by saying, we just make it more usable for us if you said something like, although in Germany and France, physicists thought that a controlled reaction for power would be easier in Britain. Frisch and Piers also came to the opposite conclusion.

Although, independently, the scientists in France and in Germany believed that what was the easiest to be reached for the production of energy, at the contrary, in Britain, two German refugee scientists, Piers and Frisch, thought that it would be easier and quicker to make an explosive and a bomb. And this point of view was later adopted also by the Americans. Could you tell me briefly how you came to leave France and go to the United States and seek to work with Piers and Frisch? I had a university position and in October 1940, the Vichy government took anti-Semitic laws which prohibited Jews to have a teaching position or Jews to be civil servants.

So I lost my job in December 1940. I managed to leave France to the Martinique in West Indies and from there I came to America. And in America, I rather quickly got in touch with Fermi and Zilla and Fermi wanted me to come and work with him on the purification of uranium that needed very pure uranium to try to make a chain reaction with graphite. And all this summer of 1941, I was always supposed to next week to start working at Columbia University. And by month of September, Dean Peegrim of Columbia called me to say that it wasn't possible to hire me. That they weren't allowed to take any more foreigners. I believe that I didn't get my clearance.

So then I joined the free French. And the free French offered me to the British Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. By July 1942, I was hired by the DSI, the British Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. As I was in America, the voyage sending a chemist over from England, they sent me to Chicago where Fermi and Zilla had moved. And funny enough, I came as the British representative in the project which hadn't wanted me or had been allowed to hire me in nine months before as a Frenchman. But I ask you to back up a second. I think we have the beginning of your story. I'd like to try to ask you to say in a fairly brief way to get across the irony of that situation where you could not be hired at first in New York, but then by going through the British, you ended up going to Chicago. Maybe you could start by saying you contacted Fermi and Zilla when you arrived in New York.

When I arrived in New York, I contacted Fermi and Zilla and they told me that I was just kind of a man they were looking for as a chemist to study the purification of uranium. And for nearly three months, I was always going to start working the next week with them and then by the end of September 41, they told me they hadn't got the right to hire me. They couldn't hire me. And finally, the irony of the story is then I joined the free French forces. They offered me to the British. And after six months, I was taken by the British, the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research and sent as the British representative to the American group, which hadn't been able to hire me as a private Frenchman. Good. I think that tells the story. Let's go to a tighter. Could you explain briefly the work you did then in Chicago and the excitement of isolating plutonium for the first time? And maybe you can add a little bit about the significance of plutonium. Without getting too into too much detail.

You see, I was lucky to work with Glenn Seabog, who was just 30 years old. It was the head of the chemical team and the man who had discovered plutonium. And what was so exciting that during the time I was there, Seabog and his team, and I participated to the work I was training there, isolated the first quantitative visible and the first quantitative web of the first man-made element. And this was really what the alchemist of the middle age had tried in vain many, many centuries ago. Go to the medium, shot, please. And what was the importance of plutonium as regarding the bomb project? How was it, I don't know if it's easy to explain or not, but how was it different from a purified uranium to have plutonium? By that time, when you, that there was two possible explosives, either the uranium to verify, which is a fraction of all uranium, very difficult to separate from the more abundant uranium to putate, or plutonium because when Seabog had isolated very small amount of plutonium,

physical measurements had shown that it had the same property, allowing it to be an explosive, then uranium to 35. Therefore, one knew that if one could isolate plutonium, if one could produce plutonium, in a reactor, one would have a bomb material. Go back to the close, please. So, realizing what plutonium had some of the same properties, what is it easier? Is that the idea is it cheaper or easier? It was another way. It was, if you want the... Could you start again, just pause a second so my voice is not on top of you. If you want, this is the characteristic of the work of the Manhattan Districts of the Megan Pole, that every single path was explored.

And you to 35, the uranium was one path, and the plutonium was another path. When I met, when I arrived in Chicago, I met Arthur, I was met by Arthur, I mean I was introduced to Arthur Compton, who told me that they were working on a bomb and on radioactive poisons. They were both, would be ready in about three years of time. Then, as you know, that the radioactive poison was considered by the army as too similar to poison gas and was abandoned. But the extraordinary thing that I was told free years by Compton in July of 42, and the first test took place in July of 45. Let's go to the media, please.

Another ironic thing to me, why is it that radioactive poison is somehow less moral or more evil than an atomic explosive? It's a show that one didn't realize the order of magnitudes in those days. I mean, one knew it would be an explosive much more powerful than classical ones. But nobody had in mind the bomb in the hydrogen bomb, which is already a thousand times more dangerous. I mean, today we think in hydrogen bombs. The atomic bomb was only equivalent to a thousand plane bombardment. It wasn't a different order of magnitude, and one didn't know even if it would be as powerful as that. While the radioactive poison had something insidious, which resemble the poison gas, which had been forbidden by the Geneva Convention, that by the way the Americans hadn't signed, I think. Okay, thank you. Let's go to the water.

Here's something I wanted to ask you about. General Gross had said that, as far as he was concerned, that Russia was the main enemy, and that the Manhattan Project was conducted on that basis. Was that kind of attitude evident to you at all in your days? Not at all. Not at all. I mean, when I spoke of the bomb I think was Compton, or later with my American colleagues, I always had an impression that the first bomb would be used for Japan, and the second one for Germany, if the Germans had been still in the war. The best proof that it is what I believed is that when General De Gaulle came through Ottawa, the 11th of July 1944, one year before the bomb was used. That free of us, the free Frenchmen who were in the Project, in the Anglo-Canadian Project, asked to see alone and secretly the General. We saw him three minutes, and we told him that there was a new weapon being produced in America, that this weapon would be used first against Japan, and if the German was still in the war, secondly against Germany.

Not only this weapon would allow the Allies to win the war, but it would completely transform the world after the war, and therefore that France should lose a minute and start as quickly as possible to work in this field where it was one of the pioneers until the invasion of France. I think that the fact that the French atomic energy commission was created in October 1945, was the first civilian commission created in the world, was a little bit due to that interview we had with the Gaulle, and which was against our secrecy pledge with the British. Let's go to the median post.

What was the attitude of the Manhattan Project authorities toward you, toward the French? When you, in early 1945, you wanted to travel from Montreal to Paris, and there was some question about whether that would be allowed. What was the concern and part of general growth in others? You see, the French problem only took an importance in 1944-45, when we wanted to go back to France and continue a career in France, because during the war, Jolue, which stayed in France and had a part in the underground, had become a communist, and so general growth was very upset that the French project could be led by a communist who could perhaps speak to the Russian, while I never believed that the Jolue gave any secret to the Russian, but that was why the French became paying the neck or a headache for general growth.

Furthermore, France was not a party to the tripartite agreement, which had been signed in Quebec in between mainly American and the British, with Canadians as junior partners. If general growth was concerned that Jolue was a communist, was there some evidence that his main fear was really the Russians? By that time, Jolue. You see, I think this feeling of non-proliferation that we discussed so much today was already present during the war, when the Americans in the end of early 1943 decided to stop collaborating with the British and the Canadians.

It was because they felt there was such potentialities, either towards energy or towards the bomb, that they didn't want to shake with anybody else. Then later, because of Churchill energy, they did shake with Canada and Britain, who were junior partners, but they had no intention to shake with anybody else. They didn't want the shake with France, which was an ally, and they still less wanted the shake with Russia, which was an ally during the war, which probably wouldn't continue to be an ally after the war. That's a good concise statement of that. Can we back up to the media? Let's go to the watch. What a work to eliminate all that, to try to find two minutes.

Did you have a sense during a war that once the war was over, that an arms race between the two superpowers was going to ensue? Niels Bohr talked about that. Was that a prevalent notion? We started work in Canada, this Anglo-Canadian outfit, just at the time where collaboration stopped early in 1943, in between the Americans and the Anglo-Canadian. We became very anti-American because of that. We felt the Americans wanted to have a monopoly, and I wouldn't be astonished that if a man like Alan Nunmay, who was the first British to become a spy for the Soviet, I think the fact of the non-collaboration with the Americans probably encouraged him.

He was a communist, but he was probably feeling that America shouldn't be the only one to have that. There was no concern on your part or amongst the people that you work with, that after the war, this would lead to an arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union. You know, nobody knew if the bomb would work and how powerful it would be. All these questions naturally came to our mind after Irochi, but we were working in the lab, we were not so involved with the bomb ourselves, we were a little bit on the sideway track, and we were not obsessed at all by those problems at that time. If you want a man like Zilla, who was always thinking yours in advance, on Niels Bohr, who was a genius in his kind, it's normal that he thought of it, but we who were, let's say in the kitchen, there was no reason for us to worry about these problems.

We were more worried, let's say a Frenchman, what could the France do when it recovered, when he was able to be freed from the drums? Okay. You mentioned after Hiroshima, I'd like to ask you how you heard about the Hiroshima and what your reaction was at the time. We heard about Hiroshima the day it took place like everybody, and we were, I think we had heard about the test, the successful test in July, or there had been some rumors, and we were very pleased because we felt that this enormous effort hadn't been wasted. And anything which would be just one second, we're changing our, let's go back a little bit wider please. Okay, good. I'm sorry, go ahead.

Hiroshima meant for us the end of an ordeal, I mean, it's because because of the war that I left France and my family, some members of my family had gone to America, and it was everything was finished, we were able to, the war was over, we were able to go back to France, we weren't thinking of an arms race in those days. Okay, watch out please. Would it be possible to summarize the relationship between France and the United States and the United Kingdom during the war years in terms of work on atomic energy? I think the way to summarize it is that there was no relation with France because there was a few French individuals working with the British, but the French didn't represent France.

They had been individually seconded to the British, and they were just like Australian and New Zealanders, there were some or checks or people of German or Eastern origin, they were just working with the British, we were not, we were not represent, we were French, but we were not a French unity if you want, a French group. But the French didn't, certainly in the beginning, especially in Jolio, it didn't contribute to the project. Oh, there's no doubt, there's no doubt even that the fact that Jolio contacted the Belgium, the union-minier Jolio Katanga, where the monopoly of the production of Uranium or quasi-monopoly of the production of Uranium before the war, had a tremendous importance because if Jolio hadn't contacted the Belgium's, the Belgium firm wouldn't have bought in 1940, as early as 1940, tons and tons of very rich ore, which were stocked in a warehouse on Staten Island for two years before the day where miraculously they were available to the Manhattan produce in 1942.

So, we really had an influence, and furthermore, two of Jolio's colleagues, Albanian Kovarski, left with a world stock of heavy water that we purchased from Norway, left in July 1940 for England, and their part in the writing of the mode report was quite important, and as you know the mode, the mode committee's report was a booster of the American effort. So, if you want, indirectly, the French effort contributed to the American effort. One last thing I wanted to ask you, during the war, do you think the attitudes that emerged between the allies, between the United States and the Kingdom, France, Russia? Do you think the attitudes that emerged, if led to the fact that the British had to develop a ton of weapons on their own, and the French had developed on their own, and there was no sharing of atomic knowledge by the United States, or your technical knowledge?

There's no doubt that the policy of secrecy and of Monopoly of Uranium was started during the war, and it was in November 1945. There was a first summit conference with athlete Truman and Mackenzie King, and they decided to keep the secrecy and to keep the monopoly to purchase all Uranium available, and that was anti, it was essentially against a possible Russian project, so we had a project, but it also obliged France or the countries to go all alone. If you want, we will reduce the nuclear importance, say, by the decisions taken immediately after the war, in between Truman and Mackenzie King, who said as long as there's no international control, we will not give out information or let countries have Uranium. And if we hadn't found Uranium on the French national ground, we wouldn't have been able to have an independent effort.

Tell me about your attendance at the Bikini test. You can't understand the Bikini test in considering today's attitude of the public towards the bomb. The best proof is I was invited because there was two national for each country of the Security Council invited. And when I came back to France, I was famous for three months because I had seen an atomic exposure. I was invited to lunch and dinner by people I'd never heard of seen before, simply because I had been at Bikini, and it was a tremendous happening. There wasn't all the revulsion days against the bomb today. And I gave a lecture on Bikini the only time in my life where people had to stay out at the Sorbonne because there were so many people attending. And I can't imagine that today where there's the fact that the Americans' test in Neville is considered a little bit as a crime against humanity.

At the time, the Bikini test coincided with the discussion of the Baruch plan in that nation. Was there any feeling that continuing to test atomic weapons was going against? Yes, that was very unfortunate. Let me reply stop and then respond please. Yes, that was very unfortunate. And you know Bikini was simply because the Neville had had nothing to do with the Holman hadn't project. It was the Army with on the project. It was the Air Force which had bought the bomb over Japan and the Neville wanted just some prestige. So let's pick up on the idea. I'd like you to express the idea that the Bikini test was unfortunate. The Bikini test occurred during the time of international control negotiations.

Yes, there's no doubt that it was unfortunate that this test, the Bikini test, took place just at the time the first negotiations at the UN on the control of the bomb. It did give the impression and by the way the choice of Bernhard Baruch for these as the American representative for these negotiations was also a bad choice. It did give the impression that the Americans were really negotiating it from a position of strength and this wasn't surely the way to have the Russians abide. I'm going to ask you if you wouldn't mind saying that again without the aside about Baruch, then I'll ask you another question about Baruch. Yes, it was unfortunate that the Bikini test took place exactly in the same time that the first meetings of the United Nations on the negotiation for the international control of atomic energy.

It was an unfortunate coincidence and it was due to the fact that the Navy wanted to have some prestige out of the bomb that they didn't have during the war because it was the Army which had run the Manhattan Project. And it was the Air Force which had delivered the bombs over Japan. So how did that make the United States look in the eyes of the world at that point? By the time one was discussing the atomic international control, it looked like if the Americans were not very serious in their proposals. And what about Baruch and the Baruch plan? Did it seem to you that there was any hope that this plan would be adopted? You see the plan would have meant opening up a Russia and that was inconceivable. It's still nearly inconceivable today. It was inconceivable then.

And Baruch was surely not the best choice and many people in America thought that to negotiate with Russia. Did you have any sense at that time that that was a real loss? That was a real opportunity to put a cap on proliferation if you like that. You see the Baruch plan which is really the actual Sunilian plan was an extraordinary evolution and were only conceivable if there was a world government. It was a kind of miniature world government in the field of atomic energy. I don't think it was really a non-starter. What one doesn't know is that in June 47, the Russians made a proposal which was refused by the majority by the Americans.

I myself participated to the writing of the paper against the Russian proposal. And now 30, 40 years later, nearly. If one looks at that Russian proposal, it's exactly the non-proliferation treaty of 1970. If we had accepted the Russian proposal then, it probably wouldn't be the number of bombs which existed. But this is something which people have completely overlooked. And I had only found that out recently and published it in a disarmful conference done for the Andres anniversary of Niels Bohr in Copenhagen last year. One last question. In 1945 when the bomb was first used in Japan, did you have a feeling that this was a new era that the atomic weapon made it necessary for nations to think differently about war?

Yes, as I told you, when we sold the gold, general the gold, one year before Hiroshima, we told them that if the bomb was successful and we believe it would be, that the whole world politics would be different afterwards. That we had realized that it was a weapon which would have considerable importance in world politics and would upset if you want the equilibrium as we knew it before. We were convinced that the Americans having the bomb would be tremendously powerful and personally I believe that it's thanks to the bomb that Russia didn't overrun politically the whole of Europe.