War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Solly Zuckerman, 1987

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Transcript

WAR AND PEACE IN THE NUCLEAR AGE - TAPES C06069-C06071 SOLLY ZUCKERMAN

Britain's Nuclear Program

Interviewer:

THE FIRST QUESTION REALLY, AND WE MIGHT AS WELL TAKE IT HISTORICALLY IN

A SENSE, IS I WONDERED IF YOU COULD JUST DESCRIBE TO US THE EXTENT OF

THE SECRECY THAT SURROUNDED ATTLEE'S DECISION TO PROCEED WITH THE

DEVELOPMENT OF THE BRITISH BOMB PROJECT?

Zuckerman:

If you ask about the secrecy which surrounded the atomic bomb... the

secrets around Attlee... you've got to realize that until Nagasaki and

Hiroshima, in fact, nobody at all knew about the weapons being done, or

nuclear weaponry, and Attlee didn't know. Attlee, I understand, heard

of the nuclear bomb project for the first time in the middle of the

Potsdam Conference. Churchill had not taken him into his confidence,

even though he was the Deputy Prime Minister; in the same way in the

United States Roosevelt had not taken many of his closest buddies into

his confidence. The secrecy was almost absolute. The... if one asked

about Attlee's decision that this country should go ahead in developing

its own nuclear bomb, then you've got to realize that the aura of

secrecy was still there, because it... he did... the war had just come

to an end, and the Truman, who had taken Roosevelt's place, had met

Attlee for, I believe, the first time at Potsdam. And after the first

bomb had dropped on Hiroshima, Attlee sent a message to Truman saying

that it was an appalling development, and shouldn't the United Kingdom

and the United States make a pact together to save humanity, et cetera,

et cetera. Well, Truman turned that down. And it was then that Attlee

decided that... and I don't know how many people he consulted. I knew

nothing whatever about these things. But he took the decision then that

we would go ahead and become an independent nuclear power. And there

had been several factors in that decision. And there have been pressure

on him from people who had been engaged in the project. Well then, to

the best of my knowledge, not very much work was taking place in the

United Kingdom at that time. We transferred our work and our teams to

the United States. Where it... and we'd entered into a collaborative

agreement with them early in 1943 I believe it was. And actually,

naturally believed that the... that we knew about the nuclear bomb.

Nuclear fission was a vital matter as far as power was concerned and

the United Kingdom had to be aware of power, and the world power had to

be a nuclear power in those days.

Interviewer:

PEOPLE GENERALLY REFER TO AN INTERVENTION BY BABIN WHO WAS FOREIGN

SECRETARY AT THE TIME, AFTER SOME OF THE NEGOTIATIONS HE WAS HAVING

WITH THE UNITED STATES, AS BEING PERHAPS THE MAIN INTERVENTION THAT

SWUNG THE DECISION ABOUT GOING AHEAD WITH A NUCLEAR WEAPON. DO YOU

THINK THERE'S TOO MUCH EMPHASIS PLACED ON THAT OR DO YOU THINK THAT IN

THE END THAT REALLY WAS ONE OF THE MAIN MOTIVATIONS?

Zuckerman:

There are very few people of course who are around today who took part

in the actual... what the... what people now are inclined to call the

decision making process leading to the decision that we were going to

produce our own fissile material and go on towards the production of

the bomb. A primary decision had been taken by Attlee. And very few...

members of these cabinet knew -- obviously the people who would have to

know who would be the foreign secretary who was Babin, the Chancellor

of the Exchequer, Atlee actually knew nothing about nuclear weaponry or

fission or what it was all about anyhow. And so he called in an

assistant, Sir John Anderson who had been the minister responsible

under Churchill in the war, and became Lord Waverley and was really...

it was a... in effect you might say that a Labour administration was...

took its advice from a Tory minister. I imagine that any other person

there who would... I'm trying to remember, Dorkin certainly, new

Chancellor of the Exchequer. And almost certainly Herbert Morrison who

was Minister of Supply I think at the time. Ah, actually it was his own

Minister of Defense. That I assume that he had brought in Alexander or

-- who was his sort of deputy. But what we know about... about the

story comes essentially from Sir Michael Perrin who is Lord Portal, who

was there of course. Portal being given charge of atomic energy, moved

to the Ministry... when he ceased being Chief of Air Staff. And Perrin

was his Secretary. And Perrin has left the record. Now the record that

Perrin has left is that as the financial implications of going ahead

in... in the construction of the nuclear reactor, it was called a pile

then -- after the Chicago pile, p-i-l-e, putting the blocks together,

the rods and all this, on the...on the famous playing fields over

Eaton. So he... some place associated with the University of Chicago.

Well, the story that Perrin said... the... Attlee and the few who are

in the know decided that this was going to be too costly and they

couldn't go ahead. Devin was due to be at the meeting and had been

delayed, and he then came in and they brought him up to date about what

the decision -- the discussion had been like, and the conclusion

reached, of course we have to stop this. And Devin is then, according

to Michael Perrin, Devin then said, "We can't do that. We've got to go

ahead whatever it costs, because I don't want any future foreign

secretary of this country to be spoken to as I've just been spoken to

by that man Burns," who was Secretary of State. And that's the story

as... as it has been reported, and as I know it. It... it sounds

possible and plausible. Ah, it... at the very least it sounds dramatic

and romantic.

Interviewer:

I'M GOING TO ASK YOU, THERE WAS SOME OPPOSITION -- YOU'VE WRITTEN FROM

TWO PEOPLE, I THINK TIZARD AND BLACKARD WROTE MEMORANDUMS OPPOSING

THE...THE... BRITAIN'S PROGRAM BECAUSE THEY FORESAW CERTAIN PROBLEMS. I

MEAN WHY DO YOU THINK THEY WERE IGNORED AND DO YOU THINK THEY WERE

RIGHT AT THE TIME OR WHAT?

Zuckerman:

The... politicians of course were involved in the decision were taking

their technical advice or advice on technical matters from a limited

number of individuals who were concerned in the work. Now you might

well say that those politicians were no more competent to make a

judgment on what technical advice to accept, than they were as

professional politicians competent to say whether the subsequent Bishop

A is more suitable than subsequent Bishop B to take over the diocese of

C. I mean they knew nothing about it. Now there were some scientists

who... who knew what was going on, but who... could not make judgments

both about the technical side of it and also the political side. Among

them were... Blackard who must have known, he was a Professor of

Physics, who ended up as being President of the Royal Society...

appear. And Sir Henry Tizard. And Henry Tizard, who had been the

government's scientific adviser before the war... when I say the

government's scientific adviser there was a committee, the Committee of

the Imperial Defense which dealt with technical matters. And that

Committee was presided over... it's a small body, it was... by Tizard.

And that... that was where Tizard came into conflict with Churchill's

own special scientific adviser, Lindemann, who later became Lord

Cherwell. Blackard had been a member of that committee. Blackard

certainly was I think through his contacts with... with Cockcroft,

among other people, probably -- and because he was a nuclear physicist

under... understood more about what was happening than did Tizard. But

Tizard is a man of very, very broad sweep, and very good judgment. And

he was kept out of the picture deliberately by Churchill for some time.

When he sort of came back into... into the picture really the

government changed, although I think it took some time, some six months

or so after the change of the government. In other words it might have

been only at the end of '45, the beginning of 1946 that he himself

decided he would leave Oxford and come back to London. And when... when

he was put into the picture that he then decided... and also. Oliphant

for example. Another Cambridge nuclear physicist who had moved over to

Birmingham. And Tizard is... believed that on straight strategic

grounds it was then I felt that this country should proceed on the

nuclear path. Blackard took the same view. Blackard took the view...

took the view which was being openly debated in the United States,

then. Blackard was in touch with many of the top nuclear physicists of

America. And there the debate was in the open. Everybody seemed to be

involved.

Interviewer:

YOU'VE SAID THAT TIZARD AND BLACKARD'S OPPOSITION TO SOME EXTENT WAS

BASED ON STRATEGIC GROUNDS. DO YOU THINK THAT THERE WAS A SERIOUS

DEBATE ABOUT THE STRATEGY OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS AT THAT PARTICULAR TIME? I

SUPPOSE WHAT I'M TRYING TO GET AT IS DO YOU THINK THAT DECISIONS WERE

TAKEN TO PROCEED WITH AN ATOMIC BOMB PROGRAM WITHOUT ANY CLEAR IDEA OF

WHAT STRATEGICALLY THEY WERE CAPABLE OF DOING OR WHAT EFFECT THEY COULD

HAVE?

Zuckerman:

Yes. I think one asks oneself the question, was there any serious

discussion about what the consequences of going the... the nuclear were

likely to be for this country, I think the answer is no, there was not

a discussion of the kind one assumed would take place today if we were

to start at this moment. Certainly we were not a nuclear power and

someone suggested we ought to become a nuclear power. We would... we

would go through a very, very lengthy period of discussion and debate

before undertaking any such step. Whereas in 1945, or '46 the situation

was quite different. First of all nobody had really... as Attlee

himself said, Attlee knew nothing about fallout, he knew nothing about

genetic effects of radiation. And he even went so far to say that he

did not believe that Churchill knew or Sir John Anderson knew or

Roosevelt knew. And he said... and I seem to recall that in the

sentence in his own... autobiography he also said, "and if the

scientists knew they said nothing about it." Now it's possible of

course that some of the scientists knew nothing about it. They were

just doing their job. There was no discussion therefore in... and if

Attlee they had known the facts and the other people had known the

facts about radiation, about the very the destructive nature of...

nuclear weapons, about the fact that while Hiroshima and Nagasaki were

being rebuilt... ground burst nuclear weapons in the megaton range,

would just leave radioactive rubble, on which you could never rebuild

London, or Birmingham or any other city that had been destroyed that

way. I think had there been that kind of discussion it's conceivable

that... the debate would have gone not necessarily in favor of

proceeding in a nuclear way. Attlee had another reason of course. I

mean he believed the nuclear weapon was a very powerful piece of

armament. And if America withdrew from Europe we might be left to face

the USSR if the USSR decided to take over a broken destroyed Europe as

it then was.

McMahon Act

Interviewer:

DURING THE WAR PERIOD THERE HAD BEEN QUITE A LOT OF COLLABORATION

BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND MANY BRITISH SCIENTISTS HAD ACTUALLY BEEN

WORKING IN THE UNITED STATES ON THE MANHATTAN PROJECT. AND THEN QUITE

SHORTLY AFTER THE END OF HOSTILITIES THERE WAS WHAT WAS GENERALLY KNOWN

AS THE MCMAHON ACT WAS INTRODUCED, WHICH EFFECTIVELY TRIED TO PREVENT A

CONTINUATION OF THAT COLLABORATION. COULD YOU TELL US FIRST OF ALL, WAS

IT A SERIOUS SHOCK TO PEOPLE IN BRITAIN AND DID IT SERIOUSLY HAMPER THE

RESEARCH EFFORT GOING ON IN THIS COUNTRY?

Zuckerman:

Well, immediately after the war of course in the same way as everybody

was trying to appreciate what happened, in this country, and of course

its effects in Japan which had been the target country were absolutely

phenomenal. And... I imagine that it was... barely a corner in the

world where you didn't have a... strong reaction. Or the reaction was

mixed, one side was here's a... here's a marvelous piece of new

armament, we've got to have it. And certainly with the USSR in... in a

hostile relationship with the USA or immediately after the war, the

fact that it would proceed... the Americans therefore, they wanted it.

There were some of course that thought the whole thing was too

horrible. The others who thought that this is so wonderful we must keep

the secret to ourselves, And very soon after Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Brien McMahon, the Senator from Connecticut, he...

[END OF TAPE C06069]

Interviewer:

DID THE MCMAHON ACT SERIOUSLY AFFECT THE LEVEL OF RESEARCH IN THIS

COUNTRY? WAS IT A HINDRANCE TO THE SCIENTIFIC EFFORT IN THIS COUNTRY,

IN THE INITIAL STAGES?

Zuckerman:

Well, I imagine very few people in this country knew about the McMahon

Act or the news leading up to it. Because in there was a move to put

the future of nuclear energy both civil and military under the United

Nations sponsorship. I don't think, in other words, that the McMahon

Act as such did more than cut us off from exchange of knowledge with

Americans at a particular stage at which that knowledge had reached. We

did... we would not have been able to start on the building of power

which was where the... our nuclear efforts started in this country

after the war, during the war. Almost everyone engaged, even

Cockcroft... Cockcroft was far more engaged the way he went up to Chalk

River, but Cockcroft had in the earlier parts of the war been immensely

important in the radar field. And the scientists were... were not

two-a-penny in those days. Particularly the scientists who had the...

the knowledge. And knowledge at the very limits of their fields to

apply them in various ways which were regarded as relevant to the war

effort. Though I wouldn't think that the...the McMahon Act impended

our...our work here. But I think the question I would like to put and

I'd like an answer to is what would have happened to this country if

the McMahon Act had not been passed, what would the nature of our

collaboration with America have been? What would that have done to the

development of the scientific and technological expertise of this

country. And then on the other hand one's got to remember that in

building up our nuclear effort after the war, in increasing the output

of scientists and engineers in the universities, our.. main

consideration had nothing whatever to do with the nuclear effort. They

were small. They were trivial compared to the wide scale of tasks for

which scientific people were required in the reconstruction of this

country after the war. Though I would... I would like to know as I say,

what would have happened had we gone on with the Americans?

Interviewer:

WHY DO -- YOU SAID TO ME WHEN WE WERE SPEAKING EARLIER, I MEAN A FEW

WEEKS AGO THAT IN FACT THE WAY THAT... THE CONDITIONS THAT WERE IMPOSED

ON THE MCMAHON ACT AND WHEN IT WAS REPEALED, PREVENTED ANY SERIOUS

COLLABORATION WITH ANY OTHER EUROPEAN POWERS PARTICULARLY THE FRENCH AS

FAR AS THE BRITISH WERE CONCERNED. CAN YOU JUST DESCRIBE HOW THAT

HAPPENED AND WHETHER IT WAS IMPORTANT?

Zuckerman:

Well, the McMahon Act of course was an act passed by Congress to

prevent any exchange of... of information on nuclear matters with any

second party. They were barred from discussing nuclear matters or

anything which was even remotely connected with nuclear matters with

another nation. The McMahon Act was first... was repealed in two

stages. In 1958 there was a repeal which permitted the American Atomic

Energy Commission to let this country know about nuclear propulsion

parts. They had nothing to tell us about nuclear reactors in general,

but this was telling us about nuclear reactors for submarines or for

surface vessels. And in the early days, people thought that nuclear

reactors were going to be marvelously important in ordinary commercial

shipping. So there were secrets there. So when... the first repeal took

place in the civil sphere or... although we were concerned then with

nuclear propulsion parts for submarines, a condition, a necessary

condition was that any information which the Americans gave us under

the... the repealed McMahon Act should not be passed by us to a third

party. And needless to say when in the following year, 1959, the second

repeal took place which allowed us to discuss with each other warhead

design... that condition was... even more stringently imposed. There

was no question about talking to any third party. But I suppose one

could ask, did those conditions... restrictive conditions hold us back

from discussing these matters with either scientists in other

countries... scientists of other countries, also had ideas and knew

about nuclear matters, or impede us politically? And there I'm afraid

one has to say yes. Becoming tied to the United States through the

repealed McMahon Act in the nuclear field did become an impediment. So

far as our European relations are concerned and so far as our efforts

to become members of the community, the Common Market were... were

concerned in the negotiations, which were oddly enough, of course,

taking place at the same time.

Interviewer:

WHY DO YOU THINK THE MCMAHON ACT WAS REPEALED IN THAT WAY? WHAT

WAS...WHAT WAS THE MOTIVE FORCE BEHIND...?

Zuckerman:

The... McMahon Act, I suppose was...in its nature was known to

Congressmen, and in particular to the Congressional Committee on Atomic

Energy. They were really a powerful lot. I forget how long McMahon

himself was a member. They were a really powerful lot, because the

nuclear thing itself is dominating international relations. It's

extremely difficult to know why they... felt it necessary or wanted to

repeal the act. NATO had been formed in 1949. In '52 there was the

Lisbon Conference as we all know when the participating countries in

the western Alliance said that it was highly unlikely that we could

raise the conventional forces which would be adequate to face...

forces. And then came the belief that nuclear weapons could compensate

for conventional weakness. Well, as President Reagan has recently said,

we've been relying too long on the nuclear prop to hide our real

weakness. The Americans might have felt that political pressures inside

the alliance as such demanded some loosening of the... of the McMahon

Act and its restrictions on the passage of information. Because

everywhere, ever since 1953, '54, nuclear weapons started being

stockpiled in Europe as we all know. And there... so you're stockpiling

nuclear weapons in an alliance only two members of which were actually

engaged in making nuclear weapons.

War Games on European Nuclear War

Interviewer:

NOW I WANT TO GO ON TO THAT, BECAUSE IN A SENSE YOU STARTED WORK --

WHEN YOU BECAME SCIENTIFIC ADVISER TO THE GOVERNMENT AND WHEN YOU WERE

ALSO ENGAGED IN SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH FOR THE MINISTRY OF THE DEFENSE,

YOU STARTED WORK ON WAR GAMES, STARTED LOOKING AT WAR GAMES AND SETTING

UP WAR GAMES THAT LED YOU TO SOME QUITE IMPORTANT CONCLUSIONS ABOUT THE

USE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN A WAR IN EUROPE. AND WHAT I'D LIKE YOU TO DO

IS COULD YOU JUST BRIEFLY DESCRIBE THE WAR GAMES AND TELL US WHAT

CONCLUSIONS THEY ACTUALLY LED YOU TO?

Zuckerman:

Well... as the '50s drew on, as nuclear weapons were introduced into

Europe, as they became part of NATO tactical doctrine, one had to ask

oneself whether or not battles could actually be fought with weapons

whose destructive power was such that if what was then called a small

nuclear weapon were to explode in a zone of contact between enemy

forces fighting our own. And it didn't take much reflection, and I had

had a fair amount of experience in the war, what actually did happen,

on analyzing what happened in the battles with conventional explosives,

it didn't take very... me very long to realize that a nuclear battle

would get out of hand straightaway. And what had happened was that in

the... shortly after nuclear weapons had been introduced into Europe

there... it was a... do they call them war games? I've forgotten...

between the... forces with an actual sort of play-out to what would

happen in Europe. And this was done with troops, moving troops and the

troops were allowed to use nuclear weapons. And then knowing what...

something about the destructive power of... of radius of action of a

nuclear weapon the... it became apparent that in addition to... to the

Military casualties which you said would be hundreds of thousands of

civilian casualties. And there was naturally a political reaction in

Western Germany, because western Germany was going to be destroyed in

the effort to save it. Well knowing from the second World War something

about military planning, I decided ah to have a... to look at the plans

or... they have generalized plans for what... war in Europe in which

nuclear weapons were used, and it became apparent very quickly by just

playing out... we... start off by firing six artillery... nuclear

artillery shells or drop so many nuclear bombs, and the Russians just

reply in kind. And it didn't take any great genius to realize that one

was going to devastate totally the whole region in which the fighting

was taking place and it... the region would be useless for anything,

and the whole... the operation would grind to a halt or escalate. And

that was the real danger, the escalation. And that was what... why and

has been the continuing thing about the European fear that America

would leave Europe, coupling to Europe... the Americans to Europe means

we believe that there would be escalation. That the United States would

be as vulnerable to Russian attack as we are here. And nowadays of

course you can say that the war games have shown and this is recognized

on all sides that if there were a conflict in Western Europe, which

became a conflagration and a mutual suicide pact between the NATO

European powers and Russia that we want the USA to join in a mutual

pact as well. That's what it would add up to. It's perfectly apparent

to... and we've only realized this lately, that at the time artillery

shells and...and the like were being introduced... nuclear artillery

shells I'm talking about, into Europe. No one had ever seen a nuclear

artillery shell fired in the proper case. Or rather no one who take...

took the decision. And one of the men who was involved in... the only

trial that he believes ever did take place of a shell, exploded

under...underground or as a test device up top, but fired as an

artillery shell, a man called Bennett O'Keefe, who was one of a party

of about 30 men, most of them are dead now. But O'Keefe has given a

description of what happened. And as he put it, I think the shell was

fired about... in placement. And the shell was made to burst about ten

miles away. And as he said, anybody who'd been looking towards it would

have been blinded. That the...the shock was... the moral shock was

incredible. That anybody... anyhow within the zone unprotected would

have been killed. But there you've got to add it up. It wouldn't be one

artillery shell that would be going. It would be tens of artillery

shells. There would be bombers... and in the same way we've got to

recognize the... our own... it wouldn't matter who started the use of

of these shells. Nobody would have the experience of knowing what it's

like. They would have had the experience of knowing what a conventional

artillery shell did. And so you would have had chaos of a fantastic

kind. And then there's some other thing. You don't have teams of

physicists rushing on the battlefield to decide whether or not what was

fired was a 10-kiloton, a 5-kiloton device or a 100-kiloton. You report

back that nuclear shells are being used, that nuclear bombs are being

dropped and you reply not with a... not with an equivalent one, you

reply with a bigger one. Kilotons become megatons, and then of course

there's... just following the conventional strategy, you talk about

having to interdict the movements of reinforcements. So while you're

battling in this way as it were, over an area no bigger than greater

London you are taking out Bristol, possibly even Edinburgh, and that is

what the range is of... intermediate range nuclear missiles. And so the

war games in which these things were being played out have been played

out eve... it... it's just a business now of doing war games. They all

come to the same conclusion. I don't know of any... war games which has

shed... which has demonstrated that... there's war games in which the

assumption is that nuclear weapons will be used. I do not know of any

single one that says we can... you can win with their use.

[END OF TAPE C06070]

Interviewer:

YOU JUST WANTED TO ADD SOMETHING?

Zuckerman:

What...what the war games showed in effect, that the very possession of

nuclear weapons by two sides similarly armed and the threat of their

possible use was a deterrent to any aggressive action on either side.

But that if they were used then you ended up in a kind of chaos of

which no military commander previously had experienced. And with

territory which was so radioactive that people would begin to ask

themselves, if there were people to ask questions, did we really do

this in order to capture radioactive ground on which we can do nothing?

Physicists Drive Arms Race

Interviewer:

JUST TO FOLLOW ON FROM THAT, IN SOME OF YOUR WORK YOU'VE ACTUALLY

CRITICIZED QUITE STRONGLY THE ROLE OF WHAT I WOULD CALL IVORY TOWER

RESEARCH ESTABLISHMENTS IN PROVIDING A CONTINUING DRIVE FOR THE ARMS

RACE. COULD YOU JUST TELL US WHAT YOU THINK? WHO YOU WOULD NAME AS THE

MOST GUILTY PEOPLE IF YOU FEEL LIKE THAT?

Zuckerman:

Well, it always has... been the case, I suppose ever since the

development of armaments for warfare that it is the... the

metallurgists, even not in the days when there wasn't scientific

metallurgy, who invents better steel. The man who first devised

gunpowder. I mean it all begins in the whole field environment with

somebody inventing something, either on the basis of existing knowledge

or as sometimes happens in technology as a way of doing things. You

think you know a better way to do things usually. In the case of the

nuclear world, we've got to realize there were no politicians. There

were no generals, no admirals, no air marshalls, who had anything

whatever to do with the beginning of the development of nuclear

weapons. The people who were involved were the physicists and the

mathematical physicists in particular at the start. I mean in this

country there is well-known two refugee scientists, Peierls and Frisch

from... western Germany were responsible for... as it were writing a

recipe, showing how you could devise a nuclear weapon from your

knowledge of nuclear fission. The Manhattan Project which was the code

name for the development of nuclear weapons in the United States was

presided over by an engineer general called Groves, a one-star general.

But practically everybody in the thing... at the working end was a

scientist. Had the scientists not been at the... at the job, the

generals and all the military appurtanances to the whole project would

have had no work-through. In the USSR of course, the scientists gave up

as the Russian forces fell back and they only restarted in the latter

part of the war in the... In Western Germany we know what... what

happened there. Eisenberg says they had to give it up. In this country

we joined with the Americans because if we hadn't what would we have

done? So the scientists are at the back, and the scientists continue to

be at the back. And in the immediate post-war, Dean Acheson who is the

Deputy Secretary of State in the United States, made a complaint that

foreign policy in the United States seemed to be run by General Groves

of the Manhattan Project and not by the State Department, not by the

Administration. But all the way along, there have been refinements in

the technical field which lead to some sort of political acceptance and

then to the political problems. Today of course the major issue is

President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative. The idea of putting

together by means of... artificial satellites a defensive screen over

America, emitting death rays of one sort or another and shooting down

an avalanche of Russian missiles. Well, if you go into the matter and

ask yourself where did... where did President Reagan get that idea

from? Well, the belief is he got it from Edward Teller. He would have

got it somewhere because Edward Teller didn't start by going up to the

President. He'd been talking at lower levels, and lower levels in the

military will talk to the higher levels. And you can always promise the

military that you've got a better weapon than the one they've already

got. That's easy. But the... this... the force behind it all is with --

where the technologist is. Is the same way as it was the technologists

who devised the camera and the tape on which this interview is being

conducted. It wasn't done by the producer, and it certainly wasn't done

by... in your case I don't know who the originator. But it... but it

would have been a miracle. In fact, very few... there are very few has

a exceptions major technological development been put... put on the

market and taken charge and then had major... political repercussions.

What... all the way with the help of only technologists. But

technologists at the beginning. In the... in the camera field of

course, Dr. Land... in the United States with the Polaroid is

responsible for the whole thing. I mean he proved... he not only

invented the Polaroid camera, but he... invented the Polaroid

Corporation. That is a reality.

Interviewer:

DO YOU THINK FOR EXAMPLE THAT THE LAWRENCE LIVERMORE LABS IN THE UNITED

STATES PLAY A PERNICIOUS ROLE IN A SENSE?

Zuckerman:

Without question the... the Livermore Laboratory in the United States

is another illustration. It is said -- I am here basing myself entirely

on what is public record, that what stimulated the Livermore people was

the belief that they could invent a laser beam of such intensity by

pulsing it with nuclear power, and that was the x-ray laser, the

nuclear pulsed laser. It required a nuclear bomb to provide the energy

for this intense beam of gamma rays, x-rays, whatever rays they were,

which would... could be aimed in split seconds and split... and split

seconds at nuclear warheads. Now that came out of Livermore. And

Livermore... that was what is said to have animated Edward Teller. And

with Teller who with this wonderful new invention x-ray laser, excited

Reagan to believe that it would be possible to have x-ray lasers

operating in space, reacting to an immediate signal in this most

fantastic picture of a space-based defense system, which practically

nobody who's... who's working mainly from the outside and several now

from the inside believes to be possible. But it begins in the

laboratory. It does not begin on the hill or in the White House or in

the Pentagon.

Nuclear Test Ban

Interviewer:

YOU DESCRIBED TO ME THE FACT THAT MACMILLAN WHEN HE WAS PRIME MINISTER

WAS PLAYING -- WAS HAVING TO RIDE TWO HORSES IN A SENSE. ON THE ONE

HAND THERE WERE DOMESTIC POLITICAL REASONS FOR HIM HAVING TO DO A DEAL

WITH KENNEDY OVER POLARIS AND ALL THAT, AND ALL THAT FOLLOWED FROM THAT

MEETING. AND YET AT THE SAME TIME HE WAS DEEPLY COMMITTED TO A TEST BAN

TREATY AND TO NON-PROLIFERATION AND TO ANY INTERNATIONAL EFFORTS TO

CONTROL AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE THE USE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS. COULD YOU JUST

DESCRIBE IN A SENSE WHAT DILEMMAS YOU THINK MACMILLAN HAD TO FACE AND

HAD TO COPE WITH IN THOSE NEGOTIATIONS WITH KENNEDY?

Zuckerman:

I have often asked myself, supposing Attlee had not taken the decision

when he did, partly out of ignorance you might say, but nonetheless a

decision which set us on the course of being an independent nuclear

power, would... supposing it hadn't been taken. He was replaced in 1951

by Winston Churchill. I think Winston Churchill with... at his side,

might well have then said I'm going to... going in for nuclear

weaponry. We're only five years behind. It was 1952 that we exploded

our first bomb. That was 1951. Let's say they would have taken the

decision and the bomb would have been... would have been used in 19...

or would have been exploded first let's say on the five year gap. After

him, I do not believe, this is my... I'm speculating now. I doubt very

much whether after a gap of ten years we would have gone ahead. But

what happened was we were in it, though even at the time of Suez we

were... we were developing nuclear weapons. We weren't proposing to use

nuclear weapons. They were our deterrent and that was made quite clear

in 1957 by Duncan Sands in his white paper on defense. But Harriman

really knew full well that a nuclear arms race is a disastrous thing

for the world. And he and General Eisenhower who was then President of

the United States believed that the way to stop the nuclear arms race

is to stop the testing of nuclear devices, nuclear warheads. Khrushchev

too, believed it too up to a certain extent, but he was highly

suspicious of the Americans. The man who really put the... the biggest

pressure into this business of trying to achieve a nuclear test ban was

Macmillan. When Eisenhower ceased being president the whole world was

becoming concerned about nuclear testing, radioactive fallout was now

in... radiation was now affecting the whole... food chain. And they...

that attitude of Macmillan's feelings that we had to have a nuclear

test ban. At the same time we were on... on course but with... with our

nuclear developments of our own. And the missile age had begun with

Sputnik in 1957. So in the belief that aircraft would be too vulnerable

to use and... the time of the ballistic missiles had come we decided to

go in for... the ballistic missiles. But we were our own independent

nuclear power, that mattered. The first nuclear weapon we went into...

ballistic missile, was a thing called Blue Streak, based upon a design,

an American design which was a liquid fueled missile. And the

difficulties started being expressed about its development and about

its... the strategic validity of having such a thing in this country.

It was cancelled in 1960. And we... that left us as it were, bare. A

nuclear power losing its nuclear prop. So we tried to get another

nuclear prop. And that's when we went to the Americans. And...

Macmillan found himself in the position of having to seek American help

to... so that we could continue as a political... with a political

strength. Granted that's because we was... an assumed nuclear power at

the same time as he wanted to stop the nuclear arms race. And he... he

as you know ceased being Prime Minister in 1964, the partial test ban

treaty for which he was very largely responsible because it became

apparent that President Kennedy could not get the technical people...

and each... those technical people had their constituencies in Congress

or the American military to agree to a comprehensive test ban, and so

we had to settle for the partial test ban. And those talks took place

in... in mid-1963 in Moscow. And they were tripartite, Lord Hailsham

was the leader of our delegation. I was with him as his scientific

adviser. And Gromyko had a big Russian team with him, and Averell

Harriman who recently died, led the Americans. But we failed to get...

Macmillan failed to get what he wanted.

Interviewer:

WHY WAS THAT? WHY DID HE FAIL? WHAT WAS THE REASON FOR THAT FAILURE?

Zuckerman:

The reason for the failure is that President Kennedy wasn't able to

deliver the nuclear weapons laboratories. They wanted to go on. As

Harold Macmillan said in his... autobiography, they wanted to go on

forever improving the nuclear weapons, whether or not the... the people

concerned, who were doing the improving asked themselves whether what

they were doing had any strategic significance at all, when as we now

know from 1960, certainly, East and West were mutually deterred from

attacking each other for fear that nuclear weapons would be used by one

side first and that if they were used retribution would follow and

utter disaster with it.

Interviewer:

SO FUNDAMENTALLY YOU SAY THAT IT WAS THE GROWING SUM OF THE SCIENTIFIC

AND MILITARY COMMUNITIES THAT WERE VERY, VERY...?

Zuckerman:

As the Americans themselves have said, President Kennedy did not

believe that if his emissary, Harriman had succeeded in getting the

Russians to agree to a comprehensive test ban, which is what Harold

Macmillan wanted, he would... it would never be ratified by the Senate

because the military as I said had their constituencies in Congress in

the same way as the weapons laboratories and the armaments industry in

general had their constituents involved. Over here, the difference is

that the Prime Ministerial authority is much more absolute than is

Presidential authority in the United States. Our kind of parliamentary

government makes it certain that the... that the majority party will

follow its leader, follow the Cabinet. The Cabinet makes the government

policy. In the United States, the Senate in these international

treaties say, no, we will not ratify. And without... without their

ratification nothing...nothing happens.

[END OF TAPE C06071 AND TRANSCRIPT]

Transcript

Transcript

Series: War and Peace in the Nuclear Age

Raw Footage: Interview with Solly Zuckerman, 1987

Contributing Organization: WGBH (Boston, Massachusetts)

AAPB ID: cpb-aacip/15-x34mk65j89

If you have more information about this item than what is given here, or if you have concerns about this record, we want to know! Contact us, indicating the AAPB ID (cpb-aacip/15-x34mk65j89).

Description

Credits: Publisher: WGBH Educational Foundation
Writer: Zuckerman, Solly Zuckerman, Baron, 1904-1993

AAPB Contributor Holdings: WGBH
Identifier: c8cf41b8c7bd026f1356323bed7ea4275b7e1b12 (ArtesiaDAM UOI_ID)
Format: video/quicktime
Color: Color
Duration: 00:00:00

Citations: Chicago: “War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Solly Zuckerman, 1987,” 1987-02-11, WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed November 16, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-x34mk65j89.; MLA: “War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Solly Zuckerman, 1987.” 1987-02-11. WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. November 16, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-x34mk65j89>.; APA: War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Solly Zuckerman, 1987. Boston, MA: WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-x34mk65j89