Joan Clarke, cryptanalyst, World War Two 

                                                                (credit: Wikipedia)

Leo Szilard, Joan Clarke, and the Women of Bletchley Park

Leo Szilard and Edward Teller had a lot in common. They were both born Jewish in Hungary a generation before World War Two. They both became scientists, and both worked on the team in the U.S. in the mid-1940s that built the atom bombs, the ones that were dropped on Japan in August of 1945.

But otherwise, they diverged in many ways. Szilard did not want to see the Los Alamos team’s first nuclear bombs, “Fat Man” and “Little Boy”, actually used on any cities in Japan. He put together a petition and got many of the main scientists who had built the bombs to sign it in the last days before “Little Boy” was dropped on Hiroshima. He wanted the bomb dropped on some island near Japan with Japanese official observers present, so they would see what could be done to their cities if they continued with the war. The military ignored him. He and many other scientists working on the bomb had only joined the project because they feared Germany might build one first. By June of 1945, Germany was out of the war. Leo, to his dismay, found that control of the project had been ripped out of the hands of the men who knew what these gadgets could do. 

                                                  Leo Szilard (credit: Wikipedia)

 

In the meantime, Teller consulted with project director, Robert Oppenheimer, who reportedly felt military and political leaders should handle the decision on whether to drop an atom bomb on Japan. Teller refused to sign the petition. Teller has been characterized since those times as a stooge of the US military, while Szilard is seen as a man of conscience. These characterizations are not completely fair, but close enough for my purposes in this post.

My larger point is that these men who were key players in the building of the bomb were both of Jewish descent. In Nazi Germany, they probably would have died in Auschwitz. They would never have had the chance to work together and agree – or disagree – as they did. The Jewish components wouldn't even have been available. 

Enrico Fermi, the key scientist in the earlier Manhattan Project, had a Jewish wife. They had fled Italy in 1938 to escape the harsh new race laws there, which were deeply anti-Semitic. Oppenheimer himself was Jewish. In fact, the list of key figures in the building of the first bombs is full of names of Jewish scientists. 

                                              Edward Teller (as a young man) 

                                                            (credit: Wikipedia) 

Teller is also seen as the father of the fusion bomb, the H-bomb, which was built a few years after the war. Fusion bombs are more powerful than fission bombs. They are the weapons in the figurative cloud that now hangs over this planet.

Some of these scientists did not like each other, but that didn’t matter to the final results. They tolerated each other. They cooperated and built the bombs. Out of this mix, the democracies of the West got an early lead on the totalitarian system in the USSR, which had long since openly vowed to create a Communist world state and kill all who opposed that view.

The secret of the H-bomb was stolen by Soviet spies, and the whole arms race we all know about was run. But the USSR was held in check by those weapons until it dissolved out of existence. (Without a major war, we should also note. Those who cared more for peace than ideologies defeated those who believed in violence simply by outlasting them.)    

When Heisenberg’s facility was destroyed by Allied agents in April of ’45, the German work on nuclear weapons was found to be at least two years behind the work at Los Alamos. He didn’t have Oppenheimer, Szilard, or Teller. 

In Japan, arguably an even more monochrome society than Germany, during WWII, no meaningful work on atom bombs was even done.  

But I reiterate that there is a larger point here. In the more tolerant national ethos of the US, the project was simply more possible sooner. There were more varied and numerous human resources there.

A major strength of democracy, clearly visible in the events of the years leading up to the building of the bomb, is its pluralism. Its tolerance. In a real, working democracy, lots of different kinds of people learn to live together and tolerate, even respect, each other. The Americans acquired many of the Jewish scientists of Europe in the 1930s. As the power of the Nazis rose in their home countries, these men made a simple choice: to leave. Most went to the US to continue their scientific work there. Jewish scientists added to the ranks of scientists of many other creeds in the West, and they became a strength of Western democracies. Not out of any one of them, but out of their interactions and teamwork, a huge scientific breakthrough occurred.

                                               Alan Turing (as a young man) 

                                               (credit: Wikimedia Commons) 

In this same vein of thought, I point to Alan Turing in Britain. He was the key player in the project that broke the most important German code, the one called “Enigma”. He was also a homosexual. He was treated shamefully after the war, but repressive laws often get renewed in the nervous times that exist after a war. By 1947, Britain was a more scarred and frightened land than it had been in 1934.

In the meantime, in Germany in 1934, measures aimed at purging the nation of homosexuals were brought in. Thousands were arrested and given prison terms or sent to camps. After the “Night of the Long Knives” in 1934, the homosexual life style of Ernst Rohm and several of his cohorts in the SA was even given by many Nazis as an excuse for their being assassinated. 

If Turing had been in Germany during the pre-war years, he would have known his private life would be closely scrutinized before he could do classified work such as code-breaking. He would likely have shied away from doing any such work. But Britain in the years before the war was, unofficially, but practically, more tolerant than Germany. Once again, a democracy’s being tolerant turned out to be a major strength.

The Americans broke the Japanese codes in the Pacific war. Their knowing what Japanese fleets were going to do before they did it produced some major American victories, notably the Battle of Midway in mid-1942 and the shooting down of Admiral Yamamoto’s plane a year later.

In the meantime, the Japanese never did crack the code used by the Americans in the Pacific. It was Navajo. Only a very few people in the world spoke Navajo and none of these betrayed the US. The Navajo men who actually spoke radio messages for the US forces were called “Code Talkers”. They were vital to the winning of the war. The highly monochrome regime in Japan, which was condescending and cruel in its view even of other Asians, had no such resources to draw upon. The Code Talkers were clear-cut strengths of a democracy.

Generally, “macho” male-dominated societies don’t even want women among the ranks of those who are really deeply involved in a war. No important roles for females. Ever. But Joan Clarke was a vital member of Turing’s team in the cracking of Enigma. Many, many women worked at Bletchley Park.

It is also widely known now that women are among the cleverest and bravest secret agents working inside enemy country. Violet Szabo was captured by the Nazis. And tortured. But she never gave away a single fact that was of any use to them.

  

                                 Violet Szabo, British spy (credit: Wikimedia) 

A key insight into nuclear fission came in 1938 from Lise Meitner, an Austrian Jew. In 1953, Rosalind Franklin provided vital insights that made it possible for Watson and Crick to build an accurate model of the DNA molecule, the key to all life.

I could list examples for hours. 

The point is that any nation that bars women from playing meaningful roles in its national life is, in one fell swoop, losing half of its human resources. Not a smart move in the great game.

I could go on, but I think my point is made. In the giant picture, over the long haul of years, decades, generations, and even centuries, democracy is tougher than its competitors, the totalitarian societies, because in the long haul, freedom and pluralism are real assets, not liabilities.

Even more deeply, we need to see that these democratic traits are national assets because of the uncertainty that is built into the physical universe from the level of the atoms on up to the stars. Freedom and pluralism are a society’s way of matching its culture to one of the basic principles of the universe, namely the probabilistic quality of reality. We don’t know what kinds of surprises our nation will be hit with in the future. But we do know for certain that surprises will come. That is how the universe is built.

The answer to this deep uncertainty is to have lots of different kinds of arrows in your quiver and skills in your skill set. You just can’t know what the future may throw at you. But you can know that your nation's chances of handling those shocks are better if your nation has a whole lot of different resources at its disposal.

In plainer English, love is an asset. Democracy’s tolerant way of life is an asset. Kind people, in the long haul, really are the strongest people.

I think I will leave it at that for today.