Reflecting on the Cold War 40 years later

When George Kennan wrote the Long Telegram, later to be named the X Article, it was intended to be broad analysis of the Soviet Conflict and propose a vague, not ultimate, solution to the issue. Kennan would be supportive of his ideas of containment being the basis for The Marshall Plan but he was against the Truman Doctrine  authorizing the use of military forces in containing the communist threat. Later in his life Kennan would try to popularize a new "wider concept" of containment to replace the original interpretation  of the idea. Kennan's reflections and new viewpoint on his original policy of containment along with original articles criticizing the Long Telegram are included in this article focused on how the article has stood up after 40 years since it was originally printed.

http://faculty.nwacc.edu/smoyers/Containment%2040%20years%20later.pdf

Yet again another of Bourne's Anti-War writing: http://www.bigeye.com/thewar.htm

http://www.bigeye.com/thewar.htm

Here Bourne is calling for a radical rejection of the 'intellectual' support of World War I. He argues that the intellectuals started the war for selfish reasons and attempt to cover their tracks by eyes of the common-man.

Kennan and The Cold War

Though American diplomat George F. Kennan had emphasized the irreconcilable differences that greatly challenged US-Soviet relations in his famous "Sources of Soviet Conduct" article published anonymously in Foreign Affairs Magazine in 1947, he spent much of his later career stressing how American policy makers had gravely misinterpreted his works and consequently formulated an overly militaristic foreign policy in order to defeat its rival superpower.

In an interview in 1972, Kennan was asked if he had regretted writing the article given the subsequent misinterpretation of his policy recommendations. The following is a link to his response: http://books.google.com/books?id=g4FuZSjALN8C&pg=PA143&lpg=PA143&dq=George+Kennan+misinterpretation&source=bl&ots=xu9FgX1mVx&sig=f5V7F3CuGedm1E85RaS9uFaLDR0&hl=en&ei=gx7KSe7yM8zJtgfa5_meAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=5&ct=result#PPA143,M1

As stated in his answer, Kennan did not regret writing the article as a whole, but was regretful of how he had exactly worded his opinions. Kennan argued that he never meant to make war sound inevitable in order to solve our differences with the Soviet Union, and emphasized that the press had overly stressed and overestimated the Soviet threat in an unnecessary, militaristic light. As Kennan states, "What we need mostly to do is to free ourselves from some of our fixations with relation to the military competition - to remind ourselves that there is really no reason why we and the Russians should wish to do frightful things to each other and to the world."

MLK and Vietnam

http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/publications/speeches/Beyond_Vietnam.pdf

One truth about history is that any event, movement, or figure can be invoked in the name of any modern cause or idea. This is especially true about important figures with controversial opinions: it's simply easier to ignore statements one finds inconvenient. Everyone associates Martin Luther King Jr. with the civil rights movement, but few laud his anti-capitalist, anti-war views. In this time of economic turmoil and useless two-front wars, King's sentiments appear prophetic:

(from page 9 of the link)

"I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered."

"A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: 'This is not just.' "

"This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."

In these passages from "Beyond Vietnam", King emphasizes an undeniable link between a lack of compassion for one's fellow man, and one's zeal for war. If one stops seeing people as as human beings and instead as numbers on a chart, the consequences are disastrous and wrong.

King used this speech to speak out against the war in Vietnam and advocate for social welfare. He argued that it is spiritually impossible to be pro-war and pro-social reform, as a country can't mass-murder civilians and still claim moral superiority.

Kennan Anwsers Kruschev

http://proquest.umi.com.ezproxy.bu.edu/pqdweb?index=4&did=80567989&SrchMode=1&sid=5&Fmt=10&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=HNP&TS=1237956546&clientId=3740

This primary source is a short article from the New York Times archives from December 21, 1959. In the article, George F. Kennan responds to criticism from Kruschev's propaganda ploys; he says that any dialogue between the nations need to change "if that discussion is to be fruitful."

Kennan wrote this in an issue of Foreign Affairs in response to an article written by Kruschev's. Kennan says that, "We are all accustomed to hearing not only from the communist propaganda machine but from the lips of senior Soviet statesmen propositions which are either so paternally absurd or so flatly in contradiction to known facts that no child could believe them."

It's interesting how Kennan takes such a harsh tone when confronting Soviet leaders. Even though the USSR was percieved as an imperialistic threat with nuclear capabilities, the distinguished diplomat had no problem calling Kruschev and his statesmen out in a way that would embarras them.

G.O.P. winning cold war "is intrinsically silly." (George F. Kennan)

The great Kennan, long considered the most important diplomat in the 20th century played a crucial roll in US battle against Communism during the Cold War.
As US Ambassador to the Soviet Union in the early 1950's Kennan's famous letter to DC outlining the imperial aspirations of Communism in the USSR single-handedly set in motion political, military, and economic warfare that luckily ended without bloodshed.
In a short article Kennan wrote for the New York Times on October 28, 2002, he sharply debunks beliefs that the Republican GOP "won the war."
He even continues to call such rhetoric "intrinsically silly," and "childish." Kennan explains how those living in the USSR in the years leading up to the war noticed its brewing lack of interest in domestic affairs and i's ignited interest in the global spread of their ideologies.
Kennan also sites events including 1960's U2 spy plane drowning and growing anti-American sentiment in Russia.

John Dewey and Peace Education

As we discussed in class, WWI was an event that not only helped define Randolph Bourne and John Dewey as individuals and but also one that forever changed their relationship. Dewey originally supported the war and believed it to be a means for advancing the progressive movement. However, when he saw the destruction and horrors of WWI he changed his beliefs and acknowledged that Bourne, his former student, had more accurately assessed the international crisis. This article highlights one of the ways the war changed Dewey’s feelings towards his primary interest, education. After the war, Dewey put a great deal of energy into advancing his ideas regarding peace education. Dewey understood and appreciated the enormous impact a school can have on a young person’s life and saw peace education as an opportunity to better educate children living in the post-war era. His work in peace education as well as other education reform shows a genuine belief in the idea that schools should be created with a child's best interest in mind.

http://www.tc.edu/centers/epe/PDF%20articles/Howlett_ch3_22feb08.pdf

Reinhold Niebuhr as a liberal leader

In this article, Kevin Mattson, a history professor at Ohio University, looks to Reinhold Niebuhr as a voice that could unite and define the political left in our time. To do so, Mattson considers the parallels between our modern day and the early stages of the Cold War, as well as Niebuhr's rethinking of liberalism during the 1940's and 50's. In Nieburh's time, conservatives were calling for containment, and " 'preemptive' wars based upon an absolutist faith in American power," while Niebuhr articulated a more liberal view of the role America should play in international affairs. Mattson says that Niebuhr formulated this view based on "military and diplomatic action" as well as a "correcting social inequities at home." It is this public philosophy of Niebuhr's that Mattson believes could be applied today. The essay goes on to explain how Niebuhr's religion worked with his political beliefs and not against them, and how this alternative view of both religion and politics lent itself to a more realist and moderate theological approach to the Cold War--after WWII, Niebuhr had an understandably "chastened view of world state behavior."
Mattson's essay is a thoughtful, well-written overview of Niebuhr's work and personal philosophies, made more intriguing by its modern comparisons.

Malcolm X: "The Ballot or the Bullet"

In his 1964 speech, "The Ballot or the Bullet,"Malcolm X incorporates images of numerous wars and revolutions to his views on Black Nationalism. Although the speech concerns civil rights in the US, Malcolm X emphasizes how "if [the USA is] gonna draft these young black men and send them over to Korea or South Vietnam to face 800 million Chinese -- if you’re not afraid of those odds, you shouldn’t be afraid of [civil rights'] odds." Additionally, references to the American Revolution and the recently independent, nationalistic countries of India and China support his push for a Black Nationalist movement. The war of the American Revolution is his most significant reference to illustrate bloody, wartime revolutions to the non-violent protests. Malcolm X even uses an example of how "in French Indo-China those little peasants, rice growers, took on the might of the French army and ran all the Frenchmen -- you remember Dien Bien Phu. No." I chose this website and speech because it presents a new way in which war, past and present, was used by Malcolm X to advocate nationalism. It does not concentrate on one specific, instead combining several wartime and revolutionary events to demonstrate the problems with the civil rights movement. There is a great audio option at the top of the page which was really interesting to listen to as well.

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/malcolmxballotorbullet.htm

Jane Addams letter to Wilson

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=51447

I found it interesting that during a time of war women from all over the world, even the "belligerent nations", found it important to meet and advocate a non-violent method of conflict resolution. Jane Addams, the president of the Women's Peace Party, was amongst these women. After attending the International Congress of Women she wrote a letter to President Wilson expressing her concern with his call for increased military preparedness. She believed that "to increase our fighting equipment would inevitably make all other nations fear instead of trust us,". She saw the U.S. as a role model for other countries and that a non-violent method would move other countries to do the same. Although, the U.S. did eventually enter the war, Addams letter and ideas on peace have had a lasting effect on future generations. Her efforts for peace did not stop after her letter to Wilson. She later helped Herbert Hoover with the American Relief Administration after the war.

Kennan and McNamara: How the "Misinterpretation" of Containment Led to 50 Years Under the Threat of Mutual Annihilation

My first link comes form a PBS NewsHour Interview of George Kennan by David Gergen. The importance of this interview is the fact that Kennan continues to try and show that his Long Telegram was misinterpreted in policy making for the Cold War.

"DAVID GERGEN: So in your view, though, we might have avoided a Korean War?

GEORGE KENNAN: I think we might have avoided it, and avoided the whole great Korean problem had we done this.

DAVID GERGEN: But did you--you wrote in your book that you felt that Vietnam also had its roots in the containment policy--

GEORGE KENNAN: That's right. And this was unnecessary. I don't--these are not my own ideas, but John Davies, who is a formidable expert on China's affairs, Davies always told us, don't kid yourself, Ho Chi Minh is a nationalist, not a Communist. Communists are going to try to use him but that he's too smart, and they can't do it.

DAVID GERGEN: All right. For my generation, it's a surprise to hear those interpretations because I learned growing up that the containment policy had been a great success, that--and I believed that we were right in Korea, and I believed we were right in Vietnam, but you're really arguing a very different perspective.

GEORGE KENNAN: It was a success in Europe.

DAVID GERGEN: Uh-huh.

GEORGE KENNAN: And it led to the possibility of a Marshall Plan."

It is important to take that Kennan was for a more positive role for the US in the world with policies such as the Marshal Plan. Kennan sought a political containment not a militaristic one.

He also makes clear that the policy of containment was meant only for Europe and that it did not have anything to do with Asia.

What matters, however, was the real impact of his words, not his true intent. Washington would pursue various degrees of aggressive policies in acting against the USSR int he Cold War.

One Washington leader who provides a good comparison to Kennan is Robert McNamara. In the following video, it reveals how the misinterpreting of Kennan's policy of containment almost led to mutual anihilation of both the US and the USSR.

William Graham Sumner on the Spanish American War

William Graham Sumner’s essay The Conquest of the United States by Spain is a critique of U.S. involvement in the Spanish American War. Through his denunciation of imperialism as an inherently Spanish invention, it is apparent that he is against the Spanish American War.

He begins this short essay attacking imperialism on grounds that it is inherently un-American. It is the invention of colonizing countries like Spain. If America engages in imperialism for purposes of national vanity, it would in essence be a victory in Spanish ideology over American ideology. He goes further to write “[e]xpansion and imperialism are at war with the best traditions, principles, and interests of the American people ... and they will plunge us into a network of difficult problems and political perils.”

As an alternative to imperialism, Sumner stresses a new form of governance that looks inward instead of outward. He believes that the founding principles of the nation should be prioritized; the government should be small and the only military should be in the form of a militia for self-protection, not expansion.

http://www.fff.org/freedom/1101i.asp (shortened version)
http://praxeology.net/WGS-CUS.htm (full length version)

Noam Chomsky and the Cold War

Although Noam Chomsky primarily established himself as a scholar in the world of linguistics, it was his liberatarian socialist and often anarchist views that brought him to the forefront of Cold War politics. Chomsky describes liberatarian socialism as an idea that calls for challenging hierarchy and overthrowing unjust governments. He has spoken against Cold War attempts at socialism because he did not feel it was representative of the socialist ideals of Marx. He felt that true socialism required that the means of production be democratic and that public ownership had to exist. In the Soviet state that existed under Stalin, Chomsky's definition of true socialism did not exist. Chomsky did however sympathize with Cold War communism in China and Korea because the movement was begun by the people and public ownership did exist to some extent. Chomsky claims that entry into the Cold War with the Soviet Union was motivated by the United States wanting to maintain its place as a dominant world power rather than being motivated by anti-communism. He states that the war was not about tensions over communism itself but instead was driven by the two superpowers' desire to have economic and ideological control over the rest of the world. In "The Victors", a magazine article published in Z magazine in 1990, Chomsky analyzes the victory of the United States in the Cold War and the effect victoy would have domestically and on the rest if the world, particularly in Central America.
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199011--.htm

Hannah Arendt and the Cold War

http://www.humanists.net/pdhutcheon/Papers%20and%20Presentations/arendt.htm

Hannah Arendt, a German-Jewish immigrant during WWII, became famous for her criticisms of Totalitarian regimes during the Cold War. In her work The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt attempted to explain the link between the totalitarian Nazi regime through which she lived, and the totalitarian Communist regime during the Cold War. According to Arendt, the intense "tribalism" of both regimes, in the forms of pan-Germanic Nazism in Germany and pan-Slavism in the Soviet Union, fueled ideologies which became the roots of totalitarianism. Arendt was a strong critic of totalitarianism during the Cold War, and her thinking continues to influence how we view totalitarian governments today.

In his article on Arendt, Pat Duffy Hutcheon describes his reactions to a lecture Arendt gave at Yale when he was a student there in 1968. Arendt was both a critic of the Vietnam War and the violence often glorified by anti-war protesters. Arendt made the distinction between the concepts of force and power, and was against the use of violence for any political means, no matter their intentions. Hutcheon argues that Arendt was ahead of her time in her criticisms of totalitarianism, anticipating the evils of soviet communism and predicting the evils of Chinese communism which many of her colleagues saw as a positive revolution in the 1940's.

Martin Luther King: "The hottest place in hell, is reserved for those who are in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality."

Most people are aware that Martin Luther King was opposed to the Vietnam War. However, most are not clear on the reasons for his opposition. This is a sermon that King gave at Ebenezer Baptist Church on April 30, 1967. His clear and complete disgust for the war is felt from the beginning of the speech to the end and it is obvious why those who ever had to privilege of hearing King speak was moved by his determination and eloquence. Kings starts by stating "Rationalizations and the incessant search for scapegoats are the psychological cataracts that blind us to our sins. But the day has passed for superficial patriotism. He who lives with untruth lives in spiritual slavery. Freedom is still the bonus we receive for knowing the truth." He goes on to speak about polls of opposition to Vietnam, the amount of money the war costs versus the amount of money the U.S. spends on it's poor, and he lists his seven reason for choosing to speak about the war while followers of his questioned this decision. He even attempts to make embellish his congregation with an accurate depiction of history of the Vietnamese. This all comes together to form a strong, moving, and significant sermon that King delivers in the utmost of poised and confident manners.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b80Bsw0UG-U - This is the recording of the sermon.
http://husseini.org/2007/01/martin-luther-king-jr-why-i-am.html - This is the text of the sermon

Wilson, WWI and the Fracture of Progressive Idealism

Throughout his career, President Woodrow Wilson advocated progressive reform. The era's personification of political idealism, Wilson strove to promote democracy abroad. The President's quest for worldwide peace and order culminated in his Fourteen Points. This agenda addressed the causes of World War I, and it aimed to prevent the horrifying consequences of such warfare in the future. A premiere doctrine of the Wilson administration, the Fourteen Points called for the international League of Nations, which aspired to prevent warfare and turbulence in geopolitical affairs. World War I was the undoubted catalyst that sparked Wilson's drive. Simultaneously, the war inhibited the president's domestic ambitions to reform social ills. The United States would never join the League of Nations, showcasing the disillusionment associated with Wilson idealism following the First World War. World War I, the morbid conclusion of the Progressive Era, exposed the limitations of the progressive movement; the war stalled Wilson's campaign for domestic reform, revealed the hopelessness of attaining international order, and ultimately fractured American idealism. The following article, written by Allen F. Davis, addresses the war's effect on President Wilson's political ideology.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/2711070


Allen F. Davis. "Welfare, Reform, and World War I." American Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 3 (Autumn, 1967), pp. 516-533. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967.

Niebuhr and WW II

The book Faith and History: A Comparison of Christian and Modern Views on History by Reinhold Niebuhr was written shortly after the conclusion of World War II. In it, Niebuhr compares the views of Christianity and modern thinking on history, especially wars. Niebhur states that Christians "recognized the peril" of human freedom, while modernists believe that human freedom should expand. He goes back to Hitler's Nazi Germany as something that the Christians prophecized about when it came to human freedom. However, Niebuhr states that although the act cannot be reversed, events like this can be prevented in the future "if challenged with sufficient initiative". Niebuhr admits that freedom can be taken advantage of and turned into something bad, but he says that it is not as if it cannot be fixed. He believes that people just need to be involved in what is going on and take initiative on some things.

http://www.archive.org/details/faithandhistorya027348mbp

Einstein Answers to the Enemy

In September of 1952, Einstein received a letter from Katusu Hara, editor of the Japanese magazine Kaizo, with four different questions begging to be answered (with an added sidenote that if "no replies are received...this fact will be duly published in the magazine") dealing with the impact that the atomic bomb had on Japanese society since its double use in 1945, particularly with the morality of such an act. Einstein responded with an apologetic yet imperative response, stating that while the advent of the atomic bomb leaves the world in "dreadful danger", as long as nations are unwilling to abolish war and solve their conflicts peacefully, similar developments are inevitable. He ends his response looking to Gandhi, citing him as an example of how human conviction IS capable of overcoming material power.

http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/einstein/peace/popups/large_fromhara.php?image=1
http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/einstein/peace/popups/large_tohara.php?image=1

Beyond the Borders of Chicago: Jane Addams Pursuit for Peace

"Action indeed is the sole medium of expression for ethics"

These words, said by Jane Addams, embodies the sentiment which drove a life of social, political, domestic, and international activism. Addams commenced her crusade in Chicago, Il, in 1889, when she opened Hull House in order to aid and educate the impoverished immigrants of the South Side. However, Addams did not stop her work in the slums of Chicago, but established herself as an advocate for women’s suffrage, welfare reform, and international peace. In response to World War I, Addams founded the Women’s Peace Party in 1915, the first such organization created entirely of women, and helped organize the first Women’s International Congress for Peace and Freedom, held in the Hague in April 1915. The organization sought to discuss and create solutions to male aggression in war, offering various mandates throughout the years in order to weaken the political and military structures which propelled nations to fight one another. In 1931, Addams was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her dedication to the struggle for peace.

In the presentation speech from Halvdan Koht, Koht praises Addams for her collaboration with other women and her unwavering devotion to the peace movement which continues to inspire feminist activism almost eighty years later.
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1931/press.html

Bourne in the USA

"It will be coercion from above that will do the trick rather than patriotism from below."
- Randolph Bourne, A War Diary (1917)

Bourne takes issue with the democratic hypocrisy of the government and its intellectual militia, who have determined their course of action to enter the World War I and spread democracy. In his experience, there existed little patriotic fervor, some critical dissent and an overwhelming apathy towards the war. Democratically speaking, the United States shouldn't have entered the war; it's populace wasn't behind it. But its leaders were, so it didn't matter.

A War Diary harks back to Bourne's disgust in Twilight of Idols with the instrumentalism of war promoted by Dewey and Wilson, but it also illuminates what he understands as a failure of democracy. His musings construe a frustration with the inevitability of the situation and lack of government concern for public sentiment. It's a timeless frustration that often finds itself at the forefront of public discussion in wartime. He further also cites the war as a failing American progress, distracting the creative, innovative minds from pioneering a constantly evolving, forward-thinking global culture.

Sydney Hook: A Conservative?

In this 1987 interview, Sydney Hook discusses his changing views in ideology after the Second World War. Hook recalls his vehement opposition to the World War One on the socialist belief that it was a senseless conflict between imperial powers that did not represent the interests of the people. His hope that the Russian Revolution would bring about peace, however, was destroyed when Lenin’s reign became one of a totalitarian dictator, changing his view of the Bolshevik Party. He supported World War Two and opposed the communist state of the USSR because the situations were fundamentally different from Marxist ideals and World War One, respectively. It is interesting that Hook does not consider his transfer of support and ideological change of his own, but a change in society. He still believes socialism is a key to democracy, but the current Communist Party oppresses democracy and therefore cannot be supported. His response to the label of conservative suggests that though his fundamental beliefs have not changed, society’s definition of a liberal has changed to, what he considers, a less democratic position.

He also makes references to Santayana and Dewey.

WEB Dubois and WW1

W.E.B. Dubois is most well known for helping to found the NAACP, National Association for the Advancement of Colored people. Dubois had an opposing view to that of Booker T Washington, another prominent figure, about how colored people should try and gain respect through WW1. Dubois believed that it was crucial for africans americans to fight in the war and through this they would then gain respect and the civil rights that they wanted so badly. His message was clear and he used all the resources he had to get it out to everyone. "Many of those who volunteered did so because of the message W.E.B. DuBois sent out through the magazine The Crisis. That message was that African Americans could gain progress in civil rights by proving themselves as worthy patriotic citizens in the war." He encouraged african americans to go out and educate themselves intellectually, but also in politics and economics. Dubois understood what the turn of the war would be and was trying to ready the african americans for the new found freedoms they were hoping to win. He understood that by fulfilling a duty in the war it would allow him to gain some of the equality they were fighting for.

http://www3.eou.edu/hist06/WWIRace.html

George F. Kennan on the end of the Cold War

In this 1992 Op-Ed piece published by George F. Kennan we see a re-iteration of the same ideas he put forth in the beginning of the cold war in his "X" article. This article is a response by Kennan to the Republican Party's campaign claim that they won the cold war. Kennan finds this idea preposterous, saying "[t]he suggestion that any Administration had the power to influence decisively the course of a tremendous domestic political upheaval in another great country on another side of the globe is simply childish." Kennan stipulates, as he predicted in his X article almost 50 years earlier, that the Soviet Union would be the cause of its own downfall. Kennan goes on to put forth the idea that the "belligerent and threatening tone" in which the U.S. government carried out military preparations against did "hasten" but rather delayed the change that eventually undermined the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980's. It is rather interesting to see in this article the continuation of many of the same ideas and positions Kennan had 50 years earlier.

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/28/opinion/the-gop-won-the-cold-war-ridiculous.html

Einstein and WWII

Einstein's letter to FDR: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Einstein-Roosevelt-letter.png

In addition to rearranging the world of physics with his theory of relativity, Albert Einstein was looked up to by the public to give his views on non-scientific matters, like WWII. Einstein was a known Jewish scientist in Germany, and Hitler's law to remove Jews and suspicious government employees from their jobs forced Einstein to leave the country and go to the United States in the 1930s. Einstein opposed militarism in Germany and devoted time to recommending US visas fro Jews in Europe fleeing prosecution. It was Einstein and Leo Szilard's letter to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt that urged the US to work on developing nuclear weapons, as there was a danger that German scientists would soon develop an atomic bomb of their own. The letter stressed how powerful a bomb like this would be and how much damage it could cause. It clearly expresses Einstein's view on the issue of the development of atomic weaponry; although Einstein had been a pacifist and did not support the development of weapons, he felt it was his responsibility to make sure Nazi Germany was not the only one to attain atomic weapons and that the US could stand a chance by developing their own weapons and use them against the system in Nazu Germany which Einstein opposed.

Einstein and the Bomb: Revisited

Albert Einstein is the scientist most often associated with the development and implementation of the atomic bomb. Featured on the July 1, 1946 issue of Time magazine (above), it is a common misconception that Einstein "invented the bomb". In fact, Einstein was an absolute pacifist until Hitler took control of Germany in WWII. Newsweek published a remark by Einstein saying, "Had I known that the Germans would not suceed in producing an atomic bomb, I never would have lifted a finger." While some of Einstein's work was used to develop the bomb, the idea of the bomb was conceived by Leo Szilard in London after hearing a provoking lecture by Ernest Rutherford on a sci-fi book written by HG Wells. Szilard brought the idea of a nuclear chain reaction to Einstein who immediately recognized its significance. Fear of the Germans creating such a weapon led Einstein and Szilard to draft a letter to President Roosevelt which would ultimately provide the impetus to begin the Manhattan Project. However, Einstein was never a member of the Manhattan Project because he would not have been granted the necessary security clearance.

From Discover - March 2008 article by Walter Isaacsn, "Chain Reaction: From Einstein to the Atomic Bomb". Isaacson also wrote a full volume called Einstein: His Life and Universe