TRUMAN'S DECISION TO BUILD THE
HYDROGEN BOMB
Truman said it was his responsibility
to see that our country is able to
defend itself against any aggressor.
The decision as to whether the U.S. should make
a hydrogen bomb, said Harry Truman, is mine and nobody else's.
But there were a lot of people looking over his shoulder,
and they seemed remarkably in agreement on how he should play
his hand: they wanted the H-bomb-built."I am very unhappy,"
said Dr. Harold Clayton Urey, the Nobel Prizewinning atomic
chemist, "to conclude that the hydrogen bomb should be
developed and built. I do not think we should intentionally
lose the armaments race; to do this will be to lose our liberties,
and with Patrick Henry, I value my liberties more than I do
my life."Should the Russians win the race and build the
first H-bomb, he added, they might decide that they did not
even have to use it. They might say: " 'We will build
these bombs and issue ultimata to the western countries, and
the millenium of Communism will be with us immediately...'
"
Harold Urey, standing before the Roosevelt Day dinner of the
Americans for Democratic Action in New York's Waldorf-Astoria
Hotel, had a right to be heard. His Nobel Prize had been won
in 1934 for the discovery of heavy hydrogen, a basic step
toward the development both of the first atomic bomb and any
hydrogen bomb that may come. He had predicted the date of
the Russian atomic bomb explosion far more accurately than
had U.S. military or political leaders.
"I personally hope very much," he said, "that
the [hydrogen] bombs will not explode . . . However, nature
does not behave in the way I should like at times, and so
there is no use in engaging in wishful thinking. I think we
should assume that the bomb can be built." His estimate
of the cost of development: $100 million.
Others joined in, urging the building of the H-bomb: Elder
Statesman Bernard Baruch, Republican Senator John Bricker,
Eleanor Roosevelt, Senator Tom Connally.
What, then or who was holding up the President's decision?
If there were voices inside the Administration counseling
against the H-bomb, they did not make their arguments public.
Many a Washington correspondent pointed the finger at retiring
Atom Boss David Lilienthal, who last week characterized all
such stories about him as "inaccurate," but was
careful on security grounds not to say just where he did stand.
This week the President made his decision. He ordered work
on the H-bomb to go ahead. Harry Truman's announcement had
in it no sabre-rattling swagger, only the reluctant awareness
of a duty that had to be done. He knew that he was authorizing
construction of the deadliest weapon ever known to man.
White House aides on Tuesday afternoon summoned a dozen reporters,
handed them this statement from the President:
"It is part of my responsibility as commander-in-chief
of the armed forces to see to it that our country is able
to defend itself against any possible aggressor.
"Accordingly, I have directed the Atomic Energy Commission
to continue its work on all forms of atomic weapons, including
the so-called hydrogen or superbomb. Like all other work in
the field of atomic weapons, it is being and will be carried
forward on a basis consistent with the over-all objectives
of our program for peace and security.
"This we shall continue to do until a satisfactory plan
for International control of atomic energy is achieved we
shall also continue to examine all those factors that effect
our program for peace and this country's security".
MacARTHUR RECEIVES DISTINGUISHED
SERVICE MEDAL FROM PRESIDENT TRUMAN.
The Democratic candidate for President of
the U.S., campaigning in California, looked out at his Oakland
audience, drew a deep breath, and struck hard again last week
for his proposal that the U.S. end its hydrogen-bomb tests.
To Adlai Stevenson the reaction was a heady surprise: his
words triggered a burst of applause and cheers in the crowd
of 5,000. In a week when the Eisenhower tide was rising (see
below) and Stevenson was searching determinedly for a big
issue, the H-bomb argument seemed to be striking fire far
more so than his proposal to end the draft. Result: a high-level
Stevenson campaign decision to play the hydrogen-bomb proposal
for all it was worth beginning with a national television
speech this week.
Adlai had been toying with his H-bomb notions
since last April when, in the midst of his campaign for the
Democratic nomination, he said: "I believe we should
give prompt and earnest consideration to stopping further
tests of the hydrogen bomb." In subsequent speeches and
statements he declared his hope that, once the U.S. set the
example, the Russians might follow suit. If they refused,
the U.S. could detect the violation (by-air samplings) and
then "reconsider its policy."
In the Wagon. After Stevenson's first proposal,
Harry S. Truman, who gave the order in 1950 for the U.S. to
start H-bomb development, commented that "our power to
guard the peace would be weakened" if tests were halted.
Last week, in the political wilds of northwestern Pennsylvania,
Truman was asked if he had come to agree with Stevenson. The
old Democrat swallowed hard. "I'm in the same wagon,"
he said. "I can't be anywhere else."
The U.S., as both Presidents Truman and Eisenhower
have made clear, cannot safely end H-bomb tests until the
entire system of atomic-weapons production is placed under
a workable mutual-inspection system. And although he has a
few scientists in his corner, Stevenson is boldly down-facing
the experts when he questions the "sense" of further
hydrogen development. Even now, the U.S. and Russia are engaged
in a desperate race for an intercontinental ballistic missile
capable of carrying a hydrogen payload. For the U.S. to test
the missile package without continuing work on its thermonuclear
warhead would give the Soviets a disastrous advantage.
Moreover, said Atomic Energy Commissioner Willard
Libby last week, the latest U.S. H-bomb tests have helped
to develop a weapon with a lower rate of fallout contamination.
Under the Wire. The question of further thermonuclear
development is new only in the sense that this is the first
time it has been bandied about as a political issue in a national
campaign. After World
War II, left-wing viewers-with-alarm begged
Harry Truman to stow the A-bomb away in the national attic.
The Russians, they said, could not possibly develop the bomb
for at least a decade. Truman refused and the Soviet Union,
depending heavily on Joseph Stalin's army of scientists and
his very effective spies, came forth with the atomic bomb
in 1949. Again, the hand-wringers pleaded with Truman not
to go ahead with the H-bomb. Truman did go ahead and because
he did, the U.S. got under the wire by a few short months
and escaped the earth-shaking fact of a Russian H-bomb monopoly.
In both these cases, the decisions were made
deliberately, quietly and completely by the man who held final
responsibility for the nation’s strength, and indeed.
Its continued existence.: the President of the U.S.
The careful decisions could be undone if in
Election Year 1956, the matter were to be decided by nothing
more than the appeal of a political candidate in search of
an issue.
Source: National Archives and New &York
Times
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