"The First War of Physics" by Jim Baggott (brief review)

I was not intending to read, much less finish, this book -- but I couldn't help it. I'd made up a list of about 50 books (fiction and non) I've been wanting to read and would like to finish in 2012. It's already July and suffice to say, I'm got a ways to go. But having slogged my way through some Thomistic philosophy of late, I really wanted something lighter. "Just a little bit of history," I thought . . . and so I picked up Baggot's The First War of Physics: The Secret History of the Atomic Bomb, 1939-1949

You might have heard about The Manhattan Project and Los Alamos in high school; groaned at the horribly overwrought Hollywood version of "Fat Man and Little Boy" -- and if you're a fellow blogger, drowned in the flood of comments that accompanies the annual moral debate over the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Baggot's popular scientific history, however, offers something different: global coverage of the race to build the atomic bomb between America, Germany and Russia spanning a decade, from the discovery of nuclear fission in 1939 to Russia's first atomic test in 1949. Striving for a comprehensive perspective, the author engages such questions as:

• Why did physicists persist in developing the atomic bomb, despite the devastation that it could bring?
• Why, despite having a clear head start, did Hitler's physicists fail?
• Could the soviets have developed the bomb without spies like Klaus Fuchs or Donald Maclean?
• Did the allies really plot to assassinate a key member of the German bomb program? Did the physicists knowingly inspire the arms race?

It's all here, the science, the history, the politics, the espionage. On one page you'll find some fairly-abstract discussion of nuclear physics (not to such a degree that it would overwhelm a laymen, but just enough detail for the reader to comprehend what they were doing) -- on another a "James-Bond"-esque sabotage mission deep into Norway to bomb a heavy water facilities in Norway.

The First War of Physics is an account of physicists engaged in what is on one level a thrilling, scientific and intellectual pursuit, coupled with the awareness of how said scientific venture was rendered subservient to U.S. military objectives. Academic and largely theoretical discussions give way to the growing realization of what they are in fact building, juggling moral reservations about their complicity in such with the simultaneous and compelling awareness that the Germans were in all probability engaged in the same pursuit of a weapon.

Also fascinating is the manner in which the news of the atomic bombings provoked within the German scientists an agonizing of how they had fallen so far behind in the race -- rather than face the prospect of academic embarassment (how could the Americans have achieved it first?) Heisenberg and others would instead fashion a revisionist history of the German nuclear program (the "Lesart"), whitewashing complicity and academic failure alike with a self-serving apologetic. In the words of Carl von Weizsäcker: "I believe the reason we didn’t do it was because all the physicists didn’t want to do it, on principle. If we had all wanted Germany to win the war we would have succeeded."

Or, how some Red-leaning physicists who betrayed nuclear secrets to the Soviets -- concerned about an American "monopoly" over nuclear energy and a desire to help our "allies" at the time -- subsequently repented of their actions during the Cold War, when "Papa Joe" Stalin's true totalitarian colors revealed themselves. (Such was the case of German-British spy Klaus Fuchs).

Of great benefit to the reader is Baggot's timeline of notable events (organized by country in parallel), a helpful "cast of characters" (and there are many!), and an extensive bibliography. I have since added American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer

Cinema: "Behind the Lines" (1997)

For those who appreciate "period films" -- historical films -- I saw a good one recently: "Behind the Lines". Based on the novel Regeneration by Pat Barker and true events, the film chronicles the meeting between a psychologist named Dr. William Rivers (Jonathan Pryce) and his patients:

... a mute, amnesiac officer named Billy Prior (Jonny Lee Miller), as well as the emotionally depleted poet Wilfred Owen (Stuart Bunce) and another poet and war hero, Siegfried Sassoon (James Wilby). Unlike the others, Sassoon is not, in fact, suffering from any disorder but is being quietly punished for writing a pamphlet denouncing the war. The army hopes Rivers can find some basis for mental incompetency in Sassoon, but the thoughtful doctor instead attempts to persuade him to add legitimacy to his criticisms of the war by returning to active duty. [-- Tom Keogh]

Wilfred Owen is lauded as the greatest English poet of the First World War. Readers will perhaps recognize the memorable description of a gas attack from his poem "Dulce et Decorum Est", (after the Latin phrase "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" - "how sweet and fitting it is to die for one's country" by Horace):

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning

... and the composition of which is depicted in the film:

Behind the Lines addresses a number of fascinating themes, among them the principled pacifism of the officer and war-hero Siegfried Sassoon and his literary friendship with Wilfred Owen (and why they were persuaded to return to active duty); the predicament of Dr. William Rivers of 'curing' his patients with the intention of returning them to the Front; the experiences of soldiers dealing with trench warfare in World War I; the various psychological techniques employed (from electric shock treatments to the more refined and, at that time, innovative "talking" therapy) to treat them.

Not the most pleasant of subjects for cinema, but well worth watching.

Related

• First World War Poetry and Poets

Abortion, capital punishment and war -- One of these things is not like the other.

[Cross-posted to The American Catholic]

Ed Stoddard of Reuters' religion blog Faithworld carries a roundup of the skirmish between Congressman Patrick Kennedy, the son of the late Senator Edward Kennedy, has claimed that Rhode Island Bishop Thomas Tobin.

In conclusion, Stoddard asks:

This leads to a question about the consistency of views in the U.S. Catholic Church leadership. The Church opposes abortion and therefore liberal politicians who support abortion rights risk being refused communion. The Church supports a healthcare overhaul that would make the system more equitable. So does a conservative Catholic politician who opposes this reform risk being denied communion for ignoring the Catholic social teaching that justifies it?

How about support for capital punishment, which the Vatican says is unjustified in almost all possible cases, or for war? In the build-up to the Iraq war, Pope John Paul was so opposed to the plan that he sent a personal envoy to Washington to argue against it. Did bishops threaten any measures against Catholic politicians who energetically supported that war despite Vatican opposition?

The author's questions reveal an elementary ignorance concerning the moral issues in question and their relationship to varying levels of Church teaching. While I am disappointed by his answer (Faithworld is generally one of the better and more educational "religion blogs" in the secular media), it is understandable -- as even many Catholics find themselves confused on this matter.