Diana Preston - Before the Fallout

The British team spent a few days in New York, amazed by the abundant food in the shops. Chadwick, with his legacy from the First World War of an impaired digestion, unwisely visited Grand Central Station’s oyster bar and suffered agonizing consequences. A few days later, according to Oliphant, he still looked “like death.” However, news that the Quebec Agreement had indeed been signed revived him. On Monday, 13 September 1943, at a meeting at the Pentagon, Chadwick and the British team learned for the first time of the existence of Los Alamos. General Groves suggested that Chadwick and Oliphant should go there at once because of the lack of experienced experimental physicists.

Chadwick’s initial impression of Groves, who forcefully outlined his views on secrecy and compartmentalization at the meeting, was that he was “the dominant personality” of the American project—in fact “a dictator.” Chadwick and Groves would later come to a mutual respect, even admiration, but for the moment, Chadwick found his discussions with Robert Oppenheimer more productive. The British team also toured several U.S. laboratories, where, according to Peierls, the American scientists revealed Groves’s instructions that the British “could be told everything, but must not be shown anything.” However, as nobody could understand this perplexing order, “it caused no problem.” By the time Chadwick returned to Liverpool in late September, arrangements for the revived Anglo-American collaboration were largely in place.

Chadwick began assembling a team to go to the United States. The Quebec Agreement required all its members to be British citizens. For many this was no problem. Among Chadwick’s own group at Liverpool, Otto Frisch happily agreed to take British nationality. His aunt Lise Meitner could have accompanied him. She was invited to leave Stockholm and join the British team, but her response was that “I will have nothing to do with a bomb.” Her views on the moral duty of scientists had altered from the early days of the First World War when she reassured Hahn about his chemical warfare work with the words “Any means which might help shorten this horrible war are justified.” She later explained, “I hoped that the newly-discovered source of energy would be used only for peaceful purposes. During the war, I used to say… ‘I hope they will not succeed in making an atomic bomb, but I fear they will.’” It also seemed that Chadwick’s favorite protégé, Joseph Rotblat, would not be coming to the United States. Deeply attached to his Polish nationality, he refused to renounce it. However, Chadwick was so eager to bring Rotblat with him that he obtained a special dispensation from Groves, assuring him of Rotblat’s complete loyalty.

The next sticking point was over security. Groves demanded U.S. security checks on every scientist the British proposed sending. The British were affronted and offered, instead, to guarantee that every member of their team had been thoroughly vetted by British intelligence. Groves attributed their reaction to “the attitude then prevalent in all British officialdom that for an Englishman treason was impossible, and that when a foreigner was granted citizenship he automatically became endowed with the qualities of a native-born Englishman.” He was forced to accept the British position but tried to ensure that, insofar as possible, British scientists did not gain access to the most sensitive areas of the project. Even Chadwick was not allowed to visit Hanford.

The British scientists were allocated to various teams and locations. Chad­wick, as leader of the British team, would base himself at Los Alamos. Mark Oliphant was to work with Ernest Lawrence at Berkeley on electromagnetic isotope separation. Rudolf Peierls was to work on gaseous diffusion theory in New York. Among those also cleared to go to the United States by British intelligence, which failed to spot his communist allegiances, was Klaus Fuchs, a British citizen since 1942.

Brought up in a left-wing German family with deeply rooted socialist and Christian beliefs—his father was a pastor—Fuchs had joined the Communist Party in 1932, believing that only a united working class could stop the rise of the Nazis. He later wrote, “I was ready to accept the philosophy that the [Communist] Party is right and that in the coming struggle you could not permit yourself any doubts.” After Hitler came to power and the Nazis began arresting known communists, Fuchs had fled Germany, reaching England in the autumn of 1933. His orders from the Communist Party were to complete his education to prepare himself for the struggles ahead.

Fuchs had duly found a position as a research assistant in Bristol University’s physics department and after completing his doctorate had worked with Max Born at Edinburgh University. In 1940 the British had briefly interned him as an enemy alien but soon released him. Realizing that Fuchs had the kind of ability he was looking for, Rudolf Peierls had offered him a post at Birmingham University as assistant in theoretical physics, writing, “I cannot now describe the nature or purpose of the work, but it is theoretical work involving mathematical problems of considerable difficulty, and I have enjoyed doing it, quite apart from its extreme importance.” He obtained official clearance for Fuchs [31] The pronunciation and spelling of Fuchs’s name was a source of difficulty and embarrassment to English-speakers. Even his fellow German Rudolf Peierls signed one letter addressed to “Dear Fucks.” to join the nuclear project and put him to work on gaseous diffusion techniques for isotopic separation. His contributions were so significant that, when Peierls was invited to go to America, his gifted young colleague naturally went too. Before leaving for the United States, Fuchs contacted his Soviet handler, a woman code-named “Sonia,” who promised that a new agent would contact him there—a man he would know only as “Raymond.” They would make contact in February 1944.

Under the Quebec Agreement, the United States also promised to underwrite the Anglo-Canadian nuclear project. In late 1942 the British had established an Anglo-Canadian laboratory in Montreal, which later moved to Chalk River, and dispatched a team to Canada, including Hans von Halban, Lew Kowarski, and Bertrand Goldschmidt. Its primary purpose was to study the effectiveness of heavy water at slowing down neutrons. Hans von Halban was director until April 1944, when John Cockcroft took over. Groves allowed some low-level exchanges with the Montreal team but, deeply distrustful in particular of the French contingent, forbade direct contact with the U.S. scientists. His reservations would ultimately be proved correct. The team sent to Montreal by the British included two men—one a Briton, Alan Nunn May, and the other a refugee, Bruno Pontecorvo—who would later be unmasked as ideologically motivated Soviet agents.

The Chadwicks arrived at Los Alamos in early 1944 and moved into a two-bedroom log cabin on Bathtub Row. When Rotblat arrived a few weeks later, he moved in with them. Also in early 1944, Mr. Nicholas Baker and his son arrived to join the British contingent. Laura Fermi, when she arrived at Los Alamos later that year, would be struck how, “in the Los Alamos array of faces wearing an expression of deep thought at all hours and under all circumstances, whether the men they belonged to were eating dinner or playing charades, Mr. Baker’s face stood out as the most thoughtful, the one expressing the gravest meditations. He appeared to be dedicated to a life of the intellect alone, which allowed no time for earthly concerns…. Mr. Baker’s eyes were restless and vague. When he talked, only a whisper came out of his mouth, as if vocal contacts with his fellow-men were of little consequence. He was a few years older than the other scientists—close to sixty in 1944—and all looked at him with reverence.”