The political background of the atomic scientists work was the determination to defeat the Nazis. It was held I think rightly that a Nazi victory would be an appalling disaster. It was also held, in Western countries, that German scientists must be well advanced towards making an A-bomb, and that if they succeeded before the West did they would probably win the war. When the war was over, it was discovered, to the complete astonishment of both American and British Scientists, that the Germans were nowhere near success, and, as everybody knows, the Germans were defeated before any nuclear weapons had been made. But I do not think that nuclear scientists of the West can be blamed for thinking the work urgent and necessary. Even Einstein favored it.
When, however, the German war was finished the great majority of those scientists who had collaborated toward making the A-bomb considered that it should not be used against the Japanese, who were already on the verge of defeat and, in any case, did not constitute such a threat to the world as Hitler. Many of them made urgent representations to the American government advocating that, instead of using the bomb as a weapon of war, they should, after a public announcement, explode it in a desert, and that future control of nuclear energy should be placed in the hands of an international authority. Seven of the most famous of nuclear scientists drew up what is known as the Franck Report which they presented to the Secretary of War in June 1945. This is a very admirable and far-seeing document, and if it had won the assent of the politicians, none of our subsequent terrors would have arisen.
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