[lit-ideas] Re: Ought we to do something about Iran?

  • From: Robert Paul <robert.paul@xxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 01 Feb 2006 20:04:57 -0800

Lawrence Helm wrote:

Do you mean that when we learned Germany was developing an atomic weapon and
established a program to beat the Germans, we started something?  What did
we start?

We started the British 'Tube Alloys' program, and ultimately the Manhattan Project.

However, we didn't start them because we learned that Germany was developing 'an atomic weapon.' We couldn't have learned that because they weren't. We began research into atomic weapons when the Government was made aware of the _possibility_ of them in Einstein's famous first letter to FDR, in August 1939. Einstein wrote at the urging of the refugee physicist Leo Szillard, who had 'invented' (or discovered) self-sustaining chain reaction.

The US/UK ultimately began work on atomic weapons because they believed (a) that such weapons were possible and (b) that whether or not there was a German atomic weapons project, the fact that there might be was sufficient reason to try to get there first.

Robert Paul
Reed College
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