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The assumption that a crash project to develop an atomic bomb was imposed upon the Allies by the urgency of ensuring that Hitler would not have this terror weapon while the Allies had no credible counterthreat, is an accepted part of the mythology surrounding the Second World War. In the same category is the idea that Hitler was a purely German phenomenon, a diseased mutation of German Classical culture and Prussian nationalism. Both are lies. The British not only supported Hitler, as evidenced by the deposed King Edward VIII's affection for the Nazis both before and during the war, but they were instrumental in creating the Nazi Party, and bringing it to power and maintaining it there. This has been well documented in my book--soon to be issued in a new edition--The New Dark Ages Conspiracy.
The assumption that the Germans were driving headlong to build a bomb was a chimera--as the German scientists in charge of the program, led by Werner Heisenberg, were at pains to inform the Allies by a number of channels throughout the war.
Further, how can we explain that the United States went to the unnecessary extreme of dropping the only two atomic bombs it possessed upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Even were one to accept the dubious argument that this was the only way to force a timely surrender on the Japanese government, as an explanation for the bombing of Hiroshima, it can hardly justify the destruction of Nagasaki within days.
By following the history of the efforts to build an atomic bomb, and tracing it back to its beginnings in the pre-World War II period, one sees the outlines of a monstrous geopolitical scheme, intended to create the one-world policing institution toward which the United Nations is presently evolving. Was the entire bomb project not a British geopolitical hoax, aimed not at winning World War II, but setting up a system of British-directed U.N. world government? This was the scheme of Leo Szilard, friend of H.G. Wells and Bertrand Russell--the same Russell who, despite his pacifist pretensions, in 1947 advocated a preventive atomic strike against the Soviet Union, in order to manipulate the United States into building the bomb.
The evidence which I shall present here in outline, should be sufficient to convince the reader of the cogency of this thesis.
Before 1939, the enormous technological potentialities of nuclear energy were deliberately downplayed, and the science of the matter obfuscated, not because the British feared its potential use as a devastating new weapon, but because they did not wish to see the technology unleashed for purposes of economic development. They did not wish nations such as Germany, France, and the United States to remain viable republics, nor did they wish to reform the Soviet Union in that direction. To the contrary, they were committed to engineering a return to a feudal, fascist new world order--as I shall document below, in the words of Russell, Wells, et al. themselves.
They did not succeed 50 years ago; but that is still the agenda of their heirs today, such as Margaret Thatcher, George Bush, John Major, and Douglas Hurd.
With the discovery of radiation, in which Pierre and Marie Curie played a crucial part, the possibility of tapping energy from within the atom became clear. Pierre Curie himself wrote about this. As early as 1903, British scientists Frederick Soddy and Ernest Rutherford--who, along with the Curies in France and the William Draper Harkins in the United States, were pioneers in the field--lectured and published estimates of the energy latent in the atomic nucleus, to an astounded public. For example, in his much-revised and oft-reprinted book, The Interpretation of Radium, Soddy wrote in 1908: ``All these considerations point to the conclusion that the energy latent in the atom must be enormous compared to that rendered free in ordinary chemical change.''
One gram of radium sends out 250 million alpha particles (helium nuclei). This energy release is a million times greater than that involving a molecular change. In a popular talk which he gave in February 1916, Rutherford predicted that it might eventually be ``possible from one pound of material to obtain as much energy practically as from 100 million pounds of coal.'' This optimistic estimate was based upon the energy release achieved by the bombardment of radium with alpha particles.
By the 1920s, Rutherford in England and Harkins in the United States were predicting the discovery of the neutron, which was pinned down definitively by James Chadwick in 1932.
Already in 1914, H.G. Wells had written an influential book, The World Set Free, based upon Soddy's The Interpretation of Radium. Wells distorted Soddy's report on the great benefits to be hoped for from nuclear energy, and presented a scenario of an atomic war which would occur in 1956 and would result in the destruction of all of Europe's major cities. This would then allow for the creation of a world federalist government, run by ex-kings and the American President, and some other ideologues--presumably personalities modelled on Wells and Russell. For Wells, the promise of atomic energy as a resource for humanity was clear, but it could not be unleashed until the existing social order had been wiped from the face of the Earth.
In 1932, the year that Chadwick confirmed the existence of neutrons, Wells updated his diabolical vision in a new book, The Shape of Things to Come. From this point on, in an amazing reversal, Ernest Rutherford was at pains to deny the possibilities of nuclear energy. Speaking at the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, according to a summary account in the London Times, he spoke on the topic of ``The Hope of Transforming Any Atom, for the Period Twenty to Thirty Years Ahead'':
``High voltages of the order of millions of volts would probably be unnecessary as a means of accelerating the bombarding particles. Transformations might be effected with 30,000 or 70,000 volts.... He believed that we should be able to transform all the elements ultimately. We might in these processes obtain very much more energy than the proton supplied, but on the average we could not expect to obtain energy in this way. It was a very poor and inefficient way of producing energy, and anyone who looked for a source of power in the transformation of the atoms was talking moonshine.''In 1933, Rutherford repeated the warning, according to another Times article, in a statement which contained a ``timely word of warning ... to those who look for sources of power in atomic transformations--such expectations are the merest moonshine.''
A reason for this denial is given by Ronald Clark in his book, The Greatest Power on Earth. Clark reports that Rutherford was in touch with Sir Maurice Hankey, secretary of the British Committee for Imperial Defense, to urge British government oversight of nuclear energy research as a matter of national defense.
The possibilities inherent in splitting the atom were anticipated well before Otto Hahn conclusively demonstrated the fissioning of uranium at the close of 1938. Indeed, Ernest O. Lawrence achieved fission reactions, which he failed to take note of, even before the 1934 discovery of fission by Enrico Fermi. Fermi totally misinterpreted the splitting of uranium and believed instead that a transuranic element heavier than uranium had been created. At that time, German chemist Ida Noddack suggested the correct solution, but her contribution was overlooked then and thereafter.
At issue here was the assumption that the release of nuclear energy could only occur as a result of the emission of particles--either through beta decay (electron emissions) or the emission of alpha particles (helium nuclei). In such instances, an element might be transmuted to a near neighbor on the Periodic Table; while in the case in which fission occurs, the atom is actually split apart. With the confirmation by Chadwick, in 1932, of the existence of neutrons, scientists had been presented with a powerful new tool for penetrating the nucleus. Fermi's misunderstood but nonetheless momentous discovery of uranium fission, was followed by experiments by his group in Italy and at the Curie laboratory in France, in which various materials were rendered radioactive after being bombarded with neutrons. Up until that time, bombardment of materials could only be done with positively charged particles--protons (hydrogen nuclei)--or alpha particles. Unlike neutrons, which have no charge, these could not easily penetrate the positively charged nuclei of atoms.
In 1934, Noddack commented on these results in an article in the journal Angewandte Chemie: ``One can just as well assume that by these new sorts of nuclear demolitions using neutrons, completely different kinds of `nuclear reactions' occur, than have so far been observed under the action of protons and alpha particles. In these latter forms of irradiation, nuclear transformations are observed only to occur through the emission of electrons, protons, and helium nuclei, through which, in the case of heavy nuclei, the mass of the irradiated nucleus changes very little. But it is conceivable, that the bombardment of heavy nuclei by neutrons might cause them to break up into larger fragments, which would be isotopes of known elements, but not close neighbors of the irradiated element.''
As early as 1935, Leo Szilard anticipated the occurrence of a neutron chain reaction. His correspondence with Frederick Alexander Lindemann, a professor of experimental philosophy at Oxford University who became Winston Churchill's scientific adviser, is quoted by Richard Rhodes in The Making of the Atomic Bomb. In the summer of 1935, Szilard wrote to Lindemann, raising the question of ``whether or not the liberation of nuclear energy ... can be achieved in the immediate future and whether ``double neutrons'' might not be produced. He advised Lindemann that ``it is certainly less bold to expect this achievement in the immediate future than to believe the opposite.''
Professing to fear that Germany would gain the advantage in a rush to exploit nuclear energy, he advised that there be ``an attempt, whatever small chance of success it may have ... to control this development as long as possible.'' Thus he suggested that scientists accept a self-imposed censorship.
The question, then, is: What reason was there for suppressing the enormous potential of nuclear energy? Why was there no major effort by the British, for example, to develop a nuclear reactor as a source of power generation?
The answer can be found in Wells's scenario novel. Nuclear energy was to be kept in abeyance as an instrument for political control. Only in 1939, as war between England and Germany became inevitable, did the British decide that the time had come, not to develop a reactor for peaceful uses, but to build a terror weapon which could kill civilian populations on an unprecedented scale.
That this was a deliberate policy decision, taken for no military reason, is attested by the fire bombing of Dresden--a hospital city and a center for refugee civilian populations who were fleeing from industrial areas under attack--just as the war in Europe was drawing to a close. Similarly, at the end of the war in the Pacific, more people were killed by the fire bombing of Tokyo than the 100,000 victims in each Hiroshima or Nagasaki. In the fire bombing, incendiary bombs were used to create fire storms in which oxygen was sucked up, so that masses of people were asphyxiated as well as burned alive.
As to developments in the Soviet Union during this period, it is remarkable that the pre-history of the Soviet atomic bomb project is completely ignored by Pavel Sudoplatov's new book, Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness--A Soviet Spymaster. When Sudoplatov ascribes the success of the Soviet nuclear program to the secrets obtained by spies under his control, he is denying the actual achievements of the Soviet scientists, despite the miserable conditions under which they were forced to work--the terrible wartime conditions and the brutality of the communist regime.
Soviet Academician V.I. Vernadsky was one of the earliest advocates of developing nuclear energy in order to create a new industrial revolution. Even though he himself was not a physicist, he created a whole new science of biogeochemistry. From the vantage point of his own area of expertise, he was drawn to the work of Marie and Pierre Curie, as a way of understanding the nature of volcanic activity. He studied in their laboratory for several years. Even after the Bolshevik Revolution, he frequently travelled to European laboratories to exchange ideas, as did other Soviet scientists, such as Pyotr Kapitsa, who worked with Rutherford in England.
Kapitsa remained in close contact with Rutherford even after he was forced by his government to remain in the U.S.S.R. Soviet scientists were then fully up-to-date on all of the developments in the field of nuclear energy. Kapitsa was a key figure in the development of the Soviet bomb, along with Igor Kurchatov.
Vernadsky early saw the promise of nuclear energy for his own nation and the world, and became the father of the Soviet nuclear program. On Dec. 29, 1910, Vernadsky addressed the General Assembly of the Russian Academy of Sciences on the promise of atomic energy: ``Before us here are opening up sources of energy, before which the power and significance of steam, electricity, and chemical explosive processes pale.... Mankind has entered a new age of atomic energy.''
After the revolution, in 1922, Vernadsky proposed a mission for Soviet science in these words: ``We are approaching a great transformation in the life of mankind, with which nothing which it has lived through previously can be compared. The time is not far off when man will take atomic energy in his hands, a source of power that will give him the possibility of building his life just as he desires. This may happen in the immediate years ahead, it may happen a century from now. But it is clear it must happen.
``Will man manage to use that force, to direct it for good, and not for self-destruction? Has he grown enough to know-how to use this force which science must inevitably give him? Scientists must not shut their eyes to the possible consequences of their scientific work, of the scientific process. They must connect their work with the better organization of mankind.''In 1932, the First All-Union Conference on Radioactivity was held in Leningrad at the Radium Institute. By this year, Rutherford had allowed himself to become persuaded that research on nuclear energy should be subordinated to the political aims of British state policy. While Rutherford orchestrated a disinformation campaign in the press, and against his own knowledge deprecated the peaceful potential of nuclear energy as a new power source which could revolutionize technology, here is the policy which Vernadsky proposed at the conference:
``We have gathered here at the first conference on the study of the phenomena of radioactivity in our country. Our task is definite and businesslike. Scattered workers in this new area of knowledge, we want, gathered together, to achieve the following: that in our country scientific research work on these problems of the greatest importance be placed on the necessary high level, which it presently is not. And at the same time, we for the first time have the possibility here to discuss together the greatest problems that scientific thought is now approaching. In that great anxiousness, in the search for a road to a better future which has so deeply and, I hope, so solidly encompassed all humanity now, the phenomena of radioactivity have a great future in the creation of man's mastery over nature. We can hardly even imagine in our thoughts, in our creative fantasy, what this may lead to--and in the agitation which the world is now undergoing--what this road of scientific work will inevitably lead to. The more deeply and broadly the scientific study of nature becomes, the closer human thought comes to a great source of power. In the phenomena of radioactivity--the creation of our century--mankind has approached a source, before which the investigations of the past and present pale.Conditions under Stalinism operated to hinder the realization of Vernadsky's vision, but nevertheless Soviet science chalked up some impressive achievements. The first cyclotron built in Europe, in 1937, was built in the Soviet Union. The first working atomic reactor in Europe was built by the Soviets in 1946; the first hydrogen bomb in the world was produced by the Soviets in 1953; and the first industrial atomic power station in the world to function, was opened by the Soviets in 1954.``We are approaching the effective power of future human society, greater than steam, electricity, or chemical bonding. If the scientific apparatus is powerful, if the work is harmonious, if minds are found in our country which can go freely, boldly, and independently along this road, the future will become near. I know from conversations with representatives of the authorities in Moscow, which I had occasion to conduct with the organization of the Radium Institute, that the authorities of our country recognize the full significance of this work, and I strongly believe that in this circumstance a mighty Radium Research Institute will finally be created in our country, a mighty center of scientific work for the mastery and understanding of the greatest manifestations of energy that mankind has ever come near. Our conference must be the first step on that road.''
Sudoplatov writes in Special Tasks: ``At that time [1942], a special committee of the Academy of Sciences to examine atomic energy, among other things, already existed. It had been set up in November 1940 by Academicians Abram Ioffe and V.I. Vernadsky.... Igor Kurchatov was called to Moscow to organize a full-scale Soviet nuclear project.''
This statement ignores the long history of Soviet research on nuclear energy, and aggrandizes the role of known and putative atomic spies in the surprisingly rapid success of the Soviets in building a bomb in 1949.
The appendix to Special Tasks includes a series of reports by Kurchatov on materials made available to him through British channels. The following excerpts document Lyndon LaRouche's assertion, in the preceding article, that it was not scientific principles which the Russians were lacking, but engineering particulars. Kurchatov's reports also show that the major body of material which the Russians got came from British sources, at least until 1943, when British scientists moved to the newly built Los Alamos laboratory in the United States.
First, on March 7, 1943, Kurchatov writes to the intelligence oversight committee, which includes Sudoplatov, the following acknowledgment of intelligence reports which he had received and reviewed: ``The examination of the materials I have done shows that obtaining them has immense, indeed invaluable importance for our State and science.
``On the one hand, the materials furnished evidence of the importance and intensity of the research work in Britain on the uranium problem; on the other, they provided a chance to obtain most important guidelines for our own research, enabling us to bypass many very labor-consuming stages of the problem's development and to learn about new scientific and technological ways of tackling it.Other reports have a similar tone, including the request for information about the work being conducted in America, which was far more important than what was ongoing in British laboratories. Clearly, Soviet scientists did benefit from the materials passed on to them, but they were fully abreast of, if not in advance of, work going on in major laboratories internationally, up until the crash effort undertaken under the aegis of the Manhattan Project.``Below please find deliberations on individual parts of the materials.
``I. Separation of Isotopes--The most valuable part of the materials relates to the task of isotope separation.... II. The Problem of Nuclear Explosion and Combustion--Data relating to this part of the materials are also of substantial interest.... A great deal of attention is paid in the materials to the physical processes that are to take place in the uranium bomb. The conclusions contained in the materials are generally in accord with the calculations that were carried out on the matter by our scientists.... III. Physics of the Fission Process--In this regard there is hardly any fundamentally new information for Soviet physicists, but some of the data cited deserve a closer look.
``1. It was very important for us to learn that Frisch confirmed this phenomenon discovered by the Soviet physicists G.N. Flyorov and K.A. Petrac of spontaneous fission of uranium, a phenomenon which can in the mass of uranium create initial neutrons leading to the emergence of an avalanche process. Due to this phenomenon it is impossible, until the very moment of explosion, to keep the entire bomb charge of uranium in one place. Uranium should be divided into two parts which at the moment of explosion should be brought together at a high relative velocity. This way of activating the uranium bomb is reviewed in the materials and is likewise not new to Soviet physicists. A similar method was proposed by our physicist G.N. Flyorov; he calculated the necessary approach velocity of the two halves of the bomb, and the results obtained are in perfect agreement with those cited in the materials....
``Published in 1939 and 1940, works by Joliot, Halban, and Kowarski in France; Anderson, Fermi, Zinn, and Szilard in America; as well as some research conducted in my laboratory, yield the same values of the number of secondary neutrons per fission and approximately the same general picture of the distribution by energy values. If, however, the data of the materials on the release of secondary neutrons relate to uranium nuclei fission by high-velocity neutrons, they have a vast significance, since I know of no indisputable serious work on the matter....
``It should be pointed out in conclusion that the overall mass of data contained in the materials points to the technical feasibility of the entire uranium problem being resolved much sooner than our scientists believe, who are not familiar with the progress of work on the problem carried out abroad. Naturally, the question arises whether the materials obtained reflect the real progress of research in Britain, and are not a contrivance designed to mislead our research. This question has particular significance for us because with regard to many important spheres of work (due to the absence of the technological base) we are so far unable to verify data contained in the materials.... Some of the conclusions, even on very important aspects of their work, seem dubious to me, others poorly substantiated, but responsible for that are British researchers, but not reliability of the information.''
The situation in Germany was in many ways similar to that in the Soviet Union, in that a major technological effort to build a bomb was not undertaken during the war. Thomas Powers, in his excellently documented book Heisenberg's War: The Secret History of the German Bomb (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1994), develops the persuasive case that not only were the Germans not building a bomb, but that Werner Heisenberg, who directed the German research, along with Otto Hahn and other key scientists, were determined that that be the case, because of their opposition to Hitler and the Nazi Party. This contention has been disputed by Allied scientists, but also by German scientists such as Erich Bagge, who claim that the failure lay in the poorer quality of the German scientific effort rather than a deliberate design. In any event, the facts concerning the basic status of the German program were well known to Allied intelligence, through many channels, well before the end of the war.
Regardless of the moral intentions of the grouping of scientists around Heisenberg, circumstances militated against German development of a crash effort to build an atomic bomb. The Nazis' strategy at the beginning of the war called for a Blitzkrieg, which would guarantee them an early victory. Certainly, they did not expect a British declaration of war against them, and for a long time hoped for a negotiated settlement with Britain which would allow them to conduct a one-front war against the Soviet Union.
By 1942, it became clear that the German war drive was stalled because of Russian resistance. Moreover, the United States had entered the war. This required a reassessment of German military policy, since now they were in for the long haul, and could anticipate developing shortages in manpower and materials.
With these problems in mind, Erich Schumann, a scientific adviser to Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, wrote to Paul Harteck, a scientist working on the nuclear program:
``Given the present need for manpower and raw materials, the project ... requires an effort that can be justified only if certainty exists that an application can be expected in the foreseeable future.''A six-month reassessment of the project followed, in which Heisenberg correctly predicted that no bomb could be developed before 1945; however, unlike the scientists working on the Manhattan Project, he also downplayed the possibility that such a bomb could be developed even by then. Furthermore, he never even raised the possibility that such a project would be or had been undertaken by the Allies. His written recommendation, which was accepted, was that Germany confine itself to building a reactor intended to supply energy to industry.
German Jewish scientist Fritz Reich came to the United States in the spring of 1941, at which time he brought a message from the German scientists, with the assurance that Heisenberg was trying to delay the work as much as possible. Around the same time, Heisenberg visited Niels Bohr in Copenhagen and showed him all of the plans of the German nuclear program, and assured him that although they knew how to make a bomb in principle, they had no intention of doing so. Furthermore, he expressed the hope that Bohr would convince Allied scientists to join him in a manifesto pledging that they would not create such a weapon of mass destruction. Bohr had been an intimate associate of Heisenberg before the war, but he furiously rejected Heisenberg's suggestion, and during the war and thereafter, circulated the malicious disinformation that Heisenberg was a Nazi supporter.
Heisenberg in fact only barely escaped being sent to a concentration camp by the Nazis, because of his open support for Jewish scientists. He was also a friend of those in the circle of Karl Friedrich Bonhoeffer, whose brother was among the conspirators who had unsuccessfully tried to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1944. It has been claimed that the German scientists did not realize the potential of plutonium as a nuclear fuel, but this is not true. Already by 1940, Carl Friedrich Von Weizsa@aucker considered the problem of where the excess neutrons released by fission of U-235 would go, and realized that some would go to U-238 to create an unstable isotope, U-239. He published this in July 1940.
In 1968, Heisenberg gave an interview to the French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur, on the subject of his wartime role. ``In February 1942 we were called to a meeting in Berlin. I presented my conclusions. I was able to say in all honesty that, yes, we could build an atomic bomb, but that it would take a very long time, much longer than the duration of the war. And in any case, we could only make it if we had at our disposal the best researchers in Germany and a large part of the industrial resources of our country. At this time the Wehrmacht had suffered its first defeats outside of Moscow, and Hitler had given the order to give up all expensive projects that couldn't be exploited within nine months. We knew that, and we therefore had no doubts about their decision. And, in fact, a short time later, we were invited to continue our research with the existing resources which meant--no bomb. I think it was more luck than anything we deserved.''
Bertrand Russell was arguably the most evil man of this century, yet strangely, he maintained a reputation as a philosopher and pacifist even after he had advocated a preemptive nuclear strike against the Soviet Union, on the grounds that Stalin refused to place the Soviet nuclear program under international control. The generation that had just fought and won the Second World War was certainly not prepared to countenance bombing the Soviet people, who had valiantly done their part and more to bring down Hitler, so Russell and his friend Winston Churchill did their best to fan the flames of the Cold War as an alternative.
The well-documented fact that Britain was the spawning ground for atomic spies, most notably Donald Maclean and Klaus Fuchs, is best understood in the context of the fact that the United States was reluctant to relinquish its initially undisputed control over atomic energy to British-controlled international agencies. If the Soviets also had the bomb, as the Cold War developed, the United States might be brought to accept transformation of the United Nations and its various subsidiary agencies, into a world police force. Why not speed up the inevitable, the British reasoned, and pass along some tips to Soviet scientists on how to efficiently engineer the bomb?
The July 1947 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists published excerpts from a recent political debate in the British House of Lords, on the question of ``The Control of Atomic Energy.'' Bertrand Russell was quoted as follows:
``If we are to preserve the peace of the world beyond the time when America ceases to have a monopoly of the bomb--which is not very distant--it must be done by having the bomb completely controlled by some one authority, and it cannot then be a national one. The period during which it can be a national authority is necessarily brief, and if the control does not pass straight from a national authority to an international authority, then we shall inevitably get an atomic war. I entirely agree that controlling atomic energy alone is not enough, and that ultimately we must have an international authority which can prevent war. But it is a step, and the machinery that is required in the one case is similar to the machinery needed in the other.In 1946, Russell had written an article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in which he advocated the creation of a totalitarian world government whose purpose would be ``to preserve the peace.'' This government would have absolute power to control international trade and economic policy, and would possess a ``monopoly of armed force.'' What in 1946 might have been characterized merely as an evil vision, has unfortunately become the reality of the 1990s.``It could grow, and it would be an object lesson, showing what could be done in the way of international control. But--and this is a question to which I should very much like to know the answer--what is to be done, in view of the objections that Russia seems to have to any kind of international control?|...
``Presumably we should try every method of persuasion that we can, and make every concession that is not a concession of something vital, in the hope of producing some agreement. But if all that fails, as I am inclined to think it will, and Russia, for example, still continues to object to any adequate or sufficient inspection, what are we then to do? Are we to do what I think would have to be done in that case--namely, to try to organize all the nations of the world which are in favor of international control into a somewhat tight alliance, giving them all the advantages that America at present possesses, and trying then to frighten Russia into joining the association, with all the privileges it would entail? Or are we to go on, leaving Russia outside, with the certainty that if we do so an atomic war will result? It is a very difficult choice.''
The following quotation from that article gives the flavor of his thinking:
``When I speak of an international government, I mean one that really governs, not an amiable facade like the League of Nations or a pretentious sham like the United Nations under its present constitution. An international government ... must have the only atomic bombs, the only plant for producing them, the only air force, the only battleships, and, generally, whatever is necessary to make it irresistible.''This international police power would have a large army of ``inspectors'' who would ``have the right to enter any factory without notice; any attempt to interfere with them ... must be treated as a casus belli.'' This world government would be the supreme arbiter of all conflicts among nations.
The physicist Leo Szilard took a leading role in organizing the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and later the various evolutions of the movement to ban the bomb. This movement was eventually transformed into the Pugwash Conference, an international movement founded in 1957 by Bertrand Russell. In 1939, it was Szilard who was most actively involved in agitating for what eventually became the Manhattan Project. He motivated this on exaggerated claims that German scientists would be producing an atomic bomb within a few years.
As early as 1933, Szilard had predicted the possibility of a nuclear chain reaction, and in 1934 he filed a patent application for the idea and assigned it to the British Admiralty for safekeeping. He foresaw the potentialities for nuclear weapons.
Szilard, in autobiographical writings, emphasizes the importance for him of the writings of H.G. Wells. For Wells, the promise of atomic energy as a resource for humanity was clear, but it could not be used until the existing social order, including the sovereignty of nation-states, had long been consigned to the history books.
In 1932, Wells said in a speech at Oxford University: ``I am asking for a liberal Fascisti, for enlightened Nazis.'' In 1928, Wells had published a program for forming a British Fascist movement, which he identified as an Open Conspiracy. This received enthusiastic support from Bertrand Russell and Leo Szilard, who was entertaining similar ideas of his own. It takes no great leap of the imagination to identify the United Nations of today, and the Open Conspiracy of 1928.
Wells's program called for:
``1) the complete assertion, practical as well as theoretical, of the provisional nature of existing governments and of our acquiescence in them; 2) the resolve to minimize by all available means the conflicts of these governments, their militant use of individuals and property, and their interference with the establishment of a world economic system; 3) the determination to replace private local or national ownership of, at least, credit, transport, and staple production, by a responsible world directorate serving the common ends of the race; 4) the practical recognition of the necessity for world biological controls, for example, of population and disease; 5) the support of a minimal standard of individual freedom and welfare in the world; 6) the supreme duty of subordinating personal life to the creation of a world directorate capable of these tasks and to the general advancement of human knowledge, capacity, and power.''The May-June 1947 issue of the Bulletin featured an article by Szilard, ``Calling for a Crusade,'' which spelled out the policy of the one-worlders further:
``Collective security might very well have solved the problem which faced the world in 1919. Assuming American participation, perhaps it could have been made to work under conditions different from those which prevail today. But the ills of 1947 cannot be cured with the remedies of 1919. With the United States and Russia far outranking in military power all other nations, there is no combination of actions which could restrain by force either of these two giants.``No balance of power in the original meaning of the term is possible in such a situation, and there has arisen between the Russian government and the government of the United States a rather peculiar relationship. Because of the possibility that they might be at war with each other at some future time, these two governments consider it their duty to put their nations into the position of winning that war if war should come. Stated in these terms, the problem is not capable of a solution which is satisfactory to both parties and Russia and the United States are thus caught in a vicious circle of never-ending difficulties....
``All this does not mean, of course, that either the United States or Russia want war. It merely means that they want to win the war if there is one. But as long as Russia and the United States will allow their policies to be guided mainly by such considerations, their course will be rigidly determined, and they will maintain little freedom of action for working toward the establishment of world peace....
``As matters now stand at the moment, Russia has no atomic bombs. Feeling in this respect secure, we find it easy to see all this very clearly and, therefore, we recognize that such a preventive war against Russia could not be justified from a moral point-of-view. But can we predict how we shall react if the day approaches on which Russia has a stockpile of bombs and airplanes and rockets suitable for delivery at a moments notice?|... The most ardent advocates of international cooperation might then turn into the most ardent advocates of a preventive war....
``It is easy to agree that permanent peace cannot be established without a world government. But agreement on this point does not indicate along what path that ultimate goal can be approached, and not only approached but also reached in time to escape another world war....
``The American people will soon be faced with a crucial decision. This decision is not so much what amount of national sovereignty we are willing to give up. Undoubtedly more and more sovereignty will have to be given up as time goes on, but the main issue is not the issue of sovereignty. The main issue is whether we are willing to base our national policy on those higher loyalties which exist in the hearts and minds of the individuals who form the population of this country but which do not as yet find expression in our national policy. The main issue is whether we are willing to assume our full share of responsibility in the creation of a world community....
``The suggestion that this country should commit herself to contributions up to 10% of her national income sounds perhaps Utopian.... What we need in this country now is a crusade--a crusade for an organized world community.... Atomic bombs are not precision instruments, they cannot discriminate between Republicans and Democrats. Most elections are pretty close and a rather small fraction of the voters who are willing to disregard all other issues and to cast their vote solely on the issue of establishing peace by creating a world community, could decisively influence the nominations in many of the states.... Obviously the odds are heavily against us but we may have one chance in ten of reaching safely the haven of permanent peace; and maybe God will work a miracle--if we don't make it too difficult for Him.''
President Clinton, during the commemorative celebrations around the 50th anniversary of D-Day, told a reporter that the idea of the United Nations being the seat of a utopian world government would have been repudiated by both Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt. What Churchill or Roosevelt thought is certainly debatable, but Clinton is nonetheless absolutely correct in his attack on the utopians. Fifty years ago, the A-bomb was conceived as a device to enforce world government, and this is still the scenario being used by the utopians today. This is the significance of efforts by these circles to stampede the United States into another war with North Korea. Things have even gotten to such a point that Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., the director of the Center for Security Policy, called for a U.S. preemptive first strike against North Korea, in a speech to the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 18, 1994.
Said Gaffney:
``With so much at stake, the United States cannot afford to ignore or otherwise accommodate North Korea's nuclear ambitions. As with Iraq, there are risks associated with taking forceful action--but they pale by comparison with those sure to arise if Pyongyang can wield `The Bomb'.... [The United States must] prepare to prevent North Korea from achieving the credible capacity to threaten the use of nuclear weapons. At the very least, selected military strikes designed to neutralize those facilities associated with Pyongyang's covert nuclear weapons program must be prepared. Israel's brilliant preemptive strike against the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak should serve as a model for this form of `assertive arms control.'''
A precedent was set for this when in 1981, Israel bombed an Iraqi nuclear reactor, without being called to account for this blatant violation of Iraqi national sovereignty. While the Osirak research reactor could theoretically have been used to breed plutonium, the fact that the reactor and its fuel were provided by France, and that the reactor operated under French supervision, made this possibility extremely unlikely. This was precisely the kind of action called for by self-styled pacifist Bertrand Russell at the close of the Second World War, and by Leo Szilard in the same period.
Russell and his fellows failed in their plan to impose one-world government following the Second World War. Now, 50 years later, a new generation of British imperialists, and their epigones throughout the world, is attempting to follow in the footsteps of Lord Russell. We must ensure that they do not succeed.
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