Bomb: The Race to Build—and Steal—the World's Most Dangerous Weapon

After months of prepping his team to kidnap Werner Heisenberg, Carl Eifler learns, with great disappointment, that the mission has been scrubbed. In reality, OSS director Donovan tells him this to let Eifler down easy; the director instead believes another man can do the job without Eifler’s flamboyant, attention-grabbing style. Donovan selects Moe Berg, an attorney and ex-pro baseball player. Berg studies atomic physics in preparation for traveling to Switzerland, where Heisenberg will give a lecture. If Berg hears anything in Heisenberg’s talk that suggests the Germans are close to completing a bomb, he’s to shoot Heisenberg dead on the spot.

Berg is good at languages and can pass for several different nationalities. At the lecture, posing as a student, Berg quickly gets lost during a discussion of advanced S-matrix theory. He focuses on Heisenberg, a slender man with “sinister eyes.” The lecture ends without incident.

A few days later, Berg attends a party where Heisenberg appears. Swiss guests deplore Heisenberg for working for Hitler; Heisenberg retorts that he’s not a Nazi but a loyal German citizen. He admits that the war is lost and wishes it were otherwise. Berg realizes the Germans don’t yet have a bomb. He walks out with Heisenberg; they chat briefly, and Berg lets him get away.

The OSS still wants to interrogate a German scientist, just to be sure there’s no danger of the Nazis getting a nuclear weapon.

Using a secret code in a letter to Saville Sax, Ted Hall arranges to meet him in Albuquerque. On the appointed day, he hands Sax a report on the plutonium bomb; Sax asks him a technical question posed by the Soviets. Sax transcribes Hall’s report onto a newspaper sheet using milk—an invisible ink—and then burns the original report and departs.

As Allied forces cross into Germany in February 1945, the OSS spy group “Alsos” follows behind, searching for clues about the German bomb project. They learn that Heisenberg has been moved to the town of Haigerloch.

At Los Alamos, Oppenheimer’s team settles on a bomb made of explosives that surround a plutonium core and crush it, setting off an instant chain reaction. This “implosion” device must detonate perfectly, or some of the plutonium will squirt out and the bomb will fizzle.

Oppenheimer gives the design problem to professor George Kistiakowsky (“Kisty”), who finds he must place 100 explosive charges around the core in an arrangement “which had to fit together to within a precision of a few thousandths of an inch” and all detonate within a millionth of a second (157). Kisty’s team builds a metal core the size of a basketball, surrounds it with explosives, takes it to a nearby canyon, and detonates it. The results convince the team that an implosion bomb is possible.

Hall is on the team, and he sends a full report to Sax, who passes it on to the Soviets. Stalin’s secret police director, Lavrenti Beria, suspects Hall’s information consists of false leads meant to waste Russia’s research efforts. He threatens the KGB, which redoubles its efforts to get intelligence from Fuchs. His reports corroborate Hall’s, and the Soviet bomb team learns that the gun assembly system fails with plutonium, but that an implosion method would work. This saves them a lot of time.

In April 1945, exhausted from the war effort and in failing health, Roosevelt dies. Harry Truman, who had occupied the vice president’s office for only three months, becomes president. War secretary Stimson fills him in on the A-bomb project.

As the German war effort collapses, an Alsos team led by Lt. Colonel Boris Pash races ahead to Haigerloch. There, they find a cave with an atomic pile similar to Fermi’s Chicago pile. This one isn’t complete: The loss of the heavy-water shipment from Norway undermined Heisenberg’s experiments. All of Germany’s uranium stash is found at a nearby farm and shipped back to the US. The Nazi program to build an atomic bomb is at an end.

Groves now focuses on foiling the Russians. Alsos teams capture Otto Hahn, Heisenberg, and other German atomic-bomb scientists. Russian teams also search Germany and find that Hitler’s scientists made little progress on a bomb. They also find no remaining physicists: The US has them all.

Hitler kills himself on April 30, 1945. Germany surrenders within days. Los Alamos workers cheer. Many believe their work is done, and some hope the entire project will be scrapped because of the extreme danger it poses to the world. Secretary Stimson issues a memo that keeps them on the job: The war against Japan is still ongoing.

There isn’t enough material to build a test bomb from uranium, but plutonium can be manufactured faster. Oppenheimer wants to do a test; worried about wasting the plutonium, Groves is against it. Oppenheimer and Kistiakowsky convince the general that, without a test, the raid on Japan will itself be a blind experiment.

They select a place in the desert of southern New Mexico. Oppenheimer calls it “Trinity.” Teams pitch tents there and work day and night despite heat, scorpions, and sandy wind. They build a 100-foot tower that will hold the device, huts for cameras and people, and miles of wires and detectors.

On June 2, Harry Gold arrives in Santa Fe for his meeting with Fuchs. He buys a map titled “New Mexico: Land of Enchantment” (168), finds the spot where the rendezvous will take place, and marks it in pen. He goes to the spot, the Castillo Street Bridge, and waits. Fuchs drives up late, delayed by a flat tire, and drives Gold to a secluded place. Fuchs hands Gold a packet: It’s the description of the design for a plutonium bomb.

The next day, Gold is in Albuquerque, where he meets Army Sergeant David Greenglass, who has been working as a machinist on the molds for the bomb’s explosives. He has information, but it’s not quite ready. Frustrated by the delay, and by Greenglass’s unprofessional manner, Gold leaves for a few hours and returns to pick up the information: a package of notes and sketches. It’s not scientific, but it’s useful. Gold returns to New York and hands all the papers to his Soviet contact.

At the Trinity site, Kistiakowsky discovers air holes in the explosives and gently fills them with liquid explosive. Other crises keep erupting with the 500-piece bomb, and Oppenheimer begs Groves for more time. Groves says Truman will meet with Stalin—leader of the only other great power left standing, and now the chief US rival—and the president wants to know that he has a working device with which he can intimidate the Soviet leader.

In England, captured German scientists are herded together at a country mansion, Farm Hall. The Allies want them away from the press, lest they blurt out the story of the atomic bomb and ruin the shock value the US expects when the device detonates over Japan. The Allies also want to know more about the German atomic program. They plant microphones everywhere, hoping to catch the men chatting about their recent work.

On July 12, the bomb’s core, in two pieces, is transported carefully from Los Alamos to a clean room inside an old ranch house at Trinity. The next day, the explosives arrive: a five-foot-wide shell watched over by Kistiakowsky. It sits under a tent at the base of the tower while scientists in surgical coats assemble the plutonium core is assembled at the ranch house. It’s then driven to the tower and lowered into the explosive shell, but it doesn’t fit. They realize the plutonium warmed up in the hot ranch house, wait several minutes for it to cool down and contract, and then try again; the core slides in perfectly.

On July 14, a 300-pound package of uranium in a lead bucket leaves Los Alamos for a flight to San Francisco. From there, the USS Indianapolis will transport the lethal cargo to the Pacific island of Tinian, where Paul Tibbets and his bomber crew await it. At Trinity, the plutonium bomb is attached to a cable and lifted slowly and carefully to the top of the tower, where it’s secured into place. Scientists begin connecting detonators and wires all over the bomb’s shell.

Late on July 15, hours before the test, Oppenheimer climbs the tower and gives the bomb a final look. He assigns young chemist Donald Hornig the task of watching over the weapon through the night. Hornig settles in at the top of the tower with a book. A lightning storm threatens, but the tower should channel any bolts past the bomb and down into the ground. If this mechanism fails and the bomb goes off early, Hornig realizes, “I’d never know about it” (176).

General Groves arrives and assesses the storm clouds. The bad weather might sweep up the bomb’s radioactive fallout and dump it onto nearby towns. The test might have to be postponed.

Early on July 16, Los Alamos scientists ride in buses to a hilltop viewing point 20 miles from the bomb tower. The high desert is chilly, and the men shiver as they wait. With them is a reporter from the New York Times, William Laurence, invited by Groves to witness the test. Later, he’ll be permitted to reveal what he sees.

A weather scientist predicts a clear window between five and six o’clock in the morning. They set the test for 5:30am. Just past five, Kistiakowsky throws a switch at the tower base, arming the bomb. He, Hornig, and a few others drive six miles to the bunker where Oppenheimer oversees the test amid electronic devices monitored by scientists.

At the appointed moment, the hilltop observers are to lie down and turn away. Physicist Edward Teller recalls that “No one complied” (181). Instead, they put on suntan lotion and hold up pieces of welder’s glass to protect their eyes.

When the counter at the bunker reaches zero, a supremely bright light appears “with the intensity many times that of the midday sun […] It lighted every peak, crevasse, and ridge of the nearby mountain range with a clarity and beauty that cannot be described” (182-83). The light slowly darkens to a glowing orange ball of fire about a mile wide that rises until it takes the shape of a giant mushroom. Oppenheimer says, simply, “It worked.”

After 30 seconds, a powerful boom knocks over Kistakowsky, who stands outside the bunker to watch. The others rush outside and join him, clapping each other on the back. On the hilltop, scientists cheer and dance. Oppenheimer, elated and almost cocky, drives to Groves’s bunker, where the general shakes his hand and says, “I am proud of you” (184).

After the jubilation, the scientists grow solemn. They know now that they have created something of enormous destructive power. It gives them an eerie chill.

People living near the Trinity test feel the shock wave. In Amarillo, Texas, 450 miles distant, residents see the bomb flash. General Groves issues a bulletin that blames the light and noise on the accidental detonation of explosives at Alamogordo Air Base.

The gun assembly and uranium are shipped aboard the Indianapolis. The uranium bucket is bolted down in a cabin and guarded day and night.

At the Allied conference in Potsdam, Germany, US President Truman learns about the Trinity test. The bomb exploded with a power equal to 18,000 tons of TNT. It vaporized its tower, turned nearby sand to glass, heated the ground a mile away to 750 degrees Fahrenheit, and killed everything inside that zone. Truman and Churchill collar Stalin and tell him they have a new super-weapon. Stalin nods and congratulates them. This puzzles them because they don’t realize that he already knows about it. Still, Stalin tells his foreign secretary that the Soviet bomb program must be speeded up.

Truman has to decide whether to use the bomb against Japan. Already, US bombers have destroyed many Japanese cities, in one instance killing 100,000 Tokyo residents during a single raid. The Japanese military is severely damaged, yet it refuses to surrender. An invasion would likely kill a quarter-million US troops and possibly millions of Japanese. Truman hopes a demonstration of the tremendous power of the atomic bomb will stun the Japanese into surrender, saving millions of lives.

The US issues an ultimatum to Japan: Surrender or face “prompt and utter destruction” (189). Japanese leaders debate the demand and reject it; for them, surrender is too humiliating to consider. Colonel Tibbets gets the order to deliver the “special bomb” as soon as possible after August 3.

Robert Serber and other scientists arrive at Tinian, an island in the Pacific, where they assemble the uranium bomb. It’s long and looks like a miniature submarine; they call it “Little Boy.” The skies will clear over the target on August 6. On August 5, Little Boy is loaded into a bomber nicknamed Enola Gay in honor of Tibbets’s mother. At midnight, Tibbets gathers his crew and informs them of the package they’ll deliver. They’re stunned.

The crew boards the plane, which must take off, weighted down with extra fuel, from a runway not quite long enough: It recently claimed four bombers that couldn’t get airborne in time. The B-29 roars down the runway and lifts off with 100 feet to spare.

Advance planes scour southern Japan for a city with clear skies. They radio a coded message to Tibbets, who reads it and announces to his crew, “It’s Hiroshima” (192).

The crew locates the bridge over which they will release the bomb. At 8:15 on a sunny morning, the plane drops the bomb and then veers away to escape the blast.

The bomb detonates at 1,900 feet above the coastal city of Hiroshima. It heats the ground to 5,000 degrees and kills everyone within 1,000 yards. Witnesses report a blinding flash, followed by darkness caused by a huge cloud of debris. Survivors, slashed and bleeding, climb out of crushed homes to see entire neighborhoods in ruins. This isn’t the kind of bomb they’re used to. Buildings burn and many people try to flee; they pass crumpled bodies and see others, still alive, whose blackened skin hangs in bloody flaps.

Nine miles away, the Enola Gay feels the shock wave from the bomb but is undamaged. Tibbets turns the plane back to circle the city and evaluate the results. A giant mushroom cloud, “purple-gray,” towers above the plane; beneath it, the city seems to boil in flame-like black oil. The scene shocks and horrifies the crew. They radio news of the success, but in his logbook, co-pilot Robert Lewis writes, “My God, what have we done?” (197). 

General Groves gets the news. He calls Oppenheimer, and they congratulate each other. Groves comments on how well selecting Oppenheimer to head the program worked out. Oppenheimer admits to his own doubts on that, but Groves responds, “I’ve never concurred with those doubts at any time” (198).

Truman learns of the success and issues a press release that announces it to the world. He warns Japan of complete industrial ruin if it continues to fight. Los Alamos scientists find out and run from lab to lab shouting, “Hiroshima has been destroyed!” (199). General celebrations break out; Otto Frisch finds them “ghoulish.” Feynman admits both to celebrating and feeling anguish at the bomb’s destructive effects—a common mixture of feelings at the lab that day. At an evening party, Oppenheimer reads aloud a report on details of the destruction at Hiroshima. The mood darkens; the party breaks up early.

In England at Farm Hall, detainee Otto Hahn, discoverer of uranium fission, feels shattered with guilt. That night at dinner, the other German scientists learn the news. They’re shocked, and some express disbelief. As they talk among themselves, the British secretly record them. The scientists argue whether, with enough resources, they could have beaten the Americans to the bomb. Heisenberg wonders what the Soviets are thinking.

Stalin flies into a rage at the news. The bomb’s power is a terrible danger to the USSR. They must, he insists, get their own atomic weapon. He assigns secret police chief Beria to oversee the task. Money is no object, and Beria can execute any scientist who slows progress.

In Tokyo, news of the disaster at Hiroshima is sketchy. A general flies down to investigate; he finds that over 90% of the city’s buildings are destroyed, and tens of thousands of people are dead or dying. Japan’s own atomic bomb program is rudimentary—they have no uranium—and the military can’t stop American bombers. The Soviet Union, wanting in on the victory, declares war on Japan. Japanese political leaders want to surrender, but the military steadfastly refuses.

On Tinian Island, a Trinity-type plutonium bomb is assembled. Code-named Fat Man, the device will be dropped as soon as possible to suggest that the US has an endless supply of such weapons. Fat Man is loaded onto a B-29; commanded by Paul Sweeney, the plane reaches its target, Kokura city, but clouds intervene and anti-aircraft blasts shake the plane. The bomber heads for the second target, Nagasaki, and drops its bomb. It explodes with the force of 22,000 tons of TNT, kills 40,000 instantly, and lethally injures tens of thousands more.

A third bomb will be ready by mid-August, but the military is not to deploy it without express orders from the president. Japanese leaders meet once again, and they’re still divided. Emperor Hirohito steps in: “I cannot endure the thought of letting my people suffer any longer […] The time has come when we must bear the unbearable” (206). He orders a surrender, ending the war.

The Russians are desperate to know the complete details of the American bomb. Soviet agent Lona Cohen arrives in New Mexico to meet with Ted Hall, but he doesn’t show at any of the three possible meetings they’ve arranged. On a fourth try, Hall finally makes the meeting and hands Cohen his written description of the bombs.

Cohen puts the papers in the bottom of a tissue box and heads for the train station, where FBI agents and soldiers search everything leaving New Mexico. Cohen hands the tissue box to an agent, searches her purse for her tickets, and then struggles to open her suitcase to find them while the agents check the case and her purse. As she boards, an FBI agent hands back her tissue box. The confusion works, and she gets away.

Klaus Fuchs also writes a description of both types of bomb and hands it to Gold just outside Santa Fe. Gold and Cohen transfer the information to the Soviets, who note that the reports are nearly identical, which validates them. Using the reports, the Russians begin construction of their first atomic bomb.

Suddenly famous as the “Father of the Atomic Bomb” (213), Oppenheimer goes to Washington, where he argues that a world full of such weapons will be unsafe. He wants the US and Russia to agree not to build any more of them. He’s told that his idea is impractical and ordered to return to Los Alamos and build more bombs: The government wants 20 by year’s end.

At Los Alamos, Edward Teller shows Oppenheimer a design for a new, vastly more powerful nuclear weapon. He wants the director to campaign for funding for the new device, but Oppenheimer turns him down flat. In October, Oppenheimer resigns. At a parting ceremony, he warns that a world filled with nuclear weapons may someday cause people to curse Los Alamos.

Again, Oppenheimer travels to Washington, where he warns of an impending arms race between the US and the Soviets. He meets with President Truman, who insists that the Russians will never have a bomb. Privately, Truman dislikes Oppenheimer’s attitude and never wants to see him again.

Oppenheimer realizes it’s already too late: “[H]is creation was completely—and forever—beyond his control” (217).

In August 1949, using information stolen from the American Trinity bomb test, an identical atomic bomb detonates atop a 100-foot tower in a remote region of Kazakhstan while scientists and government officials watch from a bunker six miles distant. A blinding white light once again resolves into a tumbling mushroom cloud. Beria is ecstatic; he calls Stalin at once to report the good news.

Truman is stunned. His intelligence services thought the Russians wouldn’t have the bomb until 1953. Suspicions rise that the Soviets got help from America. US agents decode telegrams sent to Moscow during the war; the messages contain detailed information from the Manhattan Project. Signs point to an author: Klaus Fuchs. British investigators interview him repeatedly; he finally breaks down and confesses.

Fuchs’s testimony leads to his handler, Harry Gold, who likewise finds himself questioned over several weeks. Finally, the FBI discovers a map of New Mexico at Gold’s house; it’s marked at the location of a meeting with Fuchs. Gold confesses.

Because he’d given secrets to a war ally, Fuchs receives only 14 years in prison. Released early for good behavior in 1959, Fuchs moves to East Germany, where he marries, resumes nuclear research, and dies at age 76 in 1988. Gold cooperates and avoids the death penalty; he gets 30 years in prison but is released early in 1965 and dies in 1972 at age 61. His information implicates Sergeant David Greenglass, who implicates spymasters Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. They’re executed, but their case triggers a 1950s “Red Scare” in America that involves fevered searches for Communist spies everywhere.

Ted Hall goes to Chicago for his doctorate. He tells all to his girlfriend, who marries him. The FBI links him to the spying but has no definite proof. Hall never cracks under interrogation, and investigators finally give up. Hall and his wife and children move to Cambridge, England, where he works at the university. In 1999, news services get wind of his connection to the Soviets, and he admits he contacted them but will say no more. He dies, age 74, in 1999.

Oppenheimer continues his campaign in Washington for nuclear disarmament. Truman, though, doesn’t trust Stalin and fears the Soviets will develop more and bigger bombs. American scientists have theorized about a fusion bomb that uses the same principles that light the sun. It would involve an atomic bomb that crushes hydrogen, causing it to fuse into helium and release enormous energy. Early in 1950, Truman orders production of the new hydrogen bomb.

In November 1952, a US hydrogen bomb detonates above an island in the remote South Pacific. It explodes with a yield equal to 10 million tons of TNT—an effect 500 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb. A year later, the Soviets test an H-bomb of their own.

Oppenheimer persists in his campaign to wind down nuclear weapons production. Atomic Energy Commission chair Lewis Strauss decides Oppenheimer really is a Soviet sympathizer and spy. Arguing “that Oppenheimer’s opposition to the H-bomb was an act of disloyalty to America” (233), Strauss engineers the revocation of Oppenheimer’s security clearance. This prevents Oppenheimer from advising the US government. He’s broken-hearted; the experience ages him. He continues his work as director of Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, retires in 1966, and dies the following year of throat cancer at age 62.

In 1954, the US detonates a 15-megaton hydrogen bomb at Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific. Soon the Russians set off a 50-megaton giant, the largest ever unleashed. Thereafter, both sides compete not for sheer explosive size, but for total number of bombs and delivery systems. By 1974, England, France, China, and India also have nuclear weapons; 10 years later, the world total is 65,000. Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea also join the nuclear club.

Even if the US and Russia never get into a massive nuclear exchange, other dangers persist. Terrorists might get hold of a nuke; a rogue state such as North Korea might “lash out” with bombs. If two nations—for example, India and Pakistan—get into a war and detonate just 100 nuclear weapons, or .5% of all such bombs, the resulting dust and fires would cloud the planet for up to 10 years, causing crop failures, mass starvation, and the deaths of billions.

In short, the creation of these bombs is a remarkable technical achievement, but it may yet end up “wiping our species off the planet” (236).