Einstein: His Life and Universe

explained in a polite letter to the Jerusalem newspaper that had been campaigning for him, he did not want to face the chance that he would have to go along with a government decision that “might create a conflict with my conscience.”

In society as in science, he was better off remaining a nonconformist. “It is true that many a rebel has in the end become a figure of responsibility,” Einstein conceded to a friend that week, “but I cannot bring myself to do so.”⁴⁷

Ben-Gurion was secretly relieved. He had begun to realize that the idea was a bad one. “Tell me what to do if he says yes!” he joked to his assistant. “I’ve had to offer the post to him because it’s impossible not to. But if he accepts, we are in for trouble.” Two days later, when Ambassador Eban ran into Einstein at a black-tie reception in New York, he was happy that the issue was behind them. Einstein was not wearing socks.⁴⁸

CHAPTER TWENTY- FOUR

RED SCARE

1951–1954

With J. Robert Oppenheimer, 1947

The Rosenbergs

The rush to build the H-Bomb, rising anticommunist fervor, and Senator Joseph McCarthy’s increasingly untethered security investigations unnerved Einstein. The atmosphere reminded him of the rising Nazism and anti-Semitism of the 1930s. “The German calamity of years ago repeats itself,” he lamented to the queen mother of Belgium in early 1951. “People acquiesce without resistance and align themselves with the forces for evil.”¹

He tried to maintain a middle ground between those who were reflexively anti-American and those who were reflexively anti-Soviet. On the one hand, he rebuked his collaborator Leopold Infeld, who wanted him to support statements by the World Peace Council, which Einstein rightly suspected was Soviet-influenced. “In my view they are more or less propaganda,” he said. He did the same to a group of Russian students who pressed him to join a protest against what they alleged was America’s use of biological weapons during the Korean War. “You cannot expect me to protest against incidents which possibly, and very probably, have never taken place,” he replied.²

On the other hand, Einstein refrained from signing a petition circulated by Sidney Hook denouncing the perfidy of those who made such charges against America. He was enamored of neither extreme. As he put it, “Every reasonable person must strive to promote moderation and a more objective judgment.”³

In what he presumed would be a quiet effort at promoting such moderation, Einstein wrote a private letter asking that Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who had been convicted of turning over atomic secrets to the Soviets, be spared the death penalty. He had avoided making any statements about the case, which had divided the nation with a frenzy seldom seen before the advent of the cable-TV age. Instead, he sent the letter to the judge, Irving Kaufman, with a promise not to publicize it. Einstein did not contend that the Rosenbergs were innocent. He merely argued that a death penalty was too harsh in a case where the facts were murky and the outcome was driven more by popular hysteria than objectivity.⁴

In a reflection of the tenor of the time, Judge Kaufman took the private letter and turned it over to the FBI. Not only was it put into Einstein’s file, but it was investigated to see if it could be construed as disloyalty. After three months, a report was sent to Hoover saying no further incriminating evidence had been found, but the letter remained in the file.⁵

When Judge Kaufman went ahead and imposed a death penalty, Einstein wrote to President Harry Truman, who was about to leave office, to ask him to commute the sentence. He drafted the letter first in German and then in English on the back of a piece of scrap paper that he had filled with a variety of equations that apparently, given how they trail off, led to nothing.⁶ Truman bucked the decision to incoming President Eisenhower, who allowed the executions to proceed.

Einstein’s letter to Truman was released publicly, and the New York Times ran a front-page story headlined “Einstein Supports Rosenberg Appeal.”⁷ More than a hundred angry letters swept in from across the nation. “You need some common sense plus some appreciation for what America has given you,” wrote Marian Rawles of Portsmouth, Virginia. “You place the Jew first and the United States second,” said Charles Williams of White Plains, New York. From Corporal Homer Greene, serving in Korea: “You evidently like to see our GI’s killed. Go to Russia or back where you came from, because I don’t like Americans like you living off this country and making un-American statements.”⁸

There were not as many positive letters, but Einstein did have a pleasant exchange with the liberal Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, who had unsuccessfully tried to stop the executions.“You have struggled so devotedly for the creation of a healthy public opinion in our troubled time,” Einstein wrote in a note of appreciation. Douglas sent back a handwritten reply: “You have paid me a tribute which brightens the burdens of this dark hour —a tribute I will always cherish.”⁹

Many of the critical letters asked Einstein why he was willing to speak out for the Rosenbergs but not for the nine Jewish doctors whom Stalin had put on trial as part of an alleged Zionist conspiracy to murder Russian leaders. Among those who publicly challenged what they saw as Einstein’s double standard were the publisher of the New York Post and the editor of the New Leader.¹⁰

Einstein agreed that the Russian actions should be denounced. “The perversion of justice which manifests itself in all the official trials staged by the Russian government deserves unconditional condemnation,” he wrote. He added that individual appeals to Stalin would probably not do much, but perhaps a joint declaration from a group of scholars would help. So he got together with the chemistry Nobel laureate Harold Urey and others to issue one. “Einstein and Urey Hit Reds’ Anti-Semitism,” the New York Times reported.¹¹ (After Stalin died a few weeks later, the doctors were freed.)

On the other hand, he stressed in scores of letters and statements that Americans should not let the fear of communism cause them to surrender the civil liberties and freedom of thought that they cherished. There were a lot of domestic communists in England, but the people there did not get themselves whipped into a frenzy by internal security investigations, he pointed out. Americans need not either.

William Frauenglass

Every year, Lord & Taylor department stores gave an award that, especially in the early 1950s, might have seemed unusual. It honored independent thinking, and Einstein, fittingly, won it in 1953 for his “nonconformity” in scientific matters.

Einstein took pride in that trait, which he knew had served him well over the years. “It gives me great pleasure to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed,” he said in his radio talk accepting the award.

Even though he was being honored for his nonconformity in the field of science, Einstein used the occasion to turn attention to the McCarthy-style investigations. For him, freedom in the realm of thought was linked to freedom in the realm of politics. “To be sure, we are concerned here with nonconformism in a remote field of endeavor,” he said, meaning physics. “No Senatorial committee has as yet felt compelled to tackle the task of combating in this field the dangers that threaten the inner security of the uncritical or intimidated citizen.”¹²