But by the time that the letter reached him, Wallace was hardly in a position to advocate any such controversial stand with Truman. A week earlier, public outcry had followed press accounts of the cabinet meeting where Stimson urged a more cooperative “direct approach” to Russia. What Stimson had proposed was only a symbolic sharing of basic information about atomic energy, as a gesture of good faith. Opponents of the idea in the cabinet, not wanting to attack the venerable Stimson, had focused their scorn instead upon Wallace, who valiantly came to the idea’s defense.99
Portrayed in newspapers as a scheme to “give the atomic secret to Russia,” the so-called Wallace Plan was doomed from the outset.100 The commerce secretary was forced to write a public apology to Truman, defending himself for even raising the idea.101 Not surprisingly, Wallace made no mention of Compton’s initiative in his letter to the president.102
Nor would the Scientific Panel’s report, with its more qualified reservations about the Super, have an impact upon official Washington—where Truman, in early October, pointedly described the U.S. atomic monopoly as a “sacred trust.” In November, Patterson ordered all copies of the report recalled, pending creation of a permanent commission on atomic energy to replace the Interim Committee. A few weeks later, the Interim Committee itself was dissolved; along with it, the Scientific Panel likewise disappeared.
The panel’s lengthy report, as well as Compton’s letter to Wallace, passed into dusty filing cabinets fitted with combination locks, and thence into oblivion.103
* * *
The harsh winter that followed the war froze water pipes at Los Alamos, persuading several more scientists and their families to leave the mesa and return to academe. Included in the general exodus were the Bethes, who went back to Cornell after Rose grew tired of using water trucked from a nearby creek to wash the family’s laundry.104
The normally stoic Bradbury protested to Groves that it was becoming increasingly difficult to hold people at the lab without a commitment from the army that the work of Los Alamos would continue.105 Not knowing how long his alliance with the University of California would last, however, Groves gave no assurances. In December, he told Bradbury he could guarantee salaries at the lab for only another six months.106
To be on the safe side, Teller had already sounded out his friend Robert Mulliken, chairman of Chicago’s physics department, about the possibility of joining Fermi on the faculty there.107 But Edward postponed making further plans until he knew whether Los Alamos would continue work on the Super.
While awaiting that word, Teller had begun teaching classes in elementary quantum mechanics at “Los Alamos University”—the impromptu classroom that wartime veterans had established to train new recruits and to keep their own minds sharp.108 Perhaps because he regretted bending to Oppenheimer’s will in the matter of Szilard’s petition, Edward had also become a political activist of sorts—joining the Association of Los Alamos Scientists (ALAS) and helping Robert Wilson, one of the group’s founders, draft a statement calling for the international control of atomic energy.*109
At a subsequent meeting of ALAS, Teller led a discussion on the role of scientists in influencing public opinion. (He urged that they present the facts only, without interjecting their own political views.)110 That fall, perhaps more out of boredom than conviction, Edward and metallurgist Cyril Smith lectured a rather bewildered assembly of Indians at Taos Pueblo on the prospects for the peaceful atom.111
Oppenheimer’s speech at the “E”-award ceremony had finally removed any doubt about where he stood on the question of the lab’s future. It would be many years before anyone could improve upon the job done at wartime Los Alamos, Oppie told Teller. When Edward asked that Oppenheimer intercede with Bradbury and urge that superbomb research continue, Oppie flatly refused.112 Teller told friends, in hushed tones of horror, that Oppenheimer spoke of giving the mesa back to the Indians.
* * *
On a rainy night in early November 1945, more than 500 scientists and their spouses crowded into the auditorium at the lab to hear Oppenheimer speak about the implications of what they, collectively, had wrought. Even after he had stepped down as director, Oppie remained a dominant presence at Los Alamos. Speaking softly and earnestly for more than an hour, without notes, Oppenheimer argued that the threat of the bomb had created a common interest among humanity—one “which might almost be regarded as a pilot plant for a new type of international collaboration.”113
The following morning, Oppie, Kitty, and Peter drove down off the mesa in the family Cadillac, bound for Pasadena.
In his inaugural speech as director, Bradbury talked guardedly of the future—defining the principal task of the postwar lab as that of improving the Fat Man bomb. On the topic of superweapons, Bradbury spoke only of possibilities: “This does not mean we will build a Super. It couldn’t happen in our time in any event. But someday, someone must know the answer: Is it feasible?”114
Unwilling to remain at Los Alamos on the strength of such an equivocal promise, Teller gave the new director an ultimatum: he would stay at the lab only if Bradbury launched an intensive program to develop either the Super or Teller’s other wartime obsession, the hydride bomb.115 As part of this crash effort, Teller also wanted Bradbury to commit to carrying out at least a dozen Trinity-type nuclear tests a year.
Bradbury had already offered to make Teller head of the Theoretical Division, replacing Bethe. But there was neither enthusiasm nor money in Washington for what Edward wanted, Norris patiently explained.116 Late in October, Teller notified Bradbury that he planned to leave the lab at year’s end. Norris obligingly agreed to transfer the contract for opacity research to Chicago, where Mayer had agreed to join Teller and Fermi.117
For Teller, the decision to leave Los Alamos was wrenching. “I have started to feel homesick for this place before I have even left it,” he wrote to Mayer that fall.118 But he also began taking steps to ensure that his work on the superbomb survived at the
