The Start of the Cold War and the Soviet Bomb

1. Lecture II The Start of the Cold War and the Soviet Bomb

2. There is among my scientific colleagues some hesitancy as to the advisability of this development on the grounds that it might make the international problems even more difficult than they are now. My opinion is that this is a fallacy. If the development is possible, it is out of our powers to prevent it. Edward Teller

4. Lake Karachai is the most radioactive spot on Earth http://sometimes-interesting.com/2011/07/15/the-most-contaminated-place-on-earth-chelyabinsk-40/

5. In spite of a great deal of preliminary study of fission products, an unforeseen poisoning effect of this kind very nearly prevents operation of the Hanford piles, as we shall see later. Smyth report, litho edition

6. “Offence, recognised in the past as the best means of defence, in atomic warfare will be the only general means of defence.” US Joint Chiefs of Staff. 1947

7. Composite or Levitated Core (Pit)

8. The USSR still lives in antagonistic ‘capitalist encirclement,’ with which there can be no permanent peaceful coexistence.” There is “a neurotic view of world affairs which, at bottom, was the traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity…so that the possibilities for distorting or poisoning sources and currents of information are infinite….we have a political force committed fanatically to the belief that with the US there can be no permanent modus vivendi, that they believe it is desirable and necessary that the internal harmony of our society ne disrupted, our traditional way of life be destroyed, the international authority of our state be broken. George Kennan, long telegram

9. Soviet power, unlike that of Hitlerite German, is neither schematic nor adventuristic. It does not work by fixed plans. It does not take unnecessary risks. Impervious to the logic of reason, it is highly sensitive to the logic of force. For this reason it can easily withdraw - and usually does - when strong resistance is encountered at any point. Thus, if the adversary has sufficient force and makes clear his readiness to use it, he rarely has to do so. Kennan

10. From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of central and eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in the Soviet sphere and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and increasing measure of control from Moscow. Winston Churchill

11. it would be wrong and imprudent to intrust the secret knowledge or experience of the atomic bomb, which the United States, Great Britain and Canada now share, to the United Nations while it is still in its infancy. Joseph Stalin

12. my own feeling is that if he had studied Hebrew and the Talmud rather than Sanskrit and the Bhagavad Gita he would have been a much greater physicist. I never met anyone who was brighter than he was. But to be more original and profound I think you have to be more focused. I I Rabi, referring to Oppenheimer

13. When will the Russian be able to build the bomb? Asked Truman. I don’t know, said Oppenheimer. I know, said Truman When? Never!

14. “to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.” Truman Doctrine, 1947