Churchill's Bomb : How the United States Overtook Britain in the First Nuclear Arms Race

Churchill's Bomb reveals a new aspect of the great Prime Minister's life, so far completely neglected by historians: his relations with his nuclear scientists, and his management of Britain's policy on atomic weapons. Graham Farmelo, the author of the celebrated and prize-winning biography of Paul Dirac, argues that Churchill was far more interested in science that he appeared. He made brave efforts to understand the exciting and sinister new world opened up by quantum physics in the 1920s and 30s, and wrote repeatedly about the coming of unimaginably dangerous new explosives. Britain then was the world leader in nuclear research. But when the awful possibility of actually building an atomic bomb raised its head, Churchill made crucial errors that ensured Britain's exclusion from the American-led project to build the bomb. He neglected an offer by Roosevelt to give Britain equal footing on the project and marginalized the real elite of British science, relying instead on the counsel of Frederick Lindemann, a wayward Oxford physicist hungry for power and resentful of scientists more brilliant than he was. As a result, Britain lost its leadership of this cutting-edge science and was denied access to the latest research. Churchill allowed himself to be fobbed off with emollient words from the notoriously evasive American President. In this original and controversial book, Graham Farmelo shows a new and less flattering side to the great war leader. Perhaps no scientific development has shaped the course of modern history as much as the harnessing of nuclear energy. Yet the twentieth century might have turned out differently had greater influence over this technology been exercised by Great Britain, whose scientists were at the forefront of research into nuclear weapons at the beginning of World War II. As award-winning biographer and science writer Graham Farmelo describes in Churchill's Bomb , the British set out to investigate the possibility of building nuclear weapons before their American colleagues. But when scientists in Britain first discovered a way to build an atomic bomb, Prime Minister Winston Churchill did not make the most of his country's lead and was slow to realize the Bomb's strategic implications. This was odd — he prided himself on recognizing the military potential of new science and, in the 1920s and 1930s, had repeatedly pointed out that nuclear weapons would likely be developed soon. In developing the Bomb, however, he marginalized some of his country's most brilliant scientists, choosing to rely mainly on the counsel of his friend Frederick Lindemann, an Oxford physicist with often wayward judgment. Churchill also failed to capitalize on Franklin Roosevelt's generous offer to work jointly on the Bomb, and ultimately ceded Britain's initiative to the Americans, whose successful development and deployment of the Bomb placed the United States in a position of supreme power at the dawn of the nuclear age. After the war, President Truman and his administration refused to acknowledge a secret cooperation agreement forged by Churchill and Roosevelt and froze Britain out of nuclear development, leaving Britain to make its own way. Dismayed, Churchill worked to restore the relationship. Churchill came to be terrified by the possibility of thermonuclear war, and emerged as a pioneer of detente in the early stages of the Cold War. Contrasting Churchill's often inattentive leadership with Franklin Roosevelt's decisiveness, Churchill's Bomb reveals the secret history of the weapon that transformed modern geopolitics. Perhaps no scientific breakthrough has shaped the course of human history as much as the harnessing of the atom. Yet the twentieth century might have turned out entirely differently had this powerful technology stayed under the control of Great Britain, whose scientists spearheaded the Allies' nuclear arms program at the outset of World War II. As award-winning science historian Graham Farmelo reveals in Churchill's Bomb, Britain's supposedly visionary leader remained unconvinced of the potentially earth-shattering implications of his physicists' research. Churchill ultimately sha .. Describes how the science behind Britain's nuclear arms advances at the beginning of World War II was given to America because Winston Churchill didn't fully believe in the physicists' research or the implications of such powerful weaponry Contents Prologue 1 Towards the Nuclear Age 2 World War II 3 Churchill as Leader of the Opposition 4 Churchill’s Second Premiership Epilogues Acknowledgements References Notes Index