Albert Einstein - The Pacifist Who Won the War

There are some people whose very names have become part of the English vocabulary. We call someone who appears to get out of difficult situations “a real Houdini.” Someone who practices financial chicanery is often said to have engineered “a real Ponzi scheme.” And someone whose intelligence may border on genius we will surely label “another Einstein.”

The super-brilliant physicist Albert Einstein is known for many groundbreaking scientific theories. His remarkable works on the relativity of matter, energy, gravity, time, space, and light are known throughout the world. His theories have revolutionized our ideas and understanding of the universe.What is far less known is the role he played during the weeks preceding World War II.

All he did was write a letter addressed to President Roosevelt (Number 2), making the case for developing an atomic bomb.

It is ironic that Einstein should be represented here among the top war-makers. He was an ardent pacifist, but one who feared that Adolf Hitler (Number l) and his scientists might get the atomic bomb first. If that happened, Einstein knew, it would mean the end of Western civilization. 

From Germany to America

Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany, in 1879. At the turn of the century, he became a Swiss citizen and worked in the Bern patent office as an examiner. Interested in how things work, he studied physics at the local university. In 1905, he won acclaim for his special theory of relativity, and he was besieged with teaching offers by many universities. In 1909, Einstein chose the University of Bern. Four years later, he was offered the directorship of the practical physics program at the prestigious Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin. In 1921, Einstein won the Nobel Prize in physics.

In 1933, everything changed for Einstein, for Germany, and for the world. Hitler came to power. The Führer hated Einstein, who was a Jew and a pacifist. The physicist’s works were publicly thrown into the bonfires and his property was seized. At the time, Einstein was lecturing in America. Instead of returning home, he joined the faculty of the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton.

A Race to the Atomic Age

Early in August 1939, it was clear that Hitler was saber-rattling once again. War in Europe appeared likely. Physicists in the United States were genuinely concerned that the Führer’s scientists were hard at work on an atomic bomb. They believed that only Einstein, preeminent in the field, could convince the American political and military leaders to avert the potential threat. Einstein was persuaded to write a letter to the president. 

He wrote: In the course of the last four months it has been made probable through the work of Joliot, Fermi, and Szilard in America that it may become possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium, by which vast amounts of power and large quantities of new radium-like elements would be generated. Now it appears this could be achieved in the immediate future. This phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is conceivable, though much less certain that extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed. A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might well destroy the whole port, together with some of the surrounding territory.

The letter was dated August 2, 1939.

In 1940, Einstein became an American citizen. By that time, his letter to Roosevelt had set in motion the Manhattan Project to develop an atomic bomb. Einstein opposed using the bomb on Japan, but in August 1945 atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Within a week, the Japanese sued for peace.

Albert Einstein died in 1955, still clinging to his pacifist convictions. He was surely the most unusual pacifist in living memory, having set in motion the conception, construction, and delivery of the deadliest weapon ever unleashed on humankind.