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EINSTEIN’S POSTWAR CAMPAIGN TO SAVE THE WORLD FROM NUCLEAR
DESTRUCTION  
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Lawrence Wittner
March 1, 2024
Foreign Policy in Focus
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_ The scientist's efforts helped create the movement for arms control
and disarmament. _

Einstein: 'Life is like a bicycle. It is necessary to advance in
order to not lose one's balance', image: carfree.fr

 

Although the popular new Netflix film, _Einstein and the Bomb_
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of the great physicist’s relationship to nuclear weapons, it ignores
his vital role in rallying the world against nuclear catastrophe.

Aghast at the use of nuclear weapons in August 1945 to obliterate the
cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Einstein threw himself into efforts
to prevent worldwide nuclear annihilation. In September, responding to
a letter from Robert Hutchins, Chancellor of the University of
Chicago, about nuclear weapons, Einstein contended
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“as long as nations demand unrestricted sovereignty, we shall
undoubtedly be faced with still bigger wars, fought with bigger and
technologically more advanced weapons.” Thus, “the most important
task of intellectuals is to make this clear to the general public and
to emphasize over and over again the need to establish a
well-organized world government.” Four days later, he made the same
point to an interviewer, insisting that “the only salvation for
civilization and the human race lies in the creation of a world
government, with security of nations founded upon law.”

Determined to prevent nuclear war, Einstein repeatedly hammered away
at the need to replace international anarchy with a federation of
nations operating under international law. In October 1945, together
with other prominent Americans (among them Senator J. William
Fulbright, Supreme Court Justice Owen Roberts, and novelist Thomas
Mann), Einstein called for
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“Federal Constitution of the World.” That November, he returned to
this theme in an interview
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in the _Atlantic Monthly._ “The release of atomic energy has not
created a new problem,” he said.  “It has merely made more urgent
the necessity of solving an existing one…As long as there are
sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable.” And
war, sooner or later, would become nuclear war.

Einstein promoted these ideas through a burgeoning atomic
scientists’ movement in which he played a central role. To bring the
full significance of the atomic bomb to the public, the newly-formed
Federation of American Scientists put together an inexpensive
paperback, _One World or None_
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with individual essays by prominent Americans. In his contribution to
the book, Einstein wrote that he was “convinced there is only one
way out” and this necessitated creating “a supranational
organization” to “make it impossible for any country to wage
war.” This hard-hitting book, which first appeared in early 1946,
sold more than 100,000 copies
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Given Einstein’s fame and his well-publicized efforts to avert a
nuclear holocaust, in May 1946 he became chair of the
newly-formed Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists
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a fundraising and policymaking arm for the atomic scientists’
movement. In the Committee’s first fund appeal, Einstein warned
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“the unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our
modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled
catastrophe.”

Even so, despite the fact that Einstein, like most members of the
early atomic scientists’ movement, saw world government as the best
recipe for survival in the nuclear age, there seemed good reason to
consider shorter-range objectives. After all, the Cold War was
emerging and nations were beginning to formulate nuclear policies.
An early Atomic Scientists of Chicago statement
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prepared by Eugene Rabinowitch, editor of the _Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists_, underscored practical considerations. “Since world
government is unlikely to be achieved within the short time available
before the atomic armaments race will lead to an acute danger of armed
conflict,” it noted, “the establishment of international controls
must be considered as a problem of immediate urgency.” Consequently,
the movement increasingly worked in support of specific nuclear arms
control and disarmament measures.

In the context of the heightening Cold War, however, taking even
limited steps forward proved impossible. The Russian government
sharply rejected the Baruch Plan for international control of atomic
energy and, instead, developed its own atomic arsenal. In turn, U.S.
President Harry Truman, in February 1950, announced his decision to
develop a hydrogen bomb―a weapon a thousand times as powerful as its
predecessor. Naturally, the atomic scientists were deeply disturbed
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this lurch toward disaster. Appearing on television, Einstein called
once more for the creation of a “supra-national” government as the
only “way out of the impasse.” Until then, he declared,
“annihilation beckons.”

Despite the dashing of his hopes for postwar action to end the nuclear
menace, Einstein lent his support
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the following years to peace, nuclear disarmament, and world
government projects.

The most important of these ventures
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in 1955, when Bertrand Russell, like Einstein, a proponent of world
federation, conceived the idea of issuing a public statement by a
small group of the world’s most eminent scientists about the
existential peril nuclear weapons brought to modern war. Asked by
Russell for his support, Einstein was delighted to sign the statement
and did so in one of his last actions before his death that April. In
July, Russell presented the statement to a large meeting in London,
packed with representatives of the mass communications media. In the
shadow of the Bomb, it read
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“we have to learn to think in a new way…Shall we…choose death
because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal as human beings to
human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.”

This Russell-Einstein Manifesto, as it became known, helped trigger a
remarkable worldwide uprising against nuclear weapons
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the late 1950s and early 1960s, culminating in the world’s first
significant nuclear arms control measures. Furthermore, in later
years, it inspired legions of activists and world leaders. Among them
was the Soviet Union’s Mikhail Gorbachev, whose “new thinking,”
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brought a dramatic end to the Cold War and fostered substantial
nuclear disarmament.

The Manifesto thus provided an appropriate conclusion to Einstein’s
unremitting campaign to save the world from nuclear destruction.

_Lawrence S. Wittner ([link removed] ) is
Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author
of Confronting the Bomb
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University Press)._

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* Albert Einstein
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* Nuclear Disarmament
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