Skip to main content
History

History

Atomic secrets and the red scare

07 May 1999

American Science in an Age of Anxiety: Scientists, Anticommunism and the Cold War
Jessica Wang
1999 University of North Carolina Press 392pp £39.95/$49.95hb £15.95/$19.95pb

The trial

Almost everyone has heard of the “Oppenheimer affair”. It took place between 1953-54 when the father of the atomic bomb, Robert Oppenheimer, was subjected to a humiliating show trial by the Atomic Energy Commission and subsequently permanently stripped of his security clearance. But most people, including most historians of science, know little else about the fate of the scientific community in the “red scare” period that stretched from the end of the Second World War to the excesses of the McCarthy era. Jessica Wang’s book is important, ground-breaking and compelling because, for the first time, it critically and carefully studies American scientists’ encounters with anticommunism in the period leading up to the Oppenheimer affair.

Wang’s story includes many different types of scientists, but it is dominated by nuclear science, both because of the “atomic euphoria” of the post-war age and, most importantly, because of the widespread belief among politicians and governmental officials that there were “atomic secrets” that the Soviet Union might obtain from the Americans and thereby endanger national security. One of the telling themes in Wang’s book is that, although no significant or serious scientist failed to disparage such simplistic claims, influential politicians nevertheless held to their beliefs and thereby provided the rationale for the pervasive, intrusive and ultimately destructive rituals of anticommunism. These included the mandatory, voluntary and not-so-voluntary loyalty oaths, the security-clearance investigations by the FBI, the security-clearance hearings, and the denial by the State Department of visas to foreign scientists trying to enter the US and to American scientists trying to leave the US.

But Wang argues, or at least implies, that it need not have turned out that way. In the immediate post-war period, scientists’ organizations like the Federation of Atomic Scientists wielded a significant influence in both science policy and politics, culminating in the successful fight to entrust nuclear energy and nuclear weapons to a civilian agency – the Atomic Energy Commission – rather than to the military. The federation was successful precisely because its members publicly organized support for their position among the greater population as well as among influential politicians, and publicly asserted their right, as experts, to have their say and to be heard.

However, as the Cold War turned frigid, as Americans learned of the Soviet atomic bomb and of the espionage that probably contributed to it, and as scientists and scientific organizations felt the heat of anticommunism, they retreated from their public positions and tried instead to negotiate behind closed doors for limited goals and with limited success. This pragmatic strategy initially appeared successful in ameliorating the anticommunist purge, but in the long run it meant an abdication of any significant influence on science and security policy.

Along with chapters that investigate these broad themes, Wang also devotes a significant portion of her book to case studies of individual scientists, some famous and others not, who were caught up in the gears of anticommunism. They include Eugene Rabinowitch, Robert Vought, Harlow Shapley, Edward Condon, and John and Hildred Blewett.These short biographies really make clear how wrenching, Kafkaesque and ultimately evil it was to have yourself, your friends, relatives and acquaintances investigated, to have your loyalty questioned, and your career either hampered or ended, without due process of law and the most basic rights granted to the accused.

Perhaps the most troubling message of this book is how the overwhelming majority of Americans reacted to loyalty investigations, security-clearance hearings, visa restrictions, news of the fate of other colleagues and, of course, the show trial of Oppenheimer. Although there were exceptions, most American scientists chose not to question the system of anticommunism – what is often know as McCarthyism (although as Wang demonstrates, it long predated the infamous Senator from Wisconsin) – but rather to defend themselves by asserting their loyalty and thereby tacitly accepting the validity of the inquisition. What Wang does not emphasize, because it lies outside the scope of her investigation, is that most American scientists nevertheless actively sought to serve what Eisenhower eventually called the “military-industrial complex”, either merely by taking research monies, or by working to expand and modernize the US nuclear arsenal and other defence capabilities.

Wang’s book is one of the most important and significant to appear in the last decade in the literature on the history of 20th-century science. She has taken a very important topic that, for whatever reason, the community of historians of science had collectively avoided, and provided a well researched, judiciously argued and subtle history of the period. Her book will serve well as a foundation for a generation of historians who will hopefully follow her lead and examine in even greater detail the period in which political ideology decisively influenced the practice of science in the United States.

Related events

Copyright © 2024 by IOP Publishing Ltd and individual contributors