In his book, "Human Smoke", Nicholson Baker explores diaries, newspaper accounts, letters and other documents. He mines these sources for illuminating comments about the years following The Great War and leading up to World War Two. All of these gleanings have been collected and published in this book.
Much of the material has been forgotten or was never noticed by the average joe like me. Some of it is obscure, but all of it is relevant to the human condition.
In one quote from "Human Smoke", Mr. Baker shares a reference to Albert Einstein’s pacifist views.
"If only 2 percent of men liable for war service were to refuse", Einstein said, "there would not be enough jails in the world to take care of them".
He and Mrs. Einstein got a standing ovation. It was December 14, 1930.
A year before that, Einstein had publicly declared that if a war broke out he would "unconditionally refuse to do war service, direct or indirect… regardless of how the cause of the war should be judged."
Later in his life, however, Einstein modified his pacifist views somewhat.He became very concerned about the possibility of Germany creating an atomic bomb and advocated that the U.S. build one first.
Nevertheless, Einstein looked beyond Germany to the problems that such a weapon could bring to humankind. He wrote to physicist Niels Bohr in December 1944, "When the war is over, then there will be in all countries a pursuit of secret war preparations with technological means which will lead inevitably to preventative wars and to destruction even more terrible than the present destruction of life."
The atomic bombings of Japan occurred three months after the surrender of Germany. For a year after the atomic bombing of Japan Einstein kept silent. Then a short article on the front page of the New York Times contained his view: "Prof. Albert Einstein… said that he was sure that President Roosevelt would have forbidden the atomic bombing of Hiroshima had he been alive".
Einstein later wrote, "I have always condemned the use of the atomic bomb against Japan."
In November 1954, five months before his death, Einstein summarized his feelings about his role in the creation of the atomic bomb: "I made one great mistake in my life… when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made; but there was some justification – the danger that the Germans would make them."
For more on the life of Albert Einstein, see –
Ronald Clark, Einstein: The Life and Times
Otto Nathan & Heinz Norden, editors, Einstein on Peace
Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb
Spencer Weart & Gertrud Weiss Szilard, editors., Leo Szilard: His Version of the Facts
