Cultural History of Animals in Antiquity Book

(review is incomplete.)

Recently while skimming a copy of "Physical Review Letters" I read a short essay about their founding editor, Dr Goudsmit. It recommended reading this book, his WWII memoir. Goudsmit had a mission which places him at a critical locus in scientific history: in 1944 and 1945 he was assigned to travel to Germany with the invading American Army, capture the top German nuclear bomb scientists, and interrogate them, to find out how close Nazi Germany was to getting the bomb. For anyone who was intrigued by the mysteries in the stage play "Copenhagen," Goudsmit's work stands at the very beginning of those political/historical/scientific questions.

The book is a brisk read, cheerful recounting the excitement of cloak-and-dagger work, the nuisance of Army bureaucracy, and various amusing anecdotes of wartime Europe and army life. In this regard, it is no different than many "war memoirs." Published a little more than a year after the war ended, it shows signs of being hastily written and edited, a quick book indented to make the author a bit of money and raise a voice in on public matters. Inexplicable redundancies appear, for instance the story of a Gestapo inquiry about Heisenberg is repeated two or three times without advancing any new information it.

Goudsmit was an accomplished theoretical physicist who had trained in Europe with some of the world's best minds, and contributed significantly to atomic and nuclear theory in the 1930s. For some unexplained reason, he wasn't tapped like many of his colleagues to work on the Manhattan Project, and instead spent the early war years at the MIT Radiation Lab developing radar. When the Army asked him to lead the "Alsos mission," it was his chance to do something critical for his country at the forefront of his expertise. However, Goudsmit's mission turned out to be something of a fizzle, because it soon became clear that the Nazis were nowhere near getting the bomb. Especially after this revelation, the Alsos team was never very well staffed, and its duties devolved into arresting the important German physicists and giving them quick interrogations. Tnen they were shipped to Britain to be interned, and that's where they were at the moment of their epiphany, i.e. when the news of Hiroshima broke. Sadly, by that time, they were well out of Goudsmit's hands, or he would have had a much more interesting story to tell.

Much of his lack of knowledge (e.g. hiroshima) was deliberately the army keeping info from him so he couldn't reveal it to this captives or in the unlikely event that he himself was capture.

Despite having only a limited role in uncovering the Nazi atom bomb program, Goudsmit makes a very good attempt at a comprehensive description of that program, and tries to answer the question of why they did not in fact get the bomb. compelling case that german scientists failed to make progress not because of conscience but a variety of factors: departure of persecuted scientists, poor management, hierarchy that kept younger scientists from usefully challenging the work of their elders, infighting among government agencies and cliques of scientists, lack of initiative, the meddling of managers promoted for their Nazi loyalty and not scientific talent, antisemitism which prevented widespread teaching of Einstein's work and therefore stunted the education of new students, time wasted protecting the laboratories from allied bombing

shabby politicking by e.g. weiszacker(?) who sucked up to Nazi leaders, and self-delusional attitudes of e.g. heisenberg and ???? who thought they would save German science

side topics

german scientific organization and bureaucracy

industrial espionage

slave labor

goudsmit's personal meetings with old colleagues, the strange experience of for instance interrogating an old mentor and ordering him arrested.

his visit to his parents' abandoned apartment

interrogation and intelligence methods. most important to get documents, interrogation seldom worked unless guided by documents. ardent nazis broke and talked, while pure scientists kept quiet.

almost no mention whatsoever of russians (despite several mentions of japanese!) obvious question on the mind of someone in 1947 picking up this book is, why didn't the Nazis get the bomb, and what can this tell us about whether the russians will get one?!