Scientists at War

The Causes and Consequences of World War II HIST 1301 | History Scientists at War Similar to World War I, World War II produced scientific and technical advancements that were eventually crucial to human survival. The connection between nations and scientists changed as a result of the nature of total conflict. Governments made investments in the creation of technology, both deadly and nonlethal, that were eventually crucial to the war effort and the security of the country. The British scientific community quickly turned its attention from pure research to projects supporting the war effort in the autumn of 1939. Radar, which provides early warning of enemy strikes, was developed as a result of advancements in our knowledge of radio waves. Subsequent developments introduced improved electronics, such microwaves and the earliest digital computer devices, into a variety of military uses, setting the stage for the post-war commercial expansion of electronics into daily life. The development of the earliest primitive computers was spurred by Allied efforts to crack the Nazi secret codes. Alan Turing, a British mathematician, and a group of scientists employed by the British Secret Service set out to crack the Nazi Enigma code, which at the time seemed indestructible. During this procedure, they created an electromagnetic device that finally succeeded in cracking the code by cycling through hundreds of thousands of different key/letter combinations in intercepted Nazi transmissions. The electrical Numerical Integrator and Computer, or ENIAC for short, was another computing innovation. Originally created to compute artillery trajectories for the US Army, it operated at an electrical speed rather than a mechanical one. By 1955, ENIAC is said to have solved more computations than humans had ever known how to do. Additionally, advancements in science and medicine that might save lives were created. During the war, a significant advancement in medicine enhanced the application and synthesis of the antibiotic penicillin. Charles Drew, an African American physician, made another life-saving discovery when he invented the method of converting blood plasma. This allowed blood plasma to be stored for extended periods of time and provided a viable alternative to whole blood transfusions. However, racial prejudice surfaced in 1941 when the American Red Cross accepted the War Department's designation of blood and plasma as "White" or "Negro." Due to the National Blood Bank's discriminatory and pseudoscientific policies, Dr. Drew resigned. There were hardly many events as momentous as the enormous mobilisation of public and scientific resources to construct the atomic bomb. Nuclear fission was discovered in December 1938 by German physicists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann by an unintentional splitting of atoms. A few months later, in an attempt to develop an atomic bomb, the Germans launched the Uranium Club, a covert weapons programme. German-born physicist Albert Einstein, who had recently immigrated to the United States, saw the implications of Hahn's work and sent President Roosevelt a letter authored by physicist Leo Szilard alerting him to this research and urging an increased U.S. commitment to conducting its own. Scientists from Britain and other countries began to believe in the possibility of an atomic bomb by the late 1930s. Teams of physicists, including some who were refugees from Nazi Germany, formed and started experimenting with nuclear chain reactions, which are the catalysts of an atomic explosion. The U.S. government increased this endeavour in August 1942 with the launch of the top-secret Manhattan Project. 600,000 workers started a frantic race to construct the first atomic weapon at dozens of locations around the United States, including Hanford in Washington State, Oak Ridge in Tennessee, and Los Alamos in New Mexico. Japan and Germany were also trying to construct their own at the same time. Other issues as well as technical ones hampered the German effort. Leading German scientists, for instance, had left their country and were helping with the Manhattan Project. Furthermore, Hitler was more in favour of developing V2 bombers for the air war with England than he was of using an atomic weapon. Yoshio Nishina, a scientist, was hired by the Japanese in 1941 to start project Ni-Go, an atomic bomb project. However, the project did not advance much due to the paucity of intelligence supplied by the Germans and the effective air strikes by the United States. The Manhattan Project eventually paid off in July 1945 when a bomb was successfully exploded in the Trinity Test in Alamogordo, New Mexico. The first successful test of an atomic bomb was characterised by project historian William L. Laurence as follows: "On that moment hung eternity." Time froze. The universe shrank to a single point. The sky appeared to have split and the earth to have opened. One got the impression of having been granted the honour to see the world come into being—to be there when the Lord spoke, "Let there be light" at the moment of creation. Vice President Harry S. Truman replaced President Roosevelt after the latter's unexpected death in April 1945. Truman was left to determine whether or not to employ the new weapon.