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The Atomic Bomb

Introduction

The Bertrand Russell Research Centre is offering an electronic version of an edition-in-progress of Russell’s first anti-nuclear writing. The electronic version has a range of hypertext capabilities woven into the traditional Collected Papers structure of headnote, chronology, text, annotation, textual notes, bibliographical index, and sometimes illustrations. Maroon-coloured passages link to bidirectional annotations; green passages, to bidirectional textual notes. It is hoped this feature will prove both inobtrusive and useful.

Russell’s paper “The Atomic Bomb” (published as “The Bomb and Civilization”) was written in 1945. The editor of this paper, which is scheduled to be in Volume 24, is Kenneth Blackwell. Let him know of any errors. A conventional view of the headnote, paper and apparatus as they are to be printed in the edition is available in PDF format. This view is searchable, saveable, and printable.

This article, as Dr. Blackwell states in the headnote, is Russell’s first response to the news of the devastation caused by the first atomic bomb. Though written hurriedly, and in a frantic moment of history, it announces themes that will dominate Russell’s political programme for years to come. The article announces the urgency of the search for a structure of world peace, and it reiterates his faith in scientific progress and his hope that the United States will assume leadership in creating the global structures that are necessary for the survival of the human race. Russell’s mood is one which combines the composure of the sage and the panic of the prophetic Cassandra. As a man of science he wishes to reassure the public concerning the scientific achievement. He advises his readers that “The atomic bomb embodies the results of a combination of genius and patience as remarkable as any in the history of mankind”, that the men whose work made this bomb possible were for the most part “both high-minded and public spirited”, and finally that we should not look upon the bomb as a punishment “for impiety in inquiring too closely into the hidden secrets of nature”. On the contrary he reaffirms his faith that “Science is capable of conferring enormous boons.”

But the panic is equally vivid. Russell is clearly convinced that now that the weapon has been unleashed, a war for the possession of uranium is almost inevitable. Even before the war has ended, Russell is convinced of the outbreak of rivalry between the wartime Allies, the United States and the Soviet Union. He is convinced that another war is inevitable. After proposing and then dismissing the alternative of a Hobbesian contract in which all the nations of the world surrender their power and constitute a world government, or the next best solution, an American putsch in which, armed with the only available atomic weapons, the government of the United States will set up a world government by force (a programme which he advocated since the closing stage of the First World War), he ends with the hope that after the next world war “some one Power will emerge with such preponderant strength as to be able to establish a peaceful hegemony over the rest of the globe.”

Louis Greenspan (1934–2018)
Past Director, Russell Editorial Project

Contents

Headnote

Chronology

“The Atomic Bomb” (1945)

Annotation

Textual Notes

Bibliographical Index

Headnote

Under its published title “The Bomb and Civilization”, Russell’s first known comment of any kind on the atomic bomb appeared as an article in the Glasgow Forward, 39, no. 33 (18 Aug. 1945): 1, 3 (B&R C45.14). He never reprinted the article, and it has remained largely unknown, even to histories of the anti-nuclear movement such as Wittner 1993. Forward, which had previously published Russell (see papers 33, 43 and 44), supported the Independent Labour Party. The article is notable for its call for a “new political thinking”.

The atom-bombing of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 destroyed four square miles of the city. Three days later Russell was at work on this article. We know this because midway he remarks that he has just learned of the explosion of the second atomic bomb, over Nagasaki. This bomb was dropped about 2 a.m. GMT (Weintraub 1995, 482; Ham 2012, 364). He abandons the exposition and history of atomic theory to dwell on the danger to civilization posed by the new weaponry, and immediately states: “The prospect for the human race is sombre beyond all precedent…. A great deal of new political thinking will be necessary if utter disaster is to be averted.” This is in contrast to the guarded optimism of paper 48, finished a few days prior to the nuclear attack on Japan and perhaps, as a consequence, not published. In the last sentence quoted, Russell began using language that would occur repeatedly as he wrote about the prospect of nuclear warfare. In a cognate paper a month later (61) he wrote, “we must learn a new kind of political thinking” (324: 17–18). When the Soviets exploded their first atomic bomb, he gave a new paper the title “The Bomb: Can Disaster Be Averted?” (1949d). In “Man’s Peril” he wrote: “All, equally, are in peril, and, if the peril is understood, there is hope that they may collectively avert it. We have to learn to think in a new way” (1954a; Papers 28: 86). He closely reiterated these lines in the Russell–Einstein Manifesto (ibid., 28: 318).

Russell does not refer to the Manhattan project by name, although he may well have been cognizant of the physicists’ pre-war curiosity about producing an atomic explosion. By the time of writing he knew of the 1938 discovery of nuclear fission and that scientists on both sides of World War II had been working on the problem. Newspapers carried this information in early days of the nuclear age (see The Times 1945q and, there officially on the bomb’s origins, Churchill 1945a). The Times covered military and scientific aspects extensively (1945p, 1945r, 1945s). Some of Russell’s information may have come from these sources.

The main outline and some details of his international policy for the next few years are visible, complete with an argument for forcing world government and a prediction that the U.S. would not internationalize the atomic secrets.

Russell could not comment here on whether the atomic bomb hastened the end of the war. Japan did not surrender until several days later, on 14 August. At the same time preparations were under way for massive Allied land invasions (Giangreco 2017). It remains uncertain whether it was the atomic bomb or the prospect of the invasions, including that of the Russians, which brought Japan to surrender. It was “a common observation that Japan at war’s end was vastly weaker than anyone outside the country had imagined—or anyone inside it had acknowledged” (Dower 1999, 44). However, this is not (Giangreco’s conclusion (see his 2017, xvii–xix).

The copy-text is a photocopy and scan of the manuscript, which Russell titled “The Atomic Bomb” (RA3 Rec. Acq. 840). The manuscript survived in the papers of Forward’s editor, Emrys Hughes (1894–1969; soon to be elected M.P. at this time). Its survival as the marked-up copy for the compositor is unusual in this volume. Additional changes were made, possibly to save space. There is no evidence that Russell read proofs of the newspaper publication, of which he kept two copies. Manuscript and print were collated. Several departures from Russell’s manuscript were made, none of which is accepted here. The substitution in the printed text of “hear” for the manuscript’s “learn” was a misreading of Russell’s hand, as was “expelled” for “repelled”. Forward silently deleted several commas in typesetting Russell’s manuscript, and others were inserted. The substantive variants are recorded in the Textual Notes.



Chronology (selected)

Life/Related Events Writings/Broadcasts
26 June 1945 U.N. charter signed. On the BBC Brains Trust.
5 July 1945 General election in U.K.
16 July 1945 First A-bomb tested at Alamogordo, New
Mexico.
17 July–2 Aug. 1945 Stalin, Truman, Churchill (replaced
by Attlee on 28 July) attend Potsdam
Conference.
22 July 1945 9, “Make Divorce Easier”
published.
26 July 1945 U.K. general election results: Labour victorious with 48% of
the vote and 393 of 615 seats. Churchill resigns; Attlee becomes
Prime Minister.
U.S., U.K. and China
demand Japan’s unconditional
surrender (“Potsdam Declaration”)
.
26–28 July 1945 10, “Proposal for a Free Rational Thought
Club”
written.
2 Aug. 1945 48, “Hopes and Fears for Tomorrow” written
shortly
thereafter but before 6 Aug.
6 Aug. 1945 U.S. drops A-bomb on
Hiroshima
.
8 Aug. 1945 Soviets declare war on Japan.
London Agreement sets rules
for Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals.
9 Aug. 1945 U.S. drops A-bomb on Nagasaki. Soviets invade Manchuria.
London Agreement, setting up an International Military Tribunal for
the trial of war criminals, is signed by U.S., U.K., France and
U.S.S.R.
11–25 Aug. 1945 At Hotel Portmeirion, N. Wales.
14 Aug. 1945 Victory in Japan Day, after massive bombing raid
previous night.
16 Aug. 1945 U.S. Smyth report (Atomic Energy for Military Purposes)
published.
18 Aug. 1945 58, “The Bomb and Civilization”
published.
21 Aug. 1945 U.S. abruptly ends Lend-Lease.
Sir John Anderson to be
chairman of U.K. Advisory Committee
on Atomic Energy
1 Sept. 1945 Writes to Gamel Brenan that
preventive war is the only way to
save the world, but he would never
advocate it.

The Atomic Bomb
(published as “The Bomb and Civilization”, 18 Aug. 1945)

It is impossible to imagine a more dramatic and horrifying combination of scientific triumph with political and moral failure than has been shown to the world in the destruction of Hiroshima. From the scientific point of view, the atomic bomb embodies the results of a combination of genius and patience as remarkable as any in the history of mankind.
Atoms are so minute that it might have seemed impossible to know as much as we do about them. A million million bundles, each containing a million million hydrogen atoms, would weigh about a gram and a half. Each hydrogen atom consists of a nucleus, and an electron going round the nucleus, as the earth goes round the sun. The distance from the nucleus to the electron is usually about a hundred-millionth of a centimetre; the electron and the nucleus are supposed to be so small that if they could be crowded together it would take about ten million million on end to fill a centimetre. The nucleus has positive electricity, the planetary electron an equal amount of negative electricity; the nucleus is about 1850 times as heavy as the electron. The hydrogen atom, which I have been describing, is the simplest of atoms, but the atom used in the atomic bomb is at the other end of the scale.

Uranium, the element chiefly used in the atomic bomb, has the heaviest and most complex of atoms. Normally there are 92 planetary electrons, while the nucleus is made up of about 238 neutrons (which have mass without electricity), 238 positrons (which have positive electricity and very little mass) and 146 electrons, which are like positrons except that their electricity is negative. Positrons repel each other, and so do electrons; but a positron and electron attract each other. The overcrowding of mutually attracted and repelled particles in the tiny space of the uranium nucleus involves enormous potentially explosive forces. Uranium is slightly radio-active, which means that some of its atoms break up naturally. But a quicker process than this is required for the making of an atomic bomb.

Rutherford found out, about thirty years ago, that little bits could be chipped off an atom by bombardment. In 1939 a more powerful process was discovered: it was found that neutrons, entering the nucleus of a uranium atom, would cause it to split into two roughly equal halves, which would rush off and disrupt other uranium atoms in the neighbourhood, and so set up a train of explosions so long as there was any of the right kind of uranium to be encountered.

Ever since the beginning of the war, the Germans on the one side, and the British and Americans on the other, have been working on the possibility of an atomic explosive. One of the difficulties was to make sure that it would not be too effective: there was a fear that it might destroy not only the enemy, but the whole planet, and naturally experiments were risky. But the difficulties were overcome, and now the possibility which scientists have foreseen for over forty years has entered into the world of practical politics. The labours of Rutherford and Bohr, of Heisenberg and Schrödinger, and a number of other distinguished men, the ablest men of our time, and most of them both high-minded and public-spirited, have borne fruit: in an instant, by means of one small bomb, every vestige of life throughout four square miles of a populous city has been exterminated. As I write, I learn that a second bomb has been dropped on Nagasaki.

The prospect for the human race is sombre beyond all precedent. Mankind are faced with a clear-cut alternative: either we shall all perish, or we shall have to acquire some slight degree of common sense. A great deal of new political thinking will be necessary if utter disaster is to be averted.

For the moment, fortunately, only the United States is in a position to manufacture atomic bombs. The immediate result must be a rapid end to the Japanese war, whether by surrender or by extermination. The power of the United States in international affairs is, for the time being, immeasurably increased; a month ago, Russia and the United States seemed about equal in warlike strength, but now this is no longer the case. This situation, however, will not last long, for it must be assumed that before long Russia and the British Empire will set to work to make these bombs for themselves. Uranium has suddenly become the most precious of raw materials, and nations will probably fight for it as hitherto they have fought for oil. In the next war, if atomic bombs are used on both sides, it is to be expected that all large cities on both sides will be completely wiped out; so will all scientific laboratories and all governmental centres. Communications will be disrupted, and the world will be reduced to a number of small independent agricultural communities living on local produce, as they did in the Dark Ages. But presumably none of them will have either the resources or the skill for the manufacture of atomic bombs.

There is another and a better possibility, if men have the wisdom to make use of the few years during which it will remain open to them. Either war or civilization must end, and if it is to be war that ends, there must be an international authority with the sole power to make the new bombs. All supplies of uranium must be placed under the control of the international authority, which shall have the right to safeguard the ore by armed forces. As soon as such an authority has been created, all existing atomic bombs, and all plants for their manufacture, must be handed over to it. And of course the international authority must have sufficient armed forces to protect whatever has been handed over to it. If this system were once established, the international authority would be irresistible, and wars would cease. At worst, there might be occasional brief revolts that would be easily quelled.

But I fear all this is Utopian. The United States will not consent to any pooling of armaments, and no more will Soviet Russia. Each will insist on retaining the means of exterminating the other, on the ground that the other is not to be trusted.

If America were more imperialistic there would be another possibility, less Utopian and less desirable, but still preferable to the total obliteration of civilized life. It would be possible for Americans to use their position of temporary superiority to insist upon disarmament, not only in Germany and Japan, but everywhere except in the United States, or at any rate in every country not prepared to enter into a close military alliance with the United States, involving compulsory sharing of military secrets. During the next few years, this policy could be enforced; if one or two wars were necessary, they would be brief, and would soon end in decisive American victory. In this way a new League of Nations could be formed under American leadership, and the peace of the world could be securely established. But I fear that respect for international justice will prevent Washington from adopting this policy.

In view of the reluctance of mankind to form voluntarily an effective international authority, we must hope, and perhaps we may expect, that after the next world war some one Power will emerge with such preponderant strength as to be able to establish a peaceful hegemony over the rest of the globe. The next war, unless it comes very soon, will endanger all civilized government; but if any civilized government survives and achieves supremacy, there will again be a possibility of ordered progress and of the utilization of science for happiness rather than for destruction.

One is tempted to feel that Man is being punished, through the agency of his own evil passions, for impiety in inquiring too closely into the hidden secrets of Nature. But such a feeling is unduly defeatist. Science is capable of conferring enormous boons: it can lighten labour, abolish poverty, and enormously diminish disease. But if science is to bring benefits instead of death, we must bring to bear upon social, and especially international, organization, intelligence of the same high order that has enabled us to discover the structure of the atom. To do this effectively we must free ourselves from the domination of ancient shibboleths, and think freely, fearlessly, and rationally about the new and appalling problems with which the human race is confronted by its conquest of scientific power.

Annotation

  • Atoms In The ABC of Atoms (1923a), 9–10, Russell writes in much the same detail and with the same figures about the minuteness of atoms. He predicted of nuclear research that “It is probable that it will ultimately be used for making more deadly explosives and projectiles than any yet
    invented” (1923a, 11; quoted by Wood 1957, 152).
  • Rutherford Ernest Rutherford (1871–1937), New Zealand-born British physicist. He was Professor of Physics at McGill University 1898–1907, when he left for Manchester. He won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1908. In 1919 he became director of the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge.
  • more powerful process Lise Meitner and O.R. Frisch concluded that the results of experiments done by the German chemist, Otto Hahn, in December 1938 could only have been obtained as the result of nuclear fission. Frisch verified their assumption with experiments done in Copenhagen in January 1939 (Ham 2012, 101–2).
  • the Germans on the one side, and the British and Americans German research was led by Werner Heisenberg. The British and Americans at first worked separately, but during the Quebec Conference of August 1943 it was agreed they would work together. In 1951 Russell was to boast (his own word) of the British contribution and could not think of any Americans who had “contributed anything of any great importance at this stage” (Papers 26: 502).
  • foreseen for over forty years 1905 was the year of publication of Einstein’s special theory of relativity. Wittner (1993, 4) discusses H.G. Wells’ The World Set Free (1914a), which depicts a war fought with nuclear weapons.
  • Bohr Niels Bohr (1885–1962), Danish physicist, worked with Rutherford at Manchester before returning to Denmark. After escaping from Denmark in late 1943, he spent the remainder of World War II in the United States working on the Manhattan project. Bohr later favoured the internationalization of atomic weapons. Russell had gotten to know Bohr well on the former’s 1935 Scandinavian lecture tour. Indeed, Bohr tutored Russell at that time in quantum physics and indeterminism (Stevenson 2011, 115, 117).
  • Heisenberg Werner Karl Heisenberg (1901–1976), German physicist. With Max Born, he worked in quantum mechanics, proposing the uncertainty principle in the 1920s. He won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1932. Russell got to know him in Copenhagen in 1935 (Stevenson 2011, 121n.1), and made his acquaintance again at a meeting on 3 March 1948 at the Master’s Lodge, Christ’s College, Cambridge. They corresponded and cooperated over Pugwash in the 1950s.
  • Schrödinger Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961), Austrian physicist. He won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1933 and left Germany for Oxford the same year. He spent World War II in Dublin. Russell and Schrödinger later corresponded.
  • one small bomb Some British “Blockbuster” bombs, and especially the “Grand Slam”, weighed more than “Little Boy”, the uranium bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. This bomb weighed 9,700 pounds and was ten feet long with a diameter of 28 inches. Russell’s point, of course, concerns the size of the
    bomb relative to its target. New was the much greater explosive power (15–20 kilotons) of the “small bomb” and the slightly greater power of the plutonium bomb that levelled much of Nagasaki. It was also a fission bomb. In November 1945, in a House of Lords speech (paper 66, 1945, Russell forecast the development of the fusion bomb. For his still developing early views on thermonuclear weapons, see Papers 26: lxii–lxiv, 85. He was later to write (1961d ) on the U.S.S.R.’s 50-megaton hydrogen bomb, the most powerful yet exploded.
  • every vestige of life throughout four square miles It was three days before photographic evidence was made public. Cf. the
    headline in The Times: “Hiroshima Inferno; 4 Square Miles Obliterated; Huge Death Roll” (1945r).
    Devastation outside the city centre was not total, and lingering deaths from the survivors’
    radiation sickness were yet to come (Ham 2012, Chap. 21).
  • surrender or by extermination. Emperor Hirohito decided Japan should surrender on 10 August 1945, but the Japanese military did not agree to do so until 14 August. See Weinberg 1994, 890, and Weintraub 1995, Chap. 33. For the last severe months of the war of atrocity with Japan, see Beevor 2012, 772–4.
  • a month ago This was a reasonable belief at the time, since contested. In early July 1945 the U.S.S.R. had as yet no Far Eastern military presence to speak of but was overwhelmingly strong in Eastern Europe, Austria and East Germany. The U.S. was rapidly defeating the Japanese forces, except on the
    home islands Kyushu and Honshu, and was redirecting its troops from Europe to the planned invasion of Japan. Both the U.S.S.R. and U.S. had reached a peak of conventional weapons production. Thus in all factors considered together, they might have seemed equal in “warlike strength” before the explosion of America’s plutonium test bomb on 16 July 1945. It was the distribution of their respective strengths that was very unequal.
  • British Empire Since 1931 the empire’s dominions and colonies had been known as the British Commonwealth of Nations (and from 1949 the Commonwealth of Nations). Russell began referring to it as “the British Commonwealth” in 1947, in which year India became a self-governing dominion.
  • make these bombs for themselves The U.S. Atomic Energy Act (1946; in effect 1 Jan. 1947) restricted the exchange of information on atomic
    energy, thus reducing Anglo-American cooperation, even though Roosevelt and Churchill had agreed on it. On 8 January 1947 Attlee and his
    cabinet secretly authorized the manufacture of a British atomic bomb. The first British atomic test was on 3 October 1952. The Soviets exploded
    their first atomic bomb on 29 August 1949. They had been working separately on a bomb and accelerated their programme after Potsdam.
  • control of the international authority One such authority that developed in the next two years was the Atomic Development
    Authority. See the papers 70a (B&R B85), 73 (B&R C47.12), where Russell discusses the A.D.A. See also in this volume (Papers 24) the
    annotation at A121:14.
  • League of Nations Although the United Nations Organization did not come into existence until 24 October 1945, the founding San Francisco
    Conference had been over since 25 June and the Charter signed on the 26th. Russell, who was critical of the veto power on
    the Security Council, appears here to dismiss the U.N.O.
  • ordered progress Russell often invoked this faith of his youth: “We believed in ordered progress by means of politics and free discussion” (Russell 1967, 1: 70). See, e.g., 379 in this volume and Papers 13: 137.

Textual Notes

The links in the textual notes are to the passages in green type in Russell’s final text.

The copy-text is a photocopy plus a colour scan (RA3 Rec. Acq. 840) of the manuscript (“CT”) in the Emrys Hughes papers, National Library of Scotland. It is foliated 1, 2–8, seems to measure 211 x 268 mm., and is written in ink. An editorial hand rewrote, none too clearly, more than three dozen of Russell’s words in decipherment for the compositor. The same hand (or hands—sometimes with a blue pencil) added fifteen paragraph breaks and the instruction “Double Column”, all of which are ignored here. “45” is the publication, “The Bomb and Civilization”, Forward, Glasgow, 39, no. 33 (18 Aug. 1945): 1, 3. It has six section heads, also ignored here as non-authorial; so is a pair of non-Russellian-drawn commas around the restrictive clause “which scientists have foreseen for over forty years”.

Bibliographical Index

Instead of page numbers, links are provided to the references to
these citations.

  • BEEVOR, ANTONY, 2012. The Second World War. New York: Little, Brown and Company.
    Referred to: surrender
  • BLACKWELL, KENNETH, and HARRY RUJA, B&R. A Bibliography of Bertrand Russell. 3 vols. London: Routledge, 1994.
    Referred to: headnote, control of the international authority
  • CHURCHILL, WINSTON, 1945a. “Britain’s Share; Statement by Mr. Churchill”. 7 Aug., p. 4.
    Referred to: headnote
  • DOWER, JOHN W., 1999. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. New York: W.W. Norton.
    Referred to: headnote
  • GIANGRECO, D.M., 2017. Hell to Pay: Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan, 1945–47. Revised edition. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute
    Press.
    Referred to: headnote
  • HAM, PAUL, 2012. Hiroshima Nagasaki. London: Doubleday.
    Referred to: headnote, more powerful process, vestige of life
  • RUSSELL, BERTRAND, 1923a. The ABC of Atoms. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner. (B&R A45) (Russell’s library.)
    Referred to: atoms
  • ——1945 “The International Situation”. Parliamentary Debates, Lords, (5), 138 (28 Nov. 1945): cols. 87–92.
    Referred to: one small bomb
  • —— 1949d.“The Bomb: Can Disaster Be Averted?”. Unpublished ms. RA1 220.019200.
    Referred to: headnote
  • —— 1954a. “Man’s Peril from the Hydrogen Bomb”. The Listener, 52 (30 Dec.): 1,135–6. (B&R C54.35) Reprinted as “Man’s Peril” in 1956 and as 16 in Papers 28.
    Referred to: headnote
  • ——1956. Portraits from Memory and Other Essays. London: George Allen and Unwin. (B&R 102) (Russell’s library.)
    Referred to: Man’s Peril
  • —— 1961d. “Thoughts on the 50-Megaton Bomb” New Statesman, 62 (3 Nov.): 638. (B&R C61.40)
    Referred to: one small bomb
  • —— 1967. The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell. Vol. 1: 1872–1914. (B&R A142.1a) London: George Allen and Unwin.
    Referred to: ordered progress
  • —— Papers 13. Prophecy and Dissent, 1914–16. Edited by Richard A. Rempel et al. (The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, Vol. 13.) (B&R AA6) London: Unwin Hyman, 1988.
    Referred to: ordered progress
  • —— Papers 26. Cold War Fears and Hopes, 1950–52. Edited by Andrew G. Bone. (The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, Vol. 26.) (B&R AA20) London: Routledge, 2020.
    Referred to: the Germans, one small bomb
  • —— Papers 28. Man’s Peril, 1954–55. Edited by Andrew G. Bone. (The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, Vol. 28.) (B&R AA16) London: Routledge, 2003.
    Referred to: headnote
  • STEVENSON, MICHAEL D., 2011. “ ‘No Poverty, Much Comfort, Little Wealth’: Bertrand Russell’s 1935 Scandinavian Tour””. Russell, 31 (2011): 101–40.
    Referred to: Bohr, Heisenberg
  • THE TIMES, London, 1945p. “First Atom Bomb Hits Japan”. 7 Aug., p. 4.
    Referred to: headnote
  • —— 1945q. “The New Chemistry”; Releasing the Energy That Runs the Sun; Atomic Bombs Explained”. 8 Aug., p. 5.
    Referred to: headnote
  • —— 1945r. “Hiroshima Inferno; 4 Square Miles Obliterated; Huge Death Roll”. 9 Aug., p. 4.
    Referred to: headnote, vestige of life
  • —— 1945s. “Atom Bomb on Nagasaki; Second City Hit; Fleet Attack on Honshu”. 10 Aug., p. 4.
    Referred to: headnote
  • WEINBERG, GERHARD L., 1994. A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    Referred to: surrender
  • WEINTRAUB, STANLEY, 1995. The Last Great Victory: The End of World War II July/August 1945. New York: Dutton.
    Referred to: headnote, surrender
  • WELLS, H.G., 1914a. The World Set Free. London: Macmillan.
    Referred to: foreseen
  • WITTNER, LAWRENCE S., 1993. The Struggle against the Bomb. Vol. I: One World or None: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement through 1953. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.
    Referred to: headnote, foreseen
  • WOOD, ALAN, 1957. Bertrand Russell, the Passionate Sceptic. London: George Allen & Unwin. (Russell’s library.)
    Referred to: Atoms