From: Walter Felscher (walter.felscher@uni-tuebingen.de)
Date: Thu May 27 1999 - 10:56:27 PDT
Dear Mr. Hart,
you write " May I ask how you come by such knowledge ? "
Well, there is nothing in my article on the a-bomb which is not
public knowlege and appeared, at some time, in the newspapers. I
was 14 when the war ended and, therefore, mentally awake enough
to notice when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed - after all,
I had experienced myself much conventional bombing before. And
so, of course, one was interested to know how these explosions
had been brought about. There was plenty of popular literature
about the basic physics underlying their background, e.g. the atomic
model of Niels Bohr; it was easy to understand and some of it I
read. Already by 1950, I think, everything I mentioned was well
publicised. The one exception may be that part of the bracketed
comment on the German development of rocketry which referred to
the use of forced labour (mainly Russian POWs and inmates of
concentration camps); of that one became aware only during the
last 15 years.
Looking at it from a more philosophical point of view, both the
developments of atomic power and rocketry, independent of their
grisly origins. must be counted as absolute triumphs of science
and the human mind. On the one hand, consider Bohr's model of the
atom as a kind of immensely tiny planetary system. A nice picture,
but of course nothing but a model, a picture of things so small that
man will never be able to see them. A picture that can only be
verified indirectly by measuring possible effects. Not a proof of the
deed, but a proof exclusively from indirect evidence. And a picture,
of course, from which no practical consequences would arise were
its gaps not filled in by extremely complicated differential equations.
But the solutions, predicted by solving these equations, turned out
to manifest themselves: a bomb was built that worked !
And on the other hand, look at the heavenly bodies. When Copernicus
invented the solar-central hypothesis, setting it against the
earth-central hypothesis of Ptolemy that had worked to explain the
planetary motions with a precision sufficient for centuries, the
only advantage that new hypothesis had was its technical simplicity;
during the first decades, the predictions computed from the new
hypothesis were in no way more precise than those arrived at from
the old one. There then came Kepler, came Newton, came Langrange,
all refining the theory. In the second part of the last century,
the American mathematician Hill was the first to present a precise
description of the movements of the moon. But all of it remained theory,
theory on paper and verified only indirectly by looking through
large telescopes. And then came rocketry which, working from these
mathematical descriptions, sent satellites around the earth, a man
to the moon and orbiters to Mars. The theory worked !
***
As for the remark that I "forgot" not mention Lise Meitner: I did not
mention her for the precisely the reason the questioner herself stated:
she was not involved with the particular experiment whose publication
caused Einstein's letter to the Roosevelt. Of course would Lise Meitner
have to be mentioned would I have wanted to write a history of research
of what later was called particle physics - as well as Marie Curie
or Ir\ene Joliot-Curie. But I really find it annoying to read the
insinuation that I "forgot" and the feminist whine about not satisfying
their quota requirements.
I shall close with two memories concerning the song "Lili Marleen".
I do not know where I heard it first, but I do remember an evening
in the apartment of acquaintances of my parents which we were visiting
in Berlin. At ten at night, the talk was broken off, the large radio
set was turned on, Mr. Moeller carefully adjusted the dial to the
position he knew that the "Soldatensender Belgrad" could be found
[ the dial scales contained only the names of the standard stations
plus a rough kHz indication ]. The station came in, very weak, and
everyone turned towards the loudspeaker. A few words from the announcer
still, then the song. Of course, all of us listened silently. But
when the song was over, the radio turned, the silence lasted for
some minutes. I had an almost haunted feeling: what would become of
us ? What would become out of this war ? Was there a future ?
That was maybe in 1943 when I was about 12 . The song's words circulated
among friends on carbon copies. No records were available of it,
though the tune was known somehow - maybe it actually had been
played a few times on an inland station after all. But shortly after,
one of my classmates, Henning D., became (locally) famous for having
a poem published, with his name below it, in the local daily, the
"Brandenburger Anzeiger". It began with the words
Deine Schritte kenn' ich, [ Your steps I know
deinen leisen Gang, your silent walk
wache oder penn' ich, be I awake or be I asleep
Du l"aufst am Bein entlang you walk along my leg
und alle Landser ... and all the soldiers ...
....
Du s"usse, kleine Laus. You sweet little louse ]
preceeded by an editor's commentary that the soldiers at the Eastern
fronts, as everyone was aware, suffered much from being plagued by
lice. But they would bear it with humour, as the following poem
of a local high school pupil was describing it. - The poem had many
more stanzas, all of which I have forgotten, as I have forgotten the
dotted omissions in the above first stanza. But reading it, everybody
recognized the rhythm from the lines of "Lili Marleen" which Henning D.
had parodied here.
Henning D. is still alive and well, a retired, successful manager
in a large company. I doubt that he later ever wrote poetry again.
W.F.