It was late in the afternoon of October 11, 1939, barely a month after President Roosevelt had been awakened to learn that Hitler had invaded Poland and ignited World War II. The president had spent most of the time since then beginning the restructuring of the federal government to meet the crisis and working feverishly with a recalcitrant Congress to repeal the arms embargo of the Neutrality Act so that America could supply Britain and France with war materiel.
There was a discreet knock on the Oval Office door, and the president’s aide, General Edwin M. Watson, ushered in a familiar face, Dr. Alexander Sachs, a vice president of the Wall Street giant Lehman Brothers. Sachs had been an important adviser to the president from the early days of the New Deal. He was a polymath who had taught at Princeton and was learned in a number of disciplines, including economics, jurisprudence, and some of the more esoteric realms of science. Roosevelt was aware that Sachs had been trying to meet with him for several weeks, but he had put him off because of the urgency of dealing with the war.
“Alex, what are you up to?” the president asked, greeting him genially.
Sachs, a serious, formal man, sat down somewhat nervously and opened his briefcase, which included a file folder with several papers and some scholarly journals. He told the president that he had come to Washington to deliver a letter from Albert Einstein. Roosevelt was intrigued. He had met the famous Einstein, but in no sense could he say he knew him. Sachs then explained that before discussing the letter, he wanted to open his presentation with a historical anecdote. He told a story about Robert Fulton, a young American inventor in Paris, who wrote a letter to Napoleon claiming that he could build the emperor a fleet of warships powered by steam that required no sails, which could cross the channel in a few hours and attack England, regardless of the weather. Napoleon was unimpressed. “Ships without sails? Away with your visionists!”
Roosevelt nodded good-naturedly. He understood that the point of the story was to show how a national leader might fail to understand an important invention that could win a war. Perhaps sensing Sachs’s continuing uneasiness, FDR scribbled a note and gave it to an aide, who promptly returned with a prized bottle of Napoleon brandy that had been in the Roosevelt family for years. The president opened it, poured two glasses, and gave one to Sachs, and the two men toasted each other.
Sachs then took out an 800-word typed document that he had written himself, which, he explained, paraphrased the letter from Einstein and, he hoped, made it less technical and more understandable. He then began to read aloud his description of a potential new energy source derived from uranium, that could be used to power industry, revolutionize the practice of medicine, and create “bombs of hitherto unenvisioned potency and scope.”
Roosevelt had some difficulty following the complicated explanation, but what he could understand was that this nuclear power, whatever that might be, was important enough for Albert Einstein to think that the president should be made aware of it, and that he had gone to the trouble of recruiting Alexander Sachs, a man who FDR knew well and trusted, to carry the message.
Sachs could see the president’s attention wandering. He took out the Einstein letter and read the opening and closing paragraphs, which noted that German physicists were already investigating nuclear power.
That caught Roosevelt’s attention.
Encouraged, Sachs reached again into his briefcase and, pulling out a scholarly journal, read aloud the closing paragraph of a 1936 lecture on nuclear power by the English chemist, physicist, and spectroscopist Francis Aston:
“Personally I think there is no doubt that sub-atomic energy is available all around us, and that one day man will release and control its almost infinite power. We cannot prevent him from doing so and can only hope that he will not use it exclusively in blowing up his next door neighbor.”
Now Roosevelt understood fully. He leaned forward cheerfully. “Alex, what you are after is to see that the Nazis don’t blow us up.”
“Precisely, Mr. President.”
Roosevelt called in General Watson and gestured toward Sachs and the various papers surrounding him. “This requires action,” he said decisively. In that simple gesture, he began the process that would eventually produce the weapon that would finally end World War II six years later.