Physics was perhaps the most authoritative discipline in the early 20th century. It constantly reveals and examines the long-hidden material world, acquiring a unique charm.
Part of the reputation physics has earned, however, stems from hindsight. If the atomic bomb hadn't been built, people might not have been so in awe of physics.
Atomic bombs in wartime
The atom has long been declared the last building block. An atom is so small that even 10 billion atoms juxtaposed together are no more than a meter wide. In 1704, Sir Isaac Newton wrote in his book Optics that the atom is so hard and so fundamental that it cannot be redivided and that "no 'force' can separate the 'element' created on the first day by the Creator God."
Later, an even smaller and more complex unit was discovered, named "nucleon." The enormous power of atoms and nucleons to create energy and cause destruction was not foreseen at the beginning of World War I. Their power was only clearly seen after New Zealand immigrants Ernest Rutherford, Denmark's Niels Bohr and other Western physicists studied them.
Niels Bohr
Since Germany is leading the way in physics, one can expect the country to actively use this science for war. Germany, however, prioritized ethnic cleansing over the search for knowledge. Many prominent physicists were Jews, and they all wisely sought refuge abroad in the 2030s. The United States came to the fore and became a pioneer in nuclear research.
In December 1942, it achieved nuclear fission in a controlled manner, but the road to subsequent experiments and research is still long. In May 1945, Germany finally gave in before the United States was ready to test its first atomic bomb. However, the United States is still stepping up its research because Japan is still recalcitrant to resist.
On July 16, 1945, the first atomic bomb was tested in the desert of New Mexico. The heat caused by the atomic bombing was so great that the desert surface melted into glass for nearly a kilometer. This is the most extraordinary weapon in the history of war. The question of whether atomic bombs should be used in warfare against Japan was a difficult question, and the answer chosen remains controversial to this day. The desire to avenge Pearl Harbor stirred in the hearts of American political leaders; Nuclear scientists understandably resolve to test the effectiveness of this weapon, for which they have worked so hard; What haunts the minds of American generals is the fear that Japan will resist to the end. If that were the case, 500,000 Americans might have lost their lives before Japan finally surrendered. Even in July 1945, some 5 million Japanese soldiers were ready to defend most of the territory they had previously occupied, including most of China, the Indonesian archipelago, the Malay Peninsula, Taiwan, and present-day Vietnam.
Japan's military factories still maintain a strong production capacity. Japan has more than 5,000 kamikaze suicide aircraft, and brave pilots are ready to sacrifice their lives along with enemy aircraft carriers and air bases. Japan remains reluctant to admit defeat. Many historians today condemn the U.S. decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan as another step in humanity's history of evil deeds. They point out that the atomic bomb ushered in a new era of massacre of ordinary people.
However, this new era may have arrived. Air strikes on German and Japanese cities with conventional bombs have already taken a heavy toll on both countries. An air strike on Tokyo in May had killed 82,000 ordinary people, equivalent to 4/10 of the total number of Japanese who would have died under the first atomic bomb. If the war had continued and only high bombs had been used, tens of thousands of Japanese civilians might have been killed by air strikes and bombings, perhaps as a result of the eventual occupation of the Japanese mainland. President Truman, who lives in Washington, widely embraced the controversies. However, an extremely important factor has been overlooked.
When an atomic bomb explodes, it causes damage beyond the reach of a conventional bomb: the radiation from the atomic bomb causes hereditary damage, so that unborn Japanese children will be punished for the failures and sins of the generation of Japanese who started the war. But even if scientists were fully aware of the dangers posed by radiation, they might still come to the same conclusion: the atomic bomb must be used against the Japanese. This terrible all-out war has been going on for almost six years. Victory cannot be delayed any longer. It's always more persuasive to those who are in it than it is to those decades from now.
On August 6, 1945, an American heavy bomber flew from the Mariana Islands to Japan and dropped an atomic bomb. Much of Hiroshima became almost a blast furnace, and nearly 90,000 Japanese lost their lives. Nearby Tokyo still has no intention of surrendering. Three days later, a second atomic bomb — the last from the U.S. arsenal — was dropped on Nagasaki. Even then, the much-awaited news of the surrender did not come out of Tokyo. Five days later, the Japanese emperor himself announced over the radio that his country had surrendered. Indeed, for the first time, the voice of the emperor became known through the radio, and it was a sign of the emperor's alienation from the people and majesty. The divine power of the emperor collapsed in an era heavily influenced by Marconi and Henry Ford. The first round of gunfire at the official start of World War II rang out in the Nordic plains, and the peace document was signed on a battleship anchored in Tokyo Bay.
During the war, more than 170 million people were conscripted. About 11 million Soviet soldiers were killed, more than the entire number of warring armies in World War I. The combined death toll of German and Japanese troops was close to 5 million. The civilian death toll pales in comparison to the previous world war: China may have lost 20 million civilian lives, and Russia 11 million. Compared to the German population, the total number of Jews, who were very small in all of Europe before the war, was greater than the total number of German soldiers and German civilians living in bombed cities combined. Ironically, many Jews once felt safe in Germany. Many German Jews did have held respectable positions in law, universities, and medicine. Some moved hopefully from their troubled lands to Germany, and many gave up the opportunity to emigrate to the growing Jewish settlement of Palestine: Israel had not yet been born.
However, by 1942, if not earlier, the German leadership had decided to purge Jews living in all areas under their rule. At least 5 million Jews were killed. Some Nazi leaders called the purge plan "the final solution to the Jewish question." Later, the term "Holocaust" became a simple way of describing it. Such incidents based on barbarism and hatred are not uncommon. For centuries, human history has been marked by both generosity and goodwill and mass atrocities.
But the massacre remains chilling because the scale of the carnage was so horrific that even the elderly and infant babies were not spared. It dealt a heavy blow to the idea of human progress, because it was planned and carried out by a country that at the beginning of this century was considered by many impartial men to be the most civilized and cultured region in the world. The existence of nuclear weapons is also a blow to the idea of human progress.
If only the United States had this weapon, which is far more powerful than all other weapons, most of the world might feel safe. However, the USSR would not feel safe, it had to have similar weapons. Finally, the Soviets secretly tested their first atomic bomb in 1949. In 1951, President Truman responded to Soviet nuclear tests with an even more powerful weapon, the hydrogen bomb.