Peaceful Bombs: Paradox in the Correspondence of Leo Szilard

• In Event: Guns, Bombs, and Policy: Collective Voice, Paradox, and Epideictic Appeal in Weapons Rhetoric

Abstract

This paper examines the correspondence of Hungarian nuclear physicist Leo Szilard, whose scientific acumen, political ideals, and work with the Manhattan Project helped to organize and manufacture the Bomb. His correspondence with influential recipients, such as Albert Einstein and Vannevar Bush, reveal contradictory purposes. On one hand, he wanted to persuade politicians and scientists to develop the Bomb to ensure American security, but on the other hand, he wanted to persuade American leadership to never use the Bomb for fear of widespread destruction. Szilard recognized the paradox that while the Bomb guaranteed humanity’s survival via deterrence, the same weapon also guarantees humanity’s destruction if deterrence failed. This paradox presented Szilard with a technological dilemma: that which saves us will destroy us, and that which destroys us will save us. I argue that Szilard utilized two rhetorical tactics that both characterize his negotiation of this paradox and abrogate and deflect accountability for his role in creating the Bomb. First, his letters and recollections appealed to the popularity of “world peace.” This appeal emphasized Szilard’s faith in both the success of deterrence and the plausibility of eradicating large-scale war. Second, he dissociated science from politics in order to argue that “the intervention of intelligent beings” in thermodynamic systems would be futile in a universe governed by entropy. This entropic argument contradicted his voluminous political advocacy by arguing that scientists have little power to intervene in weapons and war policies.

Author

• Ian Hill, Univ of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign