The nuclear nation and the German question: an American reactor in West Berlin

Abstract

This essay analyses the relationship between nuclear technology and ideas about the nation in the late 1950s by looking at the US–West German bilateral agreement and at American proposals to develop reactors in West Berlin, both of which emerged from Eisenhower's 1953 Atoms for Peace programme. American efforts to maintain tight control over the German nuclear sphere contradicted the claim that reactors were solely instruments of peace. At the same time, plans to build a reactor in West Berlin underscored that city's status as an occupied city with an uncertain future and with ill-defined relationships to East and West Germany.

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Erratum

Acknowledgements

I gratefully acknowledge funding for this research from the Hoover Association, the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, the State University of New York at Albany, and the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. Thanks also to William Glenn Gray, H. Peter Krosby, Mary McPartland, Jonathan Nash, Leopoldo Nuti, Carlo Patti, Dan S. White, Larry Wittner, and the anonymous reviewers for their comments.

Notes

¹ The full text of the speech can be found online at Press Release, ‘Atoms for Peace’ Speech, 8 December 1953, Eisenhower Presidential Library, http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/research/online_documents/atoms_forpeace/ Binder13.pdf (accessed 23 July 2013). For more on the speech, see Ira Chernus, Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2002); Martin J. Medhurst, ‘Atoms for Peace and Nuclear Hegemony: The Rhetorical Structure of a Cold War Campaign’, Armed Forces and Society 23 (1997): 571–593; Martin J. Medhurst, ‘Eisenhower's “Atoms for Peace” Speech: A Case Study in the Strategic Use of Language,’ Communication Monographs 54 (1987): 204–220. Kenneth Osgood analyses the Atoms for Peace propaganda campaign in Kenneth A. Osgood, Total Cold War: Eisenhower's Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad (Lawrence: University of Kansas, 2006), chapter 5. On the development of the IAEA, see Mohamed El Baradei, Atoms for Peace: A Pictorial History of the International Atomic Energy Agency, 1957–2007 (International Atomic Energy Agency, 2007); David Fischer, History of the International Atomic Energy Agency: The First Forty Years (Vienna: International Atomic Energy Agency, 1997); Lawrence Scheinman, The International Atomic Energy Agency and World Nuclear Order (Washington, DC: Resources for the Future, 1987).

² The US government signed two different kind of bilateral agreements: those offering research reactors and those offering power reactors. (For various reasons, not all agreements resulted in delivery of a reactor.) Research reactors are small plants that produce between .10 watts and 20 megawatts, whereas the average commercial reactor produces 3000 megawatts. In addition to research, these small reactors are used for materials testing, training and isotope production for industrial and medical use. Because of their small size, research reactors are much less dangerous in case of accident. On the other hand, many run on highly enriched uranium, a proliferation risk, and they do produce nuclear waste, though in significantly smaller quantities than power reactors. Over the past seven decades, 737 research reactors have been built worldwide; as of July 2013, 246 research reactors were operating in 70 countries. Out of a total of 582 power reactors constructed worldwide, 434 were operational, with an additional 69 under construction. US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, ‘Backgrounder: Research and Test Reactors,’ November 2009, available at nrc.gov (accessed 23 March 2011); World Nuclear Association, ‘Research Reactors’, available at world-nuclear.org (accessed 23 March 2011); International Atomic Energy Organisation, Research Reactors: Purpose and Future, November 2010, available online at www.iaea.org (accessed 4 October 2011). See also ‘Research Reactor Database’ and ‘Latest News Related To PRIS And The Status Of Nuclear Power Plants’ at www.iaea.org (accessed 25 July 2013).

³ Memorandum: The President's Atomic Proposal Before the UN, 28 December 1953, ‘Atoms for Peace – Evolution (2)’, Box 29, C.D. Jackson Papers, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, KS (hereafter CDJ). Eisenhower was aware of this proposal and though he did not respond to it directly, in a subsequent letter to Jackson, he stated that he could ‘think of no reason that would prevent us from beginning the implementation of the things suggested in your memorandum.’ Dwight D. Eisenhower to C.D. Jackson, 31 December 1953, ‘Atoms for Peace – Evolution (2)’, Box 29, CDJ. C.D. Jackson to Richard Hirsch, 17 February 1954, ‘OCB 000.9 [Atomic Energy] (File #1) (1) [October 1953-August 1954],’ Box 8, OCB Central Files Series, White House Office, National Security Council Staff: Papers, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, KS (hereafter NSC).

⁴ ‘Statement of Atomic Energy Commission on Status of Foreign Reactor Programmes, 1 July 1958,’ Foreign Reactors, General, Records of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, 1946–1977; General Correspondence; Records of Joint Committees of Congress, RG 128; Legislative Archives, Washington, DC (hereafter JCAE).

⁵ ‘Nuclearism’ is the belief in the symbolic or strategic power of nuclear weapons; nuclear science and technology are feared or celebrated as the means and the representation of that power. For earlier development of this idea, see Robert Jay Lifton, and Richard A. Falk. Indefensible Weapons: The Political and Psychological Case against Nuclearism. Updated ed (New York: Basic Books, 1991) and Bruce Larkin. Nuclear Designs: Great Britain, France, and China in the Global Governance of Nuclear Arms (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1996).

⁶ Karl Winnacker and Karl Wirtz, Nuclear Energy in Germany, trans. David Goodman (La Grange: American Nuclear Society, 1979), 23; Walter E. Grunden, Mark Walker, and Masakatsu Yamazaki, ‘Wartime Nuclear Weapons Research in Germany and Japan’, Osiris 20 (2005): 109. From the end of the war to the present, there has been much debate about whether German failure to produce a bomb was due to deliberate sabotage by participating scientists, as Heisenberg would later claim, or incompetence and a crucial calculating error on his part, as his critics insisted. A more obvious reason was that because the Nazi leadership never prioritised nuclear weapons research, the project lacked the funding, organisation and scale that brought the US bomb to fruition. See Grunden, Walker, and Yamazaki, ‘Wartime Nuclear Weapons Research in Germany and Japan’; David C. Cassidy, Uncertainty: The Life and Science of Werner Heisenberg (New York: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1992); David Irving, The German Atomic Bomb: The History of Nuclear Research in Nazi Germany (Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 1983); Thomas Powers, Heisenberg's War: The Secret History of the German Bomb (New York: Knopf, 1993); Paul Lawrence Rose, Heisenberg and the Nazi Atomic Bomb Project: A Study in German Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); Mark Walker, German National Socialism and the Quest for Nuclear Power, 1939–1949 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

⁷ Cited in Annette Messemer, ‘Konrad Adenauer: Defence Diplomat on the Backstage’, in Cold War Statesmen Confront the Bomb, ed. John Lewis Gaddis, et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 237. See also ‘Control Council Law No. 25: Control of Scientific Research’, in Documents on Germany under Occupation, 1945–1954, ed. Beate Ruhm von Oppen (London: Oxford University Press, 1955), 131–134; Matthias Küntzel, Bonn and the Bomb: German Politics and the Nuclear Option (Colorado: Pluto Press, 1995), 2–5.

⁸ John Gimbel, ‘Science, Technology, and Reparations in Postwar Germany’, in American Policy and the Reconstruction of West Germany, 1945–1955, ed. Jeffry M. Diefendorf, Axel Frohn and Hermann-Josef Rupieper (Washington, DC: German Historical Institute, 1993); Raymond G. Stokes, ‘Technology Transfer and the Emergence of the West German Petrochemical Industry, 1945–1955’, in American Policy and the Reconstruction of West Germany.

⁹ [Report on West Germany Nuclear Programme], 21 February 1956, 21.35 Country File: Germany, Federal Republic, b. Atomic Energy Development, 1955, S/AE.

¹⁰ Otto Keck, Policymaking in a Nuclear Programme: The Case of the West German Fast Breeder Reactor (Lexington: Lexington Books, 1981), 21–22.

¹¹ Howard J. Hilton, Jr. to Henry J. Tasca and Laurence C. Vass, 26 February 1957, 21.35 Country File: Germany, Federal Republic, e. General, 1956–57 Part 1 of 2, S/AE; Winnacker and Wirtz, Nuclear Energy in Germany, 46–53; German Atomic Energy Programme, 12 October 1955, 21.35 Country File: Germany, Federal Republic, e. General, 1953–55 Part 2 of 2, S/AE; M.S. Handler, ‘Bonn to Purchase 2 Reactors in US’, The New York Times, 25 August 1955, 3; Arthur J. Olsen, ‘Bonn is Pressing Heavy Water Bid,’ The New York Times, 16 January 1956, 5.

¹² Keck, Policymaking in a Nuclear Programme, 24; [Report on West Germany Nuclear Programme], February 21, 1956, 21.35 Country File: Germany, Federal Republic, b. Atomic Energy Development, 1955, S/AE.

¹³ Laurence C. Vass to Robert Schaetzel, 11 October 1955, 21.35 Country File: Germany, Federal Republic, e. General, 1953–55 Part 2 of 2, S/AE; ‘London-Bonn Atom Pact’, The New York Times, 1 August 1956, 9; German Atomic Energy Programme, 12 October 1955, 21.35 Country File: Germany, Federal Republic, e. General, 1953–55 Part 2 of 2, S/AE. Heisenberg quoted in Michael Eckert, ‘Primacy Doomed to Failure: Heisenberg's Role as Scientific Adviser for Nuclear Policy in the FRG’, Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 21, no. 1 (1990): 43.

¹⁴ Private Atomic Energy Industry in Germany, 7 July 1955, 21.35 Country File: Germany, Federal Republic, e. General, 1953–55 Part 2 of 2, S/AE; German Plans for Atomic Energy Development, 15 July 1955, 21.35 Country File: Germany, Federal Republic, e. General, 1953–55 Part 2 of 2, S/AE.

¹⁵ Andrew Barry and William Walters, ‘From EURATOM to “Complex Systems”: Technology and European Government’, Alternatives 28 (2003): 305–329; John Krige, ‘The Peaceful Atom as Political Weapon: Euratom and American Foreign Policy in the Late 1950s’, Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 38 (2008): 5–44.

¹⁶ German Atomic Energy Programme, 30 November 1955, 21.35 Country File: Germany, Federal Republic, e. General, 1953–55 Part 2 of 2, S/AE; J. Robert Schaetzel to Gerard C. Smith, 5 January 1956, 21.35 Country File: Germany, Federal Republic, a. Agreements, 1956, S/AE; Private Atomic Energy Industry in Germany, 7 July 1955, 21.35 Country File: Germany, Federal Republic, e. General, 1953–55 Part 2 of 2, S/AE; German Plans for Atomic Energy Development, 15 July 1955, 21.35 Country File: Germany, Federal Republic, e. General, 1953–55 Part 2 of 2, S/AE. See also, Jonathan E. Helmreich, ‘The United States and the Formation of EURATOM’, Diplomatic History 15, no. 3 (1991): 387–410.

¹⁷ Daniel F. Margolies to J. Robert Schaetzel, 20 December 1955; 21.35 Country File: Germany, Federal Republic, e. General, 1953–55 Part 2 of 2, S/AE; Memorandum of Conversation, 21 December 1955; 21.35 Country File: Germany, Federal Republic, e. General, 1953–55 Part 2 of 2, S/AE; Halvor O. Ekern to Robert C. Creel, 5 June 1956, 21.35 Country File: Germany, Federal Republic, k. R&D Programme, 1956–58 & 1960, S/AE; [Report on West Germany Nuclear Programme], 21 February 1956, 21.35 Country File: Germany, Federal Republic, b. Atomic Energy Development, 1955, S/AE, 13–14.

¹⁸ Germany Atomic Energy Problems, 6 September 1956, 21.35 Country File: Germany, Federal Republic, i. Berlin Reactor, 1956–57, 1960–61, S/AE; Aide Memoire from the embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany, Washington, DC, 15 May 1956, 21.35 Country File: Germany, Federal Republic, k. R&D Programme, 1956–58 & 1960, S/AE; F.J. Rolando to Carl Friedrich Ophuels, 1 September 1955, 21.35 Country File: Germany, Federal Republic, e. General, 1953–55 Part 2 of 2, S/AE; R.J. Lynch to G.C. Smith, 2 December 1955, 21.35 Country File: Germany, Federal Republic, e. General, 1953–55 Part 2 of 2, S/AE.

¹⁹ [Report on West Germany Nuclear Programme], 21 February 1956, 21.35 Country File: Germany, Federal Republic, b. Atomic Energy Development, 1955, S/AE, 13–14. On the relationship between French and Indian ideas of nationalism and their respective nuclear programmes, see Gabrielle Hecht, The Radiance of France: Nuclear Power and National Identity after World War II (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998); Itty Abraham, The Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb: Science, Secrecy and the Postcolonial State (London: Zed Books, 1998); George Perkovich, India's Nuclear Bomb: The Impact on Global Proliferation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).

²⁰ Heinz H.L. Krekeler to Lewis L. Strauss, 27 June 1956, 21.35 Country File: Germany, Federal Republic, a. Agreements, 1956, S/AE; [Report on West Germany Nuclear Programme], 21 February 1956, 21.35 Country File: Germany, Federal Republic, b. Atomic Energy Development, 1955, S/AE, 15.

²¹ German Atomic Energy Programme, 12 October 1955, 21.35 Country File: Germany, Federal Republic, e. General, 1953–55 Part 2 of 2, S/AE; AEC Meeting of Robert J. Lynch et al., 7 December 1955, 21.35 Country File: Germany, Federal Republic, b. Atomic Energy Development, 1955, S/AE; George Nebolsine to W.A. Menne, 14 June 1956, Discussion of German Atomic Energy Law, 12 July 1956, Discussion of German Atomic Energy Law, 13 July 1956, and B.E.L. Timmons to W. Walton Butterworth, 28 August 1956, all in 21.35 Country File: Germany, Federal Republic, e. General, 1956–57 Part 1 of 2, S/AE; Memorandum of Conversation on German Atomic Energy Law, 30 August 1956, and J.C.A. Roper to J.R. Schaetzel, 31 August 1956: both in 21.35 Country File: Germany, Federal Republic, k. R&D Programme, 1956–58 & 1960, S/AE.

²² Discussion of German Atomic Energy Law, 12 July 1956, 21.35 Country File: Germany, Federal Republic, e. General, 1956–57 Part 1 of 2, S/AE.

²³ Halvor O. Ekern to Gerard C. Smith, 23 July 1956, 21.35 Country File: Germany, Federal Republic, a. Agreements, 1956, S/AE.

²⁴ B.E.L. Timmons to W. Walton Butterworth, 28 August 1956, 21.35 Country File: Germany, Federal Republic, e. General, 1956–57 Part 1 of 2, S/AE.

²⁵ Ibid.

²⁶ Memorandum of Conversation on German Atomic Energy Law, 30 August 1956, 21.35 Country File: Germany, Federal Republic, k. R&D Programme, 1956–58 & 1960, S/AE.

²⁷ C.H. Breecher to J. Robert Schaetzel, 29 January 1957, 21.35 Country File: Germany, Federal Republic, e. General, 1956–57 Part 1 of 2, S/AE.

²⁸ John A. Hall to the General Manager, 19 August 1957, 21.35 Country File: Germany, Federal Republic, k. R&D Programme, 1956–58 & 1960, S/AE; ‘Nuclear Project in Germany Set’, The New York Times, 4 January 1958, 19.

²⁹ Memorandum: The President's Atomic Proposal Before the UN, 28 December 1953, ‘Atoms for Peace – Evolution (2),’ Box 29, CDJ. C.D. Jackson to Richard Hirsch, 17 February 1954, ‘OCB 000.9 [Atomic Energy] (File #1) (1) [October 1953-August 1954],’ Box 8, OCB Central Files Series, NSC. The proposal as Jackson presented it to the Operations Coordinating Board is filed with Elmer B. Staats to Lewis L. Strauss, 23 March 1954, ‘OCB 000.9 [Atomic Energy] (File #1) (3) [October 1953-August 1954],’ Box 8, OCB Central Files Series, NSC.

³⁰ James B. Conant to C.D. Jackson, 18 February 1954, 21.35 Country File: Germany, Federal Republic, e. General, 1953–55 Part 2 of 2, S/AE.

³¹ Ibid.

³² James B. Conant to C.D. Jackson, 11 March 1954, ‘OCB 000.9 [Atomic Energy] (File #1) (2) [October 1953-August 1954],’ Box 8, OCB Central Files Series, NSC.

³³ Joseph B. Phillips to Colonel Hirsch, 19 January 1954, 10.24 g The President's A-Bank Proposal, Nov 1953 – Aug 1954, Part 1 of 3, S/AE.

³⁴ Elmer B. Staats to the Operations Coordinating Board, March 30, 1954, ‘OCB 000.9 [Atomic Energy] (File #1) (3) [October 1953-August 1954],’ Box 8, OCB Central Files Series, NSC.

³⁵ Ibid.

³⁶ James B. Conant to Gerard C. Smith, 23 April 1956, 21.35 Country File: Germany, Federal Republic, f. Intelligence Reports, 1951–59 Part 2 of 2, S/AE.

³⁷ John B. Holt to C. Burke Elbrick, 11 May 1956, 21.35 Country File: Germany, Federal Republic, e. General, 1956–57 Part 1 of 2, S/AE; Clark C. Vogel to Gerard C. Smith, 5 June 1956, 21.35 Country File: Germany, Federal Republic, f. Intelligence Reports, 1951–59 Part 2 of 2, S/AE; Discussion of German Atomic Energy Law, 12 July 1956, 21.35 Country File: Germany, Federal Republic, e. General, 1956–57 Part 1 of 2, S/AE.

³⁸ Lewis L. Strauss to Carl Durham, 4 February 1957, 21.35 Country File: Germany, Federal Republic, e. General, 1956–57 Part 1 of 2, S/AE.

³⁹ Hearing before the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, Congress of the United States, Eighty-Fifth Congress, First Session, on West Berlin Reactor, 6 March 1957 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1957).

⁴⁰ Ibid.

⁴¹ Ibid.

⁴² Ibid.

⁴³ Atomic Energy Cooperation for Civil Uses: Agreement, with Annex, Between the United States of America and the Federal Republic of Germany on Behalf of Berlin, 28 June 1957 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1957); K.E. Zimen to J. Robert Schaetzel, 11 February 1957, 21.35 Country File: Germany, Federal Republic, i. Berlin Reactor, 1956–57, 1960–61, S/AE.

⁴⁴ E.U. Condon, ‘Science and International Co-Operation’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 15 May 1946, 8. For more on the field of nuclear science in the prewar period, see Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986), chapters 1–9. For more on scientific internationalism, see John Krige and Kai-Henrik Barth, eds., Global Power Knowledge: Science and Technology in International Affairs, Osiris, vol. 21 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006); Joseph Manzione, ‘“Amusing and Amazing and Practical and Military”: The Legacy of Scientific Internationalism in American Foreign Policy, 1945–1963’, Diplomatic History 24, no. 1 (2000): 21–55; Clark A. Miller, ‘Scientific Internationalism in American Foreign Policy: The Case of Meteorology, 1947–1958’, in Changing the Atmosphere: Expert Knowledge and Environmental Governance, ed. Clark A. Miller and Paul N. Edwards (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001), 167–218.

⁴⁵ Andrew J. Rotter, Hiroshima: The World's Bomb (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Jonathan E. Helmreich, Gathering Rare Ores: The Diplomacy of Uranium Acquisition, 1943–54 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986); Arn Keeling and John Sandlos, ‘Environmental Justice Goes Underground? Historical Notes from Canada's Northern Mining Frontier’, Environmental Justice 2, no. 3 (2009): 117–25.

⁴⁶ For more on the international exchange of isotopes, see Angela N.H. Creager, ‘Radioisotopes as Political Instruments, 1946–1953’, Dynamis 29 (2009): 219–39; Néstor Herran and Xavier Roqué, ‘Tracers of Modern Technoscience’, Dynamis 29 (2009): 123–30.

⁴⁷ The 1954 Atomic Energy Act allowed for the signing of bilateral agreements of cooperation on peaceful uses of atomic energy, the participation of the United States in the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the sharing of weapons information with allies, as well as encouraging greater participation by corporations. The text can be found online at www.nrc.gov.