military@att.att.com (Bill Thacker) (10/11/89)
From: military@att.att.com (Bill Thacker) Wednesday, 11 October, 1939 French Premier Edouard Daladier denounces Hitler's peace offer, stating that there could be no peace on Hitler's terms. Hitler reiterates his proposal. Finland mobilizes her fleet to guard the Aland Islands, and evacuates civilians from towns near the Russian border. The Alands are demilitarized under treaty, but Finnish troop transports stand ready to occupy them in case of a Soviet move there. Economist Alexander Sachs conveys the "Einstein letter" (actually drafted by Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, and Edward Teller) to President Roosevelt; FDR directs his aide, General Watson, to look into the potential of nuclear energy for military applications. In Germany, all fission research is already centralized under a new War Office department. In England, the possibility of a German nuclear bomb has been discussed, and discounted as an immediate threat on technical grounds, in a memo of August 5 from MP Winston Churchill to the Secretary of State for Air. In Japan, Lt. General Takeo Yasuda, Director of the Aviation Technology Research Institute, continues to track developments in nuclear fission in the open literature. (1) Contributing reporters: Mark Jackson (MJackson.Wbst@Xerox.COM) Tom Merkel (att!shuxd!merkel) References: (1) Rhodes, _The Making of the Atomic Bomb_ -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Bill Thacker military@cbnews.att.com Send submissions for "50 Years Ago" to military-request@att.att.com "It may or may not be significant that, since early spring, no accounts of research have been heard from Germany - not even from dicoverer Otto Hahn. It is not unlikely that the German government, spotting a potentially powerful weapon of war, has imposed military secrecy on all recent German investigations." - Scientific American, October, 1939