Halban’s ‘Diplomatic Flu’: A Case Study in Nuclear Diplomacy in World War II

ABSTRACT

This article recounts an incident in Anglo-American nuclear diplomacy during the Second World War, in which Hans Halban – a French physicist researching nuclear fission on behalf of the British government at a joint Anglo-Canadian research facility in Montreal – was forbidden to participate in technical discussions with his American counterparts. This previously neglected incident usefully highlights the complex and contested nature of Anglo-American nuclear diplomacy during the Second World War. In February 1943 Halban had been invited to participate in a discussion concerning his work on heavy water, a topic with immense potential significance to the American nuclear programme. The invite came at a low point in Anglo-American nuclear relations. Interchange between the two states had effectively ceased. Fearing that allowing the trip might weaken the British negotiating position, Halban’s superiors sought to forbid the discussion, and at first instructed Halban to fake an illness to excuse his non-attendance. This ruse was eventually abandoned, but the trip was nevertheless cancelled. The article provides a granular contextualised account of these events and the British rationale throughout. Focussing on the perspectives of scientists and administrators in this period directs attention away from the interpersonal diplomacy of Churchill and Roosevelt towards a more nuanced understanding of the drivers of wartime nuclear diplomacy. The inter-connection of the various tiers of relationships within the allied nuclear programmes is emphasised and the importance of technical considerations in the overall construction of allied nuclear policy demonstrated. Canada’s significance in wartime nuclear diplomacy is also highlighted.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

^1. Margaret Gowing, Britain and Atomic Energy, 1939–1945 (London: MacMillan, 1964), 160–161.

^2. Barton J. Bernstein, “The Uneasy Alliance: Roosevelt, Churchill and the Atomic Bomb, 1940–1945,” The Western Political Quarterly 29, no. 2 (1976): 212; Richard G. Hewlett and Oscar E. Anderson, Jr., A History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, Volume I: The New World, 1939–1946 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1962), 270.

^3. Some striking examples are Brian Buckley, Canada’s early nuclear policy: Fate, Chance and Character (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000) and Graham Farmelo, Churchill’s Bomb (London: Faber & Faber, 2013); it is also one of a handful of lacunae in Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986). Rhodes’ book, exhaustive in so many respects, is nevertheless is strangely incurious about many aspects of Anglo-American nuclear relations, even where they had demonstrable bearing on the course of the American programme.

^4. Peter Parides, “The Halban Affair and British Atomic Diplomacy at the End of the Second World War,” Diplomacy & Statecraft 23, no. 4 (2012): 621.

^5. See, inter alia, Septimus H. Paul, Nuclear Rivals: Anglo-American Atomic Relations, 1941–1952 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2000), 32, 47 and Margaret Gowing “Britain, America and the Bomb,” in Michael Dockrill and John W. Young (Eds.), British Foreign Policy 1945–1956 (London: Macmillan, 1989), 36; Per F. Dahl, Heavy Water and the Wartime Race for Nuclear Energy (Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2019), 183.

^6. Bernstein’s ‘The Uneasy Alliance’ may serve as one of the better examples of analyses of this type.

^7. H. Halban, F. Joliot, L. Kowarski, “Number of Neutrons Liberated in the Nuclear Fission of Uranium,” Nature 143 (1939).

^8. The term ‘heavy water’ refers to water in which deuterium – an isotope of hydrogen with both a proton and a neutron in the nucleus – is substituted for the preponderant isotope of hydrogen, which has only a proton in the nucleus.

^9. Minutes of 1st MAUD Committee, April 10th, 1940, AB 1/347, National Archives of the United Kingdom (TNA); Dahl, Heavy Water, 119 (cf. pp.104–9 for a thorough account of Allier’s additional involvement with heavy water).

^10. The original reports on Suffolk’s actions in evacuating Halban and Kowarski (and various other French scientists and engineers), are in AVIA 22/2288A (TNA); the journey is also described in Dahl, Heavy Water, 125–9 and Ronald W. Clark, The Birth of the Bomb (London: The Scientific Book Club, 1961), 99–101.

^11. Minutes of 4th MAUD Committee Meeting, July 10, 1940, AB 1/347, The National Archives of the United Kingdom (TNA).

^12. cf. Dahl, Heavy Water, 240.

^13. Gowing, Britain and Atomic Energy, 187–189.

^14. Akers to Halban, January 1, 1943, AB 1/374, TNA.

^15. Texts of both documents are in AB 1/128, TNA.

^16. Perrin to Gorell Barnes, January 19, 1943, AB 1/374, TNA.

^17. Gowing and Bernstein both agree that Churchill in fact raised the question only with Roosevelt’s aide, Harry Hopkins, rather than with Roosevelt himself: Gowing, Britain and Atomic Energy, 159; Bernstein, “The Uneasy Alliance,” 211.

^18. Gowing, Britain and Atomic Energy, 158.

^19. Buckley, Canada’s Early Nuclear Policy, 27.

^20. MacDonald to Anderson, January 8, 1943; AB 1/374, speaks of an ‘intimate personal friendship’ between Mackenzie and Conant. See also MacDonald to Anderson, January 21, 1943, AB 1/374; Akers & Halban, “Relations between the British, Anglo-Canadian and American Groups,” January 22, 1943, AB 1/128 (TNA).

^21. Halban and Newell, “Diary of Anglo-American Relations with T.A.2,” AB 1/129 (TNA).

^22. Diary entry, February 25, 1943. RG-77-D-1-b. Box 283: ‘Extracts from Dr C.J. Mackenzie’s personal diary of items relating to atomic energy’ (hereafter CJM Diary) (LAC). Note, though, that internal evidence in the diary suggests that is not wholly contemporaneous (in particular, this entry notes that ‘Eventually Sir John Anderson would not agree’; clearly a retrospective addition).

^23. MacDonald to Anderson, February 27, 1943, AB 1/374, TNA.

^24. Bush to Wallace & Stimson, December 15, 1942, ”Bush-Conant File,” Roll 1, Folder 4

^25. Halban Diary, February 27, 1943, AB 1/570, TNA.

^26. Halban Diary, February 28, 1943, AB 1/570; Diary of Anglo-American Relations with T.A.2, 1 March, 1943, AB 1/129, TNA.

^27. Anderson to MacDonald, 1 March, 1943, AB 1/374, TNA.

^28. Anderson to MacDonald, 3 March, 1943, AB 1/374, TNA.

^29. Anderson to MacDonald, 1 March, 1943, AB 1/374, TNA.

^30. Anderson to MacDonald 3 March, 1943, AB 1/374, TNA.

^31. MacDonald to Anderson, 3 March, 1943, AB 1/374, TNA.

^32. Anderson to MacDonald 3 March, 1943, AB 1/374, TNA.

^33. MacDonald to Anderson, March 3, 1943, AB 1/374, TNA.

^34. Ibid.

^35. Halban to Akers, March 3, 1943, AB 1/374, TNA.

^36. Ibid.

^37. Akers to Halban, March 4, 1943, AB 1/374, TNA.

^38. Halban Diary, March 4, 1943, AB 1/570, TNA.

^39. Anderson to MacDonald, March 4, 1943, AB 1/374, TNA.

^40. Ibid.

^41. Halban Diary, March 5, 1943, AB 1/570 TNA.

^42. MacDonald to Anderson, March 5, 1943, AB 1/374, TNA.

^43. MacDonald to Conant, March 5, 1943, Bush-Conant File, Roll 2, Folder 10.

^44. Halban Diary, March 6–8, 1943, AB 1/570, TNA. Halban to Akers, March 10, AB 1/129, TNA. Halban’s health was poor throughout this period: long-distance travel was especially onerous for him. (cf. Conant to Travers, November 13, 1943, Bush-Conant File Roll 7 Folder 83A).

^45. Halban to Akers, March 10, AB 1/129, TNA.

^46. Ibid.

^47. Halban to Akers, March 10, AB 1/129, TNA.

^48. MacDonald to Anderson, March 5, 1943, AB 1/374, TNA.

^49. CJM diary, March 12, 1943.

^50. MacDonald to Anderson, March 12, 1943, AB 1/374, TNA.

^51. Conant to Mackenzie, March 13, 1943, AB 1/631, TNA; Conant to Mackenzie, March 13, 1943, Bush-Conant File, Roll 5, Folder 42.

^52. ”Memorandum of conference between Prof. Enrico Fermi and Prof. Harold C. Urey on March 6, 7 and 8, 1943, on The Utilization of Heavy Hydrogen in Nuclear Chain Reactions,” AB 1/676, TNA.

^53. Extract from letter, Urey to Conant, March 11, 1943, AB 1/676, TNA.

^54. Halban’s response, March 20, 1943, AB 1/676, TNA; Halban, March 20, 1943 ‘Remarks on the excerpt of a letter from Urey to Coant, March 11^th, 1943, and on the memorandum on the meeting of Fermi and Urey, March 6–8, 1943’, RG-77-D-1-b. Box 284: Radiological Research: Policy, Vol.1 (LAC).

^55. Mackenzie to Halban, April 14, 1943, RG-77-D-1-b. Box 284: Radiological Research: Policy, Vol.1 (LAC).

^56. Halban to Mackenzie, April 22, 1943, RG-77-D-1-b. Box 284: Radiological Research: Policy, Vol.1 (LAC).

^57. ‘Memorandum of conference between Prof. Enrico Fermi and Prof. Harold C. Urey on March 6, 7 and 8, 1943, on The Utilization of Heavy Hydrogen in Nuclear Chain Reactions’, AB 1/676, TNA.

^58. Steven Flank, “Exploding the Black Box: The Historical Sociology of Nuclear Proliferation,” Security Studies 3, no. 2 (1993): 267.

^59. Dahl, Heavy Water, 173–4.

^60. ‘Certain people have said that Halban’s work is not reliable. This I do not believe … ’ Urey to Conant, March 30, 1942, Bush-Conant File Roll 8 Folder 86.

^61. Gowing, Britain and Atomic Energy, 72; the quote about Chadwick is from Dahl, Heavy Water, 175–6.

^62. Conant to Groves, March 11, 1943, Bush-Conant File, Roll 5, Folder 42.

^63. MacDonald to Lord President, 24 March, 1943, AB 1/374, TNA; Conant to Mackenzie, March 13, 1943, Bush-Conant File, Roll 5, Folder 42.

^64. Halban to Akers, March 25, 1943, AB 1/374, TNA.

^65. Anderson to MacDonald, March 26, 1943, AB 1/374, TNA.

^66. Mackenzie to James, December 19, 1942, RG-77-D-1-b. Box 283: Radiological Research: Miscellaneous (LAC); Mackenzie to Bush, September 15, 1942, RG-77-D-1-b. Box 284: Radiological Research: Policy, Vol.1 (LAC).

^67. Brown, Richard J.E., “The Dominions and the Bomb: Commonwealth involvement in the British Nuclear Weapons Programme, 1939–1947,” (PhD Thesis, King’s College London, 2019), 76–78.

^68. Mackenzie to Conant, March 17, 1943, Bush-Conant File, Roll 5, Folder 42.

^69. Bush to Hopkins, April 27, 1943, Bush-Conant File, Roll 2, Folder 10.

^70. Buckley, Canada’s Early Nuclear Policy, 27.

^71. Urey to Conant, June 21, 1943, quoted in Dahl, Heavy Water, 181.

^72. Urey to Conant June 21, 1943 Bush-Conant File Roll 10 Folder 157.

^73. Conant to Urey, June 29^th, 1943, Bush-Conant File Roll 10 Folder 157.

^74. Groves to Conant, November 26, 1943, Bush-Conant File Roll 7, Folder 79.

^75. Gowing, Britain and Atomic Energy, 160.

^76. Halban to Akers, March 10, AB 1/129, TNA.

^77. Minute, March 17, 1943, PREM 3/139/8A, TNA.

^78. Churchill to Hopkins, March 19, 1943, PREM 3/139/8A, TNA.

^79. Hopkins to Churchill, March 20, 1943, PREM 3/139/8A, TNA. (The reference to Tunisia is extraneous to the nuclear issue.).

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Richard J.E. Brown

Richard J.E. Brown is a historian of diplomatic, imperial and nuclear history. He has taught at King’s College London and the University of York, and has worked as a nuclear non-proliferation analyst, and as policy adviser in the UK Home Office. He holds a BA in history from the University of Oxford and an MA and PhD in War Studies from King’s College London. His doctoral thesis - The Dominions and the Bomb: The Commonwealth as an influence on the British nuclear weapons programme, 1939–1947 - explored the imperial dimensions of Britain’s wartime nuclear weapons programme.