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The biography of Joseph Rotblat, the only scientist to leave the Manhattan Project, and would eventually win a Nobel Peace Prize.
Director: Eric Bednarski
Director: Eric Bednarski
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00:00:27I was here as a kid
00:00:29and I wanted to show the rest of the family.
00:00:33It's a place you only get to see a couple times a year,
00:00:35so we thought we'd take a look.
00:00:46Nothing to worry about.
00:00:47Yeah.
00:00:49Just, hey, you're hot.
00:00:51Yeah.
00:00:52You're dead.
00:00:53Yeah.
00:00:58It can't be just open to the public.
00:01:00We have to actually be here.
00:01:01Especially after 9-11, they've really, you know,
00:01:04made the bases inaccessible.
00:01:06Oh, that's nice.
00:01:07Everything that you see on the table,
00:01:09they're all radioactive.
00:01:11What do we have from the site?
00:01:13What do we have from the site?
00:01:14The Trinit site.
00:01:15You have no concerns about that?
00:01:16No.
00:01:17It's not a danger to you from the radiation aspect
00:01:20unless you eat it.
00:01:25We heard about this place,
00:01:28and we wanted to show our children ground zero,
00:01:33where the first atomic bomb was detonating.
00:01:38It is a...!
00:01:52On the eve of July 16th, 1945,
00:01:56at the isolated and desolate Trinity test site in New Mexico,
00:02:02final preparations were being made by the most brilliant team of scientists ever assembled
00:02:11their goal was the successful construction and detonation of the first weapon of mass
00:02:17destruction only one scientist among the hundreds chosen for the Manhattan Project
00:02:24would turn his back on the terrible madness soon to be unleashed
00:02:31his name was Joseph Rotblatt
00:02:35if my work is going to be applied I would like myself to decide
00:02:39how it will be applied
00:03:20for the first time it became possible to destroy the whole of the human species
00:03:32this heralded entirely new situation in the world
00:03:42for many years in perhaps a few centuries scientists lived in the so-called ivory tower
00:03:52many scientists felt that their job is just to pursue pure knowledge science have no relation
00:04:01with any human feelings scientists have got at all because what they are doing today will tomorrow be
00:04:10applied by technology and then may have an enormous impact on the whole life of everybody
00:04:17Joseph Rotblatt may have renounced the atomic bomb but he would struggle for the rest of his long life
00:04:29he became the visionary force behind the pugwash conferences on science and world affairs
00:04:36international gatherings of scientists and statesmen designed to discuss the dangers of nuclear proliferation and expose the futility of war
00:04:50dear colleagues and friends we have really the opportunity in this meeting to establish dialogue and communication across different viewpoints
00:05:01I am Secretary General Patwash and on behalf of all of us I welcome you warmly to Cairo
00:05:11with the end of the cold war the world breathed a sigh of relief and stumbled on
00:05:19but for the members of Pugwash the threat of nuclear weapons never really went away
00:05:26the US has very clearly been signaling that they see a role for using nuclear weapons
00:05:33they talk not only about preemption but also about retaliation in the wake of being included in the axis of
00:05:43evil
00:05:44there was a real rush in North Korea and of course this nuclear test whether or not
00:05:50it was a successful nuclear test is not the issue nuclear weapons have not gone away
00:06:00it's not scientists who make nuclear weapons anymore it's a technical matter it's engineers it's technicians
00:06:07it's how much material you can afford to buy your suppliers and in fact the the technology now is pretty
00:06:15standard
00:06:16in fact you can download a lot of stuff from the internet these days
00:06:21if I gave my graduate student a project to make a simple atomic bomb if he didn't come up with
00:06:27a reasonable design four years later I don't think he should get a PhD
00:06:31so it's come down to that
00:06:34there is a fear that a non-state actor might be able to create some kind of a radiological weapon
00:06:44there's a big worry whenever you have this many nuclear weapons in the world accidents are possible
00:06:50and also in some of the regions where nuclear weapons are now becoming part of the mainstream who knows what
00:06:59might happen
00:07:00between India and Pakistan for example are they at the same place where America and the Soviet Union were during
00:07:07the Cold War
00:07:09the Soviet Union and the United States they managed to avoid a catastrophe but this kind of deterrence
00:07:19would not necessarily work for the Middle Eastern countries the Israelis say would not be the first to introduce nuclear
00:07:26weapons
00:07:26but we know that they have the capability if two or more countries have nuclear weapons
00:07:36I think we will have chaos in the region
00:07:42the existence of nuclear weapons means that we could potentially create a disequilibrium
00:07:48an imbalance on the planet and the atmosphere by the launching of some of these systems
00:07:57some of these systems
00:07:59there are 27,000 of these systems
00:08:04this is more than enough to wipe out the whole planet
00:08:11you also got people working to say you know we've got to save the planet
00:08:16well you're right we've got to save the planet
00:08:20and so the whole environmental effort as laudable and as absolutely critical as it is
00:08:27can be for absolutely not in a space of hours if these guys actually went at each other
00:08:39meeting annually since 1957 this gathering marks the first time they've assembled without Joseph Rotblath's guiding hand
00:08:49Pugwash conferences and Pugwash members have been involved not only in all the nuclear weapon treaties
00:08:57or I think all of them during the Cold War era but in chemical and biological weapons
00:09:03and it's played a role in bringing the Vietnam War to an end
00:09:11I don't think Pugwash would have achieved what it did achieve without his guidance and help
00:09:20just coming to this office one misses him
00:09:24he should be sitting behind his desk
00:09:27getting up shaking your hand
00:09:31he was genial
00:09:33wonderful old-fashioned politeness
00:09:36in which he would shake your hands every time he met you
00:09:39it's sort of Polish politeness
00:09:43he was a man of absolute integrity
00:09:50Joseph Rotblath was born in Warsaw in 1908
00:09:54the fifth of seven children
00:09:58my memories of him as a young man are mixed up with what I remember of him as an older
00:10:04man
00:10:04tall handsome and charming because he was always that
00:10:09I have a clear memory of returning by tram
00:10:13from his flat in Mokotów near Warsaw
00:10:18where he lived with his wife my aunt Tola
00:10:20I remember the tram but I don't remember the actual occasion
00:10:25but I know that on that day he and Tola told me that I needn't call them aunt and uncle
00:10:33but I could call them by their first names
00:10:35I was very proud of that
00:10:36I was probably about two and a half
00:10:38and it seemed to me a very grand thing to do
00:10:42I think my uncle got his deep moral sense from his father
00:10:46my grandfather was something of a patriarch
00:10:50called on for advice by many people
00:10:53he was very religious
00:10:55and Joseph very early showed a precocious talent
00:10:59he was the star of his cheder class at the age of four I gather
00:11:03so I think my grandfather must have had some hopes
00:11:06that his brilliant eldest son would be a rabbi
00:11:09but Joseph he became a skeptic quite early on in his youth
00:11:14which I think was a grief to his father
00:11:17my grandfather was a prosperous businessman
00:11:21he owned a transport firm using horses and carts
00:11:26I'm talking about the eight years before World War I
00:11:29and he did well, he had a nice house
00:11:33all this came to an end with the First World War
00:11:38and they ended up living in a rather pokey flat in Warsaw
00:11:43practically penniless
00:11:47that was almost the end of my uncle's schooling
00:11:50because there was no money
00:11:52this is why as soon as he'd finished primary school
00:11:55he was sent off to be
00:11:57he learned to be an electrician
00:12:00I know that he had more or less given up hope of ever becoming a scientist
00:12:05but he carried on with his scientific reading and studies
00:12:08well enough to pass the examination to the free evening school
00:12:12where he got his first degree
00:12:16Rottblatt would come here to the University of Warsaw
00:12:20and complete a PhD
00:12:23it was the age of great discoveries in physics
00:12:26and many scientists including the Germans
00:12:29had established that a nuclear bomb was at least theoretically possible
00:12:38and very soon after the fission discovery came
00:12:41I verified this experimentally
00:12:45from this it was quite easy to imagine
00:12:48make an imaginary experiment
00:12:50a chain reaction could occur
00:12:51which a large amount of energy is released
00:12:53in a very short time
00:12:54in other words, an atom bomb
00:12:57but I immediately put it out of my mind
00:12:59because as a scientist
00:13:00I felt it's not my job
00:13:01to devise methods of destruction
00:13:04it's quite contrary to all my upbringing
00:13:07and therefore I just didn't want to think about it
00:13:11his mind was engaged in other matters
00:13:14matters of the heart
00:13:16he married Tola Grinn
00:13:19a university student from Lublin
00:13:21friends described them as made for each other
00:13:31their life together would be interrupted
00:13:33by an invitation from the University of Liverpool
00:13:39it was an offer to work alongside James Chadwick
00:13:44the Nobel Prize winning British scientist
00:13:47who had discovered the neutron
00:13:53when Joseph came back to Warsaw for Tola
00:13:56in the summer of 1939
00:13:58she was ill with appendicitis
00:14:01and unable to travel
00:14:05within days of returning to his work in England
00:14:09Nazi Germany invaded Poland
00:14:23the Second World War had begun
00:14:27Tola was trapped
00:14:38Tola, she was unable to join Joseph
00:14:41he tried to get her out
00:14:42then she was ill
00:14:43and then that was it
00:14:45the last train had gone
00:14:47he tried to get her out through Italy
00:14:49but even that failed when Italy ended the war
00:14:52so she went to Lublin to live with her parents
00:14:55my parents asked her to join us
00:14:58to throw her lot in with ours in Warsaw
00:15:01but she wouldn't
00:15:03and then of course it was impossible
00:15:05the ghetto was up
00:15:06nobody travelled anywhere
00:15:08at least if you were a Jewish
00:15:09and we lost all contact with her
00:15:20I became very worried that indeed the Germans may make the bomb
00:15:24so I overcame my scruples
00:15:30James Chadwick and Joseph Rotblatt
00:15:32assembled a team to begin work on an atomic bomb
00:15:36they realised that their project would require
00:15:39a hugely expensive technological effort
00:15:42that Britain, struggling for its very survival
00:15:44could ill afford
00:15:48their work was disrupted nearly every night
00:15:54strikes by Luftwaffe bombers
00:15:56set the evening skies ablaze
00:15:59although the Liverpool docks were their primary target
00:16:02bombs landed all around the university
00:16:08Chadwick went out to check bomb craters
00:16:11with his Geiger counter
00:16:13he feared the Germans might mix radioactive material
00:16:17with conventional explosives
00:16:19and create the world's first dirty bomb
00:16:23the only way in which we could prevent the Germans from using
00:16:28if they have a bomb against us
00:16:30would be if we too had it
00:16:32and threatened to retaliate
00:16:33in other words
00:16:33the idea of deterrence
00:16:36which is now
00:16:37but now the official policy of
00:16:39superpowers
00:16:41occurred to me at that time
00:16:44of course looking back
00:16:45it was a silly idea
00:16:49for one thing
00:16:50the Terence assumes
00:16:52that you deal with a rational person
00:16:55who will respond in a rational way
00:16:58now Hitler was not a rational person
00:17:04the Americans had their own fears
00:17:07about Hitler's nuclear ambitions
00:17:08and began construction on a new town
00:17:11in a remote part of New Mexico
00:17:17the locals called it
00:17:19the city on the hill
00:17:22the town was Los Alamos
00:17:24it came complete with houses
00:17:27schools
00:17:28supermarkets
00:17:29and one purpose
00:17:32a mission so secret
00:17:34only a handful of people knew
00:17:41there was only one entrance
00:17:43and the entire town
00:17:45was surrounded by barbed wire
00:17:48armed G.I.s patrolled the perimeter
00:17:51in jeeps
00:17:53led by U.S. Army General Leslie Groves
00:17:57and the brilliant physicist
00:17:58Robert Oppenheimer
00:18:00it was codenamed
00:18:02the Manhattan Project
00:18:04here the energies
00:18:06of scientists
00:18:07technicians
00:18:08office workers
00:18:10and soldiers
00:18:10were committed
00:18:12to a project
00:18:12far more expansive
00:18:14and expensive
00:18:15than future missions
00:18:17to the moon
00:18:20I wasn't asked
00:18:22what I wanted to do
00:18:23but I was told
00:18:24what the project was about
00:18:27in very rough terms
00:18:28and that I would be assigned
00:18:31to one of the implosion groups
00:18:37Oppenheimer insisted
00:18:38that people would be free
00:18:41to interact with each other
00:18:42and help solve each other's problems
00:18:45it took enormous creativity
00:18:49to assemble the genius category experts
00:18:54from different countries
00:18:57different disciplines
00:18:59and expect them
00:19:00and persuade them
00:19:02to work together harmoniously
00:19:06they were prima donnas
00:19:08in their old positions
00:19:10but here
00:19:11they had
00:19:12to conform
00:19:17early 1944
00:19:18marked the arrival
00:19:20of James Chadwick's
00:19:21team of British physicists
00:19:26from my point of view
00:19:27as a young scientist
00:19:29it is almost like a paradise
00:19:31you know
00:19:32having all of us
00:19:33being used to difficulties
00:19:35here you find yourself
00:19:36in a place
00:19:36and money
00:19:37didn't matter at all
00:19:40you find yourself
00:19:42talking to the people
00:19:44about whom you only read before
00:19:52what I mainly remember
00:19:54about Rothblatt
00:19:55he was very pleasant
00:19:57and very bright
00:19:58and he
00:20:01was
00:20:03very worried about
00:20:05Hitler
00:20:06getting the atomic bomb
00:20:09and you know
00:20:10there was reason
00:20:10for him to worry
00:20:12it was critical
00:20:13that we get this project
00:20:15completed
00:20:16and end this war
00:20:22people understood
00:20:23very well
00:20:25from
00:20:26Hiroshima
00:20:27and all these other places
00:20:29how
00:20:30desperate
00:20:31would have been
00:20:32an invasion
00:20:33of Japan
00:20:37how many lives
00:20:39would be lost
00:20:43if we had to invade Japan
00:20:45the Soviets
00:20:46would have come in
00:20:47from the other direction
00:20:50Rothblatt's mentor
00:20:51and friend
00:20:52Niels Bohr
00:20:53the brilliant Danish physicist
00:20:55wanted to share
00:20:56the technology
00:20:57with the Soviet Union
00:20:59in order to prevent
00:21:00a nuclear arms race
00:21:03Roosevelt
00:21:04was sympathetic
00:21:04but Churchill
00:21:06wanted Bohr
00:21:07jailed
00:21:08as an enemy alien
00:21:12the Los Alamos team
00:21:14included European refugees
00:21:15like Rothblatt
00:21:16socialists
00:21:18communists
00:21:19anti-communists
00:21:20patriots
00:21:22and pacifists
00:21:23none of whom
00:21:24were noted
00:21:25for keeping their opinions
00:21:26to themselves
00:21:34maintaining secrecy
00:21:35and setting the party line
00:21:36was the responsibility
00:21:38of General Groves
00:21:40who often hosted
00:21:41dinner parties
00:21:42for the senior scientists
00:21:45after dinner
00:21:46we just sat and talked
00:21:47and began to talk
00:21:48about all sorts
00:21:49of world affairs
00:21:49and in the course
00:21:51of the conversation
00:21:51he said to Chadwick
00:21:53you realize of course
00:21:55that the whole purpose
00:21:56of this project
00:21:58is to subdue
00:22:00the Russians
00:22:02it came as a terrible
00:22:03shock to me
00:22:04because you have to remember
00:22:05this was at a time
00:22:06when the main part
00:22:08of the war
00:22:08was going on in Russia
00:22:09it was the Russians
00:22:10who tried to stem
00:22:11the advance
00:22:12of the Germans
00:22:14and they suffered
00:22:15all the casualties
00:22:17the Russians
00:22:18were our allies
00:22:20Groves said
00:22:21Russia is our enemy
00:22:22and the project
00:22:23proceeds on this basis
00:22:25from that moment onwards
00:22:27I felt
00:22:27that the whole thing
00:22:28is wrong
00:22:29and then
00:22:30I was told
00:22:30through Chadwick
00:22:32from intelligence sources
00:22:34that the Germans
00:22:34had given up
00:22:35their idea
00:22:37of working on the project
00:22:38I decided
00:22:39that I should leave
00:22:41that's the reason why
00:22:42before the end
00:22:431944
00:22:44I told the people
00:22:45of Salomon
00:22:46that I wanted to leave
00:22:47I was the only one
00:22:48to do this
00:22:50sworn to secrecy
00:22:52Rotblatt
00:22:52was allowed to leave
00:22:53the Manhattan Project
00:22:56the intelligence community
00:22:58was highly suspicious
00:22:59of his motives
00:23:02Chadwick found
00:23:03this absurd dossier
00:23:05against my uncle
00:23:06which claimed
00:23:07that he intended
00:23:08to return to Britain
00:23:09join the RAF
00:23:11hijack a plane
00:23:12fly it to Poland
00:23:15parachute into Poland
00:23:16and then hand over
00:23:17what he knew
00:23:18to the Russians
00:23:19I can't imagine
00:23:20anything more absurd
00:23:24on the way back
00:23:25all his effects
00:23:27disappeared
00:23:28he had a suitcase
00:23:29in which he had
00:23:30all sorts of things
00:23:31he treasured
00:23:31including pictures
00:23:32of his wife
00:23:34and many other
00:23:35family photographs
00:23:37and many other things
00:23:38he treasured
00:23:38his case disappeared
00:23:40sorry stolen
00:23:41can't trace it
00:23:42I myself believe
00:23:43that somewhere
00:23:44in the bowels
00:23:45of the FBI
00:23:46that suitcase
00:23:47still exists
00:23:52in July of 1945
00:23:54the highly secret device
00:23:56which the Los Alamos
00:23:57scientists referred to
00:23:59simply as the gadget
00:24:00was ready
00:24:03there was speculation
00:24:05that the chain reaction
00:24:06might set the earth's
00:24:08atmosphere on fire
00:24:118
00:24:127
00:24:136
00:24:155
00:24:154
00:24:173
00:24:182
00:24:181
00:24:19now
00:24:38after the training test
00:24:39the reaction was
00:24:41pure relief
00:24:42and pure joy
00:24:43people were
00:24:45really
00:24:47happy that
00:24:48this intense
00:24:50enormous
00:24:52effort
00:24:54was successful
00:25:00scientists have a
00:25:01responsibility to the
00:25:03society that they
00:25:04live in
00:25:06if they decide to
00:25:08shut their eyes to
00:25:09this
00:25:09they are just as
00:25:10culpable as the
00:25:12generals and the
00:25:13soldiers who actually
00:25:14fire those weapons
00:25:17I met and I was
00:25:19inspired by several
00:25:20people who had
00:25:22worked on the
00:25:22Manhattan project
00:25:23and had then
00:25:25turned against it
00:25:27but they turned
00:25:28against it
00:25:29years later
00:25:30well after the bomb
00:25:32had been tested
00:25:33and had been used
00:25:34my admiration for
00:25:37Joseph Rotplatt
00:25:38comes from the fact
00:25:38that he was there
00:25:40at that time
00:25:41he didn't say
00:25:42oh on the
00:25:43one hand
00:25:44this
00:25:44and on the
00:25:45one hand
00:25:45that
00:25:46no
00:25:46he said
00:25:47this is what
00:25:48I have to do
00:25:48and that took
00:25:50a lot of courage
00:25:51as I looked at
00:25:52his history
00:25:53I was filled
00:25:54with admiration
00:25:54because here was
00:25:55a man who
00:25:56knew war
00:25:57was evil
00:25:59and catastrophic
00:26:03back in Liverpool
00:26:05Joseph Rotplatt
00:26:06waited out
00:26:07the remaining
00:26:07months of the war
00:26:08anxious to learn
00:26:10the fate of Tola
00:26:11and his family
00:26:16six of us
00:26:17survived together
00:26:18in hiding
00:26:20we have been
00:26:22through the
00:26:23Warsaw Ghetto
00:26:23we escaped
00:26:24from the ghetto
00:26:25shortly before
00:26:26it was blown up
00:26:28house by house
00:26:30we were hidden
00:26:31in the country
00:26:31by a Polish family
00:26:33but we did survive
00:26:35somehow we did it
00:26:38what was
00:26:39tragic for my mother
00:26:41was that when she
00:26:42telephoned him
00:26:43at Liverpool University
00:26:44after the war
00:26:45to tell him
00:26:46we were alive
00:26:47he said
00:26:49and where is Tola
00:26:50and my mother
00:26:51had to say
00:26:51she is dead
00:26:55but I don't think
00:26:56that even then
00:26:57he had totally
00:26:57given up hope
00:27:00but I'm afraid
00:27:01there was no hope
00:27:09he never remarried
00:27:10I think he could
00:27:12have done so
00:27:12he had plenty
00:27:14of female admirers
00:27:16but no
00:27:17he never considered
00:27:18marriage again
00:27:28within weeks
00:27:29of the successful
00:27:30testing of the
00:27:31atomic bomb
00:27:31two more
00:27:33of the fearsome
00:27:34weapons
00:27:34had been shipped
00:27:35to an American
00:27:36air base
00:27:36on the Pacific
00:27:37island of Tinian
00:27:41on August 6th
00:27:431945
00:27:43the bomb
00:27:45called
00:27:45Little Boy
00:27:46was loaded
00:27:47into a B-29
00:27:49super fortress
00:27:55it was released
00:27:57above Hiroshima
00:28:04three days later
00:28:06Nagasaki suffered
00:28:07a similar fate
00:28:15an estimated
00:28:17145,000 people
00:28:19died within seconds
00:28:20and tens of thousands
00:28:23more would later
00:28:24die from radiation
00:28:25sickness
00:28:33Joseph Rotblatt
00:28:35heard the news
00:28:36he was dreading
00:28:37on the radio
00:28:40when the BBC
00:28:41announced
00:28:42the destruction
00:28:43of Hiroshima
00:28:45this is what I had
00:28:46for the first time
00:28:48oh it's a terrible
00:28:49time
00:28:49because I still
00:28:50hoped that
00:28:51there was a chance
00:28:52it wouldn't work
00:28:52but it did work
00:28:55then I hoped
00:28:56even if it did work
00:28:56it wouldn't be used
00:28:58against civilian
00:28:59populations
00:29:01but it did
00:29:02and I was shocked
00:29:05and there was
00:29:06the fear
00:29:07about further
00:29:08developments
00:29:18people read
00:29:20lists of casualties
00:29:21numbers of people
00:29:22killed
00:29:22they don't see
00:29:23beyond that
00:29:24to all the
00:29:26bereaved families
00:29:27and the horror
00:29:28of war
00:29:31the trouble
00:29:32is that the
00:29:32politicians
00:29:33we have now
00:29:34in the world
00:29:34haven't known
00:29:35war
00:29:36and haven't
00:29:37really known
00:29:37the aftermath
00:29:38of war
00:29:40war is
00:29:41an incredible
00:29:43my parents
00:29:45my brother died
00:29:46slowly
00:29:47of wounds
00:29:48in an open boat
00:29:49in the Atlantic
00:29:50my parents
00:29:51never got over
00:29:52that
00:29:54I would like
00:29:55all political
00:29:56leaders to go
00:29:57and see the
00:29:57peace museum
00:29:58in Hiroshima
00:30:07there's one
00:30:08extraordinary
00:30:09display of this
00:30:10young girl
00:30:11who was only
00:30:12two when
00:30:12the bomb
00:30:13fell
00:30:15she grew up
00:30:16into a healthy
00:30:17girl
00:30:17and then after
00:30:18ten years
00:30:19the radiation
00:30:20sickness
00:30:21took her
00:30:22and she died
00:30:24slowly
00:30:27she believed
00:30:28in a Japanese
00:30:29myth
00:30:30that if you
00:30:31made a thousand
00:30:31paper cranes
00:30:32you could have
00:30:33your dearest wish
00:30:36she didn't quite
00:30:37make it
00:30:37her school
00:30:38friends
00:30:39made the rest
00:31:10for her
00:31:10funeral
00:31:10of the
00:31:22the only被爆国
00:31:23of the government
00:31:23is first
00:31:26to
00:31:28to
00:31:28to
00:31:29learn and
00:31:31to learn
00:31:33the history of
00:31:35I have a responsibility for the bombing of the bomb.
00:31:42Kibakusha, that's the Japanese word for the survivors of bombing.
00:31:52What they went through is simply beyond words.
00:31:59We just don't have the vocabulary by which we can accurately represent the suffering.
00:32:07So, as a result, the only expression that really, really expresses the agony of Hibakusha is,
00:32:17no one else should ever suffer as I did.
00:32:20That's, in a sense, the most accurate description of what they went through.
00:32:25And when they say that, that includes that no one includes everybody, literally everybody,
00:32:33including those whom you would normally call enemies.
00:32:39You know, all these years, the Hibakusha have been advocating that nuclear weapons have no place on this earth.
00:32:58The completely destroyed earth into the World War II
00:33:00and a vast empire of Hong Kong China.
00:33:04The science of the Mega Manー
00:33:13The National shrine
00:33:20I think that Hiroshima was a terrible crime.
00:33:24It was a crime against humanity because it targeted innocence.
00:33:30Of course the Japanese lost hugely from this, but perhaps the real consequence of this was
00:33:38that atomic weapons became legitimized around the world and countries looked at Hiroshima
00:33:44and said, we want a bomb too, otherwise this may happen to us.
00:33:50And so you had the Soviet Union enter into the atomic race and then you had one country
00:33:56after the other out of fear and also out of reasons of wanting prestige, wanting this
00:34:03bomb.
00:34:06Stalin understood that the nuclear bomb, when it was dropped in Nagasaki and Hiroshima mostly
00:34:13was aimed against the Soviet Union.
00:34:19When we talk about the Cold War, we have to understand that in the beginning, the Soviet
00:34:27Union was in the losing position.
00:34:29It was more nuclear warheads on the American side.
00:34:33The Soviet Union was surrounded by the air bases with the strategic bombers.
00:34:42We live under the pressure that Americans can attack us any day and we can be this just
00:34:50sitting dark.
00:35:06When the Soviets tested the nuclear bomb in 49, it was some feeling of relief.
00:35:16The scientists who tested them in Kazakhstan, they eager to go to the epicenter when it was not
00:35:24too hard to walk there, just to look inside.
00:35:26And I remember I work in the Kapustin yard near Stalingrad and it was rumours that they will test nuclear
00:35:37warhead on the anti-aircraft missile.
00:35:39And we were on the airfield.
00:35:41And we were on the airfield.
00:35:41There was no airport there waiting for flying back to Moscow.
00:35:45And we were eager to witness this explosion nearby.
00:35:49So we saw this bright flush, nothing else, and then this big bomb and so it was close to the
00:35:59explosion.
00:36:01At that time, people, except few scientists who were very close to this, never thought how
00:36:09it was too dangerous because nobody tested how it was much exposed and nobody was interested.
00:36:18Many of my friends died young from the cancer, but at that time we didn't think about this.
00:36:35I came early to the conclusion that the nuclear test could be a hazard to health.
00:36:42Many other people did not believe this.
00:36:45From this point in view, I was a rebel.
00:36:58To further study the effects of radiation and cancer, Joseph Rotblatt left Liverpool for
00:37:04London in 1950.
00:37:07He accepted a position as professor of physics at St. Bartholomew's Hospital.
00:37:14There he pioneered the use of radioactive isotopes as a diagnostic tool and helped develop the
00:37:20first scanner for the detection and treatment of disease.
00:37:25Some of us physicists who were somewhat disillusioned with the way our physics was being applied,
00:37:32we felt that we should perhaps try to find other ways in which our work could be of more
00:37:37direct use to mankind than nuclear physics turned out to be.
00:37:43And I began to do research and work on the medical applications of nuclear physics.
00:37:49Well, this is where physicists produce instruments which helped in treatment or diagnosis of disease,
00:37:56which brought me into problems of the effects of radiation on the human body.
00:38:05And I felt much greater satisfaction from this.
00:38:09I went to work for Professor Joseph Rotblatt in St. Bartholomew's Hospital.
00:38:15Well, it was a bit strange because when you first went there, all the rest of the people on the
00:38:19floor were scientists,
00:38:21you know, they were all physicists or radiobiologists.
00:38:24It could be quite hard.
00:38:26He used to sometimes say things like, this office, you start work at nine.
00:38:32But he never used to join in very much in sort of like coffee breaks or anything like that.
00:38:40The only relationship was with Patricia, really. They were very close.
00:38:46She was a student of profs and therefore she worked very closely with Professor Rotblatt.
00:38:53They were trying to find out what caused cancer and what radiation, but they were using animal research
00:39:00and they were using a lot of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki data.
00:39:11Rotblatt bought a house in North London, which he rewired himself.
00:39:16He planned to make this a home base for what remained of his family in Poland.
00:39:23The reason he was able to secure visas for us all was because of his work at Los Alamos.
00:39:30I think the British government felt that he ought not to have family behind the Iron Curtain
00:39:36because of, you know, the possibilities of blackmail and so forth, but he did get us all visas.
00:39:42We all came to England, my parents and my grandmother and my uncle and aunt.
00:39:51And he was able to work in non-military uses of atomic energy, which is what he wanted to do.
00:39:58He was not the kind of man to be told what to think.
00:40:03We didn't understand how important he was.
00:40:05We just thought he was just a slightly mad Polish physics lecturer.
00:40:10Once you'd been to two or three lectures with Joseph Rotblatt,
00:40:13you realised you were in the presence of an absolutely unique human being.
00:40:18I suppose my favourite lecture was the one he did, taking us from Newton to Einstein.
00:40:24We'd just about grasped the notions of basic laws of thermodynamics
00:40:28as to how A led to B to move and so forth.
00:40:31And somehow, during the course of that time, he took us to E equals MC squared.
00:40:36There, that's simple, he said.
00:40:38We came out of that lecture thinking the world has changed.
00:40:43He really wanted to try and transform physics into a humanitarian project,
00:40:47into something that would help people, help people.
00:40:52I used to sort of have, almost have nightmares sometimes.
00:40:55I used to dream quite a lot of bombs exploding, you know.
00:40:59Didn't go into too many details, but I did used to,
00:41:02it did used to sort of pull me down a bit.
00:41:06And I once asked Professor Rotblatt, what would he do if they was bomb?
00:41:10And he said, run towards it and make sure you got killed right at the beginning.
00:41:19The nuclear club was expanding.
00:41:23Britain tested in Australia on Aboriginal lands.
00:41:31France was next, testing in Africa and Polynesia.
00:41:40And then China would become the fifth country to conduct atmospheric nuclear tests.
00:41:57America, the charter member of the club, tested constantly and enthusiastically.
00:42:10Even including scheduled test dates in Nevada tourism brochures.
00:42:16There was little concern for radiation hazards.
00:42:27Now they knew they could safely cross the area under an aerial atomic explosion,
00:42:32shortly after it had occurred.
00:42:34They hauled out some brooms and gave us the brush off before we left position two for camp.
00:42:40Decontamination, they called it, in case we had some radioactive particles on us.
00:42:49Faced with the intensive buildup of weapons among the member nations of NATO,
00:42:54the Soviet Union defiantly showed itself capable of mutually assured destruction.
00:43:01Khrushchev tried to play this game threatening Americans that we produce missiles as sausages.
00:43:08And I was starting to work in the rocket science.
00:43:13And he smiled at me and told me it was important that Americans will think that we have many more
00:43:20than we really had at that time.
00:43:23And it was very supportive to the American military industrial complex that really started the missile race.
00:43:41We're standing in the missile park, which has an example of almost every missile or rocket that's ever been tested
00:43:49at White Sands.
00:43:50One of the most important is the Nike Ajax and the Nike Hercules.
00:43:55Those were Cold War missiles.
00:43:57They were put around every large city in the United States during the Cold War, during the 50s.
00:44:05They were put around every large city in the United States.
00:44:06Scientists sometimes themselves get out of control.
00:44:10Nuclear arms race was largely the result of such scientists being simply interested in new discoveries, making new gadgets.
00:44:19The military loved it.
00:44:23Ever more missiles with even greater range and destructive power inspired the most senseless spending the world had ever seen.
00:44:34People look at the days of the Cold War.
00:44:37My comment is how many skirmishes and attacks and wars were avoided because of the threat to the would-be
00:44:46attacker of being wiped out with the touch of a button.
00:44:51On March 1, 1954, a button was pressed in the South Pacific.
00:44:57It set off an explosion 1,000 times more powerful than the weapon dropped on Hiroshima,
00:45:04and produced temperatures rivaling the surface of the sun.
00:45:11The age of the hydrogen bomb had dawned over Bikini Atoll.
00:45:22The extent and range of the fallout was grossly underestimated, and unsuspecting commercial vessels well outside of the restricted test
00:45:31area were contaminated.
00:45:33One of these was the Lucky Dragon, a Japanese fishing trawler now on display in a Tokyo museum.
00:45:52Visitors to the museum are moved by the story of the Lucky Dragon.
00:45:57Especially when they hear it first hand from Matashichi Oishi, one of the surviving crew members.
00:46:07One of the time was a strike at the beginning.
00:46:13It was not a strike in the middle of this season.
00:46:16It was a strike at the beginning of the morning.
00:46:17The fire is still a dark hour.
00:46:17The sky was still there.
00:46:20The fire was still soft in the middle of this year.
00:46:21The fire was no longer ressent.
00:46:24I had no way to discover that the fire in my head.
00:46:27That we saw what was is going on.
00:46:28There was no force about the fire in space as well.
00:46:32There was no threat at the time as well.
00:46:38I thought it would be a good thing to do with the wind.
00:46:41I didn't see the wind.
00:46:43I saw the wind.
00:46:45It was about 7 or 8 minutes.
00:46:49It was about the wind.
00:46:57It was about the wind.
00:46:59There are a lot of light of a mountain of waves and waves of wind.
00:47:12When the fire starts in the end, the fire ends in the afternoon.
00:47:14From the direction of the wind, it started to fire a day, so it's been raining.
00:47:18It's a lot of rain.
00:47:23The water had a lot of rain.
00:47:26The water had a lot of rain.
00:47:28The water had a lot of rain.
00:47:34It was hot and a smell.
00:47:42It was not a taste.
00:48:08The crew members of the Lucky Dragon were plagued with radiation sickness,
00:48:12and within months, one fisherman was dead.
00:48:20American authorities insisted that the effects of the fallout should be no greater than the radiation from an ordinary X
00:48:28-ray.
00:48:30That summer, Rottblatt met Japanese scientist Professor Yasushi Nishiwaki.
00:48:36He gave Rottblatt samples of the radioactive ash and the victim's medical records.
00:48:44When he reported and made public the size of the thermonuclear test at Bikini Atoll,
00:48:53which affected the Japanese fisherman on the Lucky Dragon,
00:49:00that was originally reported in the papers as a far smaller explosion.
00:49:05Prof worked out, probably here in the office, that the effects that it had had meant that it must have
00:49:13been a much bigger explosion.
00:49:14And he did the maths and he did the physics.
00:49:16And he was persuaded not to publish it for some little time because of the difficulties it would make between
00:49:26the British and the American governments.
00:49:29But he became convinced that it was totally undemocratic not to let people know what was going on.
00:49:37So he published it.
00:49:39And the whole full anger of the establishment came down on him yet again.
00:49:46Scientists have a responsibility.
00:49:50They have the duty to inform the public and not just leave it to the politicians to tell or not
00:49:57to tell or they're often misinformed.
00:50:02They have the duty to inform the public and not to tell or not to tell or not to tell
00:50:03or not to tell or not to tell or not to tell or not to tell or not.
00:50:15I saw what the hell was.
00:50:18It was estimated that 800 fishing boats were in the test area.
00:50:24Radioactive poisons had entered the human food chain.
00:50:28And through ocean currents and the atmosphere, spread throughout the world.
00:50:35The tragedy of the Lucky Dragon was the spark that set off a worldwide movement to ban nuclear weapons.
00:50:46Let me start with a simplified picture of the atom of which all matter is built.
00:50:53Each atom resembles a solar system.
00:50:56In April of 1954, the BBC broadcast a program outlining the dangers arising from the development of the hydrogen bomb.
00:51:08Joseph Rotblat was asked to explain the physics of the bomb.
00:51:12And there is the electron revolving around it.
00:51:17There is therefore no exaggeration when we say that the annihilation of all life on Earth is now within the
00:51:25range of possibilities.
00:51:30Rotblat met another guest backstage.
00:51:33The esteemed British philosopher, Lord Bertrand Russell.
00:51:38The two quickly became friends.
00:51:44Russell shared Rotblat's dismay over the development of the hydrogen bomb.
00:51:49They worked together to begin the campaign for nuclear disarmament and to organize an international conference of scientists to discuss
00:51:58the peril.
00:52:00Russell drafted a manifesto calling for humanity to take action.
00:52:06He sought the endorsement of the leading scientists and Nobel laureates of the day.
00:52:13The signed letters arrived.
00:52:16Except one.
00:52:17From Albert Einstein.
00:52:21When Bertrand Russell was flying from Rome to Paris,
00:52:27when the captain announced that he just had the news that Einstein had died.
00:52:32And so when Russell heard the news, he was completely shattered because he felt that without Einstein's endorsement, the whole
00:52:41project will collapse.
00:52:44But when he arrived in Paris, there was a letter, a letter from Albert Einstein, with his signature endorsing the
00:52:51statement.
00:52:53And this is one of the last acts of Einstein's life.
00:52:59The statement came to be known as the Russell Einstein Manifesto.
00:53:04It's written in the most glorious English prose.
00:53:10And Rotblat was the youngest of all the signatories on this.
00:53:15And it was he who arranged the first press conference, which was at Caxton Hall here in London, when this
00:53:22was announced to the world's press.
00:53:24And I'll just read to you just a few of the paragraphs.
00:53:29In the tragic situation which confronts humanity, we feel that scientists should assemble in conference to appraise the perils that
00:53:39have arisen as a result of the development of weapons of mass destruction.
00:53:44We're speaking on this occasion, not as members of this or that nation, continent or creed, but as human beings,
00:53:53members of the species man, whose continued existence is in doubt.
00:54:02Here then is the problem which we present to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable.
00:54:10Shall we put an end to the human race or shall mankind renounce war?
00:54:23The manifesto had a very good reception in the media.
00:54:31And we have received a number of letters from people offering their support.
00:54:35One of these letters was from Mr. Cyrus Eaton, who said he would be willing to pay for the whole
00:54:42conference on the condition that it was held in Pagvosh.
00:54:47Now, in those days, the only word Pagvosh known in England was that of a comic character, Captain Pagvosh.
00:54:56He appears in a children's comic.
00:55:00And therefore, it was just a hoax.
00:55:02In fact, when Russell asked me to look at this and I said, it's not worth it.
00:55:07But then, of course, I looked up in the gazetteer and I find a place Pagvosh does exist.
00:55:17Pagvosh is a small village in Nova Scotia on the east coast of Canada.
00:55:22This is the site of Thinker's Lodge, former summer home of Cyrus Eaton, a multimillionaire industrialist.
00:55:31Although he had trained to become a Baptist minister, a summer job with John D. Rockefeller set Eaton off on
00:55:38a different path.
00:55:41He did, however, retain his early instinct to do good in the world.
00:55:47This earned him the label capitalist with a conscience.
00:55:58He had money and that gave him independence.
00:56:02And certainly, the scientists, Bertrand Russell and Joseph Rotblatt and the others, had the right idea, but they didn't have
00:56:10the resources.
00:56:13This was not a place set up with hotels and restaurants where you would want to normally be bringing people
00:56:20from around the world.
00:56:24There were a few rooms here at Thinker's Lodge, and beyond that, they billeted people in private homes.
00:56:33It was a somewhat unbelievable scene.
00:56:39So you'd have these people that were really in charge of the Soviet Union's nuclear weaponry program,
00:56:46having tea and toast with a very local family.
00:56:58This really became not just Thinker's Lodge, but the whole Pugwash community involved in these events.
00:57:06It was the only place in the world bringing together the East and West to talk about this perilous threat
00:57:14of nuclear weapons.
00:57:17Led by Joseph Rotblatt, 22 of the most influential scientists in the world came together from both sides of the
00:57:25ideological divide.
00:57:29Among them, Chao Bei Won, the first scientist from Communist China to visit the West.
00:57:36Kuzin, the brilliant Russian.
00:57:39And the Hungarian-American, Leo Szilard, an eccentric genius.
00:57:43The politics of the Cold War made the meeting remarkable.
00:57:48It was, in effect, fraternizing with the enemy.
00:57:53Their mandate was simple.
00:57:55How could they stop nuclear war?
00:58:01Their bond was their sense of moral responsibility for unleashing on the world
00:58:06a perversely beautiful weapon of mass destruction.
00:58:13The very first topic for discussion at the very first Pugwash conference were radiation hazards.
00:58:23And the government at that time assured us that there are no health risks whatsoever.
00:58:36And they said, we don't need to worry at all.
00:58:56And they said, we don't need to worry at all.
00:59:01We have small meetings.
00:59:03We have small meetings so we can sit around the table rather than making speeches which turn very often into
00:59:08propaganda.
00:59:09One of the ways of doing this is to exclude the press from it. Our meetings are private.
00:59:16To a certain extent this is our weakness because the world doesn't know about us.
00:59:22Pugwash would meet on an annual basis at conferences all over the world,
00:59:28returning for a 50th anniversary meeting in Nova Scotia in 2007.
00:59:32Everyone, right here.
00:59:35The organizers of the meeting have agreed for a photo-only opportunity in the room.
00:59:41No audio, though.
00:59:44And this is because it's a 50-year tradition within the Pugwash movement of something called Chatham House Rules.
00:59:52Anything that's said can't be attributed to any one person in the room
00:59:58so that they could get the high-level people to speak relatively freely
01:00:03without fear of any retribution because of those comments.
01:00:08It's something that's been the key to Pugwash's success.
01:00:15The risk of idealistic scientists revealing state secrets over a lobster dinner spooked every major spy agency.
01:00:24The FBI, the CIA, MI5, and the KGB.
01:00:31Premier Kristof of the Soviet Union made his a very personal interest.
01:00:38All the Pugwash conferences was widely covered in the Soviet Union.
01:00:45Khrushchev, my father, he met with the Soviet scientists when they asked them to meet with him.
01:00:52And he discussed with them what they would do there.
01:00:57Mostly he supported their ideas because it was not pro-Soviet, but it was not pro-American.
01:01:05Khrushchev became a close friend of Cyrus Eaton.
01:01:08Using his considerable resources, Eaton campaigned to halt the arms race,
01:01:14normalize relations with the Soviet Union, and recognize Communist China.
01:01:18It made him the lifelong nemesis of J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI.
01:01:25Eaton was investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee.
01:01:31Pugwash members got the same sort of scorn, and some were denounced as Communist sympathizers,
01:01:37or even Eastern Bloc spies.
01:01:43It's quite true that the Soviet government tried to use us.
01:01:48Interestingly enough, it took only a few years before the governments in the West,
01:01:52they tried in turn, to take over Pugwash.
01:01:55And they came to me and said, told me who should be invited, what we should discuss, and so on.
01:02:01And I said, thank you very much, but we know how to do it ourselves.
01:02:04And so we had to fight for both sides.
01:02:06And I keep saying all the time that the path, you know, of independence is a very narrow one.
01:02:12But we managed to keep on it.
01:02:15Walking that narrow path led the Pugwash scientists to most of the world's continents.
01:02:22Discussions dealt primarily with nuclear issues, but also broadened to include chemical and biological weapons,
01:02:29the environment, arms trade, and regional conflict.
01:02:36The delegates often brought their spouses.
01:02:43The lasting friendships that formed across political divides
01:02:47became critical in times of international crisis.
01:02:52Sometimes not the formal part of the meeting that is the best thing.
01:02:56It's the, you know, the dialogue between people,
01:02:59or just that they meet someone from another country, you know,
01:03:02and then they can go on from there.
01:03:05There was lots of very strong personalities,
01:03:08and so the arguments were often quite fierce.
01:03:12Most of the time that it was resolved,
01:03:14but there was quite often sort of simmering things going on in the background.
01:03:22Sometimes the information exchanged would have shocked their respective governments.
01:03:30The Pugwashites had tried to transcend the vested interests of military and industrial and scientific powers
01:03:39that were behind these war machines to try and find a pathway to safety.
01:03:46Through that long twilight period of the Cold War, people genuinely were getting up every day waiting for nuclear annihilation.
01:04:00The threat of global annihilation became a part of popular culture in literature, music, and the movies.
01:04:08The 1959 hit film, On the Beach, depicted the aftermath of a nuclear war.
01:04:15As the winds carried radioactive fallout to every continent,
01:04:19the last people on Earth awaited certain death in Australia.
01:04:24They didn't think we'd fight no matter what they did.
01:04:27And they were wrong. We fought, we expunged them.
01:04:30We didn't do such a bad job on ourselves.
01:04:33We're all doomed, you know.
01:04:35The whole silly, drunken, pathetic lot of us.
01:04:38We haven't got a chance.
01:04:40I won't have it, Julian.
01:04:42I won't.
01:04:44There is hope.
01:04:46There has to be hope.
01:04:48There's always hope.
01:04:53Fears of Armageddon took on a chilling reality with the Cuban Missile Crisis.
01:05:00October 22, 1962.
01:05:03President Kennedy confirms reports that the Soviet Union is installing missiles with nuclear warheads in Cuba.
01:05:09To halt this offensive build-up, a strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment
01:05:15under shipment to Cuba is being initiated.
01:05:18All ships of any kind bound to Cuba, from whatever nation or port,
01:05:24where they're found to contain cargoes of offensive weapons, be turned back.
01:05:28It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba
01:05:34against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States.
01:05:42We are lucky that in the time of the Caribbean crisis, President Kennedy, Prime Minister Khrushchev, my father, were a
01:05:52brave person.
01:05:53They thought that they must try to prevent the war, not to start the war, because they didn't know these
01:05:59consequences.
01:06:01The Cuban Missile Crisis was emotional and psychological shock to the American society, that now they're the same as others.
01:06:10Because the danger was in Cuba, 90 miles from American soil.
01:06:16And it was not such a fact in the Soviet Union, because the Soviets all the time lived under this
01:06:22pressure of the possible war.
01:06:26After the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Pogwash idea of a permanent hotline between Moscow and Washington was implemented.
01:06:34Both sides agreed to talk about the arms race.
01:06:38A fragile first step was taken in 1963, when a meeting chaired by Joseph Rottblatt discussed the idea of a
01:06:46ban on nuclear testing.
01:06:49We could use the fact that scientists knew each other so personally,
01:06:54to use this channel of communication to try to influence events, for example, like during the time of the Cuban
01:07:01crisis.
01:07:03Khrushchev, my father, he supported this movement to stop nuclear testing.
01:07:08And I was at that time in this rocket science, and I knew that the new warhead will be much
01:07:18lighter and much more powerful.
01:07:20And when he announced this moratorium without consulting with us, we were ready to test it.
01:07:26And I came to him and told, why are you doing this?
01:07:28And he answered me, these new inventions are endless. You can make it more and more destructive.
01:07:36We now can destroy the world. We have to think now how to save it.
01:07:46Less than a year after the crisis, the USA, the USSR and the United Kingdom all signed a treaty.
01:07:55The partial test ban treaty ended testing in the atmosphere and brought in controls for testing underground.
01:08:06The success of Pugwash depends on its impeccable scientific integrity.
01:08:13It's been able to advise governments and governments have listened to it.
01:08:19One of their main contributions being to produce means of verifying whether the treaties were being held.
01:08:29Because you can't have a treaty not to use, let's say, chemical weapons or nuclear weapons unless there's a means
01:08:36for verifying that they aren't being manufactured or tested.
01:08:44The monitoring of the underground tests was done by automatic sealed seismic black boxes.
01:08:50A Pugwash initiative which satisfied a Soviet concern over intrusive inspections.
01:08:59We admit that you cannot disinvent nuclear weapons. We never say it cannot be done.
01:09:05But what we are saying, we can create a system of verification.
01:09:09We look at it and we find it can be done.
01:09:15Nuclear weapons are easier and easier to make, but they do need fissile material.
01:09:23Work in a direction where fissile materials are controlled, where the particular parts that are needed for nuclear weapons are
01:09:31strictly regulated to the extent possible.
01:09:33You then decrease the possibilities.
01:09:36You never eliminate them, but you decrease the possibilities and probabilities for any group or country to make nuclear weapons.
01:09:44And so you've got to work incrementally.
01:09:49Throughout the Cold War, the nuclear powers continued to engage in conflicts around the globe.
01:09:56North Korea, the Middle East, Africa, Vietnam.
01:10:03Although no nuclear devices were ever used, the threat of a tactical nuclear strike hung over every battlefield.
01:10:12The Pugwash leadership realized the Vietnam War was a very dangerous development.
01:10:19An attempt was made to set up negotiations by using a direct channel, so to say, to reach Ho Chi
01:10:29Minh.
01:10:30The person involved from the American side as a liaison to the American government was Henry Kissinger.
01:10:39In fact, it was the beginning of the career of Kissinger. At that time, he was a professor at Harvard.
01:10:47I think that the discussion of scientists from all over the world, discussing frankly among each other what the problems
01:10:54are, has contributed to clarifying the various points of view.
01:11:01And therefore, I believe, has made a contribution towards the easing of international tensions.
01:11:10Utilizing Pugwash back channels, North Vietnam and the United States eventually came to the table in Paris and signed a
01:11:17peace treaty.
01:11:20The idea was mainly at that time to hold the arms race and to prevent a nuclear war.
01:11:27I might say that the fact that there has been no nuclear war, no further use of nuclear weapons, to
01:11:35a certain extent, may be the result of our work.
01:11:38It may sound very, very immodest, but speaking now from the way people told us, including the person who really
01:11:46factually stopped the nuclear arms race, and that is Mikhail Gorbachev.
01:11:51And he told me directly, our effort has been helping in this direction.
01:11:58We had some very influential scientists in the Soviet Union who came to our meetings.
01:12:04And this process worked very well in the case of Gorbachev, because our ideas percolated to him.
01:12:15I have great admiration for him, because he had the courage to come out and say, enough is enough. We
01:12:21can't go on like this.
01:12:27I now call upon the Peace Prize Laureate of 1995, Professor Joseph Rothblatt.
01:12:37The Nobel Committee informed Joseph half an hour before the official announcement, and they asked him not to tell anybody.
01:12:48And Joe violated this prescription and made a phone call to me, because I was then the Secretary General of
01:12:56Pagwash.
01:12:57It was the first time that the Nobel Prize was shared between an individual and an organisation.
01:13:05I said to him, can I have an invitation? He said, do you want one? Why? He was a modest
01:13:11man, really.
01:13:13And I said, are you serious? Do you think I will ever again be present at a Nobel Prize ceremony
01:13:21for an uncle of mine?
01:13:23Of course I want to go.
01:13:24Long before the terrifying potential of the arms race was recognised, there was a widespread, instinctive abhorrence of nuclear weapons.
01:13:35But the world was then polarised by the bitter ideological struggle between East and West.
01:13:41However, after the collapse of communism, any rationale for having nuclear weapons disappeared.
01:13:51The nuclear powers still clinged tenaciously to their weapons.
01:14:03Into his eighties and nineties, Rotblatt walked from his home to the Kilburn station, his briefcase bulging with papers,
01:14:12then took the tube to Bloomsbury.
01:14:15He then walked to the modest Pagwash headquarters across the street from the British Museum.
01:14:25Two offices, jam-packed with creaking floors, which he shared with his assistant, Sally Milne.
01:14:35It made a huge difference to him and to the work of Pugwash getting the Nobel Prize,
01:14:41because suddenly you just have more access to people.
01:14:48Rotblatt was tireless.
01:14:51Taking his message to the highest places.
01:14:56And to the streets.
01:15:00He kept vigil in a mock cell in support of Mordecai Venunu.
01:15:07Venunu, an employee at the Nuclear Research Centre in the Negev Desert,
01:15:11alerted the world to a top-secret Israeli nuclear weapons program.
01:15:18Tried on charges of treason and espionage, he spent eighteen years in prison, twelve of them in solitary confinement.
01:15:28For years, Rotblatt praised Venunu's courage and campaigned for his release.
01:15:33Rotblatt, because of his personal history, was a strong defender of whistleblowers, of which Venunu was a prime example.
01:15:52When the Cold War ended, things changed quite a bit.
01:15:57He gave a very important speech at Halifax in 2003, Pugwash, when he thought that the dangers of nuclear proliferation
01:16:11were such and were becoming such that, in his view, it was as dangerous as some of the most dangerous
01:16:19times of the Cold War.
01:16:24The difficulty is that the mood in Russia has changed in relation to nuclear weapons.
01:16:34And now, the general mood is that Russia must keep the nuclear weapons.
01:16:41They must keep nuclear weapons almost as the only sort of expression of still being a superpower.
01:16:52And this means they want to keep on with them, and this has created a new and difficult situation.
01:16:57We have to somehow to deal with this.
01:17:12Thank you all very much.
01:17:13Prost was by no means anti-American, but he was devastated, and he knew what the administration of George Bush
01:17:25would mean.
01:17:26They hate the fact that we love freedom, and so they attacked us.
01:17:31And they thought we'd quit.
01:17:35They thought we were soft.
01:17:37And we love our freedoms.
01:17:40Our biggest job is to make sure the American homeland is secure.
01:17:49Anyone criticizing the Bush administration has immediately been branded as anti-American.
01:17:57The current polarization in the world is largely the consequence of the Bush slogan,
01:18:04you are either with us or you are against us.
01:18:11The use of nuclear weapons is explicitly contemplated.
01:18:17They will be used in a conflict just like any other explosives.
01:18:24The danger of a new nuclear arms race is real.
01:18:35Today in New Mexico, the scientists of Los Alamos are designing a whole new generation of nuclear weapons.
01:18:46It's really an incredible thing to see the origins of it, and just see how it's set American foreign policy
01:18:54and domestic policy for the next, well, right now.
01:18:59What sort of an impact it's having on the world today, you know,
01:19:01and the view of the world towards us as being the only people who have detonated not one but two
01:19:07bombs.
01:19:09For me, it puts it into perspective why the world looks upon us with such a fearful eye.
01:19:15We were the only ones to use this extraordinarily destructive weapon.
01:19:26I have very mixed feelings about commemorating it.
01:19:57The whole house filled up with his papers, not just the garage, not just the loft, but his, well, it
01:20:04started like this.
01:20:05He filled up his study with tottering piles of papers.
01:20:09Then, having filled up his study, he had nowhere to work, so he moved into the dining room next door.
01:20:15He worked at the dining room table.
01:20:18Pretty soon, that too was covered with tottering piles of papers.
01:20:23Also the floor all around, the piano, and every other inch of space.
01:20:31I would sit down and chat to my uncle, and we discussed the news, we discussed all sorts of things.
01:20:38For instance, I asked him if he was an atheist, and he said, not an atheist, but an agnostic.
01:20:43I said, why? Because I call myself an atheist.
01:20:47And he said, as a scientist, I can never say that something is impossible.
01:20:54He was certainly a very busy man, and a very important man, and yet he still took time to ask
01:20:59about children.
01:21:01He kept a supply of children's books in his house, so that if any kids came around, that he would
01:21:05have a gift for them.
01:21:07He was just a very, very generous and very sweet man.
01:21:12When you work on these big issues of nuclear weapons, it can get very discouraging.
01:21:17And one time I asked Joseph Rotblatt, I said, how is it possible, with everything that you have seen in
01:21:23the course of your life,
01:21:24how is it possible that you remain optimistic?
01:21:27And he looked at me with this wonderful contemplative look for a little while, and he just said, well, what's
01:21:33the alternative?
01:21:36Joseph Rotblatt, whose life spanned nearly a full century, experienced the most murderous period in all of human history.
01:21:45Somehow, he remained optimistic.
01:21:50Europe, look at history, full generations were slaughtered in the wars.
01:21:59It's no longer conceivable for the countries which fought each other, mortal enemies, in both world wars.
01:22:07And now you've got the European Union.
01:22:10And this is a very important step, which occurred in our lifetime.
01:22:14And this gives me great hope.
01:22:18If you want peace, prepare for peace.
01:22:21And I want to change their mindset to along these lines.
01:22:26And this is the only way in which we could save the future of mankind.
01:22:35If one of his great dreams for Pugwash was the elimination of nuclear weapons,
01:22:41the other was the elimination of war itself.
01:22:47Wherever one views us and them and looks at the world in these terms, conflict comes about.
01:22:58That kind of hatred, which is then put into children, results in people being at war against each other.
01:23:07And when peoples go to war against each other, then it's much worse than states.
01:23:15That's what we have to avoid.
01:23:17That's what we have to avoid.
01:23:19Important not to put hatred in them.
01:23:25We don't have a Eurocentric fear anymore.
01:23:31What we have is a world full of imploding nations.
01:23:36We have extremism that is interpreting itself into a rage that is articulated through terrorism.
01:23:47As we saw the reaction in the United States and the Western world to the two towers coming down,
01:23:54we have seen nothing until the first dirty bomb is blown by some terrorist and wipes out a good part
01:24:04of a city.
01:24:09If that ever happens, the impact on our civil liberties, on our human rights, those components of why humanity is
01:24:18advanced will take a nosedive.
01:24:21And we'll turn into police states and God knows what other paranoia, panic reaction that we created.
01:24:28The aim of the exercise of Pugwash is to say, hey, that sort of warm, fuzzy feeling you had in
01:24:37your tummy about the Cold War echolidrium,
01:24:40even though you didn't agree with it, was there, doesn't exist anymore.
01:24:45You're in a whole new era with a lot of different players and with those who are not necessarily going
01:24:53to play by the rules.
01:24:57I think people actually believe that we'll never use them.
01:25:01I think people actually believe that it won't happen.
01:25:27My nature is not to distress, just the opposite.
01:25:30By nature, I believe fundamentally in the goodness of men.
01:25:38Last night I had the strangest dream I'd never dreamed before.
01:25:48I dream the world had all agreed to put an end to war.
01:26:03In the same year he was knighted, Sir Joseph Rodplat was a guest on a popular radio show.
01:26:10Among his favorite selections was the 60s peace anthem,
01:26:14Last night I had the strangest dream.
01:26:25I would like everybody to be conscious that they are members of a species which has a marvelous history,
01:26:34but whose continuous existence can no longer be guaranteed.
01:26:44The joy of life.
01:26:48The beauty, continuation of life.
01:26:51Beauty in the world.
01:26:55To detain it.
01:26:56To detain it.
01:26:57To preserve it.
01:26:57Not to let it disappear.
01:27:08I dreamed I saw a mighty room filled with women and men.
01:27:18And the papers they were signing said they'd never fight again.
01:27:30And when the papers all were signed, a million copies made.
01:27:41They all joined hands and bowed their heads.
01:27:46And grateful prayers were prayed.
01:27:53And the people in the streets below were dancing round and round.
01:28:03And guns and swords and uniforms were scattered on the ground.
01:28:16Last night I had the strangest dream I'd never dreamed before.
01:28:26I dreamed the world had all agreed to put an end to war.
01:28:39It is not true.
01:28:50The time I listened to, I knew.
01:28:51Once the beginning of my life isIt was given up,
01:29:08Even mindfulness was made a tax찬 dingen to believe.
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