I thanked him for his kindness and told him that I had merely told the truth, which, unfortunately, it was not within my power to change; and there then ensued a most interesting and protracted conversation about the intrinsic value of truth. Since what he told me was told in confidence and might get him into trouble if revealed, I do not feel free to record it here.
The war crimes trials opened about one month later at Lake Success, and I was — apparently as a special favor— among the first to be tried. I was charged by the prosecutor, a Russian, first of all with having tried to induce the United States government to take up the development of atomic energy in a meeting held on October 21, 1939, i.e., at a time when the war in Europe was still an imperialist war, since Germany had not attacked Russia until 1941.
I was also charged with having contributed to the war crime of dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. I thought at first that I had a good and valid defense against this latter charge, since I had warned against the military use of the bomb in the war with Japan in a memorandum which I had presented to Mr. Byrnes at Spartanburg, South Carolina, six weeks before the first bomb had been tested in New Mexico.
But unfortunately this memorandum, which Mr. Byrnes had put into a pocket of his trousers when I left him, could not be located by counsel for the defense either in the files of the State Department or in the possession of any of the Spartanburg cleaners who might have kept it as a souvenir. Mr. Byrnes was himself under indictment and was not called as a witness. Excerpts from the memorandum which were published in the fall of 1947 in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists were stricken from the record on the ground that the parts of this memorandum which were omitted from the publication for reasons of secrecy might have contained the opposite of what the published part of the document appeared to indicate.
Under these circumstances I had to fall back for my defense on a petition which I had circulated in the Uranium Project at the University of Chicago immediately after the testing of the bomb in New Mexico and which asked the President to withhold his approval of a military use of the bomb against the cities of Japan. The prosecutor moved, however, that this document be stricken from the record on the ground that it was not transmitted by me to the President directly, but was, rather, handed by me to the head of the project, who forwarded it through the Manhattan District of the War Department, headed by General Groves. The prosecutor said that I, Szilard, should have known better than to agree to such a method of transmittal.
Having rested my defense, I was now free on bail. Since I was not permitted to leave Lake Success, I was spending my time there listening to the trials of the statesmen and scientists. In spite of the seriousness of my own situation, I found it difficult sometimes to refrain from joining in the laughter which frequently interrupted the proceedings.
As a prelude to the Nuremberg trials, war crimes had been defined with the collaboration of the United States, represented by Justice Jackson of the United States Supreme Court. The “violation of the customs of war” had been defined as a war crime at that time. “Planning a war in violation of international agreements” had also been defined as a crime.
The first statesman to be tried on charges arising from the bombing of Hiroshima was Mr. Stimson, and he was tried on his own admission contained in an article which he had published in 1947 in Harper’s. The prosecution pointed out that the “defense” put forward by Mr. Stimson in that article was untenable. Mr. Stimson’s point was that, had the bomb not been used, millions would have perished in an invasion of Japan. The prosecutor, a Dutchman, quoted from a memorandum prepared after the surrender of Japan by the United States Strategic Bombing Survey which showed that the United States could have won the war against Japan without invasion, just by sitting tight, since Japan was essentially defeated before the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. He further quoted passages from the book Secret Mission, by Ellis M. Zacharias, published in 1946, which showed that Japan’s desperate position must have been known to Mr. Stimson, since it was fully disclosed in the reports prepared by the United States naval intelligence.
Counsel for the defense, however, submitted a deposition obtained from the British Secretary of War in order to prove that secretaries of war never based decisions on reports prepared by naval intelligence. “Mr. Stimson,” so counsel for the defense said, “should not be reproached for acting as all secretaries of war in all English-speaking countries have acted at all times.”
The presiding judge, in summing up, disregarded the arguments presented by both the prosecution and the defense and took the line that prior to the Third World War it was not customary to drop atomic bombs on towns and cities, and that such a “violation of the customs of war” was a war crime which could not be justified on the ground that the government which committed it hoped that by doing so it would bring the war to a speedier conclusion.
It was expected that Mr. Stimson would be found guilty on his own admission, but that he would be reprieved primarily because of his article published in Foreign Affairs in 1947 in which he commented on the foreign policy of the Truman Administration. It was generally considered that in 1947 his was a voice of reason and moderation in the midst of general confusion.
Mr. Truman was charged with the “crime” of actually ordering the bombing of Hiroshima. At first, counsel for the defense took the line that at the time when the definition of war crimes was made public at Nuremberg, Mr. Truman was at sea — in the literal sense of the term. He was on board a battleship on his way back from Potsdam and did not have opportunity adequately to study the text of the Nuremberg Declaration prior to the bombing of Hiroshima. This plea was rejected by the court on the ground that those who were sentenced to death and executed at Nuremberg could — if they were alive — use much the same type of argument in their defense.
Subsequently, counsel for the defense took the line that Mr. Truman was not guilty because he had not acted on his own but had merely followed advice given to him and, so to speak, had been merely following orders. In proof of this the defense read into the record a magazine article published by Garbatov in Russia in 1947 which asserted that Mr. Truman had always been taking orders from one boss or another. This article had drawn a protest from the American ambassador at the time of its publication.
Having had little luck with any of his “lines,” counsel for the defense raised the question why the use of an atomic bomb should be considered a “violation of the customs of war” any more than the use of a virus that killed children. But the presiding judge ordered his remark stricken from the record, saying that this was the trial of Harry S. Truman and not of Somebody Else, and that since Mr. Truman was not accused of having ordered the use of a virus in warfare, nothing relating to any virus could possibly be relevant to his defense.
It was generally expected that Mr. Truman would be found guilty, but it was rumored that there were powerful Russian influences at work to have him reprieved. There were all sorts of guesses as to what the reasons of the Russians may have been, and some thought that they favored Mr. Truman on account of his supposed Wall Street connections, since the Russians were known to nurture a secret admiration for Wall Street. I, myself, believe that the reason of the Russians may have been political and rather difficult to guess in detail without knowing on which of their misconceptions it was based.