Atoms, Stay Away

Within 24 hours after Britain's White Paper leap into the missile age (TIME, April 15), West Germany's Chancellor Konrad Adenauer took a spry leap of his own. West Germany, he declared, must also have some atomic weapons--just like Britain.

From one of West Germany's principal nuclear-research centers, the Max Planck Institute of Physics in Goettingen, came an unexpected rejoinder. Led by four Nobel Prizewinners--among them 77-year-old Otto Hahn, the first man to split the uranium atom--18 scientists proclaimed their "great worry" over Adenauer's proposal. One hydrogen bomb, they warned, could render the whole Ruhr Valley "uninhabitable." Worse yet, "the entire West German Republic could be rubbed out" by spreading radioactivity. The hooker: all 18 pledged themselves not to help the West German government in any way in "the production, testing or even use" of atomic weapons.

"We side with freedom as it exists today in the Western world in contrast to Communism," said the scientists, and they acknowledged that "mutual fear of the hydrogen bomb contributes substantially to the preservation of peace" today, but "we hold this way of preserving peace to be unreliable in the long run. For a small country such as West Germany we believe the best defense of itself and of world peace lies in the voluntary forgoing of possession of atomic weapons in any form."

Konrad Adenauer hit the ceiling. In this election year the opposition, Socialists and Free Democrats, have vigorously decried any attempt to equip the Bundeswehr with tactical atomic weapons. Since Adenauer had intended from the start to get his nuclear weapons from the U.S.--Germany is treaty-bound not to produce them itself--he professed not to be disturbed by the scientists' pledge not to help make or test them. ("None of these 18 gentlemen," he snapped, "has been asked by anyone to cooperate in this matter, and none will be.") But he was plainly angry to hear a Who's Who of German scientists declare that nuclear abstention would be best for Germany. Such a notion, he said, was a political matter, and "has nothing to do with scientific knowledge."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.