Talk on nuclear weapons for Berlin
It is my pleasure and honor to represent the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Dr. Albert Schweitzer. Many people in Europe and especially in France and Germany will know that he comes from what is now the French province of Alsace. He was known as a prominent theologian, philosopher, and an expert on the organ music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Indeed, he gave many concerts and lectures on these subjects throughout Europe and spent a great deal of time in Berlin studying, lecturing, and giving concerts. I often compare his fame to that of Bono’s fame. Indeed, at our Summit for Nobel Peace Prize Laureates in Paris last year, I told Bono that he reminded me of Schweitzer due to his excellence in music and his dedication to humanitarian values.
However, he left all of his fame here in Europe when he decided to become a medical doctor and work in what is now the country of Gabon and what was then, at the beginning of the twentieth century, French Equatorial Africa. He lived and worked in a town called Lambarene for 50 years and even became more famous for his humanitarian example in Africa and for what he felt was his most important contribution to the world, the idea of Reverence for Life. From the German, I understand that the word reverence translates more accurately to the English word awe which conveys a sense of wonder for all life, plant, animal, and human. It is tough to kill another human being if you think of another human being with a sense of wonder.
However, in 1957, he decided through the influence of his friend Albert Einstein and Norman Cousins to strongly oppose nuclear testing and nuclear weapons. With the help of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee and Radio Oslo, he delivered 3 radio addresses broadcast throughout Europe in which he described in detail the problems of nuclear testing. I think we all need to be reminded of the horror of nuclear war or even an explosion of one of these devices since most people I feel are very complacent about these awful devices.
An excerpt from his radio address follows.
The explosion of an atom bomb creates an inconceivably large number of exceedingly small particles of radioactive elements which decay like uranium or radium. Some of these particles decay very quickly, others more slowly, and some of them extraordinarily slowly. The strongest of these elements cease to exist only ten seconds after the detonation of the bomb. But in this short time they may have killed a great number of people in a circumference of several miles.
Of these elements some exit for hours, some for weeks, or months, or years, or millions of years, undergoing continuous decay. They float in the higher strata of air as clouds of radioactive dust. The heavy particles fall down first. The lighter ones will stay in the air for a longer time or come down with rain or snow. How long it will take before everything carried up in the air by the explosions which have taken place till now, no one can say with any certainty. According to some estimates, this will be the case not earlier than thirty or forty years from now.
But he also was concerned about not only nuclear fallout but the moral implications of a decision to use nuclear devices.
He quoted an English M.P. who said with good reason, “He who uses atomic weapons becomes subject to the fate of a bee, namely, when it stings it will perish inevitably for having made use of its sting.” He who uses atomic weapons to defend freedom would become subject to a similar fate.
Later on in his life, he commented on the fact that the world came close to nuclear war over the Cuban missile crisis and over the construction of the Berlin Wall.
In an open letter to the United States Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamera, Schweitzer, who was very concerned that McNamera had been given authority to launch nuclear strikes in response to the Berlin crisis, writes the following:
A war, fought with atomic weapons, is something so horrible that not even military people or the scientists concerned with the real significance of atomic weapons can have a full notion about it.
First of all, it no longer has the character of war. War up to now has meant that through the use of weapons, territory can be conquered or can better be defended against enemies… A war with atomic weapons is very different. During such a war, no territory or fortress can be conquered nor can any territory or fortress be defended. The only possibility is mutual, senseless, unlimited destruction. This destruction will take place over vast territories and far over the borders of the combatants because of the terrible explosions, fires and a terrible poisoning of the atmosphere and soil. A great part of many populations will perish woefully. Atomic war was nothing to do with two nations, but the whole of humanity.
In another letter to Norman Cousins describing his letter to McNamera, Schweitzer disparages any decision to go to nuclear war over the crisis in Berlin. He says and I quote: For those who know the problem, to think of an atomic war over Berlin is idiocy. The American Secretary of Defense ought not to be concerned with that. And if there is an atomic war because of Berlin, the first thing that will happen is that the two Berlins will cease to exist – thanks to the use of atomic weapons. The Berliners know it and are afraid of war because of it. We Europeans think it strange that the American Secretary of Defense should take up the Berlin question and offer atomic war as the solution to the Berlin problem. Berliners would rather stay alive. Forgive me for writing to you to say how much the idea of an atomic war to bridge the Berlin problem is idiotic.
Returning to Schweitzer’s radio addresses, he concludes one of them by saying the following:
The awareness that we are all human beings together has become lost in war and through politics. We have reached the point of regarding each other only as members of people either allied with us or against us and our approach: prejudice, sympathy, or antipathy are all conditioned by that. Now we must rediscover the fact that we- all together- are human beings, and that we must strive to concede to each other what moral capacity we have. Only in this way can we begin to believe that in other peoples as well as in ourselves there will arise the need for a new spirit which can be the beginning of a feeling of mutual trustworthiness toward each other. The spirit is a mighty force for transforming things. We have seen it at work as the spirit of evil which virtually threw us back from striving toward a culture of the spirit into barbarism. Now let us set our hopes on the spirit’s bringing peoples and nations back to an awareness of culture.
It would be of immense importance if the United States in this hour of destiny could decide in favor of renouncing atomic weapons to remove the possibility of an eventual outbreak of an atomic war. The theory of peace through terrifying an opponent by a greater armament can now only heighten the danger of war. I am pleased and proud that President Obama is finally paying attention to Schweitzer’s call for an end to the dangers of nuclear war and testing. I hope that all of you will pressure your government to heed Schweitzer’s warning and words.
Thank you.
Albert Schweitzer Institute
Gorbachev Foundation
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