The success of Oppenheimer must have triggered this rumination about science and conscience, with the great Albert Einstein making eloquent speeches for peace and pacifism; Einstein And The Bomb is a docudrama, using archival footage and news clippings with Einstein played by Aidan McArdle, acting out portions of the scientist’s life after he left Germany.
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Hitler and the Nazis were on the rise, the Jews were being persecuted in Germany, the Holocaust was underway. As a Jew, Einstein had to bear the brunt of the hate. Everything he owned was taken away, and he was given shelter in England, in a log hut on the estate of Commander Oliver Locker-Lampson (Andrew Havill). There, he is assigned two shotgun-carrying bodyguards, Barbara Goodall (Helena Westerman) and Margery Howard (Rachel Barry).
As the world’s most eminent scientist, plus both articulate and photogenic with that shock of wild hair, Einstein is followed by media interest even when he is supposedly in hiding. Miraculously, the Germans do not attack him there, even when his ‘secret location is revealed by the press. In the humble Norfolk cottage, his belongings curtailed to one suitcase, Einstein still exudes calm and good cheer, explaining to the two star-struck women the meaning of his famed Theory of Relativity.
Footage from Germany shows the havoc Hitler unleashed in his country, and managed to sway citizens to support the pogrom against the Jews. Einstein is anguished by it, and also worried that anything he says might worsen the condition of the Jewish people. Nazi-supported scientists speak out against Einstein and his pathbreaking work. When told that a hundred scientists had debunked the Theory of Relativity, he says that if it was incorrect, even one scientist would have been enough.
It is this theory that eventually leads to the invention of the atomic bomb, though Einstein has no direct role to play in it. He was in the US at the time, and teaching at Princeton, but when the ‘Manhattan Project’ was on, he was seen as too much of a risk to be invited to the base. Still, when atomic bombs are dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a persistent Japanese journalist holds him responsible. Believing that organized force can only be fought with organized force and fearing that the Nazis would invent the atomic bomb soon, he did urge then US President Franklin D. Roosevelt to start a nuclear weapons programme. This is something he regretted particularly after the German experiment failed.
Directed by Anthony Philipson, written by Philip Ralph, the film moves back and forth in time to tell the story of the conditions post World War l that made it possible for the rise of fascism in Germany and for Hitler to collect the “human flotsam” to form his army of blind followers. It led to World War ll, and massive loss of human life. Japan had bombed Pearl Harbour and a reprisal was inevitable, but was the dropping of the atomic bomb on innocent people justified?
“The war is won. The peace is not,” as Einstein lamented. The film runs a brisk 76 minutes, but makes a lot of strong points about violence and peace that are valid even today.
Einstein and the Bomb
Directed by Anthony Philipson
Cast: Aidan McArdle, Rachel Barry, Helena Westerman, James Musgrave and others
