THE OPPENHEIMER
CASE
623
part of the Soviet Union of the inevitability of conflict...." The
date of this document is January 1948, and it is clear that the period
Dr. Oppenheimer is discussing is the previous year and a half-the
period since the autumn of 1946 when the Baruch plan was sub–
mitted to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission and re–
jected by Russia and her satellites. But if this "revelation" came to
Dr. Oppenheimer only so late, it must be obvious that the ground
on which he would have assessed Communists and Communism dur–
ing the war and immediately after the war was far from as firm as
he now imagines it was. What kind of dislike of Russia is Dr. Op–
penheimer alluding to, we must ask, which did not include an under–
standing that her interests were deeply in conflict with ours and
that her way of life was deeply repugnant to the democratic way?
How
could
a meaningful dislike of Russia such as Dr. Oppenheimer
now ascribes to himself have pre-dated his break with Communism,
as he says it did, if he broke with Communism early in the '40s and
yet could be surprised by the behavior of the Soviet Union in 1946
and '47?
These are not academic questions. They lie at the heart of the
bad case Dr. Oppenheimer and his lawyers make for him. Political
ignorance is the quintessential weakness of Dr. Oppenheimer's de–
fense.
And this weakness is not lost on counsel for the Commission.
In the first hours of cross-examination Mr. Robb has addressed
enough questions to Dr. Oppenheimer on what he thought about
Communists and Communism at what specific dates to get him into
a trap from which he can never extricate himself. I do not mean
that Mr. Robb, or, for that matter, any of Dr. Oppenheimer's
judges, need be supposed to have a clearer understanding of Dr.
Oppenheimer's political development than Dr. Oppenheimer himself
has-as I shall presently indicate, much of United States policy and
enlightened public opinion during the Roosevelt administration rested
on misapprehensions of the nature of the Soviet Union similar to Dr.
Oppenheimer's, and history has not yet adequately correlated for
most politically conscientious Americans the connection between our
lack of realism about Russia and the specific mistakes we made. But
his own historical unawareness enables Mr. Robb, with honesty, to
