Chapter 105, A Christmas Story During the Third World War (1)
December 24, 1946, Princeton, New Jersey, USA
This is a small city in the northeastern United States, between New York and Philadelphia. It is a unique rural city. The small city is located on the Delaware Plain in southwest New Jersey, bordering Lake Carnegie to the east and the Delaware River to the west. The scenery of Princeton is elegant, surrounded by green trees, green grass, and clear rivers flowing quietly around the small town. There are also the famous Princeton University and the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study in the city, which is filled with a dense cultural atmosphere. The aristocratic atmosphere has made it a favored residence for the upper class in the United States since modern times.
Compared with Eurasia, which has almost become a hell on earth, although the United States has already spent five years in the war, in general, this new world protected by two oceans is undoubtedly far away from the wars of the old world. Although American civilians also began to complain about the lack of supplies in the market, in Princeton, where a large number of celebrities, rich and privileged people lived, a variety of daily necessities were still in sufficient supply as before the war.
No. 112 Mercer Street in Princeton is a two-story building. After entering the courtyard, there is a path to the door, with neatly trimmed shrubs on both sides. The entrance door faces to the left, and there is a wooden staircase next to the wall decorated with corn stalks. Going upstairs is the study room, surrounded by bookshelves. Directly in front of the door is a large window overlooking the garden. On the right is the door leading to the balcony and bedroom, as well as portraits of Faraday and Maxwell. There is a large rectangular table in front of the large window, next to it is a small coffee table with a pipe, and an Australian Aboriginal boomerang on it. There is a round table and a sofa next to the door.
At first glance, this seems to be just a very ordinary residence of an upper-class American scholar and professor, which seems ordinary in the academic atmosphere of Princeton. However, as long as the owner of this house is mentioned, everyone will be thunderous and respectful.
——He is the leading figure in quantum science, the proposer of the theory of relativity and the mass-energy equation, Albert Einstein.
This year has passed since Einstein was driven out of Germany by the radical Nazis because of his Jewish ancestry, and was forced to immigrate to the United States with his wife Rosa, secretary Meyer and others to work at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Thirteen years.
At this time, Einstein was sitting on a newly added single sofa in the study, preparing Christmas gifts for friends and colleagues, and at the same time thinking hard about what to write on the greeting cards while listening. Current affairs news played on the radio - although the news content on the radio is still It was as impassioned and enthusiastic as ever, full of all kinds of empty patriotic slogans. However, like many rational intellectuals from various countries during the war, Einstein had gradually learned how to unearth various aspects from behind those colorful words. A cold hard truth.
What's more, he also learned the skill of "eavesdropping on the enemy's channel" without any teacher - this is a well-known secret in Princeton.
Therefore, based on both positive and negative news, Einstein could easily conclude that the United States is being defeated on all fronts!
This is really an unpleasant conclusion for Einstein, but it also makes people helpless.
On the Chinese battlefield in Asia, the Battle of Zhoushan Islands ended three days ago. The Chinese legal government announced that 100,000 enemies had been wiped out, Zhejiang Province was basically lost, and victory was transferred to Taiwan. At the same time, a rebellion broke out among Chinese government troops in Fuzhou, and the defenders mutinied and surrendered to the enemy. At this point, the territory that Chairman Chiang still can actually rule is, apart from Taiwan Island, which was recovered from Japan last year, there is only an isolated city of Xiamen on the mainland. And once the Soviet Pacific Fleet moves south from Vladivostok in a large scale, or the Japanese Navy Combined Fleet returns from the South Pacific and moves north, even Taiwan Island will basically be undefeated.
Therefore, according to the news in the tabloid, as early as the week when World War III broke out, Chairman Chiang sent his foreign minister and his wife to Washington to discuss with the White House to obtain more US aid supplies and to establish the Republic of China in San Francisco. Government-in-Exile Matters...
Then came the Philippine battlefield. General MacArthur, who had a flamboyant personality, was still bragging about his latest achievements in suppressing the guerrillas of the Communist Party of the Philippines: today he recaptured a certain town, tomorrow he annihilated hundreds of thousands of bandits, and the day after tomorrow he captured someone he had never heard of. The bandit leader... However, even people who know nothing about modern military know that no matter how many times MacArthur can win the security war in the Philippines, he can even completely wipe out the red guerrillas on Luzon Island. As long as the Japanese battlefield and the Chinese battlefield collapse, the Philippines, which is alone behind enemy lines, is destined to gain and lose again.
By then, I wonder if MacArthur will stick to the Bataan Peninsula like last time? Or just take a submarine and flee to Singapore or Hawaii?
What's even more terrible is that the U.S. military on the Japanese battlefield has collapsed this month - in order to test the damage effect of atomic bombs after repeated explosions in the same area, the Soviets happily dropped a large amount of atomic bombs on the Boso Peninsula where the U.S. military held sway. Twelve atomic bombs... When the fifth atomic bomb fell, General Patton, the commander of the US military in Japan, fled to Hawaii on a submarine, leaving hundreds of thousands of his troops to fend for themselves in the nuclear blast radiation zone.
All in all, according to current trends, the Stars and Stripes of the United States will bid farewell to East Asia by March or April next spring at the latest.
The United States and its allies are certainly losing ground in the Asian battlefields, but the situation in the European and North African battlefields is even more dire.
First of all, a week before Christmas, the Soviet Red Army finally brought a group of European socialist allies, easily crushed the weak resistance of the Portuguese and a small number of US troops stationed in Europe, and planted the red flag on the roof of the Royal Palace in Lisbon, thus bringing the US and British allies The forces were completely driven out of the European continent.
Then, after Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom issued an order to surrender and Portugal fell, in order to maintain the last foothold in Western Europe, the U.S. troops stationed in Ireland did not retreat, but gradually reduced their forces to Londonderry (the second largest city in Northern Ireland). ) as a base and prepare to stick to it for a long time.
In addition, the vast majority of British troops stationed on the island of Ireland also refused to accept Queen Elizabeth II's unconditional surrender order and arrested or expelled IRA representatives who attempted to surrender. At the same time, tens of thousands of poor British people who are dying in the nuclear wasteland are still pouring into Ireland in droves with all kinds of rags and rags. Once they land, they burn, kill, and loot. Find your own way to survive.
In response to this, the Irish Republican Army, which already boasted itself as a victor, was naturally furious and completely intolerable. But since the Soviet Red Army is busy sweeping Asia Minor and has no intention of landing on the island to join the war for the time being, they can only use the latest weapons provided by the Soviet Union - for some reason, there are actually a large number of Japanese ordnance mixed in, and start a homeland defense to expel the invaders. During the war, various massacres occurred one after another, and the moral limit reached new lows repeatedly.
In this way, the US military, the British army, the Irish Republican Army and a large number of miscellaneous civilian armed forces from the two countries, plus a group of Soviet strategic bombers that came to join in the fun from time to time, continued to turn Ireland into a bloody purgatory this Christmas. Fortunately, in order to accommodate the mood of the Irish authorities, the Soviet Union publicly announced that it would no longer drop atomic bombs on the Irish battlefield, and would instead mainly use incendiary bombs and poison gas bombs. This prevented the situation from developing in a more collapsed direction. Otherwise, Ireland's population of several million alone is not enough to die in a nuclear war...
Next, in the North African battlefield, with the blockage of the Suez Canal, the nuclear explosion in Alexandria, and the uprising in the Egyptian capital Cairo, a series of bad news came one after another. The US military was no longer able to maintain its rule over Egypt. Eisenhower, who had just recently changed from Commander of U.S. Forces in Europe to Commander of U.S. Forces in Africa, had to move his headquarters to Baghdad and changed his title again from Commander of U.S. Forces in Africa to Commander of U.S. Forces in the Middle East.
After moving his headquarters to Baghdad, General Eisenhower's top priority was to gather the Allied forces scattered across the Mediterranean, but this task was really difficult to accomplish. Because, at the same time that Admiral Eisenhower was relocating his headquarters, the Soviet Black Sea Fleet, which had rushed out of the Turkish Strait, met the U.S. Mediterranean Fleet, which was organizing a retreat, in the waters near the island of Cyprus. The Cyprus naval battle broke out immediately, and the weak U.S. fleet Almost the entire army was destroyed, and even the merchant fleet responsible for the withdrawal could not escape the disaster. It was either sunk by artillery or became a trophy of the Soviets.
At this point, although General Eisenhower still has more than 500,000 troops under his name, after losing control of the sea in the Mediterranean, most of the troops have become scattered and scattered in isolated places from Malta to Cyrenaica. In the stronghold, I couldn't fight or evacuate. In the end, I could only pinch my nose. They were left to fend for themselves - fortunately, the vast majority of them were Brazilians, Mexicans, Peruvians and Canadians. Even the American troops were mainly black and Asian soldiers, even if all were lost. I feel particularly distressed, and maybe it can also eliminate some hidden dangers in the country.
But in any case, it is a foregone conclusion that the Allied forces will lose all of North Africa, and how long General Eisenhower can continue to hold on in the Middle East seems to be unknown now - this makes Einstein, a supporter of Zionism, unable to help but worry about Palestine The fate of those Jewish settlers...Although he has always lived in Europe and the United States, Einstein has always regarded himself as a Jew and an Israeli in his heart...
Fortunately, the invader who is about to invade Palestine is not Hitler, but Stalin. Maybe the Jews there still have some hope!
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For ordinary people living in the United States, the above-mentioned distant wars burning thousands of kilometers away may seem very exciting and exciting and can attract their attention, but to put it bluntly, they just represent the meaning of the after-dinner meal. Just a few gossips after tea. However, next, the federal government's latest comprehensive domestic food and daily necessities rationing system makes every American feel worried.
——During the previous World War II era, U.S. agricultural production did not decline. On the contrary, strong war demand swept away the residual effects of the Great Depression, causing the output of various crops to reach new highs. Therefore, Americans during the war were never hungry. There was no shortage of bread and tortillas, but more high-end butter, chocolate, steak, etc. were sometimes out of stock. Even if they had money, they might not be able to eat well. .
However, as time went by, when the Third World War came, due to the sharp increase in material consumption and the increasing shortage of agricultural labor, in order to squeeze out more materials to supply the front line, even the United States, a once unique agricultural country, also Food rationing had to be implemented.
To be honest, compared with other participating countries whose people have long been suffering from hunger and cold, the food rationing system scheduled to be officially launched by the federal government in February next year is still very generous and generous. Even for ordinary heavy manual workers, the weekly rations per person are four kilograms of bread, four kilograms of meat or fish, 500 grams of butter, 500 grams of sugar, 200 grams of jam, 100 grams of coffee, milk One kilogram of products, fats and oils, three liters of milk. Eggs, vegetables and fruits are provided in unlimited quantities, as long as they are still available in the market. Clerical workers and light manual laborers received smaller amounts of bread and meat, but other non-staple food rations were the same as heavy manual laborers. For professors and officials, there are special rations at different levels.
In addition to food, cigarettes, tobacco and alcohol will also be rationed next year. Civilians can only buy three packs of cigarettes per week, and three liters of hard liquor or six liters of beer a month. Cloth and soap were also included in the ration list, and a White House spokesman encouraged people to wear old clothes amid boos.
Next, people's electricity use is also restricted. Depending on the city, each household is limited to five to fifteen kilowatt hours per month. Northern Maine and other places have shortened urban heating hours in winter, and some places have stopped supplying piped gas in the morning, allowing everyone to go to work with cold bread.
Of course, as an academic leader, Einstein didn't have to worry about his family going hungry or being forced to sit in a dark room without electricity. However, just the introduction of these rationing systems already made him feel some ominous signs.
——In fact, regarding the impact of the war on American society, even in an upper-class gathering place like Princeton, Einstein felt it very clearly: more and more young boys disappeared from schools and streets, Driven by patriotic slogans to fight across the oceans in Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania. More and more jobs in the country can only be supported by the elderly and women, like a hollowed-out shell.
Today, as overseas wars are losing ground, millions of young men are dying, and the hollowed-out United States is becoming increasingly unsustainable. And with the proliferation of atomic bombs on all fronts around the world, the death rate of these young men will be greatly accelerated...
Of course, along with them, well-known historical cities and more ordinary people were wiped out.
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Thinking of this, as the first person to push the United States to start atomic bomb research, Einstein couldn't help but feel deep regret and headache.
He sighed, turned around and took out a stack of photos from the drawer. Among them were mushroom clouds that exploded in the sky, ships and trams that were blown to pieces, and the remains of buildings that looked like they had been stepped on by giants. Most of them were... The livers and brains were smeared, the charred and hideous corpses, and the wounded whose bodies were so swollen that they were no longer humanoid... These were all obtained by Einstein through special channels of several friends, and were taken in Britain after the nuclear explosion.
When he first saw these photos, he almost threw up. According to friends, there are even more horrific nuclear explosions that have occurred in Paris, Madrid and Amsterdam, as well as in Ankara, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Jakarta and Hanoi...
Relatively speaking, the Berlin he was once familiar with, although it was severely damaged in the street battles due to Hitler's last-minute resistance, it was not hit by the atomic bomb. Now, compared to Paris and London, it is much intact...
Are all these human tragedies and civilizational catastrophes my fault?
When he thought that the atomic bomb invented based on his own mass-energy equation was actually becoming a tool for human self-destruction, as a conscientious scientist, Einstein couldn't help but feel a deep remorse and self-blame in his heart. I feel like I have been condemned by my conscience.
In fact, as early as the end of World War II, when the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Tokyo, Japan, Einstein already felt very uncomfortable. He said with regret to the reporters who came to interview: "... My biggest feeling now is regret. , regretting that I should not have written that letter to President Roosevelt... At that time, I wanted to snatch the atomic bomb, a criminal tool of murder, from the hands of the madman Hitler. I didn't expect that it would be given to another madman now... Why should we kill hundreds of thousands or millions of innocent men, women, and children? , as a living target for this new bomb?”
Next, when the United States was celebrating the destruction of the Japanese Empire, Einstein wrote: "... I do not think that atomic energy will be a blessing in the foreseeable future, so I must say that it is currently a blessing. Threats. As scientists, we have to keep warning people about these We must work hard to make the people of the world, and especially their governments, aware of the dangers of weapons. Unless they change their attitudes towards each other and recognize their responsibility in shaping a secure future, these weapons will inevitably cause insecurity. A disaster to describe.”
Then, as the all-out showdown between the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, approached, Einstein loudly expressed his anti-war proposition: "...I don't know what weapons will be used to fight the Third World War, but In the Fourth World War, mankind will definitely be able to fight with stones and sticks!”
But, to date, all his calls for peace have come to nothing. The Third World War still started vigorously, and from the beginning there was a nuclear war everywhere. London, Paris, Shanghai...these bustling metropolises he had visited were all instantly annihilated in the mushroom cloud of the atomic bomb. And the millions or even tens of millions of patients dying of radiation sickness made Einstein's conscience even more tortured.
——Blinding flashes of light and hideous mushroom clouds have haunted Einstein’s dreams from time to time over the past year, keeping him awake at night.
Sometimes, he even couldn't help but ask himself, if he hadn't discovered all this in the first place, maybe it would have been better for mankind?
But the matter has come to this, and it is useless to regret it anymore... However, even so, I should still do something.
So, with the sound of Christmas carols floating out of the window from time to time, Einstein sat at his desk, picked up his pen, and concentrated on writing a "Proposal on Limiting the Use of Nuclear Weapons in War" and prepared to use Christmas Party, invite friends to sign:
“… At a time when the whole world is involved in an unprecedented and huge war, and when all mankind is experiencing an unprecedented tragedy, we and other members of the scientific community should collectively assess the dangers posed by the development and abuse of weapons of mass destruction. Regardless of No matter where we stand politically, we are all human beings and should put the survival of our species above all else and ensure that we continue to exist as a species into the next century and beyond.
At present, the general public, and even many people in high positions, have not yet realized the consequences of nuclear war. The general public still only thinks that atomic bombs are more powerful than old bombs, and that one atomic bomb can wipe out an entire city.
There is no doubt that atomic bombs can easily destroy huge cities. But this is just one of the small disasters we have to face. If only people in a certain city were killed, the world would slowly recover from such a blow after a period of time. But after the tragedy in Great Britain came to light, we now know that nuclear weapons can spread destruction over a much larger area than expected.
There is very authoritative news that proves that atomic bomb explosions will be accompanied by a large number of radioactive particles being thrown into the upper atmosphere. These radioactive particles will gradually settle and fall to the surface in the form of radioactive dust or rain, posing a fatal threat to human health. At present, we don’t know much about how far such deadly radioactive particles will spread, but it is conceivable that if atomic bombs are abused to the extreme in war, it may lead to long-term damage to the entire earth’s environment, and even the extinction of the human species. . For a few it's a quick death, for the majority it's a slow killing.
From the various tragic tragedies that are happening in the Old World, we can see that some in-depth research and dedicated scientific work often bring tragic consequences to mankind. The tragic fate of scientists has led us to help create more terrifying and powerful destructive weapons. Therefore, it is the unshirkable responsibility of us scientific workers to prevent these weapons from being used for barbaric and destructive purposes.
The power of nuclear weapons is unlimited, and it is extremely dangerous to mankind. People all over the world must unite, otherwise humanity will destroy itself. Now is the time to call on everyone to think about these disasters. I believe that even in war, it is necessary to abide by the basic principles of morality. A nuclear war will not solve any problem except bringing unprecedented casualties and destruction to both sides of the war. If possible, I hope that governments around the world can seek peaceful means to resolve their various disputes. Even if this is not possible, we should try to limit the abuse of nuclear weapons, otherwise it will inevitably threaten the continued survival of mankind..."