By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO—We now have two good examples illustrating the thesis that if ever you want a U.S. President to make a momentous decision that could impact the lives of generations to come, you'd be wise to have a good story from history to tell him first.

One example was retold last night in the "Einstein's letter" episode of the History Channel's  10 Days Than Unexpectedly Changed America series.  Physicists Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, Edward Teller and Enrico Fermi were convinced that not only was it possible to split the atom to create energy, but that Nazi Germany was actively working on such a project.  It was imperative that the United States beat dictator Adolf Hitler in acquiring such a weapon.  But how to get this message to President Franklin D. Roosevelt?  These scientists, after all, were but recent immigrants to the United States.  So they turned to the colleague who could get anyone's attention, the remarkable Albert Einstein, whose name had become synonymous with brilliance.

Although a noted pacifist, Einstein harbored no illusions about what could happen to the world if Hitler had a monopoly on atomic  power.  And so, more than three years before the United States entered World War II as a result of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Einstein urged that the United States urgently undertake its own atomic  research program. 

Einstein dictated a letter to Roosevelt on August 2, 1938, explaining the implications of the ability to split an atom.  In part, this letter read:

...In the course of the last four months, it has been made probable—through the work of Joliet in France as well as Fermi and Szilard in America—that it may become possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium by which vast amounts of power and large quantities of new radium-like elements would be generated. Now it appears almost certain that this could be achieved in the immediate future.

This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is conceivable—though much less certain—that extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed. A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory.  However such bombs might very well prove to be too heavy for transportation by air...

Einstein and the others decided that a letter of such portent ought not to be simply entrusted to the U.S. Postal Service; that it had to be delivered in person by someone known to President Roosevelt.  They settled on the economist Alexander Sachs, who was known to be a friend of Roosevelt's.  It took more than two months before Sachs was ushered into the Oval Office, and it was during the "small talk" before the presentation of the letter that Sachs recalled to Roosevelt a story about Robert Fulton and Napoleon.

As the story went, Fulton had urged Napoleon to build a fleet of his steam ships and thereby be able to cross the English channel and invade England regardless of the winds that would hamper ordinary sailing ships.  Napoleon dismissed the idea as impractical.

The story was well chosen because sea power was always one of President Roosevelt's great interests.  He had risen to public prominence between 1913 and 1920 as the Assistant Secretary of the Navy—a position that his cousin, former President Theodore Roosevelt had also once occupied.

Thus alerted by Sachs' analogy to the history-changing potential of  atomic research, Roosevelt read the letter, then turned to his aide, Gen. Edwin "Pa" M. Watson, and said:  "Pa, this requires action."

The second instance of storytelling occurred in March 1948 during  the next presidential administration, that of Harry S. Truman.  The United States had voted the preceding November at the United Nations Security Council  for the partition of Palestine but elements of the U.S. government, particularly the State Department, were pressuring President Truman to reverse course. 

Zionists meanwhile wanted to meet with the President to urge the United States to quickly recognize the Jewish State if it should declare itself independent when the British mandate expired that coming May.  The clamor became so intense that Truman, frustrated that he was being distracted from other issues,  announced that he did not want to hear from anyone—not even Chaim Weizmann, head of the world Zionist movement—on this issue.

Eddie Jacobson  had known Truman since their days together in World War I and even had been Truman's partner in an unsuccessful haberdashery store.  He was prevailed upon to call upon Truman at the White House to urge him to at least meet with Weizmann.  Although he knew the subject was taboo, Jacobson maneuvered the conversation to Wiezmann by pointing to a sculpture of President Andrew Jackson that Truman kept in the Oval Office. 

Commenting how Jackson had been Truman's boyhood hero, Jacobson said that he too had a hero—a man who was a hero to many Jews, Weizmann.  Jacobson then pleaded with his friend to please meet with Weizmann, whom he described as being cast from the same temperament and mould as Jackson.  Truman laughed, then cussed, and then agreed to receive Weizmann. 

The two men's meeting occurred on March 18, 1948,  during which Truman promised to recognize the Jewish State upon its declaration of independence two months later.  True to Truman's word, the United States announced its de facto recognition of the new country,  just 11 minutes after David Ben-Gurion announced that the Jewish State would be called Israel, and declared it to be independent.