Chapter 105: A Christmas Story in the Three World Wars (1)

Princeton, New Jersey, USA, December 24, 1946

It is a small city in the northeastern United States, halfway between New York and Philadelphia, and is a country city with a distinctiveness. The small town of Pen~Fun~Pavilion www.biquge.info is located in the Delaware Plains of southwest New Jersey, bordering Lake Carnegie to the east and the Delaware River to the west. Princeton's elegant scenery, surrounded by greenery, green grass, clear rivers flowing quietly around the town, and the famous Princeton University and the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study in the city, is permeated with an aristocratic atmosphere hidden in a strong cultural atmosphere, and has been a favored residence of the American elite since modern times.

Compared with the Eurasian continent, which is almost becoming a purgatory on earth, although the United States has already spent five years in the war, on the whole, this new world, which is protected by two oceans, is undoubtedly far from the war of the old world. Although American civilians began to complain about the lack of goods in the market, Princeton, home to a large number of celebrities and privileged people, was still as abundant as it was before the war.

112 Messer Street in Princeton is a small two-story building with a path from the courtyard door to the door, lined with manicured shrubs. The entrance door faces to the left, and near the cornstalk decoration wall is a wooden staircase. Upstairs is the study, surrounded on all sides by bookshelves, with a large window overlooking the garden in front of the door, and a door to the balcony and bedroom on the right, as well as portraits of Faraday and Maxwell. In front of the large window is a large rectangular table, next to a small coffee table with a pipe, on which there is also an Aboriginal Australian flyer, and by the door is a round table and sofa.

At first glance, it seems to be just the mansion of an ordinary American upper-class social scholar and professor, and it looks ordinary in Princeton, where the academic atmosphere is strong. However, the mention of the owner of this house makes everyone feel awe-inspiring.

-- He is the titan of quantum science, the proposer of the theory of relativity and the mass-energy equation. Einstein.

This year, it has been 13 years since Einstein was driven out of Germany by radical Nazis because of his Jewish ancestry, and was forced to immigrate to the United States with his wife Luo Aisha, secretary Mayer and others, and worked at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

At this time, Einstein was sitting on a newly added single sofa in his study, preparing Christmas gifts for his friends and colleagues, while writing over the contents of the greeting cards, and listening to the current news on the radio. Albert Einstein has also learned how to unearth the cold truth behind the flowery rhetoric.

What's more, he also learned the art of "eavesdropping on enemy Taiwan" without a teacher, which is already a well-known secret in Princeton.

So, based on both positive and negative sources, Einstein could easily conclude that the United States is being defeated on all fronts!

This is a very unpleasant conclusion for Einstein, but it is also helpless.

In the Chinese theater in Asia, the Battle of the Zhoushan Islands ended three days earlier, and the legitimate government of China announced that it had annihilated 100,000 enemies, basically lost Zhejiang Province, and transferred to Taiwan in victory. At the same time, a rebellion broke out among the Chinese government forces in Fuzhou, and the defenders mutinied and defected to the enemy. At this point, the territory that Chairman Chiang could actually rule was, except for the island of Taiwan, which was recovered from Japan only last year, and only one isolated city on the mainland, Xiamen. And once the Soviet Pacific Fleet moves south from Vladivostok, or the combined fleet of the Japanese Navy returns north from the South Pacific, then even the island of Taiwan will basically be unable to be defended.

Therefore, according to the tabloids, as early as the week of the outbreak of World War III, Chairman Chiang sent his foreign minister and his wife to Washington to discuss with the White House the matter of obtaining more US aid supplies and establishing a government in exile of the Republic of China in San Francisco......

Then there is the Philippine battlefield, and the pompous General MacArthur is still boasting about his latest achievements in exterminating the Philippine Communist guerrillas: recovering a certain town today, annihilating hundreds and thousands of bandits tomorrow, and capturing a bandit leader he has never heard of the day after tomorrow...... However, even those who are ignorant of modern military affairs know that no matter how many times MacArthur was able to win the law and order war in the Philippines, he could even wipe out the red guerrillas on Luzon completely. As long as the Japanese battlefield and the Chinese battlefield collapse, then the Philippines, which is alone behind the enemy, is doomed to gain and lose.

At that time, I wonder if MacArthur will stick to the Bataan Peninsula like he did last time? Or just flee to Singapore or Hawaii in a submarine?

What is even worse is that the US troops on the battlefield in Japan have collapsed this month -- in order to test the damage effect of the atomic bombs after repeated explosions in the same area, the Soviets enthusiastically dropped a full 12 atomic bombs on the Boso Peninsula, which was held by the US troops...... When the fifth atomic bomb fell, General Patton, commander of the U.S. forces stationed in Japan, fled to Hawaii by submarine, leaving hundreds of thousands of troops under his command to fend for themselves in the radiation zone of the nuclear explosion.

All in all, according to current trends, by March and April next spring at the latest, the Stars and Stripes of the United States will be bidding farewell to East Asia.

The situation in the Asian theater of the United States and its allies is of course losing one after another, but the situation in the theater of Europe and North Africa is even more miserable.

First of all, a week before Christmas, the Soviet Red Army, with a vote of European socialist allies, easily crushed the weak resistance of the Portuguese and the small number of troops stationed in Europe, planted the red flag on the roof of the royal palace in Lisbon, and thus completely drove the American and British allied forces out of the European continent.

Then, after the surrender of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and the fall of Portugal, in order to maintain the last foothold in Western Europe, the US troops stationed in Ireland did not retreat, but gradually reduced their forces, using Londonderry (the second largest city in Northern Ireland) as a base, preparing to hold on for a long time.

In addition, the vast majority of British troops stationed on the island of Ireland refused to accept Queen Elizabeth II's edict of unconditional surrender, and arrested or deported representatives of the IRA who attempted to surrender. At the same time, thousands of poor British people who were about to survive on the wasteland of the nuclear explosion continued to pour into Ireland in droves with all kinds of shabby weapons, burning and looting as soon as they landed, to find a way to survive.

In this regard, the Irish Republican Army, which already prides itself on being the victor, is naturally furious and completely intolerable. However, since the Soviet Red Army was so busy sweeping through Asia Minor that it had no intention of landing on the island to participate in the war for the time being, they could only take the latest weapons aided by the Soviet Union -- for some reason, they actually mixed a large number of Japanese ordnance into them, and started a war to defend the territory of the invaders.

In this way, the U.S. Army, the British Army, the Irish Republican Army and a large number of miscellaneous civilian armed forces of the two countries, plus the Soviet strategic bomber groups that came to join in the excitement 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 side publicly announced that it would no longer drop atomic bombs on the Irish battlefield, but would instead use incendiary bombs and poison gas bombs, which did not make the situation develop in the direction of further collapse......

Then, in the North African theater, with the blockage of the Suez Canal, the nuclear explosion in Alexandria, and the great uprising in Cairo, the capital of Egypt, this series of bad news came one after another, and the US military could no longer maintain its rule over Egypt. Eisenhower, who had just changed from commander of the US forces in Europe to commander of US forces in Africa, had no choice but to move his headquarters to Baghdad and once again change his title from commander of US forces in Africa to commander of US forces in the Middle East.

After moving the headquarters to Baghdad, Admiral Eisenhower's first priority was to gather the Allied forces scattered throughout the Mediterranean, but this task was very difficult. Because, at the same time that Admiral Eisenhower was moving his headquarters, the Soviet Black Sea Fleet, which had rushed out of the Turkish Strait, met the US Mediterranean Fleet that had organized the retreat in the waters near the island of Cyprus -- the Battle of Cyprus broke out immediately, and the weak American fleet was almost completely wiped out, and even the merchant fleet responsible for the withdrawal could not escape the catastrophe, either sinking with medium artillery or becoming a trophy of the Soviets.

At this point, although General Eisenhower still had more than 500,000 troops under his name, after losing the control of the sea in the Mediterranean, the vast majority of the troops became scattered and scattered in various isolated strongholds from Malta Island to Cyrenaica, unable to fight or withdraw, and finally could only pinch their noses and let them fend for themselves -- fortunately, the vast majority of them were Brazilians, Mexicans, Peruvians and Canadians, and even the troops in the United States were mainly black and Asian soldiers. Even if all the losses are not particularly distressing, maybe they can remove some hidden dangers for the country.

In any case, the loss of the Allies in all of North Africa was a foregone conclusion, and how long General Eisenhower would be able to hold out in the Middle East now seemed uncertain - which made Einstein, a supporter of Zionism, worried about the fate of the Jewish settlers in Palestine...... Although he has always lived in Europe and the United States, Einstein has always considered himself a Jew and an Israeli in his heart......

Fortunately, the invaders who are about to invade Palestine are not Hitler, but Stalin, and perhaps the Jews there have some hope!

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For the ordinary people living in the United States, although the above-mentioned distant wars burning thousands of kilometers away seem very energetic and exciting, and can attract their attention, to put it bluntly, they are just a few words of gossip after dinner. But then, the federal government's latest comprehensive rationing system for domestic food and daily necessities has worried every American.

-- In the previous World War II era, agricultural production in the United States did not decline, but because of the strong demand for the war, the remnants of the Great Depression were swept away, resulting in record yields of various crops. As a result, the Americans during the war never went hungry, and there was no shortage of bread and tortillas, but the more high-end butter, chocolate, and steak were sometimes out of stock, and even if they had money, they might not be able to eat well.

However, with the passage of time, when World War III came, due to the rapid increase in material consumption and the increasing scarcity of agricultural labor, in order to be able to squeeze out more materials to supply the front line, even the United States, which was once a unique agricultural country, had to start implementing food rationing.

Truth be told, compared to other warring countries that have long been starving and cold, the federal government's food rationing system, which is scheduled to be officially launched in February next year, is still very generous and generous. Even for ordinary heavy manual labourers, the weekly ration for each person ranged from four kilograms of bread, four kilograms of meat or fish, five hundred grams of butter, five hundred grams of sugar, two hundred grams of jam, one hundred grams of coffee, one kilogram of dairy products, fats and oils, and three liters of milk. Eggs, vegetables and fruits are available in unlimited quantities as long as they are available in the market. Civilian workers and light manual workers are given less bread and meat, but the rest of the food is rationed in the same amount as heavy manual workers. In the case of professors and officials, there are also special rations for different ranks.

In addition to food, cigarettes, tobacco and alcohol will also be rationed next year, with civilians only being able to buy three packs of cigarettes a week and three litres of hard liquor or six litres of beer a month. Cloth and soap were also put on the ration list, and a White House spokesman booed people to encourage people to wear more old clothes.

Next, electricity is also restricted, ranging from 5 to 15 kilowatt-hours per household per month, depending on the city. In places like Maine in the north, the heating hours in urban areas have been shortened in the winter, and in other places, piped gas has been cut off in the morning, allowing people to nibble on cold bread to work.

Of course, as an academic champion like Albert Einstein, he didn't have to worry about his family going hungry or being forced to sit in a dark room without electricity. But the very very introduction of these rationing systems already made him feel some kind of ominous omen.

-- In fact, Einstein felt the impact of the war on American society, even in an upper-class neighborhood like Princeton: more and more young men disappeared from schools and streets, driven to fight across the ocean to Europe, Asia, Africa, and Oceania under patriotic slogans. More and more jobs in the country can only be supported by the elderly and women, like a hollowed-out shell.

Today, millions of young men are dying as wars are being lost overseas, and the hollowed-out homeland of the United States is becoming increasingly unsustainable. And with the spread of atomic bombs on all fronts around the world, the death rate of these lads will be much faster......

Of course, along with them, there are also famous historical cities, as well as more ordinary people.

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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 remorse and headache.

He sighed, turned and pulled out a stack of photographs from a drawer, including a cloud of mushrooms exploding in the air, a blown up ship and a tram, the wreckage of a building that looked like it had been trampled by a giant, and most of all, the charred corpses, and the wounded that were swollen to the point of not being human...... Einstein got these things through a special way through a few friends, and they were filmed in Britain after the nuclear explosion.

When he first saw the photos, he almost threw up. And according to friends, there are many more horrific nuclear bombings in Paris, Madrid, and Amsterdam, as well as in Ankara, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Jakarta, and Hanoi......

Comparatively speaking, Berlin, with which he was once familiar, was badly damaged in street fighting by Hitler's dying resistance at the last moment, but it was still much better off than Paris and London......

Aren't all these human tragedies and catastrophes of civilization my fault?

As a conscientious scientist, Einstein could not help but feel a deep sense of remorse and self-reproach rising in his heart, feeling that he had been reproached by his 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, and said to the reporters who came to interview him with regret: "...... My biggest feeling now is regret that I shouldn't have written that letter to President Roosevelt in the first place...... I was trying to snatch the atomic bomb, the evil instrument of murder, from the madman Hitler. I can't think of sending it to another madman now...... Why should we use hundreds of thousands, millions of innocent men, women, and children as the living targets of this new bomb? ”

Then, when the United States celebrated the destruction of the Japanese Empire, Einstein wrote: "...... I don't think atomic energy will be a boon in the foreseeable future, so I must say that it is currently a threat. As scientists, we must constantly warn people about the dangers of these weapons, and we must strive to make the people of the world, and especially their Governments, aware of their responsibilities in shaping a secure future unless they change their attitudes towards each other; Otherwise, these weapons will inevitably cause unspeakable catastrophe. ”

Then, as the full-scale showdown between the two superpowers of the United States and the Soviet Union approached, Einstein even shouted his anti-war proposition: "...... I don't know what weapons will be used to fight in the Third World War, but by the Fourth World War, humanity will definitely be able to fight only with stones and sticks! ”

Today, however, all his calls for peace have been dashed. The Third World War was still fought vigorously, and from the very beginning it was a nuclear war that was everywhere. London, Paris, Shanghai...... All these bustling metropolises he had visited were instantly annihilated in the mushroom cloud of the atomic bomb. And the millions, if not tens of millions, of radiation sickness patients who are dying have made Einstein's conscience even more tormented.

-- Blinding flashes of light, hideous and terrifying mushroom clouds, haunted Einstein's dreams from time to time throughout the year, keeping him awake at night.

Sometimes, he couldn't help but ask himself, if he hadn't discovered all this, maybe it would be better for humanity?

But it has come to this point, and it is useless to regret it...... However, even so, I should still do something about it.

So, in the sound of Christmas carols floating outside 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 the Christmas party to invite friends to sign it:

“…… At a time when the world is embroiled in a war of unprecedented magnitude and humanity is facing an unprecedented tragedy, we in the scientific community should collectively assess the dangers posed by the development and misuse of weapons of mass destruction. Regardless of our political position, we are all human beings and should put the survival of the race above all else, and ensure that we humans continue to exist in the next century and beyond.

The general public, and even many in positions of power, are yet to realize the consequences of nuclear war. The general public still thinks that the atomic bomb is nothing more powerful than the old bomb, and that an atomic bomb can destroy a city.

Needless to say, an atomic bomb can easily destroy huge cities. But this is just one of the small disasters we need to face. If it were just a city where people were killed, the world would slowly recover from the blow after a while. However, after the tragedy of the island of Great Britain has been revealed, we now know that nuclear weapons will spread destruction over a much larger area than expected.

There is very authoritative information that the atomic bomb explosion will be accompanied by a large number of radioactive particles being ejected into the upper atmosphere. These radioactive particles will gradually settle and fall to the surface in the form of radioactive fallout or rainwater, posing a deadly threat to human health. We don't know much about how far this deadly radioactive particle will spread, but it is conceivable that if the atomic bomb were misused in war, it could lead to the long-term destruction of the entire planet's environment, or even the extinction of the human species. For a few it is a quick death, for the majority it is a slow killing.

From the tragic tragedies that are taking place in the Old World, we can see that certain in-depth research and dedicated scientific work often have tragic consequences for humanity. It is incumbent upon us scientists to prevent these weapons from being used for savagery and destructive purposes, as the tragic fate of scientists has helped us to create more terrible and powerful weapons of destruction.

The power of nuclear weapons is limitless, and it is extremely dangerous to humanity. The peoples of the world must unite, or humanity will destroy itself. Now is the time to call everyone to reflect on these disasters. I believe that even in the midst of war, it is necessary to follow the basic principles of morality, and that a nuclear war will solve nothing but bring unprecedented casualties and destruction to both sides of the war.

If possible, I hope that the Governments of the world will seek peaceful means to resolve their disputes. Even if this is not possible, efforts should be made to limit the misuse of nuclear weapons, otherwise it will inevitably threaten the continued existence of humanity......" (To be continued. )