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alleviate tension and neutralize opponents, and he cultivated an ironic
     wit.
    Szilard’s interest in physics surfaced when he was a teenager. At about the same time, he found himself drawn to politics
     as well. “Ever since I was 13,” Szilard recalled later, “I was interested in physics and in public affairs but I kept these
     two things in water-tight compartments and it never occurred to me that these two interests of mine would ever meet.” 8
    In 1916 Szilard began riding the streetcar from his home, over the ornate Franz Josef Bridge spanning the Danube River, to
     the Technical University just below Gellért Hill, where he attended classes and discussed with fellow students the Great War
     raging across Europe. Szilard was drawn into the war the next summer when he was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army and
     sent to officers’ school, where he acted impertinent and nonchalant. He believed that Austria-Hungary and its ally Germany
     would eventually lose the war—and said so. He had little patience for what he considered mindless military discipline. His
     belt buckle was always tugged to one side, his boots always needed a shine.
    After the war ended, Szilard returned to the Technical University, where revolutionary turmoil swirled around him. Students,
     artists, and intellectuals debated issues of the day in sidewalk cafés. Szilard thrived as the gadfly who asked the uncomfortable
     questions that others avoided. He was sympathetic to the communist regime that had come to power in Hungary at the end of
     the war under Béla Kun but recoiled at the brutalities that Kun inflicted in the name of the people and feared a conservative
     backlash. Szilard felt this backlash personally when he was confronted by angry students at the university who shouted, “You
     can’t study here. You’re Jews.” 9 They rushed Szilard, hitting and kicking him. The blood, bruises, and shame left Szilard with a fear of anti-Semitism that
     he would carry for years to come.
    Realizing that, as a Jew, he was in personal danger, Szilard decided to leave Hungary for the University of Berlin. He arrived
     in Berlin in 1920 and took the university by storm. Berlin’s physics faculty included giants such as Einstein, Max Planck,
     and Max von Laue, and Szilard sensed new developments in the air. In 1932 British physicist James Chadwick discovered the
     neutron. The neutron had no electric charge, which meant it could pass through the electrical barrier surrounding the atom
     and penetrate the nucleus. Szilard saw in the neutron’s ability to easily penetrate the nucleus the possibility of eventually
     releasing the vast store of energy contained within the atom.
    The same year as Chadwick’s discovery, Szilard moved from the University of Berlin to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, where
     he continued his experimental work in nuclear physics. As he probed the mysteries of the atom within the institute, he grew
     edgy as he observed what was happening outside its walls. Szilard noticed that most Germans stood passively watching the growing
     Nazi threat. When he asked his German friends, “Why don’t you oppose Nazism?” most of them shrugged and muttered, “What good
     would it do?” Szilard concluded that Hitler would gain power not because Nazism was so appealing to Germans but because so
     few Germans would resist it.
    Unlike most physicists during these years, Szilard had no illusions that things would get better. He saw Nazism for what it
     was: an evil force that spelled disaster for Germany and all of Europe. Months before Hitler came to power, and years before
     he engulfed Europe in a bloody war, Szilard’s assessment of the problems brewing for Jews in Germany led him to grave predictions.
     He shared them in a letter to Rabi, whom he had met and befriended in the late 1920s. “As far as the fate of Germany is concerned,”
     Szilard wrote Rabi, “I always was very pessimistic, but I range now with the