her letter to the President urging him not to use it. He wrote the letter on behalf of his colleges, because after the Nazis were overpowered they did not believe that the bomb should be used on the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the opinion of Einstein and his colleagues, the war had already been won, and there was no need to use the bomb. That letter was reportedly lying on the Presidents desk when he died on April 12, 1945.6 After the war Einstein continued working on the unified field theory, and his mission for world peace. He tried to get the Americans to share the concept of the atom bomb with the Soviets. Although Einstein believed in communism, he also recognized the mistakes made by Lenin and Stalin. Einstein once wrote about Lenin, I respect him as a man who has sacrificed himself completely, and devoted all his energy to establishing social justice. I do not consider his methods practical, but one thing is certain: men of his caliber are the guardians and restorers of the human conscience.7Einstein was invited to visit the Soviet Union many times, but never accepted the invitation. Although he admired their communist system, he was aware of the many problems that existed in the Soviet government. He loved America because of its freedoms, but also disliked the foreign policies America upheld. In 1947 he wrote, the foreign policy of the United States since the end of the war has often reminded me irresistibly of the German attitude under the Emperor William II, and I know that I am not the only one to have observed and deplored this analogy.8He lived his final years in solitude. His wife Elsa had died in 1936 and his first wife remained in Switzerland for her entire life. He resigned from teaching, and continued to consume himself with research at his home, in the outskirts of town near Princeton. One week before his death he composed a letter to Bertrand Russel, agreeing that his name should go on a manife...
