The nexus of events is the successful working of a uranium pile by Enrico Fermi on the American side and the failure of Werner Heisenberg and the Germans. The author stresses the amazing parallels between the lives of these two men, and shows how war drove such introspective people to actions that they might not have normally considered. Both men developed a "survival" mentality in their sometimes frantic efforts to complete a crucial stage in the genesis of atomic weaponry. The generalized combat of all-out war was indeed epitomized in the indirect competition of these two scientists.