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1. AN UNCERTAIN ARMAGEDDON: THE MANHATTAN PROJECT AND THE BIRTH OF
THE ATOMIC BOMB
Lance Schneider
HIS4936: Pro-Seminar in History
March 24, 2015

2. 1
12 pm Tokyo Standard Time, August 15, 1945. In a pre-recorded message broadcast to
the subjects of the Greater Japanese Empire, Hirohito, monarch of the Chrysanthemum Throne,
“ordered the acceptance of the provisions of the Joint declaration of the Powers,” citing that “the
enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is
indeed incalculable.”1
Bound by the centuries-old tradition of Bushido ingrained within the
psyche of the Japanese people, the Emperor could neither admit defeat nor declare surrender, yet
nonetheless was forced to acknowledge the unmitigated destruction wrought by the deployment
of two Allied “superweapons” detonated over the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6
and 9. While it is recognized that the horrific devastation which followed served to solidify
victory in the Pacific theater of the Second World War, there was also an acknowledgement
amongst many employed at “109 East Palace,” the rather mundane address serving as the access
point into the United States’ top secret atomic weapons research laboratory at Los Alamos, New
Mexico, that a new and unpredictable era for man had begun: the “Atomic Age.”
As the potential to weaponize atomic energy began to be explored in earnest by the
United States of America in the late 1930s, from 1942 to 1946 the “Manhattan Project” –
undertaken with the assistance of Great Britain and under the supervision of both U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves and theoretical physicist J. Robert
Oppenheimer – was arguably the most clandestine program pursued by a nation in history.
Although it was absolutely essential for the Allies to manufacture a device before the power of
the atom was harnessed and weaponized by German scientists employed within Adolf Hitler’s
Third Reich, the ethical and moral implications of employing a creation capable of such
catastrophic destruction – and the fear of a global “arms race” sure to follow as a result – were
1. Richard Rhodes, “Tongues of Fire” in The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012),
745.

3. 2
not lost on those with the foresight to envision a modern “Pandora’s Box” being unleased upon a
world which could never – and would never – be the same.
“The bomb flashed blinding scarlet in mid-air, and fell, a descending column of blaze
eddying spirally in the midst of a whirlwind … a shuddering star of evil splendor … the
crowning triumph of military science … the rapidity with which war was becoming impossible
… they did not see it until the atomic bombs burst in their fumbling hands.”2
H.G. Wells, the
late nineteenth and early twentieth century English author and essayist largely remembered today
for such works as The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds, possessed what many describe
as an “abnormal” aptitude for predicting the future. The World Set Free, published in 1914,
relays to the reader the promise of science as a progressive agent coupled with man’s inclination
for harnessing innovation towards engineering his own self-destruction. Far from possessing any
“paranormal” gift of prophecy, Wells was a keen observer of both man and man’s institutions,
encapsulating the whole of history into one overarching paradigm: war.
By the late 1930s, Europe was once again vainly attempting to exorcise the specter of war
hanging heavy over the continent. Although British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had
declared “peace in our time”3
as a result of the previous year’s Four-Power Conference
“guaranteeing” the cessation of Adolf Hitler’s expansionist ambitions by “[agreeing] to
Czechoslovakia’s new frontiers,”4
this attempt to “appease” the Führer was short-sighted at best.
In less than five years, from 1933 to 1938, Germany had not only created the most scientifically-
2. H.G. Wells, “The World Set Free” in The Manhattan Project: The Birth of the Atomic Bomb in the Words of its
Creators, Eyewitnesses, and Historians, ed. Cynthia C. Kelley (New York, Black Dog and Leventhal, 2007), 22-24.
3. Justus D. Doenecke and John E. Wilz, From Isolation to War: 1931-1941 (Wheeling: Harlan Davidson, 2003),
84.
4. Ibid.

4. 3
advanced and well-disciplined army in history to that date, but had violated the provisions of the
Treaty of Versailles through military conscription as well as the 1936 occupation of the
Rhineland. As Austria “embraced” its newfound Anschluss and the German army marched into
the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia, it was clear that, by the summer of 1939, any expectation of
assuaging Hitler’s growing aspirations had fallen flat.
Professor Irving M. Klotz, of Northwestern University’s Department of Chemistry,
explains that, in the first three decades of the twentieth century, “Germany was preeminent in
physics and was so recognized universally … It seemed obvious that the Nazis had the advantage
in intellectual talent and in a highly organized and determined dictatorship that could create
devastating new weapons.”5
While the history of atomic (or nuclear) physics dates to the closing
decade of the nineteenth century and the somewhat “accidental” discovery of radiation emitting
from uranium salts by French scientist Henri Becquerel and furthered by the work of husband
and wife team Pierre and Marie Curie,6
the possibility of creating an atomic fission reaction “and
… a nuclear explosive … [through] the bombardment of uranium by neutrons”7
became
tantalizing to Hitler’s scientists by 1938. Although the concept of chain reactions as a result of
nuclear fission had been conceived as early as 1933 by Hungarian physicist Leό Szilárd and
expanded upon in tandem with Italian colleague Enrico Fermi8
, it would be the events unfolding
in Europe that would precipitate, in August 1939, a most peculiar letter addressed to United
5. Irving M. Klotz, “Captives and Their Fantasies: The German Atomic Bomb Scientists” Journal of Chemical
Education 74, no. 2 (1997): 204.
6. Richard Rhodes, “Atoms and Void” in The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012),
41-42.
7. Irving M. Klotz, “Captives and Their Fantasies: The German Atomic Bomb Scientists” Journal of Chemical
Education 74, no. 2 (1997): 204.
8. Richard Rhodes, “Stirring and Digging” in The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon and Schuster,
2012), 203-4.

5. 4
States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, co-authored by Szilárd and German Nobel laureate
Albert Einstein:
Some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Szilard, which has been communicated to me in
manuscript, leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and
important source of energy in the immediate future … In the course of the next four
months it may be possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium …
This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs … I understand that
Germany has actually stopped the sale of uranium from the Czechoslovakian mines
which she has taken over … the son of the German Under-Secretary of State, von
Weizsäcker, is attached to the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut [sic] in Berlin where some of the
American work on uranium is now being repeated.9
Procuring the assistance of the world renowned yet reclusive physicist was no easy task.
Szilárd and his colleague Eugene Wigner, also a Hungarian physicist, recalled spending the
better part of the morning of July 12, 1939 driving in circles around the heavily-touristed beach
villages of Long Island looking for the cottage of one “Dr. Moore.” A chance encounter with a
seven-year-old fisherman steered the two scientists in the right direction and, after accepting
refreshments from an Einstein just arriving from a morning of sailing, began to discuss their
recent work, on “how neutrons behave, how uranium bombarded by neutrons can split or
‘fission,’ and how this process might create nuclear chain reactions and nuclear bombs.”10
A
pacifist, a realist and, at sixty years of age, largely removed from the greater scientific
community, Einstein not only believed that the unlimited potential of atomic energy was
theoretical in nature, but had little present interest in the topic, “[seeking] only the time for ‘quiet
thought and reflection’ needed to unravel his unified field theory of the universe.”11
In the end,
9. Albert Einstein, Leό Szilárd, and Eugene Wigner “Letter to F.D. Roosevelt, President of the United States” in
Selected Documents on the Topic of the Atomic Bomb, 1939-1942 (Urbana: FRANKLIN Box 1, 2011), 5-6.
10. William Lanouette, “Genius in the Shadows” in The Manhattan Project: The Birth of the Atomic Bomb in the
Words of its Creators, Eyewitnesses, and Historians, ed. Cynthia C. Kelley (New York, Black Dog and Leventhal,
2007), 38-39.

6. 5
it was the fervent belief of Szilárd and Wigner that scientists employed by the Third Reich were
making headway in the race to tap this unlimited source of energy which ultimately swayed
Einstein into agreeing that, “in order to beat Nazi Germany to this awesome weapon … [he
would] sound the alarm about atomic bombs … even … if false.”12
Two letters were subsequently drafted: one to the Belgian Ambassador to the United
States whose country possessed multiple uranium mines through its colonial holdings in Africa,
and the other, at the urging of Wigner, to United States Secretary of State Cordell Hull. Unsure
as to correct diplomatic protocol, the three erred on the side of caution and decided to mail a
copy of the letter to the State Department first. Szilárd, still ill at ease with what was quickly
escalating into a “Cloak and Dagger” exercise, was referred by a Berlin acquaintance to Dr.
Alexander Sachs, “a vice-President of the Lehman Corporation … [and] since 1933 an advisor to
Roosevelt’s New Deal.”13
A science “enthusiast,” Sachs was familiar with the ongoing work
within the field of atomic physics (as much as an ebullient amateur could be) and, coupled with
his own fears of Hitler’s unquenchable thirst for expansion, informed Szilárd that, if Einstein
would indeed sign the letter (owing largely to the émigré’s celebrity), he would personally
deliver it to the President.
“I am an economist, not a scientist … but I had a prior relationship with the President,
and Szilárd and Einstein agreed I was the right person to make the relevant elaborate scientific
11. Ibid, 40.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid, 41.

7. 6
material intelligible to Mr. Roosevelt”14
recalled Sachs. In lieu of delivering the Szilárd-Einstein
letter verbatim, Sachs opted to approach the President in October with his own condensed
summary, “[emphasizing] the peaceful potentials of fission first.”15
Always the shrewd discerner
of the understated, Roosevelt responded to Sachs’s summation by saying “Alex … what you are
after is to see that the Nazis don’t blow us up.” “Precisely,” Sachs said. “This requires action”
the President responded.16
On October 19, Roosevelt dictated a brief response to Einstein:
My Dear Professor, I want to thank you for your recent letter and the most interesting
and important enclosure. I found this data of such import that I have convened a Board
consisting of the head of the Bureau of Standards and chosen representative of the Army
and Navy to thoroughly investigate the possibilities of your suggestion regarding the
element of uranium. I am glad to say that Dr. Sachs will cooperate and work with this
Committee and I feel this is the most practical and effective method of dealing with the
subject. Please accept my sincere thanks.17
The United States was now committed – on a national level, to exploring the untapped potential
of atomic energy.
As a result of Sachs’s meeting with Roosevelt in October, Szilárd now had the
opportunity to elaborate upon the letter drafted in August so as to provide a more technical
schema in the hopes of the President agreeing to an “exploratory” committee that would
investigate the budget and manpower needed to facilitate national funding for research on atomic
fission. Sachs requested a formal letter and, in cooperation with Fermi, Szilárd wrote that “It
seems to us that it will be useful to have a small group of physicists … consult with each other at
14. Richard Rhodes, “Neutrons” in The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012), 313-
14.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Letter to Dr. Albert Einstein” in Selected Documents on the Topic of the Atomic
Bomb, 1939-1942 (Urbana: FRANKLIN Box 1, 2011), 1.

8. 7
regular intervals on questions connected with the research on uranium.”18
On June 15, 1940,
Roosevelt had a series of memoranda drawn up and addressed to Dr. Karl T. Compton, President
of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Conway P. Poe, the Commissioner of Patents for
the U.S. Department of Commerce; Dr. James Bryant Conant, President of Harvard University;
Dr. Frank B. Jewett, President of the National Academy of Sciences; Dr. Richard C. Tolman, of
the California Institute of Technology; as well as Dr. Lyman J. Briggs, Director of the National
Bureau of Standards. These briefs conveyed Roosevelt’s desire to appoint each addressee to “a
National Defense Research Committee [NDRC] … attached to the Advisory Commission to the
Council of National Defense … under the chairmanship of Dr. Vannevar Bush … [in] order that
scientific research on the mechanisms and devices of warfare may be more completely correlated
and supported in the interest of national defense.”19
As a result of this request, the NDRC spent the next year – from June 27, 1940 to June
28, 1941 – investigating “whether it might be possible to obtain large sources of power from
atomic fission, or even to create an explosive of tremendous power … thousands of times more
powerful than existing explosives.”20
The final report, penned by Bush on behalf of the
committee members and delivered to Roosevelt, concluded that “new knowledge … makes it
probable that the production of a super-explosive may not be as remote a matter as previously
appeared. A program to determine this adequately would be extensive, and expensive in the time
18. Leό Szilárd, “Letter to Dr. Alexander Sachs” in Selected Documents on the Topic of the Atomic Bomb, 1939-
1942 (Urbana: FRANKLIN Box 1, 2011), 36-38.
19. Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Memoranda to Select Scientists” in Selected Documents on the Topic of the Atomic
Bomb, 1939-1942 (Urbana: FRANKLIN Box 1, 2011), 39-45.
20. Vannevar Bush, “Report of the National Defense Research Committee for the First Year of Operation June 27,
1940 to June 28, 1941” in Selected Documents on the Topic of the Atomic Bomb, 1939-1942 (Urbana: FRANKLIN
Box 1, 2011), 59-61.

9. 8
of scientists and in direct costs. The subject is being extensively studied in England.”21
Wasting
no time in acting upon the committee’s findings, on June 28, 1941 – the day the report was
delivered to his desk – President Roosevelt drafted Executive Order 8807, thereby creating the
Office of Scientific Research and Development with the aim of “[defining] further the functions
and duties of the Office of Emergency Management with respect to the unlimited national
emergency as declared … on May 27 1941 [sic], for the purpose of assuring adequate provision
for research on scientific and medical problems relating to the national defense.”22
Upon the advice given in the NDRC report, Roosevelt agreed it necessary to elicit the aid
of Great Britain through a request of information regarding that country’s own fission project
which, code named “Tube Alloys,” had been in development since 1939 under the direction of
Austrian physicist Otto Frisch with the assistance of Danish physicist Niels Bohr. Unlike the
burgeoning United States fission “energy” project now championed by Bush, “Tube Alloys”
concentrated not on the peaceful application of atomic energy – but on weaponizing it. Writing
directly to Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Roosevelt stated that “It appears desirable that we
should soon correspond or converse concerning the subject which is under study by your MAUD
[Military Application of Uranium Detonation] committee, and by Dr. Bush’s organization in this
country, in order that any extended efforts may be coordinated or even jointly conducted.”23
Bush, now acting in the capacity of director of the Office of Scientific Research and
Development (OSRD), was skeptical about the potential usefulness of an “atom bomb,”
21. Ibid.
22. Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Executive Order 8807 Establishing the Office of Scientific Research and Development”
in The American Presidency Project (Santa Barbara: University of California [Online], 2015).
23. Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Letter to Winston Churchill” in Selected Documents on the Topic of the Atomic Bomb,
1939-1942 (Urbana: FRANKLIN Box 1, 2011), 63-74.

10. 9
predicated upon his belief that “fission’s ‘great impracticability’ meant it was premature for war
planners to take it into account.”24
Regardless of Bush’s skepticism, Roosevelt managed to
secure Churchill’s somewhat reserved approval of a joint American-British atomic weapons
research project and, under the auspices of the OSRD, appropriated the monies necessary to
begin purchasing uranium from Canadian mines.
By the summer of 1942, with America now at war with both the Empire of Japan and
Nazi Germany, the applied phase of the project to create an atomic device was shifted to the U.S.
Department of War. While the United States Navy was offered the “first bite” of the atomic
apple, the general attitude of unwillingness by top naval brass in regards to a “superweapon
project” – predicated upon both the same reservations expressed by Bush as well what was
considered to be the “infeasibility” of delivering such a device by sea – led the proposal for the
transfer of supervision to be offered instead to the United States Army, which ultimately
accepted the challenge. On August 13, “a new engineer district, without territorial limits to be
known as the Manhattan District … with headquarters in New York, New York” was formed
under the code name “S-1,” and in September was placed under the direction of newly-promoted
forty-six year old Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves of the United States Army Corps of
Engineers.25
The atomic race was now on, and its goal was deceptively simple: build a bomb
before Hitler does.
24. G. Pascal Zachary, “Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century” in The Manhattan
Project: The Birth of the Atomic Bomb in the Words of its Creators, Eyewitnesses, and Historians, ed. Cynthia C.
Kelley (New York, Black Dog and Leventhal, 2007), 56.
25. Cynthia C. Kelly, “An Unprecedented Alliance” in The Manhattan Project: The Birth of the Atomic Bomb in
the Words of its Creators, Eyewitnesses, and Historians, ed. Cynthia C. Kelley (New York, Black Dog and
Leventhal, 2007), 69.

11. 10
In observance of the tenth anniversary of man’s first successful self-sustaining atomic
chain reaction, the Chicago Sun-Times published a lengthy article authored by Fermi explaining
for the newspaper’s readership “what is meant by the ‘chain reaction’ which was to constitute
our next objective in the search for a method of utilizing atomic energy”26
:
An atomic chain reaction may be compared to the burning of a rubbish pile from
spontaneous combustion. In such a fire, minute parts of the pile start to burn and in turn
ignite other tiny fragments. When sufficient numbers of these fractional parts are heated
to the kindling points, the entire heap bursts into flames. The … atomic pile … itself was
constructed of uranium, a material that is embedded in a matrix of graphite. With
sufficient uranium in the pile, the few neutrons emitted in a single fission … strike
neighboring atoms, which in turn undergo fission and produce more neutrons. These
bombard other atoms and so on at an increasing rate until the atomic ‘fire’ [sic] is going
full blast. The atomic pile is controlled and prevented from burning itself to complete
destruction by cadmium rods which absorb neutrons and stop the bombardment process
… The first atomic chain reaction experiment was designed to proceed at a slow rate. In
this sense it differed from the atomic bomb, which was designed to proceed at as fast a
rate as possible. Otherwise, the basic process is similar.27
At 2:30 pm, on December 2, 1942, Fermi, Szilárd, Wigner, and other scientists conducting
experiments at the University of Chicago’ Metallurgical Laboratory instructed physicist George
Weil to carefully remove the cadmium rods from the graphite pile under sustained neutron
bombardment since earlier that morning. The potency of the bombardment began to strengthen
and, with the chain reaction now perpetuating itself as indicated by the gauges attached to the
pile housing, all assembled were witness to an event that would irrevocably alter the course of
history: the word’s first self-sustaining atomic reaction. “The event was not spectacular”
recalled Fermi of man’s first atomic reactor, known as “Chicago-Pile-1,” “no fuses burned, no
26. Enrico Fermi, “Fermi’s Own Story” in The Manhattan Project: The Birth of the Atomic Bomb in the Words of
its Creators, Eyewitnesses, and Historians, ed. Cynthia C. Kelley (New York, Black Dog and Leventhal, 2007), 82.
27. Ibid, 83.

12. 11
lights flashed. But it meant to us that release of atomic energy on a large scale would only be a
matter of time.”28
As work was underway in Chicago, Groves, tasked with overseeing the U.S. Army’s
atomic weapons development, was not making many friends within either the scientific
community nor with his fellow army officers. A micromanager to the extreme, Groves was
brutish, squat, disheveled, and had a reputation for bullying and crassness that alienated everyone
who faced either the unwelcome experience of being assigned to his command, or was forced to
spend any length of time in his presence. “He was the biggest S.O.B. [I] had ever worked for”
recalled military aide Colonel Kenneth Nichols: “He is most demanding. He is most critical. He
is always a driver, never a praiser. He is abrasive and sarcastic.” Surprisingly, Nichols would
also admit that “[I] would opt to have Groves as my boss again, because he was ‘one of the most
capable individuals.’”29
Regardless of his severe demeanor, Groves achieved results.
The man selected by Groves to head the civilian, scientific arm of the atomic weapons
project was a figure of comparable ego. Jennet Conant, author of 109 East Palace: Robert
Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos, writes that Oppenheimer, “known simply as
Robert or Bob until his early twenties, when he felt compelled to embellish his name perhaps in
the belief that ‘J. Robert Oppenheimer’ sounded more distinguished,”30
was an engaging thirty-
seven year old lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley who enjoyed obliterating, to the
point of tears, the psyche of students he found intellectually “bereft.” Nonetheless, “We were all
completely under his spell” recalled former student Philip Morrison, “He was enormously
28. Ibid, 84.
29. Jennet Conant, 109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 2005), 34-35.
30. Ibid, 26.

13. 12
impressive. There was no one like him.”31
A devotee of Eastern Mysticism, Oppenheimer was
prone to lifelong fits of depression and, eschewing the standard psychological treatments of the
day, taught himself Sanskrit and found peace within the words of the ancient Hindu text, the
Bhagavad Gita.32
His penchant for flashy, expensive suits, his ability to speak six languages
with absolute fluency, as well as his insertion of lines of poetry into casual exchanges with
colleagues may well have been a mask for the cloud of dejection that haunted him throughout his
life.33
Although Groves had been introduced to a bevy of academics and scientists since he
began his command of S-1 in September 1942, he had an absolute (and extremely vocal) distaste
for their seemingly inherent eccentricities. Introduced to Oppenheimer due to his contributions
to Fermi and Szilard’s experiments in Chicago, Groves was impressed during the course of his
interview with the physicist – largely for Oppenheimer’s ability to maintain a steady, almost
stoic composure in accurately and succinctly answering the general’s machine gun-like inquiries.
While most folded under the Groves’ “interrogations,” Oppenheimer was not so easily cowed.
Although lacking in practical laboratory experience and, politically, a “leftist sympathizer”
whose younger brother Frank was an “unapologetic” member of the Communist Party,
Oppenheimer’s intellect and demeanor convinced Groves that he was – questionable politics
aside – the right man (indeed, the only man) for the job. According to Conant, “Years later,
when asked why he was chosen as director of the Manhattan Project, Oppenheimer would simply
say ‘By default … it was not a job anyone wanted … the obvious people were already taken and
31. Ibid, 24-25.
32. Ibid, 26.
33. Ibid, 27.

14. 13
… the project had a bad name’”34
– a bad name arguably affixed in no small part due to Groves’
hellish personality.
The first order of business for Oppenheimer was to select a suitable locale for a complex
that would be conducive to the development of a weapon. Groves was already in the process of
finalizing plutonium production and uranium isotope separation facilities for the project, which
would come to include Hanford, Washington and Oak Ridge, Tennessee, as well as more than
two dozen additional sites across the United States and Canada. While the United States Army
catalogued a number of potential remote areas in the Southwest for “Site Y,” code name for the
Manhattan Project’s proposed atomic weapons research facility, Oppenheimer was firm that
some existing amenities be available, as he was insistent that the growing cadre of academics
under his direction, now known as the ‘Manhattan District Scientists’ begin conceptual work
immediately. The final selection was more than an hour’s drive from Santa Fe, New Mexico;
located on an isolated mesa accessible only by a dangerous mountain road, the area contained
one facility: a boy’s school known as Los Alamos Ranch. “Nobody could think straight in a
place like that,” commented Szilárd, “Everybody who goes there will go crazy.”35
“Prima
donnas,” thought Groves.36
Purchasing the school and its adjoining land at a cost of $440,000.00
and selecting the University of California as building contractor for the top secret installation,37
construction began in November 1942 and, by late spring of 1943, Groves and Oppenheimer
finally had the laboratory they needed. The newly-created compound, referred to by those aware
34. Ibid, 40.
35. Richard Rhodes, “Physics and Desert Country” in The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 2012), 451.
36. Ibid, 449.
37. Ibid, 450-51.

15. 14
of its existence as ‘The Hill,’ possessed only a P.O. box as well as an innocuous Santa Fe address
for processing personnel – “109 East Palace.” Los Alamos was open for business.
Originally, Groves and Harvard President James Conant – a chemist and First World War
veteran – had envisioned all key personnel attached to Los Alamos as being “militarized,”
through which they believed army commissions and crisp uniforms would provide a spirit of
“camaraderie” and “regimentation” to the team of scientists. Oppenheimer, who was not
opposed personally to the idea, persuaded Groves and Conant to leave the civilian and scientific
personnel at Los Alamos – a United States military installation – under his direction. Science,
indeed all academic disciplines, is only successful through a free, uninhibited exchange of ideas.
For Oppenheimer, the duty of recruiting scientists and others – many of them young, idealistic,
and not yet possessing any “real world” experience outside of a lecture hall – was already a
difficult sell due to the high level of secrecy attached to it by the United States Army. “The
prospect of coming to Los Alamos aroused great misgivings,” recalled Oppenheimer. “It was a
military post; men were asked to sign up more or less for the duration … The notion of
disappearing into the New Mexico desert for an indeterminate period … disturbed a good many
scientists.” “But there was another side to it,” continued Oppenheimer: “Almost everyone
realized that this was a great undertaking … if it were completed successfully and rapidly
enough, it might determine the outcome of the war.” In the end, Oppenheimer would conclude
that “Most of those with whom I talked came to Los Alamos.”38
By April of 1943, it was clear to physicists that self-sustaining atomic fission was
possible to create energy, but the ability to concentrate such power in an applied manner largely
38. J. Robert Oppenheimer, “In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer” in The Manhattan Project: The Birth of the
Atomic Bomb in the Words of its Creators, Eyewitnesses, and Historians, ed. Cynthia C. Kelley (New York, Black
Dog and Leventhal, 2007), 161.

16. 15
eluded them. So did the actual reason for their employment with the United States Army. Dr.
Robert Serber, a brilliant thirty-four year old engineering physicist and colleague of
Oppenheimer’s at the University of California, Berkeley, was about to educate them. “The
object of the project is to produce a practical military weapon in the form of a bomb in which the
energy is released by a fast neutron chain reaction in one or more of the materials known to show
nuclear fission.”39
“The direct energy release in the fission process is of the order of 170 MeV
[electron volts] per atom. This is considerably more than 107 times the heat of reaction per atom
in ordinary combustion process … this is ten million times the energy released in a typical
chemical combustion such as an explosion or fire [or, ten trillion].”40
“Release of this energy in
a large scale way is a possibility because of the fact that in each fission process, which requires a
neutron to produce it, two neutrons are released … [assume that] the [active] material is so pure
that no neutrons are lost in other ways then [sic] by fission. One neutron released in the mass
would become two after the first fission, each of these would produce two after they each had
produced fission so in the nth generation of neutrons there would be 2n neutrons available … the
energy fission of one kilogram of U-238 [which, through intensive neutron bombardment, can
either reach sustainable critical mass at U-235 or, alternately, be rendered into fissile PU-239
{Plutonium}] is [approximately equal to] ten to twenty thousand tons of TNT, respectively [or,
ten to twenty kilotons].”41
Serber’s five lectures continued over the course of two weeks,
addressing such wide-ranging topics to be resolved at Los Alamos as “Detonation,” “Damage,”
and “Material.” Known as the “Los Alamos Primer,”42
these notes would serve incoming
39. Robert Serber, “Object” in The Los Alamos Primer: The First Lectures on How To Build An Atomic Bomb, ed.
Richard Rhodes (Berkley, University of California, 1992), 3-4.
40. Ibid, “Energy of Fission Process,” 5-9.
41. Ibid, “Fast Neutron Chain Reaction”; “Damage,” 9-13; 33-38.

17. 16
scientific personnel as the blueprint for manufacturing the atomic bomb. All that was left was
two years of grueling trial and error.
“In the Manhattan Project, schedules were crucial in allowing the coordination and
control of a vast and complex exercise … [serving] as a powerful mechanism of social control”
writes Charles Thorpe, sociologist of science and technology at the University of California, San
Diego. “In the three years from the establishment of the Manhattan District, a highly speculative
program of theory and experiment had been transformed into the largest technoscientific project
hitherto … and into a new weapon of unprecedented destructive power.”43
According to Thorpe,
“Historian Lillian Hoddeson has noted that the Los Alamos scientific workforce … experienced
the joy of research and the sense that they were working on their own problem … She [posed]
the question of ‘how it is possible for a large laboratory to create an environment in which many
or most of its scientists can experience such a sense of free inquiry while in fact they are working
in line with the mission.’” Thorpe suggests “that a significant part of the answer to this lies in
the combination of weak regulation of the working day … with a much stronger regulation of the
overall temporal framework for the completion of tasks.”44
And how does Hoddeson’s assertions and Thorp’s assessment measure up to the
experiences of scientists and their families working and living inside Los Alamos? “Often they
resented petty things to which they would never have paid attention under normal
circumstances” recalls Italian physicist Emilio Segré, “Rank, housing assignments … social
invitations, administrative assignments, everything became important, occasionally in a childish
42. Ibid, “Contents”; “Object,” v-ix; 3.
43. Charles Thorpe, “Against Time: Scheduling, Momentum, and Moral Order at Wartime Los Alamos” Journal of
Historical Sociology 17, no. 1 (2004): 33-34.
44. Ibid, 39-40.

18. 17
way.”45
The monumental pressure to fabricate a device before the Nazis consumed Groves and
Oppenheimer, spreading across the facility like a plague. Food and housing shortages, sanitation
issues, the ever-present military police patrols, drama between residents, as well as no small
number of “unexpected” pregnancies added to the near-chaotic atmosphere.46
Containing a
population approaching eight thousand by the beginning of 1944, Los Alamos shared, quite
literally, the same ills that plague any small town – albeit a town where once one arrives, one
(generally) cannot leave.
Also adding to the undercurrent inside Los Alamos and other Manhattan District
installations was a growing skepticism regarding, of all things, Germany’s capability to produce
an atomic weapon. “Hitler had sometimes spoken to me about the possibility of an atom bomb,
but the idea quite obviously strained his intellectual capacity,” recalled architect, friend, and
Reichsminister of Armament and War Production Albert Speer. “Professor [Werner] Heisenberg
had not given any final answer to my question whether a successful nuclear fission reaction
could be kept under control with absolute certainty or might continue as a chain reaction …
Hitler was plainly not delighted by the possibility that the earth under his rule might be
transformed into a glowing star.” It was June 1942, and, unbeknownst to the Allies, Germany
had “on the suggestion of the nuclear physicists … scuttled the project to develop an atomic
bomb … we could not count on anything for three or four years.”47
Since the formation of the
Manhattan Engineer District, Canada, Great Britain, and the United States had been pouring tens
of thousands of man hours and millions of dollars and pounds into a race to beat Hitler to the
45. Jennet Conant, 109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 2005), 142.
46. Ibid, 215.
47. Richard Rhodes, “The New World” in The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon and Schuster,
2012), 404-5.

19. 18
bomb. By the summer of 1944, with Operation Neptune producing a costly yet successful Allied
invasion of Normandy, cracks were now (albeit slowly) forming in the German war machine.
With the tide of war in Europe beginning to turn in favor of the Allies, many of those employed
by the Manhattan Engineer District both at Los Alamos and abroad began to question the
continued purpose of their research. If the entire reason for beginning such intense work was to
win the “atomic race” against Germany had they not, with Allied forces on both fronts closing in
on the slowly-dwindling territory of the Third Reich, fulfilled their purpose?
In January 1944 Groves, upon the recommendation of British physicist and Nobel
laureate Sir James Chadwick, hired thirty-five year old Polish physicist Józef Rotblat. Rotblat
was assigned to work on Los Alamos’s cyclotron which, simply stated, was used to test the
inelasticity of neutrons; Rotblat’s research was to ensure elasticity, so rogue neutrons would not
disperse and cause a radiation leak fatal to the contained fission process to be located inside an
atomic weapon. According to Lucy Veys, physicist at Somerville College (University of Oxford,
UK), “The science underlying a uranium bomb was already fairly well established, and its
development now depended on the successful separation of a sufficient amount of U-235 … A
plutonium-bomb project was already underway. Whereas a uranium bomb could be detonated
by firing two subcritical masses of uranium at each other to produce criticality, a plutonium
bomb … had to [implode].”48
Since 1939, a near-universal panic amongst the political and scientific communities that
the Nazis would develop (and ultimately deploy) an atomic weapon had been the driving force
for many with moral reservations to lay aside their convictions in a concerted effort to construct
48. Lucy Veys, “Joseph Rotblat: Moral Dilemmas and the Manhattan Project” Physics in Perspective 15, (2004):
461.

20. 19
a bomb that would not only end the current war, but possibly all future wars. As British
physicist Freeman Dyson stated, “The fear of Hitler was so pervasive that … [it] allowed
scientists to design bombs with a clear conscience.”49
Rotblat, a Jew with family inside German-
occupied Poland had, like thousands before him, signed on to the Manhattan Project for that very
reason. By mid-1944, however, with Germany and its occupied territories subjected to sustained
carpet bombing by Allied forces, Rotblat began to question whether under such duress the Nazis
could even maintain the facilities and the inherently stable environment needed to continue work
on an atomic project. According to Rotblat, an extremely intoxicated Groves let slip at
Chadwick’s residence at Los Alamos that “the whole purpose of the [bomb] project is to subdue
the Russians.” Further, Rotblat alleges that Chadwick informed him of Allied intelligence which
discovered a beleaguered Germany stalled in its atomic research.50
It should come as no surprise that many question Rotblat’s experience that evening,
although he would later defend his assertion through Groves’ own words in 1954, whereby the
(now) Major General testified before the Personnel Security Board in Washington, D.C.
regarding the question of Oppenheimer’s left-wing political stances. Groves stated during the
hearing that “there was never from about 2 weeks from the time I took charge of this project any
illusion on my part that Russia was our enemy and that the project was conducted on that
basis.”51
With that being said it is clear, through an examination of documents and sources either
referencing or directly stating through Groves’ own words his near-draconian application of
security as military director of the Manhattan Engineer District, that one must agree with those
who question Rotblat’s accounts of the evening at Chadwick’s home. Arguably, Groves may
49. Ibid, 461.
50. Ibid, 462.
51. Ibid.

21. 20
very well have held a personal belief that the bomb would be used as a bargaining chip against
Stalin at a later date, but it is highly unlikely that he would be so careless as to drunkenly blurt
out such damaging information of the type Rotblat contends. Such information would, by
necessity, lead back to the very top levels of both the Roosevelt Administration as well as Allied
High Command. Accepted today are the findings of the ALSOS operations of late 1944 to early
1945 –codename for the classified Scientific Intelligence Task Force conceived by Groves to
determine the actual progress of the Nazi atomic program. ALSOS would conclude that the
Germans, according to Colonel John Lansdale Jr., who was charged with executing the operation
“had not even devised, let alone constructed, a self-reacting pile.” Of course, being that this
information was not obtained until April 26, 1945 – eleven days before the surrender of Nazi
Germany, one cannot agree that Rotblat’s fears of a concerted effort by the United States
Government to “mislead” scientists as to the original objective of the Manhattan Project were in
anyway justified.52
In the end, Rotblat left Los Alamos in December 1944.
In June 1945, scientists at the University of Chicago’s Metallurgical Laboratory, under
the supervision of the Manhattan Engineer District, prepared a report to the Scientific Panel of
the Interim Committee, created by U.S. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson in May 1945,
warning of the repercussions of the use of an atomic device – a device now slated to play a key
role in ending the war in the Pacific. Known as the Franck Report, the scientists involved –
including Leό Szilárd – concluded that “the development of nuclear power … creates grave
political and economic problems for the future of this country … Nuclear bombs cannot possibly
remain a ‘secret weapon’ … Unless an effective international control of nuclear explosives is
52. John Lansdale, Jr., “Military Service” in The Manhattan Project: The Birth of the Atomic Bomb in the Words of
its Creators, Eyewitnesses, and Historians, ed. Cynthia C. Kelley (New York, Black Dog and Leventhal, 2007), 272-
3.

22. 21
instituted, a race of nuclear armaments is sure to ensue.”53
The committee also received a report
from its own panel that month, whereby Oppenheimer, Fermi, and other scientists offered their
own analysis, concluding that “we recognize our obligation to our nation to use the weapons to
help save American lives in the Japanese war … The opinions of our scientific colleagues on the
initial use of these weapons are not unanimous … we can propose no technical demonstration
likely to bring an end to the war; we see no acceptable alternative to direct military use.”54
At 05:29:45 am, Monday, July 16, 1945, at a test site located deep within the
Alamogordo Bombing Range some two hundred ten miles south of Los Alamos, an intense burst
of light illuminated the dark New Mexico sky. Accompanied by a gargantuan, expanding
horizontal fireball hotter than the surface of the sun, the surge grew to nearly half a mile in
diameter in 0.85 seconds, turning the desert sand to glass.55
Named “The Gadget,” the Trinity
explosion – with a force yield equivalency of 20 kilotons of TNT – produced at first an invisible,
inaudible shockwave which, in thirty seconds according to eyewitness Brigadier General Thomas
F. Farrell, “knocked flat”56
many within the base camp located ten miles away from the epicenter
of the blast. Groves, standing next to Oppenheimer and wearing welder’s glasses, would recall it
took forty seconds after detonation for the discharge to be heard57
– producing a sound which,
53. James Franck, Leó Szilárd, et al., “Report of the Committee on Political and Social Problems” in The
Manhattan Project: The Birth of the Atomic Bomb in the Words of its Creators, Eyewitnesses, and Historians, ed.
Cynthia C. Kelley (New York, Black Dog and Leventhal, 2007), 288.
54. J. Robert Oppenheimer, “Recommendations on the Immediate Use of Nuclear Weapons” in The Atomic Bomb
and the End of World War II: A Collection of Primary Sources, ed. by William Burr (George Washington
University: National Security Archive, 1945 [2007], 1-2.
55. Richard Rhodes, “Trinity” in The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012), 671-2.
56. Thomas F. Farrell, “Oppenheimer Scarcely Breathed” in The Manhattan Project: The Birth of the Atomic Bomb
in the Words of its Creators, Eyewitnesses, and Historians, ed. Cynthia C. Kelley (New York, Black Dog and
Leventhal, 2007), 295.

23. 22
reverberating against the canyon walls and mountains ringing the test site generated an eerie,
oscillating Doppler effect.
Twenty miles away on Compañia Hill, observers such as Hungarian physicist Edward
Teller – positioned so as to monitor the results of their research – had taken precautions before
the blast by furiously applying sunscreen over all exposed parts of their bodies. Robert Serber,
also observing from Compañia, recalled that “I saw first a yellow glow, which grew almost
instantly to an overwhelming white flash, so intense that I was completely blinded.”58
Oppenheimer’s student Philip Morrison, who had signed on to the project after completing his
studies at Berkeley, remembered “the blinding heat of a bright day on your face … It was like
opening a hot oven.”59
Val Fitch, a soldier and one of those inside the base camp blown to the
ground by the eruption, remembered the face of an MP stationed at the door of the bunker: “He
was absolutely pale and a look of incredible alarm was on his face … I simply said what was on
my mind, ‘The war will soon be over.’”60
Oppenheimer remembered “the line from the Hindu
scripture the Bhagavad-Gita: Vishnu is trying to persuade the prince that he should do his duty
and to impress him he takes on his multi-armed form and says, ‘Now I am become death, the
destroyer of worlds’ … I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.”61
Eight minutes
after detonation, the mushrooming pillar of multi-hued fire would reach a critical altitude of
nearly 40,000 feet and, “cooling” to a temperature of 9000 degrees Fahrenheit, would extend
57. Leslie R. Groves, “Three Years on a Tightrope” in The Manhattan Project: The Birth of the Atomic Bomb in the
Words of its Creators, Eyewitnesses, and Historians, ed. Cynthia C. Kelley (New York, Black Dog and Leventhal,
2007), 297.
58. Richard Rhodes, “Trinity” in The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012), 673.
59. Ibid.
60. Val Fitch, “A Soldier in the Ranks” in The Manhattan Project: The Birth of the Atomic Bomb in the Words of
its Creators, Eyewitnesses, and Historians, ed. Cynthia C. Kelley (New York, Black Dog and Leventhal, 2007), 306.
61. Richard Rhodes, “Trinity” in The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012), 676.

24. 23
outward to a maximum radius of five miles across the canyon floor. The world had just entered
the Atomic Age.
Just as Robert Serber had described in his lectures at Los Alamos in April 1943, two
distinct types of atomic weapons were ultimately developed by Manhattan District scientists. The
untested uranium bomb (“Little Boy”), deployed by the crew of the B-29 Superfortress Enola
Gay over the skies of Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945, dropped for 43 seconds before
exploding at 08:16:02 am, yielding a force equivalence of 12.5 kilotons of TNT which
instantaneously evaporated tens of thousands of people. By the end of the year, it would kill an
estimated 140,000.62
“Fat Man,” a plutonium device virtually identical to that which was tested
at Alamogordo in July, was conveyed by the team assigned to the B-29 Superfortress Bock’s
Car, erupting at 11:02:00 am at an altitude of 1,650 feet over Nagasaki, Japan on August 9.
Yielding a force equivalence of 22 kilotons of TNT, the bomb – although missing its target point
– would claim an estimated 70,000 lives by the close of 1945.63
Caution should be used when
examining the number of casualties assigned to both weapons; they are, after all, estimates; there
has never been a conclusive figure assigned to either those killed directly by the bombings or by
exposure to radiation. This reader has avoided relating to those concerned eyewitness
descriptions of the casualties uncovered during the course of research; needless to say, they are
wide-ranging and horrific.
This paper has examined the development of the Manhattan Project and the moral
questions inherent in such an endeavor. In addition to creating two weapons in less than three
years that were integral to ending the war in the Pacific, the United States led the way in
62. Richard Rhodes, “Tongues of Fire” in The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon and Schuster,
2012), 711; 734.
63. Ibid, 740.

25. 24
harnessing the untapped potential of nuclear energy. In July 1946, the project would produce
two additional plutonium bombs, detonating them at Bikini Atoll in the newly-acquired Marshall
Islands. On August 15, 1947, after five years in existence, and at a cost of two billion dollars
and the employment of over 100,000 men and women, the Manhattan Engineer District was
dissolved. Responsibility for further development of atomic weaponry was placed under the
control of the newly formed United States Atomic Energy Commission.
In the end, this reader unreservedly concludes that, much like the sentiments of
Oppenheimer, Fermi, and other scientists attached to the project, continuing the conflict at the
risk of many more lives lost than the devastation the atomic bombs rendered would have been an
unacceptable alternative inflicted upon nations of the world resisting brutal foreign adventurism.
It is with perhaps a sense of irony that the validated predictions of the Franck Report as well as
other statements from scientists in the weeks and months following the events of August 1945 –
that an international arms race would ensue as a result of their use – are what arguably remain as
the lasting legacy of the Manhattan Project. On September 23, 1949, President Truman stated:
I BELIEVE the American people, to the fullest extent consistent with national security,
are entitled to be informed of all developments in the field of atomic energy … We
have evidence that within recent weeks an atomic explosion occurred in the U.S.S.R.
Ever since atomic energy was first released by man, the eventual development of this
new force by other nations was to be expected. The probability has always been taken
into account by us … This recent development emphasizes once again, if indeed such
emphasis were needed, the necessity for that truly effective enforceable international
control of atomic energy which this government and the large majority of the
members of the United Nations support.”64
Such effective and enforceable international control never materialized. The Cold War had
begun and, although the Soviet Union would cease as a political entity in December 1991, some
64. Harry S. Truman, “Statement by the President on Announcing the First Atomic Explosion by the U.S.S.R.” in
Public Papers of the Presidents: Harry S. Truman 1945-1953 (Independence: The Harry S. Truman Library and
Museum Digital Collection, 1949 [2015]), 216.

26. 25
may argue that the struggle never ended. With the present threats afflicting our twenty-first
geopolitical climate – many of which continue to revolve around the peaceful and destructive
applications of nuclear technology – one would be hard pressed to disagree with such a position.
The influence and power commanded by a state possessing nuclear weapons are manifold upon
the nations of the world, perpetuating the arms race predicted by scientists in 1945. One may
only hope that, in our troubled times, a global crisis does not precipitate their use again.
“If atomic bombs are to be added to the arsenals of the warring world, then the time will
come when mankind will curse the name of Los Alamos and Hiroshima.”
❖ J. Robert Oppenheimer, Los Alamos, November 2, 1945.65
Seventy years on, mankind stands nervously…his mouth slightly open.
65. J. Robert Oppenheimer, “Living with the Bomb” in The Manhattan Project: The Birth of the Atomic Bomb in
the Words of its Creators, Eyewitnesses, and Historians, ed. Cynthia C. Kelley (New York, Black Dog and
Leventhal, 2007), 422.

27. 26
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