Some Oppenheimer context on science and the military (no spoilers)

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I’ve been learning a lot recently about the Manhattan project – such a fascinating and dramatic time. I thought some of this might be interesting to other people who recently saw or are thinking of seeing the movie Oppenheimer (1).

Most of what is below comes from the book A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and its Legacies (2).

  • The reason the bomb was developed under the Army and not the Navy was because Vannevar Bush – one of the top science advisors in Washington DC (3) found that the Navy officers he worked with tended to not want advice from scientists and to do things their own way, while the Army (especially Secretary of War Simson) were much more collaborative

  • Oppenheimer had to work hard to convince Bush that a lot of top scientists should be moved away from the Rad Lab at MIT (where they were developing RADAR technology that was obviously crucial to the war effort) and to the Manhattan project (where it wasn’t clear if a bomb would be built in time to be used during the war)

  • He then had to work hard again to convince those scientists to move to the middle of the desert where they were worried they would be under military control

  • In general, scientists working on the Manhattan project were very worried that they would have to be subject to military discipline. Eventually Oppenheimer was able to convince Leslie Groves that they would not get the best scientists unless Los Alamos remained under civilian control, which it did throughout the war

  • Scientists working on the Manhattan project felt that they were taking the project much more urgently than the military. They often felt that the army – with all its attempts to compartmentalize information by restricting communication between scientists – was slowing down their ability to build the bomb and potentially letting Hitler build the bomb first

  • Some people credit the scientist’s – including Oppenheimer’s – insistence on not following compartmentalization as one of the key factors in moving quickly enough to construct the bomb in time to use it against Japan

  • This sentiment was especially prominent in Chicago. After Fermi’s team in Chicago demonstrated the first nuclear chain reaction in December 1942, basic research was almost completely removed from Chicago and to the rest of the Manhattan project sites. Chicago scientists felt left behind, and became increasingly vocal against how the army was handling the administration of the project.

  • Towards the end of the war, the Chicago scientists tried to convince Washington not to drop the bomb on Japan. They had a strong sense that – since they had helped develop the bomb – they should have a strong voice in how the bomb be used

  • In retrospect this sentiment – expressed by other scientists before and after the war – seems pretty naïve. Contributing to building a weapon doesn’t mean you get to determine how it’s used. But before World War II, theoretical physicists were seen as pretty useless. There certainly wasn’t a lot of collaboration between theoretical physics and the military. Many of these scientists didn’t know at all how the military world worked.

  • From the perspective of the military, and from both Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, there wasn’t much of a question of if the bomb should be used or not. From a political-military perspective, during an all-out war, you do not invest billions of dollars and the effort of top scientists to build a weapon and then not use that weapon

Also valuable to know that Edward Teller (the awkward arrogant Hungarian in the movie) was a very strong nuclear hawk and would go on to be “the father of the hydrogen bomb”.

Hopefully that helps you appreciate some the of the background of what is going on in the movie! I’m excited to watch the movie again knowing all this now (4) (5).

 

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1.       For the interested, here is a post I wrote that touched on my views of the morality of the Manhattan Project, as well as another post with my thoughts on Christopher Nolan’s movies (and physics!)

2.       The author is Martin J Sherwin who is also one of the authors of American Prometheus – the biography of Oppenheimer that the movie is based on

3.       And famous MIT professor and administrator – shout out. He is the tall spindly kindly-looking bespectacled high-up in the movie

4.       If I’m wrong about anything in this post, please let me know! I’m trying to form a more accurate view of everything that was going on in science and politics at this time and would love to be corrected

5. I also love what Leslie Groves (Matt Damon’s character) says about the decision not to travel by air:

Mr. Stimson [Secretary of War] told me that if I went, I could not go by air, because of the hazards involved. When I said, “Well I don’t see what difference that would make,” he replied, “You can’t be replaced.” I said, “You do it, and General Marshall does it; why shouldn’t I?” He repeated, “As I said before, you can’t be replaced and we can.” Harvey Bundy, who was also present, said he had heard that I had previously urged flying when air safety dictated otherwise and then asked, “Who would take your place if you were killed?” I replied, “That would be your problem, not mine, but I agree you might have a problem.”

From Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project.