Introduction

• Oppenheimer was radical and irresponsible at Berkeley, an unlikely appointment by Gen. Groves.
• Very little U 235 or plutonium existed -- has to create it at Oak Ridge labs and at Hanford, WA.
• Secretive acquisition of PhDs and Nobels.  Primitive conditions.  Oppenheimer was the star: surprisingly good administrator.
• Security issue: most scientists were liberals, surounded by well-dressed FBI guards, but drawn together by anti-fascism.
• July 1944, the German A-bomb effort failed.
• Spring 1945 Victory in Europe -- but the Japanese war continued.
• Did not consider leaving the effort even after VE day -- kept up the intensity.
• Meeting with "Oppy": agreed to continue pending the formation of the United Nations.
• Oppenheimer had made faustian pact: he would sell his soul to the devil for knowledge and resources.  Vast supplies were given by Gen. Groves.  Ten pounds of plutonium were delivered by car -- but components failed tests.
• Oppenheimer hoped President Truman would tell Stalin about the Atom bomb.
• There was a wide variation in predicted effect -- up to the elimination of New Mexico.  A lightning storm just beforehand  increased the risk of accident.
• The scale of explosion: a blind women saw the light, and cattle suffered radiation burns.

The decision to bomb.

• Bombing of Japan: Tokyo was reduced to rubble, with 1 million civilians dead.  But Truman maintained unconditional surrender as the war goal.
• Issue was whether to show a demonstration bomb only, to the Japanese -- or to deliver a bomb.  It was no one person's fault the bomb was actually dropped -- the machinery of the Air Corps and of physicists was in motion.
• Targets: a few cities like Hiroshima had been spared as virgin targets.  The U-bomb killed 100,000 people there, while the P-bomb on Nagasaki killed 80,000.
• The first reaction was: thank God it wasn't a dud.

Aftermath.

• Oppenheimer worked in Washington DC, was lionized -- but argued for international control of the bomb.  But the US perceived a communist threat, leading to the arms race.
• Edward Teller persuaded Truman to develop the Hydrogen (nuclear) bomb with a thousand times the destructive force.
• In 1949 the Russians exploded their A-bomb -- then exploded the H bomb only months after the US.

McCarthyism.

• Se. Joe McCarthy attacked in hearings relatives of Oppenheimer as communists.  There was surveillance on a large scale because of the homosexual and leftist past of some scientists.
• 1954 the Tribunal of the Atomic Energy Commission in secret accused Oppenheimer and withdrew his security clearance.  Had he misled security about Elton and Chevalier as traitors?  Oppenheimer never corrected his lie about Chevalier, his best friend.  Teller complained Oppenheimer had impeded the H bomb effort.

Nonproliferation

• Oppenheimer: nonproliferation should have been organized the day after Trinity.  There have been over 1,200 nuclear bomb tests since Trinity, of up to 4,000 times the power.
• Oppenheimer quoted Vishnu from the Bhagavad Gita, trying to persuade the prince to do his duty:

• "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."