The Gadget, Destroying Worlds, Part I

MY FATHER gave me a copy of the first biography to appear about Robert J. Oppenheimer, titled "Oppenheimer", which appeared in 1971, just four years after the scientist's death in 1967. I was sixteen, and the book fascinated and horrifeid me. The new bio, "Amarican Prometheus" probably would too, and is doubtless much better, though I have not read it, and probalby won't. The movie's out, and that's good enough for me at this point in my career as a history buff. The rule of thumb about history books is that revisionist histories are nearly always better than early scholarship in any area, because they have the advantage of standing on the shoulders, so to speak, of the early scholarship. I'll see the movie, but can wait. The great debate about the bomb began early, before it was actually invented, and continues today, without any sign of abating. Truman never had a doubt. Oppenheimer, among others, thought it might be better to merely show it off somewhere in or near Japan where it would harm fewer people, with radiation only instead of enormous heat and blast. Either way, people were going to die; the question was whether the dead would be soldiers or civilians.The civilians lost out in the debate. A mere deonstration would doubtless have made an impression of the Japanese; the question is: would it have been enough of an impression to inspire their surrender? It seems almost certain that it would have not. Edward Teller, the "father" of the even more terrible hydrogen bomb, made an interesting point. He suggested that the first bomb was justified, and that the second was not. Hiroschima, but not Nagasaki. The problem with this argument was that during the three days between the two bomb droppings, no offer of surrender was forthcoming. The notion that the atom bombs saved as many as a million American military lives is still promulgated, but is and always has been nonsense. This false speculation was used to jsutify the bomb by people who wished to assuage their good old fashioned American guilt. It worked as propaganda, and still does, nonsense though it is. The choice was whether to kill civilian men, women and children, or male soldiers, and we (Truman) made our choice. We must live, or die with it, as we must with all our choices. After the war, Oppenheimer, hounded by communist hunters during the McCarthy era because of his very real communist symathies, retreated to aademia, and became the head of Princeton's Institute For Advanced Study, where Albert Einstein "worked", He complained to Einstein about his unfair treatment, being deprived of security clearance, etc., and einstein, who was the victim of similar treatment, advised Oppenheimer not to fight the matter, not to fight a battle he could not possibly win, which Oppenheimer was determined nonetheles to do. As Oppenheimer left Einstein's office, Einstein said to his secretary: "There goes a complete fool". Oppeinheimer felt terrible guilt about his part in inventing the ultimate weapon of mass destruction, and the fact that it killed hundreds of thousands of people, almost all of whom were entirely innocent of any war activties. After the war, he arranged an audience with President Harry Truman. In a feeble attempt to assauge his guilt, he told Truman: "Mr. President, I have blood on my hands" Truman, infuriated, threw Oppenheimer out of the oval office. After all, it was Truman who pulled the trigger, ordered the dropping of both bombs. He hardly needed to be told anything about bloody hands.