- (clock ticking)
- (birds chirping)
J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER:
I have been asked whether,
in the years to come,
it will be possible
to k*ll 40 million
American people
by the use of atomic
bombs in a single night.
I am afraid that the answer
to that question is yes.
--(clock ticking)
JON ELSE: Robert Oppenheimer
was the father of the atomic b*mb.
He was this complex
ball of contradictions.
OPPENHEIMER: They
are weapons of aggression,
of surprise and of terror.
RICHARD RHODES: Oppenheimer
wanted the b*mb to be used.
How else would the
world know what it was?
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT:
Dr. Oppenheimer,
are we creating something
we may not be able to control?
OPPENHEIMER: In a world of
atomic weapons, wars will cease.
(ticking)
NEWSREEL NARRATOR:
It is D-minus one for the test
of the world's
first atomic device.
ELSE: This cultured,
nonviolent man
was responsible for birthing
the most violent
w*apon in human history.
And he devoted the rest
of his life to trying to control
the monster that
he had unleashed.
OPPENHEIMER: If there
is another world w*r...
this civilization may go under.
KAI BIRD: He became
a political pariah.
EDWARD R. MURROW: Is it
true that humans have already
discovered a method
of destroying humanity?
(cameras clicking)
ELSE: And it finally ruined him.
OPPENHEIMER: "Now
I am become Death,
the destroyer of worlds."
(expl*si*n booming)
We have made a thing
that, by all standards
of the world we grew
up in, is an evil thing.
(birds chirping)
ELLEN BRADBURY
REID: When I was 15,
I had a chance to speak
to Oppenheimer alone.
He was at a cocktail party.
I was serving hors d'oeuvres...
(faint chatter)
and found Oppenheimer
standing alone.
I said, "I think you're
some sort of a saint."
And he was very taken aback.
And he said, "Wh-Why
would you say that to me?"
And I said, "Because
you had second thoughts."
And he turned around
and picked his hat up
and walked out the door.
It obviously struck him in a way
that I had never imagined.
MAN: Oppenheimer
for Cronkite, take one.
(film beeps)
WALTER CRONKITE:
Dr. Oppenheimer,
with all the inevitability
of the decision
that history demonstrates to us,
you still seem to
suffer, may I say,
from a bad conscience about it.
Is that true, sir?
Uh, I think when you play
a meaningful part in
bringing about the death
of over a hundred
thousand people...
uh, you naturally, uh,
don't think of that with ease.
CHRISTOPHER NOLAN: When
you look at the history of Oppenheimer,
it's very difficult to find
any person in history
sitting in such a
complex situation
with all kinds of
impossible questions
and very few answers.
(ticking)
ELSE: Everybody
has their own idea
of what Robert Oppenheimer is.
I mean, the fact is that
he invented a w*apon
that can destroy
human life on Earth.
I mean, don't forget
that this w*apon,
which has the capacity
to end civilization,
was developed as a means
to save Western civilization.
- (newsreel music playing)
- (bell clanging)
(shouting in German)
(crowd chanting in German)
BIRD: In the 1930s,
millions of Americans
were following the news
coming out of Europe
in their local theaters,
watching newsreels.
And Oppenheimer was
horrified by the rise of h*tler.
NOLAN: His sense of his own
Jewishness made him immediately
and massively aware
of the danger of fascism.
(bell tolling)
BIRD: When the
w*r started in 1939,
he was a professor at Berkeley.
And that same year,
one of his students
comes rushing into his office
to convey the news that
fission has been discovered.
MAN: Word has just come
through from Germany
that the uranium atom
under neutron bombardment
actually splits into two parts.
BIRD: Initially,
Oppenheimer can't believe it.
He runs to the blackboard
and does some mathematics,
and he comes to
the understanding
that you could use
fission to generate energy.
Einstein showed explicitly
that if you can convert
matter into pure energy,
the amount of energy
is extraordinary.
It's the speed of light
squared, for crying out loud.
(crackling)
RHODES: They realize that
from a very small amount of matter,
you could make power
to drive ships and planes
and trains, whatever,
make electricity, of course.
And they also
realize very quickly
that it might be
possible to make
a w*apon of untold destruction.
(h*tler shouting in German)
(crowd chanting)
We were deeply worried.
After all, the discovery of
fission was in n*zi Germany.
MAREENA ROBINSON SNOWDEN:
n*zi Germany could potentially build
a nuclear b*mb.
This was the worry.
And it was very tangible.
It was very real.
(plane engines buzzing)
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT:
December 7, 1941,
a date which
will live in infamy.
Pearl Harbor happens.
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT: I assert
that this form of treachery
shall never again endanger us.
(cheering, applause)
ALAN CARR: Now the United States
is an active
combatant in the w*r.
The idea at this point is
we basically need to get this
done as quickly as possible,
because we could
wake up tomorrow
and h*tler could have
that nuclear monopoly
that we all want to avoid.
So, we need a place where
we can design, build, test
and help deliver
nuclear weapons.
But even before we
pick the place though,
we need to find somebody
who can lead that installation.
And virtually nobody expected
Oppenheimer to be named
the director of the
weapons design laboratory.
He was kind of this
ethereal personality.
He had no record of
having big achievements.
One of the scientists who
knew Oppenheimer said,
"This is a man who
couldn't run a hot dog stand."
RHODES:
Oppenheimer's friends felt
that he was a divided man
not quite sure of his identity.
He said at one point,
"From my earliest days,
"I never did anything
"or thought anything
or knew anyone
where I didn't feel about
myself the deepest loathing."
(ticking)
JENNET CONANT:
Oppenheimer was born in 1904
and into an age of
great scientific possibility.
The first two decades
of the 20th century
were periods of incredible
intellectual daring.
Electricity, automobiles, flight
were all
transforming daily life.
And then you had incredible
advances in science,
and it looks like
almost anything
could be achieved.
DAVID EISENBACH:
Story of Robert Oppenheimer
is really the story of
immigrant America.
His father comes
over from Germany,
gets a job in the
garment industry
and makes a tremendous
amount of money,
winds up on the Upper
West Side on Riverside Drive.
And he's got a Picasso,
and he's got three van Goghs.
HERKEN: His mother
was a Paris-trained artist
who exhibited her work at
various galleries in Manhattan.
RHODES: She was
a nervous person.
She really didn't let
this little boy go outside.
BIRD: And he was very sheltered
and extremely socially awkward.
RHODES: When he finally went to
camp one summer, he was so nasty
to the other kids that
they roughed him up.
He said later they put him in
the icehouse all night naked
and painted him green,
including his genitals.
Oddly enough,
Oppenheimer didn't protest.
He just took his
punishment stoically.
It was a very odd reaction
for a young boy at that age.
RHODES: Imagine this
sensitive boy, this very smart boy,
but one who has no idea
how to deal with other people.
Certainly not with
children his own age.
He's had no experience.
ALEX WELLERSTEIN: The
real core psychological moment
for Oppenheimer appears to
have been when he was in college.
And he goes to study
physics at Cambridge,
and he doesn't do very well.
He ends up in a laboratory
that's really about
experimental physics,
and he is not good at that.
He doesn't really know how to
do an experiment with his hands.
And he has this sort
of crisis of confidence.
BIRD: This came to a
head when he had a...
what I think can
only be described
as a nervous breakdown.
One of his friends stumbled
upon him in an empty classroom
where Oppenheimer was
standing at the blackboard.
EISENBACH: Muttering to
himself over and over again,
"The point is, the
point is, the point is."
BIRD: And he could
never finish the sentence.
MARTIN J. SHERWIN: And
then another one of his friends
went to his dorm room and
heard this moaning inside
and opened the door,
and there was Oppenheimer
in a fetal position,
rolling back and
forth, groaning.
He literally came close
to committing
su1c1de at that point.
EISENBACH: He saw a
psychiatrist as a result of this,
and the psychiatrist said
that he's kind of
living in his own world.
RHODES: He was
having an identity crisis,
something we're clearer about
these days than we were then.
BIRD: His parents
took him to Paris,
where he saw yet
another psychologist,
and in a very French way,
prescribed a professional
woman and red wine.
(laughs) So...
Uh, we don't know
if that happened.
SHERWIN: He had always
been the top of the class,
the smartest person,
admired for his
intellectual capability
by all his classmates.
And suddenly, he
was an incompetent.
And he just couldn't
deal with that at that point.
And what snapped him out of that
was his discovery of theoretical
physics, of quantum physics.
At the time, it was sort of
the golden age of physics.
It's a very exciting
time to be a theorist.
And if you are young and
quick and willing to think
weird ideas that nobody
else has ever thought,
you can potentially make
a huge amount of progress
and a name for yourself.
BIRD: So, when
Oppenheimer decided to move
to Gttingen in Germany to study
with Max Born, a
theoretical physicist,
he blossomed.
He meets some of
the leading physicists
in Germany at the time...
Heisenberg, who,
ironically enough,
would lead the German
atomic b*mb project.
WELLERSTEIN: And
while he's over there,
he sort of invents
this Oppie personality.
This is where he gets the name.
They call him Opje,
and this turns into Oppie.
And Oppie is not an
insecure young American
who doesn't really know
what he wants to do.
Oppie is the brilliant guy
who is always five steps
ahead of everybody else
and can keep
everything in his head.
Oppie is a genius who's
very eccentric and interesting
and strikes a really dashing
figure and is chain-smoking.
And you see these
pictures of him from the '20s.
It's very Bob Dylan.
ELSE: He had the eyes of
an Old Testament prophet
inside this frail body,
and he sort of cocked
himself with his funny little
porkpie hat on top.
WELLERSTEIN: So, Oppie
is this sort of construction
of everything that
he would want to be.
And that recreation is
immensely successful.
(ticking)
NEWSREEL NARRATOR:
When the cancerous n*zi growth
spread farther still,
the people of Europe...
And the world...
Enter the new era.
RHODES: Certainly the first
motivation for the scientists
was to b*at the
Germans to the b*mb.
There's nothing like
the prospect of a hanging
to concentrate the mind.
And the thr*at of death of
civilization as they knew it
was so great that it swept
away any ethical or moral doubts
that they might have had.
WELLERSTEIN: Ultimately,
whoever gets the b*mb first
is not just gonna
win World w*r II
but is gonna run
the entire world.
NEWSREEL NARRATOR:
By the summer of 1942,
control of the atom b*mb project
passes to the hands of the Army,
under the code name
Manhattan Engineering District.
CARR: The Manhattan
Project really was
a huge national effort.
RHODES: And to plot
out the industrial scale
of the operation, they
chose a dynamic, burly,
six-foot-three,
240-pound general
named Leslie Richard Groves.
He hated Leslie.
He went by d*ck.
General Groves had a problem.
He was entrusted
to hire the people
that would build
the atomic b*mb.
But he knew that
we're talking about
the people who are the
finest scientists in the world.
These are prima donnas.
And now you have to have
somebody who's gonna be
the whipmaster.
You have to have somebody
that understands the
physics, who has a reputation,
so that these prima
donnas will follow you.
CARR: Oppenheimer and
General Groves are introduced
in the fall of 1942.
And these two
individuals are just about
as different as you can imagine.
But General Groves
saw something in him
that apparently no one else saw.
GROVES: When
meeting Oppenheimer,
you were immediately impressed.
You couldn't help it.
There wasn't a better man.
RHODES: He chose
Oppenheimer against the advice
of most of these leaders
that he had around him
in the scientific community.
Oppenheimer had never
led any large enterprise.
But Oppenheimer was really
good at explaining things.
WELLERSTEIN: He
was extremely charming,
and he had this ability
to sort of hold a lot of
things in his head at once
and keep aware of
how they all fit together.
And this is apparently
what General Groves
recognized in him.
EISENBACH: For
security purposes,
this project needs to
happen away from everything.
So Groves tells Oppenheimer
to just come up with a place
where this would actually work.
And it was Oppenheimer
who suggests
the New Mexico desert.
So they go to scope out a site.
It's called Los Alamos.
CARR: Oppenheimer
knew the area well.
He had spent a lot of time here.
CHARLES OPPENHEIMER: When
he left New York as a young man
and went to New Mexico...
that was a... just a really
important part of his life.
Going to New Mexico
and meeting cowboys
and riding horses.
He just loved it. He
loved every part of it.
BIRD: He once said that
his ambition was to combine
the two loves in his life,
physics and New Mexico.
And of course, he
did precisely this.
CARR: Now, the
government shows up
with bulldozers and architects
and laborers and craftsmen
to build a new
community and laboratory
where there essentially
had not been one before.
SNOWDEN: They're
starting from scratch.
And so much of what they
were doing was unknown
and unproven at the time.
They didn't actually know
that they would be
able to achieve this.
This was all theoretical.
ELSE: They knew that they
had to get the best scientists
if they were gonna get this
w*apon before the Nazis did.
(crowd chanting)
(ship horn blowing)
NEWSREEL NARRATOR:
Albert Einstein flees
to the United States.
He leads a vanguard
of refugee scientists,
virtually stripping
German universities
of their best minds.
WELLERSTEIN: All of the
turmoil in Europe had forced out
a huge number of really
top-grade physicists.
Enrico Fermi.
Hans Bethe.
Edward Teller, who
famously would go on
to develop the hydrogen b*mb.
One can sort of
go down the lists
and find more and more and
more of these amazing people.
Oppenheimer was
famously known for
his intellectual sex appeal.
And he could go
around the country
and sort of flash
his brain to people,
and, you know, they'd sign up.
RHODES: He would say,
"I unfortunately can't
tell you what we're doing,
"but I can tell you
that if we succeed,
"it's likely to end this w*r,
and it may end all w*r."
ROBERT CHRISTY:
Oppenheimer asked
if I would join him
in Los Alamos.
And I said I would be delighted.
Like most of his students,
I would more or less follow
him to the ends of the Earth.
If you had the choice
of fighting the Nazis
by going to this
exotic mountaintop
and doing the greatest
physics in history,
I mean, what would you do?
I would've been
on the next train.
I don't think people thought
that much about
the consequences.
You know, can we blame them?
OPPENHEIMER:
We were all aware of
the fact that, in one way or
another, we were intervening
explicitly and heavy-handedly
in the course of human history.
CARR: By the time the
laboratory was established,
Oppenheimer was a family man.
He was married.
He had a little boy.
During his tenure as
director at the laboratory,
he had a little girl as well.
BIRD: The summer of 1939,
he was at a cocktail
party in Berkeley,
and a young woman named
Kitty Puening had spied him
from across the garden and
was immediately attracted to him.
She was a firecracker
(laughs) of a young woman.
They fell in love, and by 1940,
she was pregnant.
(laughs)
SHERWIN: They live ever after.
And notice I didn't
say "happily." (laughs)
They are devoted to each other.
But it's a difficult
marriage because of
the complexity of Robert's
life, of their personalities,
of the environment
in which they live.
NOLAN: She was an academic,
and she was a
biologist and a botanist,
and ultimately, that work
was all put to one side
for the years at Los Alamos.
I think she was very frustrated
by being put in the position of
a mother and a wife
and nothing else.
CONANT: She did not
thrive at Los Alamos.
It was a lonely
and hard existence.
And she disappeared
into the bottle somewhat.
Oppenheimer was famous
for mixing his gin martinis.
(laughter)
He persuaded his scientists to
work very hard during the week
and to party hard
on the weekends.
RHODES: Everyone was
hungover on Sunday morning,
but they worked a lot,
and they worked hard,
and they worked together.
And that was
largely Oppenheimer.
BIRD: Los Alamos for
many of these people were
the most momentous
years of their lives.
They felt part of something,
part of something
meaningful and important.
And they were led
by this very enigmatic,
strange, bright, blue-eyed
young man whom they all admired.
REID: I grew up at Los Alamos.
And my father came to Los
Alamos during the Manhattan Project.
It was a-a curious place to live
because they're blowing
things up three times a day.
(expl*si*n rumbles)
Explosions were at
10:00 and 12:00 and 3:00,
so when you're in first grade,
it means recess,
lunch and school's out.
(excited chatter)
We were actually,
as little kids,
connoisseurs of explosions.
And at some point,
I asked my father,
"What-what are you doing?"
And he said, "Well,
we're doing something
that has never
been done before."
I thought, "That's got
to be pretty interesting,
whatever it is."
CARR: We get about a year
into the laboratory's existence,
and we come to
find that it's gonna be
a lot harder than we thought.
Every little thing is hard.
These are some very
complex machines.
A nuclear w*apon is not an idea.
Think of a nuclear w*apon
more as like a million ideas
that have to come together
and work perfectly together.
To make an atomic b*mb,
you need the fuel for it.
(electrical warbling)
CARR: We have plutonium,
and we have enriched uranium.
We have two different
types of material
that we're going to try and use.
Plutonium was the
better material to use.
There was gonna be more of it.
You needed less
of it to make a b*mb,
and yet it was
harder to detonate.
(electrical popping)
The initial way to make a
b*mb was called g*n assembly.
It was to take two
pieces of material
and slam them together...
(expl*si*n)
causing a critical
mass and an expl*si*n.
And that was fine if you
used highly enriched uranium.
But one day, they discovered
it won't work with plutonium.
The plutonium turned
out to be so reactive
that you couldn't
fire it up a barrel
even at 3,000 feet per second.
It would fizzle.
It would melt down
before it got up the barrel.
NORRIS: It was a great shock.
I mean, maybe this whole
plutonium thing had been wasted,
hundreds of millions of
dollars to develop plutonium.
WELLERSTEIN:
Oppenheimer was distraught,
and-and Los Alamos
was distraught.
RHODES: He considered
resigning, he was so depressed,
and his friends at
the laboratory said,
"You can't, Robert.
"You've got to stay
and finish this work.
It's got to happen.
We must do it."
And-and reluctantly, he stayed.
(filmstrip rattling)
NEWSREEL NARRATOR: w*r
under the supreme command of
General Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Allied forces have
nearly three million troops
trained for the as*ault.
(crowd cheering)
On the other side
of the channel...
- (shouting in German)
- (crowd chanting in German)
the Nazis also know
what the Allied forces
are preparing for,
and they are making
preparations of their own.
(h*tler shouting in German)
BIRD: Oppenheimer feared
he was still in a race
with the Germans.
Even as late as
the summer of '44,
they had no real intelligence
about where they were on
the German b*mb project.
CARR: And so, if they don't
cr*ck the plutonium problem,
they may not have
a b*mb in time.
NORRIS: Oppenheimer shifted
the laboratory into, you know,
full-speed panic mode.
WELLERSTEIN: They
had had some ideas
for other types of b*mb designs,
which they had thrown around
at the very beginning
of the project
but dismissed 'cause
they seemed too difficult.
But one of them
was called implosion.
The way implosion in
a nutshell works was
they had a solid
ball of plutonium,
just a solid sphere of it,
about the size of a softball,
maybe a little bit smaller.
And this is encased by
tons of high expl*sives.
And these high expl*sives
are really specially made,
so that when they explode,
they're gonna end up
sort of focusing a
blast wave onto this ball,
pushing on the top and
pushing on the bottom
and pushing on both sides of it.
Every angle of this is
gonna be being pushed upon
with a lot of expl*sive force.
What you want to
do is get this pressure
to squeeze the
plutonium target evenly.
If it were asymmetrical,
it probably wouldn't work.
You had to have enough
pressure quickly enough
to smash these subatomic
particles together hard enough
to get them to have
this a-amazing reaction.
WELLERSTEIN: This
is really hard to do.
Every aspect of this is an
almost totally new problem.
It is a technology that
would have benefited from
another decade of development.
And they didn't have
that. They had a year.
CONANT: Oppenheimer
was working night and day
building the b*mb.
And as the project grew
in size, the security service
protecting the
project also grew.
And even though he
was beloved and admired
by most of the scientists
working at the
Los Alamos project,
he had fallen under a
greater veil of suspicion
because there were
certain aspects of his past
that raised the possibility
that he could
be a security risk.
RHODES: When
Oppenheimer was teaching
at the University of
California at Berkeley,
he really was a
very unworldly man
focused on science,
until the Depression began.
He discovered, to his shock,
that his students often didn't
even have enough to eat.
One of them told
me he was living on
cat food, cans of cat food.
That was the only
thing he could afford.
Oppenheimer was
changed by this discovery
of-of suffering in
the world, really.
BIRD: And Oppenheimer
sort of naturally,
like many of his friends
in Berkeley at the time,
drifted politically to the left.
CARR: Communism was a
very appealing idea in the 1930s.
There was no Internet.
People didn't know what
was going on real time
in the Soviet Union,
where Joseph Stalin, of course,
was in the process of murdering
20 million of his own people.
(g*nf*re)
What people here in the
United States saw instead was,
hey, you know, here
in the Soviet Union,
everybody is free and
equal and has a job
and a place to live
and-and a future,
an important role to play
in the greater collective.
(crowd cheering)
Now, if I don't know where
my next meal is coming from,
that sounds like
a pretty good idea.
It's debatable if Oppenheimer
ever really joined, officially,
the Communist Party.
But his brother did.
Frank Oppenheimer
joined the party.
Frank's wife Jackie
joined the party.
Many of Oppenheimer's
close friends
had joined the Communist Party.
Many of his students at
Berkeley and elsewhere
had been members of the
Communist Party as well.
BIRD: And in the mid '30s,
he met a young woman
named Jean Tatlock,
who was studying to
become a psychiatrist.
Brilliant young woman.
He fell in love with her.
NOLAN: They were
engaged to be married twice.
I think it's probably a
reasonable interpretation
to say he was somewhat
obsessed with her.
She was a communist.
He was interested
in communist ideas.
BIRD: And for
the next four years,
Oppenheimer actually
contributed quite a bit of money
to the Communist Party.
But his political activities
began to be noticed.
HERKEN: What the
FBI did in those days,
they were following
the communists.
They would walk around
and they would take down
the license numbers of
the cars that were parked
in front of the house or the
building and look them up.
That's when Oppenheimer
first came to the
attention of the FBI.
EISENBACH: Even while he's
heading up the A-b*mb project,
the FBI is wiretapping
and following him.
m*llitary Intelligence is
constantly asking him questions.
RHODES: He was, I
think, in a strange way,
comfortable with that because
he knew he wasn't
doing anything wrong.
Even when he went
to visit his old girlfriend
when he should not
have probably done so.
In 1943, he heard
from Jean Tatlock.
She was going through
some emotional crisis,
and she wanted to see him.
He had kept in touch with Jean.
He still loved her.
She had rejected him.
He had married Kitty.
But he knew that Jean Tatlock
was in a depressed state,
and so he visited her.
RHODES: He had to leave Los
Alamos and go to San Francisco.
And that was, of
course, just red meat
for the, for the
dog, as it were.
There were two guys
sitting outside the apartment.
BIRD: Jean Tatlock
was under surveillance.
She was still a member
of the Communist Party.
RHODES: He spent
the night with her.
They had been lovers,
and I think they probably
were lovers again that night.
(engine starts)
BIRD: This was reported
back to Colonel Boris Pash,
who was head of
Army Intelligence
for all the West Coast.
And Pash was
convinced that this was
a serious breach of security
and that perhaps Oppenheimer
was conveying nuclear secrets
and atomic secrets to the
Communist Party through Tatlock.
Sadly, tragically, she d*ed
just a few months later,
in the spring of 1944.
Under mysterious circumstances,
her father found her naked
with her head
plunged in a bathtub
with her body slumped
over the edge of the bathtub.
Which is a very odd
way to commit su1c1de.
There's some speculation that
perhaps she was m*rder*d.
Oppenheimer was horrified
and devastated by the news.
The security officer
who informed him
said that he wept openly,
that he was absolutely bereft
and actually confided
that there was nobody
that he could speak to about it.
So you sense, uh, the
loneliness of his grief.
(radio static crackling)
RADIO ANNOUNCER:
We interrupt this program
with a special bulletin.
President Roosevelt is dead.
The president d*ed of
a cerebral hemorrhage.
April 1945 was
one of those months
in which the fate of the world
seemed to turn on a dime.
FDR dies,
followed by h*tler
committing su1c1de.
NEWSREEL NARRATOR:
h*tler's empire burns and shrivels.
ELSE: The b*mb was conceived
in a kind of anti-h*tler fervor.
By the spring of 1945,
h*tler's out of the picture.
The Nazis are
no longer a thr*at.
h*tler is not gonna
build an atomic b*mb
and drop it on New York.
That's not gonna happen.
But there was no way they
were not gonna finish that w*apon.
RHODES: They wanted
to make this happen.
They didn't want the w*r
to end before it happened.
Oppenheimer wanted
the b*mb to be used,
because how else would
the world know what it was?
NEWSREEL NARRATOR:
Harry S. Truman was sworn in
as President of
the United States.
EISENBACH: By the time
Truman gets to the presidency,
the wheels are in motion.
This b*mb is going to
be dropped somewhere.
With the death of h*tler, the
target then becomes Japan.
NEWSREEL NARRATOR:
The never-ending air campaign
against Japan's stolen
empire continues,
as B-24s hammer
installations in the Palau islands.
We were marching
up from island to island.
Landing on the beaches against
dug-in Japanese defenses.
Losing young men
in large numbers.
Every day that went by
without this b*mb
being successfully tested
was a day in which thousands
of Americans are dying.
NEWSREEL NARRATOR:
Thousands of Yanks have been wounded
and other thousands
have sacrificed their lives
to drive a fanatical
foe from this vital base,
the doorstep to Japan itself.
NORRIS: They knew the
Japanese were defeated,
but defeat and surrender
are two different things.
So how do you get
them to surrender?
OPPENHEIMER: In a world of
atomic weapons, wars will cease.
And that is not a small thing.
EISENBACH: The way
Oppenheimer looked at the b*mb
is in a kind of Eastern
metaphysical way of
it is a act of
destruction and creation
potentially at the same time,
act of w*r and an act of peace,
that this thing, if mishandled,
could end humanity, but if
properly handled and harnessed,
could actually lead to an era
of peace and prosperity
for the entire world.
(playful chatter)
CONANT: By the summer of '45,
they had been working on
the implosion design for a year,
tweaking, devising and
struggling with the challenges.
WELLERSTEIN:
For this thing to work,
all of those expl*sives
and their detonators
and the things powering
them and the batteries
and everything else
has got to work perfectly.
And there wasn't a really
good way to figure out
if that was actually
gonna happen,
other than setting
off a full-size test.
HERKEN: They
settle upon the site
where the b*mb will be tested,
and Oppenheimer chooses
the name for the site: Trinity.
CARR: He had been reading
the poetry of John
Donne at the time,
and one of those poems,
uh, include the line,
"Batter my heart,
three-personed God,"
a reference to the Holy
Trinity in Christianity.
HERKEN: And I think that that
was a tribute to Jean Tatlock,
because Jean and
Oppie used to read
the poetry of John Donne in bed.
(ticking)
NEWSREEL NARRATOR:
Sunday, July 15, 1945.
Alamogordo, New Mexico.
It is D-minus one for the test
of the world's
first atomic device.
NOLAN: The hours
leading up to the Trinity test
are one of the most
extraordinary moments
of-of tension imaginable.
The stakes, the
billions of dollars,
the hundreds of thousands
of people who'd been involved
in building to this one moment
of this test of this new w*apon,
all of that
responsibility falling
very squarely on
Oppenheimer's shoulders.
NEWSREEL NARRATOR:
At the b*mb test site,
the scientists are working
under growing pressure.
They are told there
must be no further delays.
The president must
know the results of the test
when he meets with Stalin.
CARR: The President
of the United States
is about to enter into the
Potsdam Conference...
Potsdam, a city in Germany.
He's gonna meet
with Joseph Stalin,
Winston Churchill as well,
and talk about the
future of Europe
and the future of
the Pacific w*r.
The president must know
if he has a nuclear w*apon
in his back pocket or not.
NORRIS: Everybody was on edge,
and they had to calm
down Oppenheimer.
He was a bundle of nerves.
RHODES: He chain-smoked,
which he pretty much
always did anyway.
GROVES: It was a
situation where I did not want
Dr. Oppenheimer to get nervous.
There's a famous
picture from that evening
where Oppenheimer himself
crawls up the tower to the top
where the b*mb has been hoisted.
He's checking
all the final plugs
to make sure that
everything is in order.
He's clearly worried,
trying to check
every last little detail.
WELLERSTEIN:
Oppenheimer doesn't know
if this thing is
gonna work at all.
EISENBACH: In fact, he had a bet
with another one
of the scientists
that it wouldn't
work... Ten dollars.
OPPENHEIMER: There
were a hundred things
that could be done wrong,
any one of which could
make the test a failure.
NYE: Everybody had doubts.
Was it even possible?
And then this question,
'cause nobody was really sure:
What if we set the
whole atmosphere on fire?
SNOWDEN: What if
we set off this b*mb
and it literally
sets the air on fire
and engulfs us all?
KAKU: The atmosphere is
made out of oxygen, after all.
Can the oxygen of the atmosphere
be set in flames
by an atomic b*mb?
No one knew the
answer to these questions.
RHODES: It's before
dawn on July 16, 1945.
It was dark.
The b*mb was in the
tower a hundred feet up,
and they were ready to go.
Oppenheimer was in one of
the bunkers that had been built.
CARR: Oppenheimer
braced himself,
according to some
accounts uttering the words,
"Lord, these affairs
are hard on the heart."
(civil defense siren blaring)
MAN (over speaker): T-minus ten,
nine, eight...
RHODES: Oppenheimer
was saying to himself,
- "I must remain conscious."
- (ticking)
MAN: seven...
"I must remain conscious."
MAN: six...
CARR: Seconds are hours.
MAN: five, four,
three, two...
RHODES: And all of a sudden...
(expl*si*n booming)
the whole place lit up.
One of the scientists told me
it felt as if someone had
opened an oven door.
Suddenly, there
was this huge heat,
which was radiant heat,
so it came at the
speed of light as well,
and then this rolling
thunder of sound,
and the first mushroom
cloud started going up.
It was orange and purple
and blue and yellow,
and it roiled, and
it grew as it rose.
And a new thing, he said,
had been created on the Earth,
a new challenge for humanity.
NYE: People had seen explosions
and tested bombs for
decades, but to see the size of it,
just... it was just astonishing.
NOLAN: There's never
been a moment like that
in the history of the world.
The view of the world,
the view of what matter is,
what we are made of
indeed, palpably changes.
It's an unleashing of a, of a
force never before imagined
and could never be
ignored from this point on.
OPPENHEIMER: We knew
the world would not be the same.
A few people laughed.
A few people cried.
Most people were silent.
(sniffles)
I 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,
takes on his multiarmed
form and says,
"Now I am become Death,
the destroyer of worlds."
I suppose we all thought
that, one way or another.
CARR: After the test was
over, Oppenheimer had this strut.
It was likeHigh Noon.
He had done it.
Oppenheimer was very
proud of this accomplishment.
It was a world-changing moment,
and a lot of the
scientists realized that.
Now came the business of
what the government
would do with their creation.
CONANT: Groves hurried back
to his Washington office
and cabled the news
that the b*mb experiment
had been a success
and even more powerful
than they had anticipated.
This information is
transmitted to Truman, who...
entire attitude
changes at Potsdam.
He suddenly feels like
he has a win in-in sight.
He suddenly starts
bossing around Stalin.
He decides the Japanese get
no concessions whatsoever.
Truman had known
that this existed
since he became president,
but to know it actually works
and it's even more
powerful than we thought,
that's a really different
position for him to be in.
Our demand has
been, and it remains,
- unconditional surrender!
- (applause)
(filmstrip slowing to a stop)
NYE: My mom and dad
were both veterans of
World w*r II, and my mom,
she said, "You know, after..."
"after four years of this thing,
"there was nobody really...
there was nobody going,
'Was it ethical to use
a-a nuclear w*apon?'"
Right? Just get it over with.
This is horrible. Like, this...
Whatever you can do
to shorten this thing.
Everybody was
terrified and exhausted,
and everybody knew
somebody who knew somebody
who was not living
anymore because of this.
ELSE: With the b*mb ready to go,
I mean, the choices
are appalling.
You know, they know
perfectly well that if they use
these weapons on Japanese
men, women and children in cities,
there are gonna be a couple
hundred thousand people who die.
But if they don't stop
the w*r with the b*mb,
there may be
millions more that die.
So those seem to
be the two choices,
but there was a third choice,
and the third choice was
to do a demonstration.
Maybe drop this b*mb in
Tokyo Bay, k*ll very few people,
make a hell of a demonstration,
and maybe the
Japanese will surrender
just based on having seen
the ferocious power of this thing.
Oppenheimer
rejected, uh, that course,
as did the planners
in Washington.
(playful chatter)
OPPENHEIMER: We did
think about whether, uh,
its destructiveness, uh,
its danger, uh,
could be vividly demonstrated
over a barren and
uninhabited target,
and we were very
doubtful of that.
Very few people would have had
a more thorough understanding
than J. Robert Oppenheimer
of what was about to unfold
when these weapons
were used in combat.
Oppenheimer
contemplated, knowing that
this destruction
would be unworldly.
(wind whistling softly)
BIRD: His secretary, Anne
Wilson, told me this story
that I'm still struck by.
After the Trinity test,
she's walking to work
one day with Robert.
He's a few steps ahead of
her, and he's suddenly muttering,
"Those poor little people,
those poor little people."
She stops him and says, "Robert,
what are you muttering about?"
And he looked at her
and-and explained that,
you know, the b*mb
was going to be used
on a Japanese city or two,
and the victims were going to be
civilians, a whole city.
This was obviously on his
mind, painfully on his mind.
And yet we know, that same week,
he was meeting with the generals
who were in charge
of the bombing mission,
and he was instructing them
exactly how the b*mb
should be dropped
and at what altitude
it should be detonated
for the maximum
destructive power.
WELLERSTEIN: It's hard
to reconcile the sensitive,
morally upright,
humanistic professor
with the guy who recommends
that the b*mb is dropped on cities
and is calculating
the ideal height
for destroying houses, right?
How do you reconcile
those two things?
Part of it is, I think,
Oppenheimer hoping that
this will not be the first
use of nuclear weapons,
that it will be the last
use of nuclear weapons.
And if that's the case,
then in order to ensure
that they're the last use,
you want it to be as bad and
ugly and horrible as possible.
RHODES: By August of 1945,
every Japanese city of
more than 50,000 people
had basically been b*rned
out, except for three or four cities
that had been deliberately
set aside for atomic bombing.
Set aside because they
had physical characteristics
that would allow us to
see how the bombs worked.
Hiroshima was a flat city.
And with the city set
aside, it was possible to see
the effects of the b*mb
all the way out to the edges.
That's why Hiroshima was chosen.
HIDEKO TAMURA:
When I was a little kid,
there were seven
rivers running through,
beautiful riverbanks.
Water was clear.
I was running through
magical gardens, flowers,
looking for beautiful,
beautiful insects
of all different kinds.
Birds chirping.
They don't understand about w*r.
It was all over,
sound of happiness.
But the sound of
the expl*si*n came
like a rage over the Earth.
(expl*si*n rumbling)
TRUMAN: A short time ago,
an American airplane dropped
one b*mb on Hiroshima.
That b*mb has more power
than 20,000 tons of TNT.
It is an atomic b*mb.
It is a harnessing of the
basic power of the universe.
We have spent more
than two billion dollars
on the greatest scientific
gamble in history,
and we have won.
(expl*si*n rumbling)
NEWSREEL NARRATOR:
Japan could read its doom.
This was more than
a routine bombing.
It was the funeral pyre
of an aggressor nation.
TAMURA: I remember every second.
I've never been so helpless.
I was under the debris
and somehow had to crawl
to the light and come out.
I had to go looking
for my mother.
Seeing these
miserable dying people,
you didn't want her
to be one of them.
Didn't hear one
single thing about
cousin, my mother
or my best friend.
I would have really loved
to have d*ed with them,
because life after that
was so very challenging
and so very difficult,
physically and
especially mentally.
REID: A few years
after the end of the w*r,
I saw the raw footage of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
And there's no sound.
It's just footage of
people with their skin
and flower reverse
patterns of the kimonos
b*rned into their skin
and bodies
floating in the river.
It was so shocking.
And I thought, "They're
all my friends' fathers.
Did they know what
they were doing?"
None of it seemed to
make any sense to me
that this was so horrible.
(Geiger counter
clicking rapidly)
CARR: As reports
of that devastation
started to come
back to Los Alamos,
obviously this weighed
on the scientists.
Yes, it had been a horrible w*r,
but still, tens of
thousands of people
were k*lled in these att*cks.
Cities were destroyed.
And that was difficult
on a lot of the scientists.
And I certainly think that it
was difficult on Oppenheimer
for the rest of his life.
Hiroshima was far more costly
in life and suffering
and inhumane
than it needed to have been.
This is easy to
say after the fact.
- (birds chirping)
- (clock ticking)
NOLAN: Oppenheimer
never apologized in any way for
Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
He was very, very
careful and complicated
in all statements he made about
the moral implications of the
b*mb and his involvement in it.
And yet, post-Hiroshima
and Nagasaki,
all of his actions
are the actions of
somebody who is
plagued with guilt.
(radio static crackles)
DOUGLAS MacARTHUR:
We are gathered here,
representatives of the
major warring powers,
to conclude a solemn agreement
whereby peace may be restored.
(crowd cheering)
TRUMAN: I have
received this afternoon
a message from the
Japanese government.
I deem this reply
a full acceptance
of the unconditional
surrender of Japan.
ELSE: And of course,
a great many people felt
that the atomic b*mb
had ended World w*r II.
Perhaps it had.
And Robert Oppenheimer was
the guy who made it happen.
ROY GLAUBER: He was
in demand everywhere.
He was the cover
story forTime magazine,
once forLife magazine.
There scarcely was
a magazine cover
that he wasn't on.
HERKEN: The inaugural issue
ofPhysics Today simply showed
a porkpie hat on
a cyclotron control.
And everybody knew the
porkpie hat was Oppenheimer.
(lively chatter)
CONANT: He becomes a rock star.
He is the oracle of
American science.
And he liked that.
He probably felt that he'd
finally come through it all
and he was no
longer the outsider.
Now he was not only
at the center of things
but that he stood
at the very top.
(applause)
And that, I think, was
intoxicating for him.
But at the same time,
he felt a real responsibility
for having ushered this
w*apon into the world.
MAN: Go ahead, please.
a*t*matic control has got it.
This time, Rab, the
stakes are kind of high.
ISIDOR ISAAC RABI: It's
going to work all right, Robert.
ELSE: I think he felt,
as the father of the
atomic b*mb, it was his duty
to keep the reins
on the atomic b*mb.
MAN: Go ahead, please.
Well, we'll know in 40 seconds.
MAN: Stay where you are.
Cut.
BIRD: Within three
months of Hiroshima,
he was giving speeches,
talking about how this w*apon
was a w*apon for aggressors,
that it is a w*apon of terror.
You know, this is the father
of the atomic b*mb speaking.
OPPENHEIMER: If there
is another world w*r...
this civilization
may go under.
We need to ask ourselves
whether we're doing
all we can to avert that.
CHARLES OPPENHEIMER:
I might like to read
what my grandfather
said about it.
This is a speech where he said,
"But when you
come right down to it,
"the reason that we did this job
"is because it was
an organic necessity.
"If you are a scientist, you
cannot stop such a thing.
"If you are a
scientist, you believe
"that it's good to find
out how the world works,
"that it's good to find
out what realities are,
"that it's good to
turn over to mankind
"the greatest possible
power to control the world
and deal with it according
to its lights and values."
He didn't regret his role
and work during the w*r,
but he soon after turns so
strongly towards managing
the outcome of the
science they created.
BIRD: He decides he doesn't want
to work any longer on
building more bombs.
He resigns from Los Alamos,
and he accepts a position
as director of the Institute for
Advanced Studies in Princeton,
where he becomes
Einstein's boss, so to speak.
He's probably the most
famous scientist in America,
and he's trying to use
that celebrity status
to have influence.
He gets an appointment with
Harry Truman in the Oval Office.
Oppenheimer's
agenda is to persuade
Harry Truman of the importance
of controlling this technology.
And he starts to
make this pitch.
And Truman interrupts
him with a question, saying,
"Well, Dr. Oppenheimer,
when do you think the Russians
are going to get this
w*apon of mass destruction?"
And Oppenheimer is sort of
taken aback by the question
and says, "Well, I'm not sure
but sometime in the future."
And Truman interrupts again
and says, "Well, I know. Never."
At that point, Oppie understands
that Harry Truman
doesn't understand anything
about the physics
of this w*apon.
And Oppenheimer, at that point,
says exactly the wrong thing.
RHODES: He really
offended President Truman
by saying, "Mr. President,
I have blood on my hands."
(expl*si*n rumbling)
BIRD: This is exactly
the wrong thing
to say to the guy
who made the decision
to drop two such bombs
on two Japanese cities.
He was trying to impress Truman.
He thought it was something
that Truman would like to hear,
and he got that wrong a lot.
I mean, Oppenheimer was
very charming to a lot of people,
but he was often not charming
to leaders and people
who had power over him.
WELLERSTEIN:
Truman didn't believe
that anybody's responsibility
was greater than his.
Truman was just, "Get
that guy out of my office.
I was the one who
made the decision."
BIRD: He ends the
meeting very abruptly
and later tells his aides that,
"I don't want to see that
crybaby scientist ever again."
I think the only hope
for our future safety
must lie in a collaboration,
based on confidence
and good faith,
with the other
peoples of the world.
SNOWDEN: Oppenheimer,
very early after the bombings,
was a part of the
team to recommend
international disarmament.
But the genie was
out of the bottle.
Right? Those who possess this
will be able to shape
the world order.
And very quickly, the
Soviet Union took note.
(expl*si*n rumbling)
NORRIS: The Soviets
tested a b*mb in 1949
to the shock of almost everyone.
NEWSREEL NARRATOR: President
Truman's dramatic announcement
that Russia has created
an atomic expl*si*n
sends reporters racing
for Flushing Meadow,
where Russia's Vyshinsky arrives
to address the United Nations...
This puts the U.S. in a
really complicated position,
because it's no longer the only
country with nuclear weapons.
Suddenly, you
have the possibility
that if w*r with nuclear weapons
broke out between two states
that had a fair number of them,
they could, in a matter of
hours, destroy themselves.
(civil defense siren blaring)
NEWSREEL NARRATOR:
We must all get ready now,
so we know how to save ourselves
if the atomic b*mb
ever explodes near us.
And one of the possible options
scientists and policy
people lobbied for
was to build the hydrogen
b*mb as the sort of next step.
(expl*si*n rumbling)
SNOWDEN: The Hiroshima
and Nagasaki bombs
were on the order
of 15 kilotons of TNT,
which is no small
number in and of itself.
When you start talking
about hydrogen bombs,
now we're talking
about megatons.
We're talking about
a million tons of TNT.
They're categorically different.
A thousand times stronger
than anything you'd see
in a Hiroshima and
Nagasaki b*mb.
ELSE: With one very
large hydrogen b*mb,
you can k*ll about
as many people
as all of the people
k*lled in World w*r II.
And Oppenheimer could
not see any use for that.
He called it a genocidal w*apon.
EDWARD TELLER: At the end of
the w*r, most people wanted to stop.
I did not.
Among the people who knew
a great deal about
the hydrogen b*mb,
I was the only advocate of it.
RHODES: Edward Teller
was a Hungarian Jew
who escaped from Hungary
and came to the United States.
During World w*r II,
Teller worked at Los Alamos,
but he became obsessed with
the idea of the hydrogen b*mb,
even before they
had the atomic b*mb.
HERKEN: Teller did very
much consider the atomic b*mb
to be Oppenheimer's creation,
and he wanted something
that was bigger and better.
CONANT: And
Oppenheimer said to Teller,
"Go back to doing
physics, but don't build this.
There's no need for it."
RHODES: Oppenheimer
was in charge of a committee
that had been put together
in Washington to decide:
What should we do?
Should we build a hydrogen b*mb?
That is a question
in everybody's mind,
Dr. Oppenheimer.
Are we creating something
we may not be able to control?
The decision to try to make
or not to make the hydrogen b*mb
touch the very
basis of our morality.
And the committee
decision was basically,
no, we shouldn't build
the hydrogen b*mb.
If we are guided by fear alone,
we'll fail in this
time of crisis.
The answer to fear
sometimes lies in courage.
WELLERSTEIN: Oppenheimer's
opposition of the H-b*mb
was taken very hard by
people who were in favor for it.
RHODES: The Air Force
wanted more and more bombs
and bigger and bigger bombs.
The bigger the b*mb,
in terms of its yield,
the more damage
one plane could do.
HERKEN: The Strategic Air
Command was focused upon
blowing up the Soviet Union.
Oppenheimer said a smarter
move would be to put resources
into intercepting
Soviet bombers.
RHODES: He was going
just the opposite direction
from what the Air Force wanted.
They wanted him out.
They wanted to get rid of him.
BIRD: By 1953, Oppenheimer
has made sufficient enemies
in the Washington bureaucracy.
And then along
comes Lewis Strauss...
(applause)
the new chairman of the
Atomic Energy Commission.
STRAUSS: I have just returned
from the Pacific Proving Ground,
where I have witnessed a
test of thermonuclear weapons.
BIRD: And Strauss
knows Oppenheimer
and has grown to
intensely dislike him.
RHODES: Oppenheimer had
been snappish with him once,
and it had deeply offended him.
So Strauss begins to plot
a means to defrock Oppenheimer.
SHERWIN: And how does he do it?
Lewis Strauss focuses on
Oppenheimer's association
with left-wing friends
during the 1930s in Berkeley.
MAN (over TV): "Communism."
Who are the apostles of a system
that attempts to destroy
the American way of life?
During the Second World w*r,
the Soviet Union was our ally.
And that sense of
being a communist
or associating with
communists was not something
that was considered that bad.
It wasn't until the Cold w*r
that all of a sudden,
in retrospect,
anyone with any kind of
legacy of a communist past
is now a security thr*at.
If there were no communists
in our government,
why did we delay, for 18 months,
delay our research
on the hydrogen b*mb?
RHODES: It was
from attitudes like that
that finally led to the
government deciding
they had to pull Oppenheimer's
security clearance.
CHARLES OPPENHEIMER:
He would have to give up
his security clearance in
30 days or ask for a hearing.
He felt he couldn't give
up his security clearance.
He couldn't agree with them
that he wasn't fit to
serve his government.
ELSE: He should have
told them to get lost.
He should have said,
"I am the atomic b*mb.
"I won World w*r II.
f*ck off."
For whatever reason, he
didn't tell them to get lost.
He decided to fight it.
BIRD: And before he
goes down to Washington,
he meets with Einstein
to tell him he's gonna
be absent for a few weeks,
and Einstein's reaction
is quite startling.
Albert says, "But, Robert,
you are Mr. Atomic."
"You don't need
them. They need you.
Just walk away. Why
should you go through this?"
And Oppenheimer shakes his
head and apparently says to Albert,
"Well, you don't understand."
And he walks away,
and Einstein turns to
his secretary and says,
"There goes a nar."
The Yiddish for a fool.
(fanfare plays)
TV ANNOUNCER: World
attention was focused this week
on the Atomic Energy
Commission building in Washington,
where a three-man board
began special hearings
on the security file of
Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer,
the nuclear scientist who
developed the first A-b*mb.
The security hearing starts,
and it quickly becomes clear
that this is not just
a security hearing.
This is a trial.
TV ANNOUNCER:
There's a new charge
that the scientist opposed
the development of the H-b*mb.
WELLERSTEIN: The deck is
stacked against him, and it's ugly.
They're wiretapping
his conversations
with his lawyer illegally and
giving it to the prosecution
so that they know exactly
what's gonna happen.
They are able to look
at classified FBI files.
He is not because he
doesn't have a clearance,
and he can't look at his
own FBI file as a result.
RHODES: Oppenheimer's
involvement with Jean Tatlock,
the question of whether his
brother had been a communist
and still was,
those were the things
they pulled out of the files.
CONANT: One of the most
damning pieces of evidence
that was brought out was
the fact that, during the w*r,
there had been a conversation
at his home in Berkeley
with Haakon Chevalier,
his old friend, who
had mentioned to him
that there was a way
perhaps that he could
leak information about the
atomic project he was working on
to Soviet officials.
Now, Oppenheimer had
dismissed it at the time,
but he had not
reported the incident.
He knew he was already on
thin ice with security people,
that he was suspected
because of his communist ties.
So he was trying to keep
himself out of hot water.
The problem was that, in
subsequent conversations
with Los Alamos security people,
he had told very evasive, vague
accounts of this
conversation, one after another.
And when they
confronted Oppenheimer
with these evasive
versions, they asked him,
"Why did you do this?
Why wouldn't you
have been forthright?"
He said, "I was an idiot."
And in a sense, he
sealed his own fate then.
RHODES: He fell apart.
He tried to testify,
but he really fell apart.
BIRD: He's having almost
another nervous breakdown,
like what he went
through as a young man.
He's oddly stoic, like
he was in the icehouse
when he was a young
boy being tormented
by his fellow summer campers.
He's resigned and not
really defending himself.
One person who sort of put
the nails in his coffin, of course,
was Edward Teller.
HERKEN: Teller testified
against Oppenheimer.
He said that he thought
he would feel better
if the security of the country
were in other hands
than Oppenheimer's.
And one of the scientists who
was close to Oppenheimer said
it was a matter of not only
stabbing Oppenheimer in the back
but twisting the blade.
RHODES: As he was leaving,
he went up to shake
Oppenheimer's hand
and said, "I'm sorry."
And Oppenheimer looked
him in the eye and said,
"Edward, after
what you just said,
I don't know what that means."
NOLAN: He was obviously
a very, very brilliant man,
but I think he may
have underestimated
the power of the
establishment, the machine,
and the inability
of one individual
to stand against that.
BIRD: The result
was to be expected.
(fanfare plays)
TV ANNOUNCER: Dr. J.
Robert Oppenheimer,
the famous scientist
whose suspension this week
by the Atomic Energy
Commission surprised the nation.
They voted to strip Oppenheimer
of his security clearance.
This was front-page news in the
newspapers across the country.
That he had
recommended communists
who are working the
A-b*mb, H-b*mb plans.
His wife, uh,
admittedly was, uh,
an official of the
Communist Party,
uh, brother a very
active communist.
BIRD: He became
a political pariah.
KAKU: And that sent a chill
through the
scientific community.
If they could take down the
most famous atomic scientist
on the planet Earth,
then we're all vulnerable.
BIRD: It sent a really
nefarious message
to all working scientists
to beware of weighing
in on political issues.
And this is a terrible thing
because we need their expertise.
And yet the Oppenheimer trial
made that difficult.
RHODES: After
the security trial,
Oppenheimer was
never the same guy again.
He was kind of a
hollow man after that.
CHARLES OPPENHEIMER:
What we say inside the family is
it hurt his feelings.
He didn't like it, but
he didn't talk about it.
He never made one
statement about it publicly.
He never asked for an apology,
and he retreated back
into where he came from.
BIRD: He still kept
his job at Princeton,
but he wasn't doing
any more physics.
These were kind of sad years.
MURROW: And Professor
Einstein is still here, too, isn't he?
Oh, yeah. Indeed he
is. Uh, indeed he is. Uh...
Does he ever call you
up on the telephone?
Hmm, sometimes.
I think he... he calls me,
uh, when he reads
in the newspapers
something about me
that he doesn't like,
and he calls me up and-and says,
"That's all right.
That's just right."
SHERWIN: He had
lost his fighting spirit.
He would have nothing
to do with commenting
on any of the issues of the
day related to nuclear weapons.
MAN: Dr. Oppenheimer, could
you tell us what your thoughts are
about what our atomic
policy should be?
No, I-I can't do that.
I'm not... not close
enough to the facts,
and I'm not close enough
to the thoughts of those
who are worrying about it.
RHODES: Hans
Bethe told me once that,
"Oppenheimer was smarter
than any of the rest of us."
He didn't win a Nobel Prize.
How could this man,
who evidently outshone
some of the greatest
physicists of the 20th century,
not have been more successful
in his line of work... physics...
Than he was?
CHARLES OPPENHEIMER:
You can't talk about Oppenheimer
when you're not talking
about his science.
That was the part of his life.
When he talks
about what he loves,
it was that human thing of
passing knowledge around.
This is negative particles,
neutral, doubly charged,
positive and positive...
CHARLES OPPENHEIMER:
His work on black holes
should have earned
him a Nobel Prize.
SHERWIN: In 1939,
Oppenheimer wrote the first paper
identifying the idea of
collapsing stars, a black hole.
So, black holes
was his original idea.
I mean, that's quite amazing.
And if a real black hole
had been identified
before he d*ed...
he probably would have won
a Nobel Prize for that work.
BIRD: In 1966,
he was diagnosed
with esophageal cancer.
All that smoking over the
years had gotten to him.
(clock ticking)
And he d*ed in early '67.
Oppenheimer's life story,
it's the story of
the 20th century.
It's the story of
our nuclear age
that we're still living with,
and that's a story
that is unfinished.
Will always be unfinished.
(expl*si*n rumbling)
ELSE: We have his b*mb.
His b*mb is with us.
And we can debate his
membership in the Communist Party
or we can debate the ethics
of bombing civilians at
Hiroshima until we drop,
but the fact is that we
have nuclear weapons.
That's the legacy.
And controlling those weapons,
it's a never-ending struggle.
(expl*si*n rumbling)
It was so horrible
with a baby b*mb.
Now they have so much
more lethal nuclear w*apon.
OPPENHEIMER:
There is much talk about
getting rid of atomic weapons.
I have a deep
sympathy with that.
TAMURA: Please, let's
try to find common ground.
I'm sure if Oppie was alive
today, he would agree with me.
MAN: two, one.
OPPENHEIMER: But
we mustn't fool ourselves.
The world is not
going to be the same
no matter what we
do with atomic bombs,
because the knowledge of how
to make them cannot be exorcized.
- (insects chirring)
- (wind whistling softly)
JUDY WOODRUFF: Physicist
J. Robert Oppenheimer
is perhaps best known as
the father of the atomic b*mb.
As time has passed,
there are some new
assessments of his role in history.
In late 2022, the
Department of Energy
decided to vacate the decision
to have the security hearings.
The national tragedy
is that this hearing,
this McCarthy-era witch hunt,
materialized in the first place.
That type of thing is
not supposed to happen
in a country like this.
This is such an important
and long overdue step.
But at the same
time, it's kind of sad,
because this is something
that J. Robert Oppenheimer
will not get to
experience personally.
OPPENHEIMER: Science
has profoundly altered
the conditions of man's life,
both materially and in
ways of the spirit as well.
NYE: I think we're still
talking about Oppenheimer
because he was so influential.
We have this respect
and fear of science.
And Oppenheimer represented
both sides of that, for sure.
NOLAN: Unquestionably,
he changed the world.
And he changed
the world forever.
There's no going back.
But we know that as long as
men are free to ask what they will,
free to say what they think,
free to think what they must,
science will never regress,
and freedom itself will
never be wholly lost.
(slides clicking)
(expl*si*n rumbling)
(expl*si*n booming)
(lighter clicks)
(expl*si*n rumbling)
(music fades)
To End All w*r: Oppenheimer & the Atomic b*mb (2023)
Moderator: Maskath3