Fact and Fiction About Oppenheimer: The Unseen Hand of the Manhattan Project

 

 

"Oppenheimer, the movie, is certainly well-made. It is also a fact that the three-hour movie could not have covered all aspects relating to and arising from the decision to use atomic bombs on Japan. Of course, the movie could certainly have made the views of Leo Szilard and Niels Bohr much more explicit. Moreover, the movie completely omitted any reference to the critical change that took place on 12 April 1945: The sudden demise of President Franklin Roosevelt—a noted liberal—and the ascendancy of then vice-president Harry Truman—an arch-conservative—as the US president.

Most commentators fail to note this ominous development and then make factually incorrect comments. Raju is a victim of such an oversight. On the face of it, the charges levelled against Oppenheimer may appear true, but there was always an unseen hand behind the political decision-making process at the Manhattan Project.

Recall that when nearly four years earlier, on June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany declared war on the Soviet Union, Truman’s reaction was as follows:

    “If we see that Germany is winning the war, we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning, we ought to help Germany, and that way, let them kill as many as possible…”[iii]
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read article by N.D. Jayaprakash

Fact and Fiction About Oppenheimer: The Unseen Hand of the Manhattan Project - CounterPunch.org: N.D. Jayaprakash