Original subtitles

I have been asked whether in the years

to come it will be possible to kill 40

million American people

by the use of atomic bombs in a single

night

afraid that the answer to that question

is yes

Robert Oppenheimer was the father of the

atomic bomb

he was this complex ball of

contradictions

they are weapons of aggression surprise

of Terror

Oppenheimer wanted the bomb to be used

how else would the world know what it

was

are we creating something we may not be

able to control

[Music]

the test of the world's first atomic

device

[Music]

should non-violent man was responsible

for birthing the most violent weapon in

human history

he devoted the rest of his life to

trying to control the monster that he

had Unleashed

if there is another world war

[Music]

this civilization

may go under

he became a political pariah

true that humans have already discovered

an effort of destroying Humanity

[Music]

and it finally ruined him

now I am become death

the destroyer of worlds

we have made a thing that by all

standards of the world we grew up in is

an evil thing

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

foreign

Oppenheimer standing alone

I said I think you're some sort of a

saint

and he was very taken aback

and he said well why would you say that

to me

and I said because you had second

thoughts

and he turned around and picked his head

up and walked out the door

it obviously struck him in a way that I

had never imagined

Oppenheimer for Cronkite take one

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 and bringing about the

death of over a hundred thousand people

uh you naturally

don't think of that with ease

foreign

[Music]

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

everybody has their own idea of what

Robert Oppenheimer is

I mean the fact is that he invented a

weapon that can destroy human life

owners

I mean don't forget that this weapon

which has the capacity to end

civilization was developed as a means to

save Western Civilization

[Music]

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 Hitler

his sense of his own jewishness made him

immediately and massively aware of the

danger of fascism

when the war 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 word has

just come through from Germany

that the uranium atom under Neutron

bombardment actually splits into two

parts

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

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 realized very quickly that

it might be possible to make a weapon of

Untold destruction

we were deeply worried after all the

discovery of vision was in Nazi Germany

and Nazi Germany could potentially build

a nuclear bomb

this was the worry and it was very

tangible it was very real

[Music]

7th 1941

a date which will live in infamy

Pearl Harbor happens

I assured

form of treachery shall never again and

dangerous

[Applause]

now the United States is an active

combatant in the war

[Applause]

the idea at this point is we basically

need to get this done as quickly as

possible because we could wake up

tomorrow and Hitler 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

oppenheimer's friends felt that he was a

divided man not quite sure of his

identity

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 of loathing

um

Oppenheimer was born in 1904 turned 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

the story of Robert Oppenheimer is

really the story of immigrant America

his father comes over from Germany

gets the 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

[Music]

this mother was a paris-trained artist

who exhibited her work at various

galleries in Manhattan

she was a nervous person

she really didn't let this little boy go

outside

and he was very sheltered and extremely

socially awkward

when he finally went to Camp One Summer

he was so nasty to the other kids that

they brushed him up

he said later they put him in the ice

house 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

imagine the sensitive boy this very

smart boy but one who has no idea how to

deal with other people certainly not

with children in his own age he's had no

experience

the real core psychological moment for

Oppenheimer appears to have been when he

was in college

[Music]

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

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

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

muttering to himself over and over again

point is the point is the point is

and he could never finish the sentence

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 came close to committing suicide at

that point

he saw a psychiatrist as a result of

this

and the psychiatrist said that he's kind

of living in his own world

he was having an identity crisis

something we're clear about these days

than we were then

his parents took him to Paris where he

saw yet another psychologist and in a

very French way

described a professional woman and red

wine

so

uh we don't know if that happened

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

[Music]

so when Oppenheimer decided to move to

guten in Germany to study with Max

Bourne 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 bomb project

and while he's over there he sort of

invents this Opie personality

this is where he gets the name they call

him up J and this turns into Opie

and Opie is not an insecure Young

American who doesn't really know what he

wants to do

Opie is the brilliant guy who's always

five steps ahead of everybody else and

can keep everything in his head

offy is a genius who's very eccentric

and interesting and strikes a really

dashing figure and his chain smoking

[Music]

and you see these pictures of him from

the 20s

it's very Bob Dylan

he had the eyes of an Old Testament

Prophet inside this frail body and he

sort of cocked himself with his funny

little pork pie hat on top

so Opie is this sort of construction of

everything that he would want to be

and that Recreation is immensely

successful

[Music]

when the cancerous Nazi growth spread

farther still the people of Europe and

the world entered a new era

certainly the first motivation for the

scientists was to beat the Germans to

the bomb there's nothing like the

prospect of a hanging to concentrate the

mind

and the threat 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

ultimately whoever gets the bomb first

is not just going to win World War II

but it's going to run the entire world

by the summer of 1942 control of the

atom bomb project passes to the hands of

the army under the code name Manhattan

engineering District

the Manhattan Project really was a huge

National effort

and to plot out the industrial scale of

the operation they chose a dynamic

barely six foot three

240 pound General named Leslie Richard

Groves

he hated Leslie he went by dick

General Groves had a problem he was

entrusted to hire the people that would

build the atomic bomb but he knew they

were talking about the people who are

the finest scientists in the world

these are primadonna's

and now you have to have somebody who's

going to be the whip master

you have to have somebody that

understands the physics who has a

reputation so that these prima donnas

will follow you

[Music]

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 Grove saw something in him

that apparently no one else saw

the meeting Oppenheimer you were

immediately impressed you couldn't help

it

there wasn't a better man

[Music]

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

Oppenheimer was really good at

explaining things

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

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 of sight

it's called Los Alamos

Oppenheimer knew the area well he had

spent a lot of time here

when he left New York as a Young Man

and went to New Mexico

[Music]

that was 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

[Music]

said that his ambition was to combine

the two loves in his life

physics and New Mexico

of course he did precisely this

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

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 if they would

be able to achieve this this was all

theoretical

they knew that they had to get the best

scientists if they were going to get

this weapon before the Nazis did

[Applause]

Stein pleased to the United States

he leaves a Vanguard of refugee

scientists virtually stripping German

universities of their best Minds

[Music]

well in Europe have forced out a huge

number of really top top grade

physicists

Enrico Fermi

Hans beta

Edward Teller who famously would go on

to develop the hydrogen bomb 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

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 war

and it may end all war

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

who 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 have been on the next train

I don't think people thought that much

about the consequences you know can we

blame them

we were all aware of the fact that it

one way or another we were intervening

explicitly and heavy-handedly

in the course of human history

[Music]

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

the summer of 1939 he was at a cocktail

party in Berkeley and a young woman

named Kitty pruning had spied him from

across the garden and was immediately

attracted to him

she was a firecracker

of a young woman

[Music]

they fell in love and by 1940 she was

pregnant

[Music]

they live Ever After

I noticed I didn't say happily

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

[Music]

she was an academic she was a biologist

and a botanist and ultimately that work

was all put to one side for the years of

Los Alamos

[Music]

very frustrated by being put in the

position of

a mother and a wife and nothing else

she did not Thrive at Los Alamos

it was a lonely and hard existence

and she disappeared into the bottle

somewhat

[Music]

Oppenheimer was famous for mixing his

gin martinis

he persuaded his scientists to work very

hard during the week and to party hard

on the weekends

everyone was hungover on Sunday morning

but they worked a lot I worked hard and

they worked together

and that was largely Oppenheimer

[Music]

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

men whom they all admired

[Music]

I grew up at Los Alamos

and my father came to Los Alamos during

the Manhattan Project

[Music]

it was

a curious

place to live because they're blowing

things up three times a day

explosions were 10 and 12 and 3. so when

you're in first grade it means recess

lunch and School's Out

we were actually as little kids

connoisseurs of explosions

Point 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

we get about a year into the

laboratory's existence

and we come to find that it's going to

be a lot harder than we thought

every little thing is hard

these are some very complex machines

a nuclear weapon is not an idea think of

a nuclear weapon more as like

a million ideas that have to come

together and work perfectly together

to make an atomic bomb you need the fuel

for it

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 going to be more of it you

needed less of it to make a bomb

and yet it was harder to detonate

the initial way to make a bomb

it's called gun assembly

it was to take two pieces of material

and slam them together

causing a critical mass and explosion

and that was fine if you use tightly

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 three thousand feet per

second would fizzle it would melt down

before it got up the barrel it was a

great shock I mean maybe this whole

plutonium thing had been wasted hundreds

of millions of dollars to develop

plutonium

Oppenheimer was distraught and and Los

Alamos was distraught

he considered resigning he was so

depressed and his friends at the

laboratory said you can't Robert

stay and finish this work it's got to

happen we must do it and and reluctantly

he stayed

command the general write the Eisenhower

ray line forces have nearly 3 million

troops trained for the assault

on the other side of the channel

the Nazis also know what the Allied

Forces are preparing for

and they are making preparations of

Their Own

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 bomb project

and so if they don't crack the plutonium

problem they may not have a bomb in time

[Music]

Oppenheimer shifted the laboratory Into

You Know full speed panic mode

they had had some ideas for other types

of bomb designs which they had thrown

around at the very beginning of the

project but dismissed because they seem

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

explosives

and these high explosives are really

specially made so that when they explode

they're going to end up sort of focusing

a blast wave onto this ball pushing on

the top and pushing on the bottom and

pushing on the sides of it every angle

of this is going to be being pushed upon

with a lot of explosive 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

it had to have enough pressure quickly

enough to smash these subatomic Partners

together hard enough to get them to have

this amazing reaction

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

[Music]

Oppenheimer was working night and day

building the bomb

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

[Music]

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 shocked that his

students often didn't even have enough

to eat one of them told me he was living

on

food cans of cat food that was the only

thing he could afford

Oppenheimer was

Changed by this discovery of the

suffering in the world really

and Oppenheimer sort of naturally like

many of his friends in Berkeley at the

time drifted politically to the left

foreign

[Music]

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

[Music]

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 a

future an important role to play in the

greater Collective

now if I don't know where my next meal

is coming from

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

and in the mid-30s he met a young woman

named Gene tatlock who was studying to

become a psychiatrist

brilliant young woman

he fell in love with her

they were engaged to be married twice

I think it's probably reasonable

interpretation to say he was someone

obsessed with her

she was a communist he was interested in

communist ideas

and for the next four years the

Oppenheimer actually contributed quite a

bit of money to the Communist Party

but his political activities began to be

noticed

[Music]

but 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

even while he's heading up the A-bomb

project the FBI is wiretapping and

following him Military Intelligence is

constantly asking him questions

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 Gene tatlock she

was going through some emotional crisis

and she wanted to see him he'd kept in

touch with Gene he still loved her

she had rejected him he had married

Kitty but he knew that Gene tatlock was

in a depressed state and so he visited

her

he had to leave Los Alamos and go to San

Francisco

[Music]

and that was of course just red meat for

the for the dog as it were

there were two guys sitting outside the

apartment

Gene tatlock was under surveillance

she was still a member of the Communist

Party

he spent the night with her

they had been lovers and I think they

probably were lovers again that night

oh

this was reported back to Colonel Boris

Posh who was head of Army intelligence

for all the West Coast and Posh was

convinced that this was a serious breach

of security and that perhaps Oppenheimer

was conveying nuclear secrets Atomic

secrets to the Communist Party through

tatlock

sadly tragically she died 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

this is a very odd way to commit suicide

there's some speculation that perhaps

she was murdered

Oppenheimer was horrified then

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 of the loneliness of his

grief

[Music]

program with a special bulletin

President Roosevelt is dead the

president died 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 Hitler committing

suicide Hitler's Empire Burns and

Tribbles

conceived in a kind of anti-hitler

fervor

by the spring of 1945 Hitler's out of

the picture of the Nazis are no longer a

threat Hitler's not going to build an

atomic bomb and drop it on New York

that's not going to happen but there was

no way they were not going to finish

that weapon

were to end

be used because how else would the world

know what it was Harry S Truman was

sworn in as president of the United

States by the time shruman gets to the

presidency that wheels are in motion

this bomb is going to be dropped

somewhere with the death of Hitler the

target then becomes Japan

the never-ending air campaign against

Japan's stolen Empire continued

continues as b-24's Hammer installations

in the Palau Island

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 bomb

being successfully tested was a day in

which thousands of Americans are dying

thousands of Yanks have been wounded and

other thousands have sacrificed their

lives to drive a fanatical poll from

this vital base the doorstep to Japan

itself they knew the Japanese were

defeated but defeat and surrender are

two different things so how do you get

them to surrender

in a world of atomic weapons Wars will

cease

and that is not a small thing

the way Oppenheimer looked at the bomb

is in a kind of Eastern metaphysical way

of it is a Act of Destruction and

creation potentially at the same time

Act of war in 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

foreign

by the summer of 45 they had been

working on the implosion design for a

year tweaking devising and struggling

with the challenges

for this thing to work all of those

explosives 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

going to happen other than setting off a

full-size test

[Music]

they settle upon with the site where the

bomb will be tested and Oppenheimer

chooses the name for the site Trinity

[Music]

he had been reading the Poetry of John

Dunn at the time and one of those poems

include the line battered mine heart

three-personed God a reference to the

Holy Trinity in Christianity

and I think that that was a tribute to

Gene catlock because Gene and Opie used

to read The Poetry of John Dunn in bed

foreign

15 1945 Alamogordo New Mexico

it is D minus one for the test of the

world's first atomic device

the hours leading our Trinity tests are

one of the most extraordinary moments of

of tension imaginable the stakes the

billions of dollars the hundreds of

thousands of people have been involved

in building to this one moment of this

test of this new weapon all of that

responsibility falling very squarely on

oppenheimer's shoulders

at the bomb 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

the president of the United States is

about to enter into the Potsdam

Conference Potsdam city in Germany he's

going to meet with Joseph Stalin Winston

Churchill as well and talk about the

future of Europe and the future of the

Pacific War the president must know if

he has a nuclear weapon in his back

pocket or not

[Music]

foreign

was on edge and they had to calm down

Oppenheimer he was a bundle of nerves

the chain smoked which he pretty much

always did anyway

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 bomb

has been hoisted

he's checking all the vinyl plugs to

make sure that everything is in order

it's clearly worried trying to check

every last little detail

Oppenheimer doesn't know this thing's

gonna work at all in fact he had a bet

with another one of the scientists that

it wouldn't work ten dollars

for a hundred things that could be done

wrong

any one of which could make the test a

failure

everybody had doubts was it even

possible and then this question because

nobody was really sure what if we set

the whole atmosphere on fire

what if we set off this bomb and it

literally sets the air on fire and

engulfs us all

the atmosphere is made out of oxygen

after all

can the oxygen of the atmosphere be set

in Flames by an atomic bomb no one knew

the answer these questions

it's Before Dawn on July 16 1945

it was dark the bomb was in the tower

100 feet up

they were ready to go

Oppenheimer was in one of the bunkers

that had been built

Oppenheimer braced himself According to

some accounts uttering the words Lord

these Affairs are hard on the heart

[Music]

Oppenheimer was saying to himself I must

remain conscious Heaven I must remain

conscious

effects

seconds or hours

[Music]

and all of a sudden

the whole place lit up

[Music]

[Music]

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 with 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

new thing he said had been created on

the earth a new challenge for Humanity

people had seen explosions and tested

bombs for decades

but to see the size of it

astonishing

there's never been a moment like that in

the history of the world

the view of the world and the view of

what matter is what we are made of

indeed palpably

changes it's unleashing of a force never

before imagined

can never be ignored from this point on

[Music]

we knew the world would not be the same

few people

laughed

few people cried

most people were silent

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 multi-armed form

and says

now I am become death

the destroyer of worlds

I suppose we all thought that one way or

another

[Music]

after the test was over Oppenheimer had

this strut

it was like High Noon

he had done it

gopenheimer was very proud of this

accomplishment

it was a world-changing moment and a lot

of the scientists realized that

came the business of what the government

would do with their creation

Groves hurried back to his Washington

office in cabled the news that the bomb

experiment had been a success and even

more powerful than they had anticipated

this information is transmitted to

Truman who entire attitude changes that

pots them he suddenly feels like he has

a win in 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

demand

[Music]

[Applause]

my mom and dad were both veterans of

World War II and my mom

she said you know after

four years of this thing

there was nobody really there was nobody

going was it ethical to use a nuclear

weapon

all right just get it over with

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

with the bomb 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 they're going to be a

couple hundred thousand people who die

but if they don't stop the war with the

bomb

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 bomb in

Tokyo bay kill 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 that course as did

the planners in Washington

we did think about whether it's

destructiveness

it's danger could be

vividly demonstrated over a Barren

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

secretary Ann 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

stops him and says Robert what are you

muttering about and

he

looked at her and and explained that

you know the bomb 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 bomb should be dropped

and at what altitude it should be

detonated for the maximum destructive

power

it's hard to reconcile the sensitive

morally upright

humanistic Professor with the guy who

recommends that the bomb 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

by August of 1945 every Japanese city of

more than 50 000 people had basically

been burned 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

[Music]

Hiroshima was a flat City

and with the city set aside it was

possible to see the effects of the bomb

all the way out to the edges

that's why Hiroshima was chosen

[Music]

when I was little kid there were seven

Rivers running through beautiful river

banks

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 war it was all over sound of

happiness

but the sound of the explosion came like

a rage of the Earth

[Music]

[Music]

oh

[Music]

a short time ago an American airplane

dropped one bomb on Hiroshima

that bomb has more power than 20 000

tons of TNT

[Music]

it is an atomic bomb

it is a harnessing of the basic power of

the universe

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

we have spent more than two billion

dollars on the greatest scientific

gamble in history

and we have won

[Music]

[Music]

Japan could read its do this was more

than a routine bombing it was the

funeral player of an aggressor Nation

[Music]

I remember every second

I've never been so helpless

[Music]

I was under the debris

and somehow had to grow to the light and

come out

I had to go looking for my mother

[Music]

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 oh my

best friend

I would have really loved to have died

with them because life after that was so

very challenging and so very difficult

physically and especially mentally

[Music]

a few years after the end of the war

I saw the raw footage of Hiroshima

Nagasaki

[Music]

and there's no sound it's just footage

of people with their skin and flower

reverse patterns of the kimonos burned

into their skin and bodies floating in

the river

it was so shocking

[Music]

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

as reports of that Devastation started

to come back to Los Alamos

obviously this Wade on the scientists

yes it had been a horrible War

but still tens of thousands of people

were killed in these attacks

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

[Music]

Hiroshima

was far more

costly life and suffering inhumane

than it needed to have been

this is easy to say after the fact

all the time and never apologize in any

way for Hiroshima Nagasaki he was very

very careful and complicated in all

statements he made about the moral

implications of the bomb and his

involvement in it and yet post Hiroshima

Nagasaki all of his actions all the

actions of somebody who is played with

guilt

we are gathered here

representatives of the major roaring

powers to conclude a solemn agreement

whereby peace may be restored

[Applause]

[Music]

I have received this afternoon a message

from the Japanese government

ID Mr fly a full acceptance of the

unconditional surrender of Japan

of course a great many people felt that

the atomic bomb had ended World War II

perhaps it had

and Robert Oppenheimer was the guy who

made it happen

he was in demand everywhere he was the

cover story for Time Magazine once for

Life Magazine this scarcely was a

magazine cover that he wasn't on

the inaugural issue of physics today

simply showed a pork pie hat on a

psychotron control

and everybody knew that pork by hat was

Oppenheimer

he liked that

foreign

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

and that I I think was intoxicating for

him

but at the same time he felt a real

responsibility for having ushered this

weapon into the world

hey go ahead please

automatic control is God

this time around Stakes are kind of high

it's going to work all right Robert

I think he felt as the father of the

atomic bomb it was his duty to keep the

reins on the atomic bomb what happened

but we're known 40 seconds

within three months of Hiroshima he was

giving speeches

talking about how this weapon was a

weapon for aggressors

that is a weapon of Terror

you know this is the father of the

atomic bomb speaking

if there is another world war

the civilization

may go under

we need to

ask ourselves

whether we're doing all we can to avert

that

I might like to read what my grandfather

said about it

this is a speech we 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're a scientist you cannot stop

such a thing

if you're a scientist you believe that

it's good to find out how the world

works that is good to find out what

realities are

it is 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 war but he soon after turned

so strongly towards managing the outcome

of the science they created

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 weapon of mass destruction

and oppenheimer's 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 Opie understands that

Harry Truman doesn't understand anything

about the physics of this weapon

and Oppenheimer at that

says exactly the wrong thing

he really offended President Truman by

saying Mr President I have blood on my

hands

good

this is exactly the wrong thing to say

to the guy who made the decision to drop

two such Bonds on two Japanese cities

[Music]

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 off number is very Charming to a

lot of people but he was often not

Charming to leaders and people who had

power over him

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

he ends the meeting very abruptly and

later tells his aides that I don't want

to see that crybaby scientist ever again

[Music]

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

Oppenheimer very early after the bombing

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

the Soviets tested the bomb in 1949

to the shock of almost everyone

President Truman's dramatic announcement

that Russia has created an atomic

explosion sends reporters Racing for

Flushing Meadow where Russia's vashinsky

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 war with nuclear weapons broke out

between two states that had a fair

number of them

they could in a matter of hours destroy

themselves

we must all get ready now so we know how

to save ourselves if the atomic bomb

ever explodes near us

the possible options scientists and

policy people lobbied for was to build

the hydrogen bomb

as the sort of Next Step

the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were on

the order of 15 kilotons of TNT which is

no small number in and of itself

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 Nagasaki bomb

with one very large hydrogen bond you

can kill about as many people as all of

the people killed in World War II

and Oppenheimer could not see any use

for that he called it a genocidal weapon

at the end of the war most people wanted

to stop I did not

among the people who knew a great deal

about

I was the only advocate of it

[Music]

Edward Teller was a Hungarian Jew who

escaped from Hungary and came to the

United States

during World War II teller worked at Los

Alamos

but he became obsessed with the idea of

the hydrogen bomb even before they had

the atomic bomb

teller did very much consider the atomic

bomb to be oppenheimer's creation and he

wanted something that was bigger and

better

Heimer said to tell her go back to doing

physics but don't build this

there's no need for it

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 bomb

that is a question in everybody's mind

Dr arsenheimer are we creating something

we may not be able to control

Vision to try to make or not to make the

hydrogen bond

touch the very basis of our morality and

the committee decision was basically no

we shouldn't build the hydrogen bomb if

we are Guided by fear alone we'll fail

in this time of crisis

the answer to fear

sometimes it lies in Courage

oppenheimer's opposition of the h-bomb

was taken very hard by people who were

in favor for it

[Applause]

or bombs and bigger and bigger bombs the

bigger the bomb in terms of its yield

the more damage one plane could do

the Strategic Air Command was focused

upon blowing up the Soviet Union

oppenerman said a smarter move would be

to put resources into intercepting

Soviet bombers

doing just the opposite direction from

what the Air Force wanted they wanted

him out they wanted to get rid of him

by 1953 oppenheimer's made sufficient

enemies in the Washington bureaucracy

and then Along Comes Louis straws

the new chairman of the atomic energy

Commission

I have just returned from the Pacific

Proving Ground where I witness a test of

thermonuclear weapons

and straws nose Oppenheimer and has

grown to intensely dislike him

upenheimer had been snappish with him

once again it had deeply offended him so

straws begins to plot

a means to defrock Oppenheimer

and how does he do it Lewis draws

focuses on oppenheimer's association

with left-wing friends during the 1930s

in Berkeley

communism

who were the apostles of a system that

attempts to destroy the American way of

life

during the second world war the Soviet

Union was our Ally

and that sense of being a communist or

associated with Communists was not

something that was considered that bad

it wasn't until the Cold War

that all of a sudden in retrospect

anyone with any kind of legacy of the

Communist past is now a security threat

there were no Communists in our

government

why did we delay for 18 months delay our

research on the hydrogen bomb

it was from attitudes like that that

finally led to the government deciding

they had to pull oppenheimer's security

clearance

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 him

that he wasn't fit to serve his

government

you should have told them to get lost

he should have said I am the atomic bomb

I won World War II

[ __ ] off

for whatever reason we didn't tell him

to get lost he decided to fight it

and before he goes down to Washington he

meets with Einstein to tell him he's

going to 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 Anar

the Yiddish for a fool

[Music]

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 Avon

the Security hearing starts and it

quickly becomes clear that this is not

just a Security hearing this is a trial

there's a new charge that the scientists

opposed the development of the h-bomb

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 going to 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

oppenheimer's involvement with Gene

tatlock

the question of whether his brother had

been a communist and still was

those were the things they pulled out of

the files

one of the most damning pieces of

evidence that was brought out

was the fact that during the war there

had been a conversation at his home in

Berkeley with hakan 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

he fell apart

he tried to testify but he really fell

apart

[Music]

I mean almost another nervous breakdown

like what he went through as a Young Man

he's ugly

stoic like he was in the ice house when

he was a young boy being tormented by

his fellow summer campers

[Music]

resigned and not really defending

himself

one person who sort of put the nails in

his coffin of course was Edward Teller

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

but it was a matter of not only stabbing

Oppenheimer in the back but twisting the

blade

[Music]

thus he was leaving he went up to shake

up when I were sinned and said I'm sorry

Oppenheimer looked him in the eye and

said

after what you just said I don't know

what that means

he was obviously 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 them

the result was to be expected

[Music]

to suspension this week by the atomic

energy commission surprised the nation

they voted to strip Oppenheimer of a

security clearance

this is front page news in the

newspapers across the country

and recommended Communists are working

in the abominate on plants his wife

admittedly was a material of the

Communist party uh brother a very active

communism

he became a political pariah

and that sent the chill through the

scientific community

if they could take down the most famous

Atomic scientists on the planet Earth

then we're all vulnerable

to really nefarious message to all

working scientists to beware of weighing

in on political issues

terrible thing because we need their

expertise

and yet the Oppenheimer trial

made that

difficult

[Music]

after the security trial Oppenheimer was

never the same guy again

it was kind of a hollow man after that

what we say inside the family is it hurt

his feelings

[Music]

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

he still kept his job at Princeton but

he wasn't doing any more physics

these were kind of sad years

and Professor Einstein is still here too

isn't he oh yeah indeed he is indeed he

is does he ever call you up on the

telephone

sometimes I think he he calls me honey

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 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

could you tell us what your thoughts are

about what our Atomic policy should be

no I 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

Hans beta told me once that Oppenheimer

was smarter than any of the rest of us

he didn't want to know about 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

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

those negative particles neutral doubly

charged positive and positive his work

on black holes should have earned him a

Nobel Prize

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

real black hole had been identified

before he died

he probably would have won a Nobel Prize

for that work

e66.

he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer

all that smoking over the years had

gotten to him

and he died in early 67.

the 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

we'll always be unfinished

we have his bomb

his bomb is with us and we can debate

his membership in the Communist party or

we can debate the ethics of bombing

civilians and her worship until we drop

but the fact is that we have nuclear

weapons

that's the Legacy

and controlling those weapons it's an

ever-ending struggle

we were apparel right now

it was so horrible with a baby Bomb

now they have so much more lethal new

career weapon

there is much talk about getting rid of

atomic weapons

I have a deep sympathy with that

please

let's try to find common ground

now I'm sure if Opie was alive today he

will agree with me

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 exercised

physicist J Robert Oppenheimer is

perhaps best known as the father of the

atomic bomb

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

[Music]

science has profoundly altered the

conditions of man's life

both materially and in ways of the

spirit as well

foreign 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

unquestionably he changed the world

and he scheduled 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

thank you

[Music]

foreign

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foreign

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