Original subtitles

Chain reaction.

Aid funds as uranium.

And you've got an instrument of unimaginable to.

When can we expect delivery of your first super bowl

average age is defined by its innovations

the greatest advances.

Are born out of fear struggles.

Between rivals.

Werner Heisenberg.

And Robert Oppenheimer.

Are on the front lines of a new battlefield

where a war gentlemen the everyday men are dying.

Striving to unleash the destructive power.

Of the atomic bomb.

Race between Heisenberg and Oppenheimer.

Will take war to a new frontier

will have only enough uranium for a single bar

and change the world forever.

That both sides.

Victory is the only option.

No matter what the cost.

In the years following world war one

the German economy is in ruins.

For young Germans like verner Heisenberg.

Country's defeat a shattering.

Eisenberg like many German youth was definitely a patriotic

he really believe that Germany should be strong and the Germany

to recover.

Heisenberg pours himself into his chosen field.

A new science called quantum physics.

Quantum physics is the physics of the atom.

Where we have bizarre concept like

how can something disappear and reappear someplace else

how can you be two places at the same time.

But that's what electrons do all the time.

As.

Heisenberg publishers of paper.

That describes the limitations of what we can know

about how particles behave at the subatomic level.

It's called the uncertainty principle.

And it will forever change.

Our quantum physics is understood.

In nineteen thirty three

Heisenberg received the nobel prize.

Making him one of the youngest winners of all time.

He is now one of Germany's most important scientists.

Just as a new party is coming to power in the country.

National socialists.

Consider.

The physical phenomenon.

On a nano skeptic scale.

Five thousand miles away

Heisenberg's work has captured the attention of another young physicist.

Where the action.

Is on the order of the planck constant.

Robert Oppenheimer

is an ambitious college professor.

Who also dreams of making his Mark on the world.

He was born to a fairly well to do family of

Jewish immigrants from Germany.

Extremely intelligent extremely capable.

He's ambitious and Oppenheimer's salvation in physics

was being exposed the quantum mechanics and eisenberg.

Oppenheimer sees Heisenberg subatomic world as a new frontier.

Right for discovery.

Especially when he gets word of a singular breakthrough.

Team of Germans claim they've turned quantum theory into action.

And of split.

The uranium atom.

Oppenheimer doesn't believe it's possible.

Until his team.

Recreates the experiment.

And they see for themselves.

A nuclear reaction releases more energy than a chemical reaction.

As much as fifty million times more.

The splitting of the arab.

Releases a little tiny bit of energy.

But.

If you split a huge number of atoms.

At the same time

you release an unprecedented amount of of energy.

The question on the table was

could that be done.

Discovery means it could be possible to create a weapon of unimaginable power.

Oppenheimer sees it as a harrowing revelation.

And he's not the only one.

Idea of creating a nuclear bomb is a theoretical question.

Both Oppenheimer Heisenberg know

it won't stay that way for long.

Hitler has rebuild Germany into a fearsome power.

And has begun his conquest of Europe.

Many German scientists have already left the country.

But Heisenberg stays.

Never before had the honor.

Of addressing the nobel prize winner.

The Ana is mine.

My superiors.

Concerned.

About your association with your physics.

You mean Einstein.

Einstein.

Bore plug.

Is the know was illness.

That you are a

wide do.

Everything do is

to clients a good of Germany.

Both one sibling order to the world.

Nice or science

he was so gatherings.

I wouldn't speak on Craig's fewer.

Him about your case.

Heisenberg was a patriot but he was not a Nazi.

That left him with a serious conflict.

After a year of questioning

the Nazis finally accept Heisenberg's loyalty.

In nineteen thirty nine.

Heisenberg sets on for the united states.

To meet with some of the brightest minds in nuclear physics.

He went to discuss the latest discoveries.

And so

just before the outbreak of the

second one world war in Europe.

We find Heisenberg at a conference in the united states.

About this brand new and interesting discovery called nuclear fission.

It's a gathering of the most renown around physicists in the world.

With the Nazis aggressively marching through Europe.

There are meeting is no longer just about science.

You have a moment professor.

Of course.

At your paper and twenty seven.

An uncertainty.

That made me a theoretical physicist.

The great.

Even when Einstein the question Layla.

Unpredictable and noble universe.

Couldn't agree more.

I hope america will be seeing more of you.

Nowadays it seems very unlikely.

Of course you'd be welcomed with open arms.

Welcome to.

Work against my homeland.

To save the world from Hitler.

I have seen once in a lot can do to Germany.

Thank you doctor.

For your hospitality.

Heisenberg said basically

no no I'm not going to defect.

He wasn't

ready in fact he never was ready to

throw over his.

Patriotism.

For Germany.

By pledging allegiance to Adolf Hitler.

Werner Heisenberg has just become one of the most dangerous men on earth.

Atomic physicist burner Heisenberg.

Will stay in Nazi Germany.

As Europe now we rubs.

Hitler takes Poland.

France and england declare war.

Within months

the Nazis are planning invasions across the continent.

And exploring the possibility the of a nuclear bomb.

Chain reaction.

Create sans as uranium.

And you've got an installment of unimaginable power.

One she knew you could get

all this energy.

Out of the nucleus.

You could imagine building a

nuclear bomb unbelievable destructive force.

Said the high government response.

Is basically

this looks really like something important.

Let's move on it.

So.

When can we expect delivery of your face Superbowl.

As a.

Principal is simple.

The process is not.

Thousand problems that have to be answered.

Some questions we.

Just begun to see.

I'm sure your next one part will be more.

Optimistic.

Nazis order Heisenberg to get to work.

Heisenberg waste no time.

In america the nuclear effort has barely begun.

Until Albert Einstein.

The most famous physicist in the world.

Writes a letter to president Roosevelt.

Albert Einstein change the course of history.

He talked about a super weapon

being created by Germany's finest physicists.

A device which will wipe out entire city harbert.

Franklin Roosevelt took this seriously.

In October nineteen forty one.

Roosevelt initiates a top secret plan.

One thousand two hundred and fifty tons of uranium

or have been shipped from the Belgian Congo

to new York city.

Where nuclear scientists are already base detested.

Operation is dubbed.

The Manhattan project.

Made a lot of people tonight but don't be afraid all that's missing.

Is a star scientists the to lead the effort.

Here we are.

The three glasses of them are low least.

As a well-paid professor at the university of California Berkeley.

Robert Oppenheimer's and joined the perks of academics.

Despite his carefree lifestyle.

Oppenheimer once more.

Oppenheimer.

Is ambitious.

He's always wanted to be seen as this real genius

as like as a guy who could accomplish great things

and Oppenheimer really wants that he really

wants that accomplishment.

Science.

And knowledge.

Energy of a charged atomic oscillator

theoretically associated with the electromagnetic wave itself.

Represents the minimum amount of energy required

to form an electromagnetic field.

Army colonel Leslie groves is in search of a scientific leader.

For the Manhattan project.

Chapters nineteen and twenty thank you.

Dr.

Leslie groves.

That a moment of your time.

As groves didn't get along with most scientists.

Bros is very graphic and.

Huh he has a very hard time

imagining how he is going to wrangle a bunch of theoretical physicists

he can't just order these people around

so when groves is looking for the chief scientist

that person who's going to be in charge of

he's looking for someone scientists will listen to.

Dr if the president were to ask you

what the three greatest challenges to producing a nuclear device what would you say.

Mr president.

Number one.

Unknown amounts of uranium or have to be mind.

Then processed in factories production on an industrial scale.

In the end we need the uranium highly refined.

To.

We need to figure out how to pull off a chain reaction.

Then how to control it.

In a self.

Chain reaction we need to go critical.

Oppenheimer had never run anything

more complex than a seminar.

But groves left that interview

believing that nobody a

understood as clearly as Oppenheimer

what had to be done

to produce an atomic bomb.

Now j Robert Oppenheimer is in charge of an undertaking.

That is among the most ambitious and fateful of the twentieth century.

But he's already years behind his rival.

Werner Heisenberg has the lab.

The uranium.

And the determination okay lot at.

Nazis and a to comic bomb.

In nineteen forty two.

As war spreads across Europe and the pacific.

Robert Oppenheimer and verner Heisenberg

are fighting on a new kind of battlefield.

Now that the uranium atom has been split.

The nuclear age has begun.

And united states and Germany are in a race to build an atomic bomb.

The Americans are really afraid that the Germans will get a bomb first.

They know the Germans have uranium they

or the Germans of eisenberg.

The Nazis have already captured twelve hundred tons of uranium from Belgium.

Key to the bomb is to split those uranium atoms.

And create an uncontrolled chain reaction.

It's not that each little reaction

release is very much energy

is that if you chain them together a has exponential growth.

If you could make

a lot of uranium atom split up the same time.

It would release a tremendous amount of energy enough to destroy an entire city.

For now.

It's just a theory.

Unless verner Heisenberg can prove it.

Didn't know whether you could produce a

chain reaction.

Measure that.

Had to show that

with an experiment.

A lot at.

Slowly now.

Heisenberg builds a small nuclear reactor called a pile.

A the lower.

Neutron source is placed in the center.

Surrounded by layers of heavy water and uranium.

If you can detect more neutrons then he started with.

It will be proof.

That he split the nucleus of multiple atoms.

First step in creating an atomic chain reaction.

The at an excessive of a ten percent.

That they have an access of of a ten percent.

This was a crucial experience.

Needed to prove that a chain reaction was possible.

Before you went through the truly enormous industrial process

of pulling out of natural uranium

the very rare part of it that will blow up.

Heisenberg's experiment is a beginning.

And for now.

Only one thing is certain.

The Nazis or on the path towards an atomic bomb.

While the Americans are just getting started.

By late nineteen forty two

as Europe suffocates under the crushing grip of the Nazis.

The Americans can only speculate about Germany's nuclear ambitions.

But they are determined to beat the Germans to the bomb.

This is a spot in my opinion.

Al.

Is there are enough area.

You tell me.

General Leslie groves and his new recruit Robert Oppenheimer.

Need a better base of operations that Manhattan's whole stuff here.

They need somewhere isolated.

And away from prying eyes.

Oppenheimer wanted a place that was private.

General grows wanted a place where could put up a bunch of

barbed wire fences and keep everybody

locked away from the rest of the world

to keep this program secret.

Oppenheimer convinces groves he has the answer.

Isolated town in new Mexico is known since he was a boy.

Is thirty miles northwest of Santa felt.

It's called los Alamos.

They both went out and surveyed the area around los Alamos were there was a building.

That they could use as a base of operations.

Welcome.

I know you're all wondering why we brought you here to the middle of the desert.

Gentlemen.

The goal of this project is to produce a practical military weapon.

In the form of a bomb.

In which the energy is released

by a fast neutron chain reaction.

In this tent

we have some of the smartest man.

In the world.

We're at war gentlemen.

Everyday men are dying.

Hundred thousand soldiers civilians.

That is why I'm calling on you.

Let's end this war.

Thank you.

Oppenheimer will lead the country's greatest minds.

In the attempt to build an atomic bomb.

Clock is ticking fast.

This is the ultimate raised.

At everyone understands.

If Germany gets the atomic bomb first.

All better on.

As america fights bloody battles on the opposite sides of the globe.

Robert Oppenheimer seeks to bring the war to an end.

The by unleashing the power of the atom.

At our current rate

we'll have only enriched and up uranium for a single bomb.

One

is not enough.

Oppenheimer realizes uranium alone won't be enough.

So he focuses his attention on another radioactive element.

Plutonium.

Unlike uranium

plutonium can be created in a nuclear reactor.

What it is far more difficult to detonate.

If you put a target of plutonium here

and a bullet for Tony I'm here no matter how fast

you push them together.

They will begin to fizzle as a call it.

Before it hits the target.

Unless they can solve the problem.

There plutonium bomb will never work.

In nineteen forty two

Werner Heisenberg became the first scientists to

produce excess nutrients in a nuclear reactor.

But that was with only a small number of atoms.

His goal now is to create a massive chain reaction.

One becomes to

to becomes for for becomes eight

and within about eighty generations.

You get enough energy out of enough uranium atoms

to blow up the city.

Oxygen as a call

it quickly.

But that next step is not only difficult.

It's dangerous.

This.

Heisenberg and his scientists narrowly escaped death.

At his laboratory is destroyed.

But when rumors about the incident spread to the united states.

There is a new feared

that the Nazis are closer to making an atomic bomb.

Than ever before.

Sure is that confirmed.

Yes.

There were no satellites in those days.

We didn't really have any spies in Germany either.

Was one of the few clips.

That it was enough to make everyone very nervous.

Pressure on oppenheim or is increasing.

Americans have discovered a way to manufacture plutonium for the bomb.

But he still needs to find it triggered

to detonated.

It was a disaster at los Alamos.

Oven timer seriously considered.

Resigning.

As director.

He was so depressed.

Because he did not see how.

They were going to be able to use plutonium.

I think behind every great genius you have that

vision that picture that send you forward.

Robin hymer he had a picture.

Before the war he was working on black holes.

And he realized want to start suddenly collapsed under gravity.

It can

burst into a gigantic supernova and a black hole.

So why not squeeze it imploded reach critical mass

and then he would explode.

That is the secret.

Of the plutonium by.

Implosion.

It's the answer

Oppenheimer and his team have been waiting for.

Implosion is the idea where you have a

solid ball plutonium.

And you put high explosives ' and ' all around it.

And what you want to do is have all those explosives go off at exactly the same time.

Which is really difficult.

Scientists at los Alamos.

Reach a monumental breakthrough.

Oppenheimer and his team.

Can only hope.

They're not too late.

This was everyone's night nightmare.

Germany could be close to losing the war and with a

couple of atomic bombs.

Could turn the last into a victory.

In the secret desert lives of the Manhattan project.

Robert Oppenheimer and his team discovered

that implosion is the key to a plutonium bomb.

There's not enough.

It's a revelation that could change the race against the Nazis.

Now.

They need to make it work.

They reorganize

the entire los Alamos labs around the implosion problem.

They pull and experts from other wartime projects they

developed new calculation methods.

This becomes the the major problem for los Alamos the of.

The Americans are feeling the pressure.

Reports of Heisenberg's explosion of trickled into los Alamos.

There was no way of knowing

what the Germans were doing

and therefore you had to do the next best thing which is to extrapolate

from where they were the last time we looked.

And there was that pressure.

That urgent.

With the just a few pieces of information.

With is lab in ruins.

Heisenberg is summoned to Berlin.

Wait.

In line a part time.

High lines of steps feel that we have to take another to your plans.

Have been a complete waste of our time

and money.

I personally debriefed the fia.

On your progress.

What should tell him now.

With the war going badly for the Germans.

The pressure on Heisenberg

is more intense than ever.

In December nineteen forty four.

Heisenberg travels to neutral Switzerland.

To lecturer a small group of colleagues at of physics seminar

and the American see an opportunity

to ensure the Nazis and never get the bomb.

There was no CIA during the second world war but there was it's predecessor.

And by that mean.

An early organization there was primarily military

and one of its operatives was very curious man named

of bird.

Moe berg is a former major league baseball player for the Boston red sox.

Is that leads us to a.

Interaction and he's also a spy

who speaks fluent German

the interactions that's distant independent

which leads to a finite cost his assignment to.

Determine whether Heisenberg is making progress on a bomb

to isolate.

Those.

Components.

Almost

he years affected.

Kill him.

What he's listening for is less about the science.

Is looking for a loose comment or eisenberg says or when the war soon or

we've got a

secret that you guys will soon learn and understand.

The same companies may to become an integral part.

Of the future it.

Perkins thinking of Heisenberg gives me any hint.

That he's working on a Bob program.

I can just shoot him right here.

Thank you for coming ladies and gentlemen.

Bill.

Sound you.

Italy our superiors.

Is until he wants a bomb need mental

at to follow me.

For.

Berg left thinking they must not have anything up their sleeve

he doesn't shoot at me doesn't feel the need.

Mo berg's instincts are right.

Despite his initial success and splitting uranium atoms.

The accident at his lab was a major setback.

At Heisenberg has made little pro aggress since.

In the spring of nineteen forty five things start

to go very poorly for Nazi Germany in the work.

Berlin is being bombed.

Soviets our on the horizon.

Heisenberg continues his experiments in southern Germany.

Nazis never invest the massive resources.

Needed to bring the atom bomb to life.

Hitler didn't trust her scientists.

He didn't take them seriously.

So he didn't get about the German program

was

behind the April if you will from the beginning.

On may third nineteen forty five.

Heisenberg along with Germany's top scientists.

Are captured by the allies.

Work for the Nazis

is over.

But is one of the world's top physicists.

Eisenberg is considered a valuable asset.

Eventually send him and

number of other German scientists to a manor house in england

to be detained and monitored to

find out whether they know much about making nuclear weapons.

Airlines are relieved to learn

that the Nazis were still years away from making an atomic bomb.

Americans took a luck and thought oh my god this is all the further they got.

We got this far in the summer and nineteen forty two.

After two years of toil in the new Mexico desert.

Robert Oppenheimer is only hours away.

From the most important moment.

In his life.

By July and can forty five they eventually have enough material

to make one uranium bomb

and to plutonium bombs but there so uncertain about whether the plutonium bombs were

work that they have to test one first.

Nuclear device is nicknamed the gadget.

A massive dark grey sphere with five thousand

pounds of explosives surrounding the plutonium.

And wired with precision detonators.

This real.

Forward.

To simulate the weapon being dropped from a bummer.

Intelligent.

Gadget

will be lifted onto a one hundred foot steel tower.

The stress is enormous say feel that they have theoretically

designed it exactly right but what about one little connection and one of the.

Hundreds of wires that are connected to this miracle monster

are they going to work.

But Oppenheimer and his team may have a bigger worried than the bomb not working.

What happens

if it does.

They realize that there was a possibility

that they hadn't figured out all the consequences

of basically igniting a small star on the surface severe.

After spending three years

and over two billion dollars.

Robert Oppenheimer has built an atomic bomb.

And is now ready to test it.

Oppenheimer is great worried that night.

Was that the implosion would work

in the bottom would fizzle.

You never quite know what the physical world is going to.

Teach you when you do something that's never been done before.

As an explosion is ten thousand times hotter than the surface of the song.

An equal to twenty thousand tons of tnt.

Oppenheimer has built the most destructive weapon.

World has ever known.

I

Just three weeks after the test.

And American plane.

Carries an atomic bomb.

Into Japan.

In effort to end the war.

Once and for all.

Dropped on Hiroshima.

A military bit.

We run the country against the dirt.

In order to shorten the agony of walk.

It's amazing is Heisenberg's as they have to just be lying

there's no way they could have pulled this off.

There's no way they could have built a bomb it's too hard we already did all the math

on that and we concluded that nobody not even the united states

could make an atomic bomb during world war two.

Three days later

a second bombs dropped on Nagasaki.

Effectively ending the second world war.

In view of the later alteration

Heisenberg is never held responsible for his actions during the war

and is returned to Germany.

To help rebuild the country.

Even though Heisenberg had obviously.

Collaborated with the Nazis during the war people decided that science in Europe.

Needed to be restored.

And Heisenberg becomes this international figure of.

Peaceful science.

For the rest of his life.

Eisenberg will claim that he intentionally hindered his work for the Nazis.

The go on to enjoy is celebrated career in academia.

I

One question to you by do you want to study a quantum physics.

Oppenheimer is dubbed the father of the atomic bomb.

At he's haunted by the visions of the devastation the bomb has wrought.

And worse.

The read now poses to the world.

Heisenberg becomes this international figure of peaceful science.

And Oppenheimer

is kind of a pariah.

That's the dilemma of the atomic.

Killed an enormous number of human beings.

And yet somehow and this is true.

It put it into a world scale.

Probably forever.

It is apparel.

And hope.