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It's not an exaggeration to say

that there was a world

before Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed,

a world after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed.

Oppenheimer's reaction to when the first nuclear bombs

were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were mixed.

There was obviously a professional pride

that this project that he had masterminded had paid off,

but at the same time, what he was aware of,

that everything he had created was causing death

on a monumental scale.

I have been asked whether, in the years to come,

it will be possible to kill 40 million American people

in the 20 largest American towns

by the use of atomic bombs in a single night.

I'm afraid that the answer to that question is yes.

I don't think, however, there's been an event

in human history that's quite so consequential

because what you showed with that

was that man was capable of not just destroying each other

on a small human scale, but capable of wiping out the world.

On the 22nd of August, 1939,

Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard sent a letter

to the 32nd president of the United States,

Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The two scientists warned Roosevelt

that the Germans were harboring uranium sources

for research into nuclear fission,

which could lead to the creation

of highly destructive bombs.

This letter would soon change the very course of the world.

At the time of its delivery,

Europe was on the verge of chaos.

Nazi dictator, Adolf Hitler, sat at the helm of Germany,

infecting his citizens with hate and division.

On the 1st of September, 1939, Germany invaded Poland,

triggering a declaration of war from Britain and France

under the 1918 Treaty of Versailles.

Within six weeks, the German Army crushed Poland,

executing thousands of citizens in the process.

A dark cloud soon loomed over Europe.

Sure I am that this day,

now, we are the masters of our fate.

We shall defend our island

whatever the cost may be.

We shall fight on beaches, landing grounds,

in fields, in streets, and on the hills.

We shall never surrender.

You've got to remember that America

does not enter the Second World War

until two years after it's broken out.

Of course it starts in September, 1939,

when Britain declares war on Germany

because Germany has invaded Poland.

And so, for two years, there has been fighting in Europe.

Hitler invades countries like France,

and the Netherlands, and Belgium.

Hitler tries to invade the United Kingdom.

You then got Hitler, in the middle of 1941,

invading the Soviet Union.

That's a big event.

So, you know, war is basically waging worldwide.

By the end of 1941, America had been neutral.

I mean, in practice, it was supplying aids

to Britain in every way it could

because President Roosevelt was,

he was more than just a supporter,

he was somebody who actually saw

that the only way of having any kind of peace in the world

was by defeating the Nazis and the Axis is powerless.

What he also saw was to involve America in another war

would've been politically catastrophic.

And people were not engaged in it and they didn't want that,

so he was very, very cautious about any kind of action

that would actually lead America into declaring war.

And even though he'd said to the king, King George VI,

a couple of years before,

if the Nazis would start bombing London,

we would come in on your side,

there was still great reluctance

to actually take further step

that would lead to such a commitment.

And obviously that changed

when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

It was not until 1941

that the conflict spread beyond Europe's borders.

In the December, Japan launched a surprise attack

on US Naval base, Pearl Harbor.

The military strike killed over 2,400 people

and destroyed 19 US Navy ships.

The reason why it was so symbolic and so successful

was America had never been attacked like that

on their home shores, especially in the modern era.

And it was proof that the Japanese

were this highly mechanized force, utterly ruthless,

who could commit an act like this

of absolute audacity and absolute violence.

As his citizens mourned, FDR retaliated fast,

declaring war on Japan and bringing the US

into the most destructive conflict in history.

That the Congress declare

that since the unprovoked

and dastardly attack by Japan

on Sunday, December 7th, 1941,

a state of war has existed

between the United States and the Japanese Empire.

Although under no obligation,

Germany and Italy also joined Japan's side,

whilst the US gained support from Hitler's enemies,

Britain and the Soviet Union.

It's one of Hitler's most perplexing decisions

as to why he decided to declare war on the United States.

Well, actually, his reason for doing it

is because he thinks, finally, this is an opportunity

to show that he really wants to rid the world

of what he sees as being the evils of international finance

and Jewish control of economies.

Of course he's dead wrong about that.

He's also in a pact with Japan

so he feels that Japan's a natural ally.

And so, this is why war breaks out,

it's Hitler saber-rattling.

He doesn't know what it's gonna lead to.

In the summer of 1942,

FDR approved the creation of the Manhattan Project,

bringing together research scientists

and military engineers from across the US and Canada.

The birth of the atomic bomb finally commenced.

The Manhattan Project has got lots of different roles,

if you like.

The primary role of course is to build a nuclear bomb

that you can use in the war.

Some of the other roles are also to try and establish

what level of nuclear capacity do other countries have,

and of course especially Nazi Germany.

Of course the Manhattan Project is also there

to construct all the stuff around

to build a nuclear bomb.

So it's got to mastermind factories,

it's got to mastermind getting hold of uranium,

it's got to mastermind creating plutonium.

So it's got lots and lots of different roles.

And this is gonna take place,

initially, you know, masterminded from Manhattan,

hence the name, but it's gonna take place

in locations all over the United States,

all the way through to California and even in Canada.

General Leslie Groves

of the Manhattan Engineer District commanded the project.

A hardheaded leader with an intensity often feared

by his inferiors, Groves stopped at nothing

to make the mission a success.

To many people's surprise,

Groves put forward J. Robert Oppenheimer for lead physicist,

a notably contentious figure.

Oppenheimer lacked a Nobel Prize.

He preferred theoretical science over practical.

He was politically left-leaning,

often attending communist front activities

and even going on to marry a member of the Communist Party.

Oppenheimer's political activities

and Oppenheimer's political sympathies

actually drew the attention of the FBI,

the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

And actually, he had his phone tapped,

he had his mail opened, he was watched, he was followed.

You know, obviously, he was

in an incredibly sensitive position.

And the fact that he had loyalties

that may lie elsewhere outside the United States

of course could have been considered a problem.

He soon became the US's greatest chance

of building an atomic bomb before the Germans.

But even though Groves wasn't a genius,

his single act of genius, the one thing he really gets right

is to appoint Oppenheimer.

The most secretive project in US history

took place in Los Alamos, New Mexico,

an isolated desert region where Oppenheimer's team

would never be disturbed.

There were very, very few people

working on the Manhattan Project

that knew what was happening.

You know, people who were doing the laundry

were given these weird devices

that they had to rub over the clothes

and to see how many clicks this device meant.

Now, those people had no idea what they were doing,

but of course today we know those are Geiger counters

which are measuring levels of radiation.

So, you know, people were aware.

There was a lot of weird stuff going on

in all the locations of the Manhattan Project,

especially Los Alamos in New Mexico.

Both Groves and Oppenheimer's scientists

set out to create nuclear chain reactions

using Uranium-235 and Plutonium-239,

two rare isotopes which needed huge levels

of funding to procure.

I think there was also a sense

that America wants to be top dog

in terms of its technology and its research.

It wants to be this country that was dominant,

because obviously at this stage,

Germany was seen as the threat.

It wasn't Russia, or Britain, or anywhere else.

There's very much a race against time

as to who was going to be the first

to harness this energy and to come out on top.

Three years into the project,

the scientists had created two new bombs

named Little Boy and Fat Man.

Little Boy had the simpler design.

The gun-shaped bomb triggered a nuclear explosion

by firing one piece of Uranium-235 into another,

causing a chain reaction.

Fat Man was in turn the more complex of the two.

A bulbous 10-foot bomb

containing a sphere of metal Plutonium-239,

it was surrounded by blocks of explosives

that were designed to produce

an extremely accurate implosion.

However, the high risk and high cost of Fat Man

made the Los Alamos scientists feel uneasy.

And so, Oppenheimer's team insisted on a test run.

Minus 30 seconds.

Minus 20 seconds.

Minus 10 seconds.

Minus five seconds.

There was a big worry that, actually,

by triggering a nuclear explosion,

you might cause the entire atmosphere to burn up.

And if that happened, that would be the end of the world.

Now, even though many scientists

didn't think that was gonna happen, there were a few

who were just a little bit worried about it.

So in fact, when that first bomb does go off,

there's a relief in some ways

that the world hasn't exploded along with it.

Oppenheimer was the American Prometheus,

because he was this man who had this enormous power,

and he was frightened of it

because when he saw the test,

he said, "I am become death, destroyer of worlds."

And I think that's a very powerful thing to say.

The entire Trinity test was not just for fun.

It was leading to what's going to become

probably the most single notorious act of 20th century.

The Trinity test succeeded,

and onlookers finally realized

the enormity of the bomb's power.

The Allied powers secured victory in Europe in May, 1945.

The Nazi empire finally fell after six long years,

and Hitler escapes to his bunker to die by cyanide.

However, for the United States, the war was not over yet.

Trouble still brewed in the Pacific,

and American blood continued to spill.

After V-E Day was declared in Europe,

there was a real problem.

America and the rest of the Allied powers

were still at war with Japan.

And Japan showed absolutely no signs of surrendering.

The difference between Germany and Japan

was Germany, especially after Hitler died,

knew they were beaten, knew there was nowhere else to go.

They just basically have to settle for a humiliating peace,

the best possible terms they could get.

The thing about Japan is that there is no concept

of surrender in their national identity.

The whole idea was that they would literally fight

until the last man.

When Japan and the United States

are fighting this war in the Pacific,

what they're doing is fighting for islands strongholds.

You've gotta think of the war

as like a kind of to and froing,

of trying to grab stepping stones on a big pond,

if you like.

And so, you know, the more stepping stones you control,

the more of the pond you control.

And so, you have huge battles

on islands like Iwo Jima, Peleliu,

which are very bloody, very attritional fights,

in which the Japanese are often dug in

and fight to the last man,

and it costs an enormous amount of lives.

So it's a very bloody, very vicious,

very drawn out combat.

And of course, as well as these battles

on these small islands,

you also have these huge naval engagement as well,

like the Battle of Midway,

which again are very costly in men and material.

President Roosevelt passed away

a month before the Nazi regime's defeat.

Harry S. Truman assumed the role of president,

only learning of the Manhattan Project's existence

24 hours into the job.

The major task of leading the world to peace

now landed in Truman's hands.

Roosevelt was a very sober man.

He understood that what they were dealing with

was something of absolute magnitude.

And so, therefore his idea,

and I think he was absolutely right,

was as few people knew about this as possible.

And in fact, Truman was, at one point,

before he was aware of the Manhattan Project,

he was seeing all these documents,

which seemed to be this vast government expense,

and he didn't understand why people

were spending so much money on a secret project.

He tried to look into it,

but he was informed very sternly, no, this is not for you.

And so, obviously, the context of war,

there are so many things that you're not involved with,

he just let it go.

But of course, after Roosevelt died

and when he became president, he became aware

of what was the greatest scientific endeavor

that America had been involved in.

On the 26th of July, 1945,

Allied leaders gathered at the Potsdam Conference in Berlin

to draw up plans for Japan's surrender.

President Truman, alongside Britain and China,

issued the document.

The Potsdam Declaration that was made

at the Potsdam Conference said to Japan,

listen, you have got to surrender,

and without any conditions whatsoever.

Now, this has got to be a complete defeat.

Otherwise, hell is gonna be rained down on your country.

What Truman, the American president, didn't do

was to reveal, actually, I've got a big ace up my sleeve,

and that's an atom bomb, but he hinted at it.

The Potsdam Declaration

gave the Japanese an ultimatum,

accept defeat or suffer incomprehensible destruction.

Japan showed no sign of bowing down.

Prime Minister Suzuki announced that the Japanese policy

towards the declaration was one of mokusatsu,

killing with silence.

From that moment, the dropping of the atomic bomb

was inevitable.

At 8:15 AM on the 6th of August, 1945,

the lead plane, Enola Gay,

released the Little Boy bomb over Hiroshima.

Residents awoke to the most almighty site in human history.

Little Boy fell almost six miles in 43 seconds

before detonating at an altitude of 2,000 feet.

80,000 people died instantly,

some even evaporating on the spot.

A short time ago, an American airplane

dropped one bomb on Hiroshima

and destroyed its usefulness to the enemy.

You can imagine that if you are in Hiroshima,

you're going about your daily business,

there's just this flash of blinding white light,

and then all of a sudden everything around you is destroyed.

And it's something biblical.

I mean, you would've genuinely imagined, if you'd seen it,

that this was the end of days.

Japan at this point was faced with the fact

that one of their major industrial and military bases

no longer existed.

I mean, a huge number of civilians had been killed.

It was an act completely without parallel in modern warfare.

It was literally the first atomic bomb.

You would've expected that they would've thought,

we can't carry on.

But this is Japan we're talking about.

This isn't any other country.

And so, they refused to surrender

on the grounds that, can keep bombing us,

we don't care.

We are not going to surrender to you.

But of course the problem is they didn't really understand

what they were up against.

The bomb obliterated Hiroshima and its people,

and yet the Japanese Government still refused to surrender.

Three days later, a second bomb landed on Nagasaki.

The devastation at Nagasaki is,

you know, make no mistake, it's huge,

but because Nagasaki is built in sort of valleys

and it's got cliffs and things like that,

the explosion was much more contained.

So relatively less, fewer parts of the city were destroyed

compared to Hiroshima.

But still, you have a death toll

approaching a hundred thousand people.

You know, it is still devastating

and it is far greater than any other single bomb

can possibly produce.

Emperor Hirohito

broke the government's deadlock,

expressing that the Japanese race will be destroyed

if the war continues.

And so, on the 15th of August,

Hirohito announced the end to Japan's suffering

over radio broadcast.

I have received this afternoon

a message from the Japanese Government

in reply to the message forwarded to that government

by the Secretary of State on August 11th.

I deem this reply a full acceptance

of the Potsdam Declaration,

which specifies the unconditional surrender of Japan.

In the reply, there is no qualification.

Reporters rush out to relay the news to an anxious world

and touch off celebrations throughout the country.

A new wave of cruelty and devastation

ended the conflict.

Japan officially signed the Surrender Act soon after.

Relief spread across the United States.

The Second World War was over.

Fathers, brothers, and sons could come home again.

But what exactly did this new power mean for America?

The reaction in the United States

was one largely of jubilation.

You know, hang on a minute,

we've got this amazing new weapon

that no one really quite understood yet.

All they knew was one bomb could do the job

of months and months of bombing in just one second.

So it meant obviously immense source of national pride.

It also meant an immense source of relief

because of course what those two A-bombs led to

was the Japanese surrender just a few days later.

War was over.

And who was not gonna be happy about that?

What was very interesting

about American public reaction to atomic bomb

was that it was sold exceptionally well by Truman.

Truman managed to convince them in such a way

that if the atomic bomb hadn't been launched, that it might've vastly prolonged the war

and vastly more people dying.

And so, there was actually

almost unanimous public support for it.

The dropping of the atomic bomb

destroyed the traditional competition

between offensive and defensive warfare methods.

No amount of blockades or shelters

could shield citizens from the bomb's fury and rage.

The Americans had ultimate control

over the most feared weapon on earth.

No one could stand in their way.

I don't think, however, there's been an event

in human history that was quite so consequential,

because what you showed with that

was that man was capable of not just destroying each other

on a small human scale, but capable of wiping out the world.

It's also a sign as if you'd ever been needed to have it,

that we were not anymore in this old fashioned war of guns,

and the military invasions, and stuff,

it was this new, much more terrifying world.

It was ahead of people.

These devices were just gonna get bigger,

and bigger, and bigger.

And actually, the devastation we see at Hiroshima

and at Nagasaki, it's tiny compared to what nuclear weapons

would shortly be capable of delivering.

Science has profoundly altered

the conditions of man's life,

both materially and in ways of the spirit as well.

It has extended the range of questions

of which man has a choice.

It has extended man's freedom to make significant decisions.

It's easy to think

that the story of the Manhattan Project

ends in August, 1945.

However, that's far from the case.

It's not an exaggeration to say that there is a world

before Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed,

a world after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed.

The monopoly over atomic weapons

placed serious strain on America's relationship with Stalin.

A new era of diplomatic tensions burst open at the seams.

The use of the atomic bomb in the theater of war

was something that I think America

was perfectly prepared to do.

And the fact that it was done

in this context in World War II

was essentially for way of ending of a war

and also showcasing American might.

We can also see that it was a way of showing

that Stalin and the Soviet Union,

who were very much intent on making their own atomic bomb,

we have this power, we have this weapon.

If you seek to emulate us, essentially we got here first.

The Soviets and Americans faced each other

in a state of neither war nor peace.

And yet the push of one button

could have led to total global destruction.

The Soviet Union's development of nuclear weapons

was vastly behind that of the United States.

But what the Soviet Union did have

was spies working in the Manhattan Project

and taking that information,

ultimately relaying it back to Moscow.

And so, you have a spy who was actually employed

by the British.

He was a physicist called Klaus Fuchs,

and he came to work in the United States

on the Manhattan Project.

And he was giving as much information as he could

to the Soviet Union.

Now, what information from people like Fuchs did

was ultimately to shorten by a year or two

how long it took the Russians to develop the nuclear bomb.

The Cold War continued

right up to the late '80s,

over 40 years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Europe suffered division once again,

and a nuclear arms race conquered political discourse.

Because of the existence of the atomic bomb,

what would've I think been a conventional world war three

between America and the Soviet Union

became a Cold War instead.

Neither side wanted to go about

creating what was known as mutually assured destruction.

And while you have this immense power

and you have this immense ability to destroy your enemy,

there's also the absolute certainty

that whoever's going to blink first,

it's gonna be the one who's gonna be in trouble.

The Cold War would've happened without nuclear weapons,

but it just made the stakes feel so much higher.

I have been asked whether, in the years to come,

it will be possible to kill 40 million American people

in the 20 largest American towns

by the use of atomic bombs in a single night.

I'm afraid that the answer to that question is yes.

In the aftermath of World War II,

the US Congress transferred the Manhattan Project's assets

to a new agency, the Atomic Energy Commission.

Oppenheimer took on the role of president

of the General Advisory Committee of the AEC.

However, from his new role sprang a commitment

to nuclear disarmament and control,

a debate many nuclear scientists found themselves drawn to

during the Cold War era.

Oppenheimer's reaction to when the first nuclear bombs

were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were mixed.

There was obviously a professional pride

that this project that he had masterminded

against the clock, vast expense, long hours,

had paid off.

But at the same time, what he was aware of,

that everything he had created was causing death

on a monumental scale.

So, you know, you couldn't help but be human,

but feel very mixed about that.

If there is another world war,

this civilization may go under.

We need to ask ourselves whether we're doing all we can

to avert that.

We need, I think, to learn to understand

the realities of life abroad

not so much in terms of slogans,

as in terms of the lives of men.

In our response to these realities, there is hope for peace.

Oppenheimer was a leading voice in wanting arms control.

He knew that nuclear Armageddon

could be imminent if there was going to be

a huge nuclear arms race

between the world's superpowers.

So he actually, ironically,

despite being the father in many ways of the atom bomb,

spent much of his time subsequently speaking out against it.

Certainly, he was somebody who, after the war

and after the launch, was somebody who was,

I think he was mistrusted

because he didn't seem to be positive about what he'd done,

he seemed to rather racked with guilt.

'Cause ultimately, it doesn't matter

how much of a scientific breakthrough it is,

there are consequences.

And Oppenheimer knew he was terrified of.

In 1954, these views,

coupled with his political convictions, led him to testify

before the House Committee on Un-American Activities,

during the so-called witch hunt

promoted by Senator McCarthy.

The committee is determined

that the hearing shall be fair and impartial.

We have subpoenaed witnesses

representing both sides of the question.

All we are after are the facts.

After the war, you have the establishment

of all sorts of committees that are investigating

whether people have been loyal to the Soviet Union,

acted as Soviet agents.

It was considered that if you really were a member

of the Communist Party, you were un-American,

you were a de facto traitor.

And in fact, Oppenheimer, despite proving his loyalty

to the United States by constructing for them

the world's first atomic weapon that ended the war

and arguably saved hundreds of thousands of lives,

he was still hauled up by committees

and asked to justify himself.

So you have this situation in which,

eventually, Oppenheimer's security clearance is revoked

because he's considered to be a threat to national security.

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 think he had probably enough humility to know

that even if he wasn't involved, it still would've happened.

You know, the nuclear physics was there,

the money was there, the nuclear bomb would've been built.

So I think Oppenheimer knew that,

ultimately, his place in history was being there

at the right place at the right time.

The legacy of the Manhattan Project is immense.

The advent of nuclear weapons not only brought an end

to the largest war in history

but also ushered in an atomic age

and a defining era of big science.

Research into nuclear physics

has both been hugely beneficial for mankind.

So, you know, understanding how the atom works

of course has created forms of scanning technology

which have been brilliant for medicine, nuclear power,

which is arguably the greenest power source on the planet.

You've got all sorts of developments

that have been very beneficial for mankind.

However, in the years

following Hiroshima and Nagasaki,

the world's two superpowers, America and Russia,

entered a race to nuclear domination,

peaking in the 1980s.

Countries which have a new nuclear capability

feel that they're carrying a very big stick indeed.

It gives 'em an enormous amount of negotiating power.

It gives them an enormous amount of potential power

in any conflict to say, look, we've always got the big one,

so watch out for us.

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989

symbolized a new era for world peace.

With the West and East united once again,

many thought the years ahead

would bring an age of nuclear compromise and calm.

And for a time, they did.

Nuclear stockpiles peaked in 1986

and steadied off from the 1990s onwards.

The appetite to produce more warheads declined.

Nevertheless, Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine in 2022

brought fears of nuclear obliteration

to the surface once again.

The current tension between the West and Russia

is merely a new phase in a Cold War that never ended.

I think, at the moment, we're probably closer

to a nuclear war than we have been

since the second World War.

It's what's been interesting

over the last two and a half decades.

When you watch how Russia has changed

in terms of our acceptance of them,

it's gone from being a slightly chaotic country,

which nonetheless was broadly on our side,

to being our enemy.

And I think we can certainly see Putin

as public enemy number one.

And it's terrifying, really,

that we all go about our daily business,

and there's this man not so very far from us

with his finger on this trigger.

And if he pulls the trigger,

our lives as we know could cease to exist.

Russia is, I think, the greatest threat to world peace.

And I think the fact that Russia has a nuclear capability

is worrying.

But it's had a nuclear capability in one way or another

since 1949.

And it's never yet used one in any conflict.

So, you know, we just gotta keep our fingers crossed.

The birth of the atomic bomb

changed the world forever.

In the years before the Manhattan Project,

a weapon of such power was not even remotely imaginable

to most people on Earth.

And yet, with war comes new inventions,

new ways of destroying the enemy,

new machines to wipe out human life.

You know, we have potentially got the power now

to literally destroy the world.

The destruction in Japan

has left a mark on every generation since 1945.

There isn't a person alive today

who does not fear a repeat of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

As the only country to have experienced a nuclear attack,

Japan stands firm in stating that human beings

and nuclear weapons cannot coexist,

a profound belief in a world gripped by the nuclear age.

I think we've all seen the pictures

of what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

We've all seen exactly what nuclear weapons do.

I think that anybody like Putin

or anybody else in the world

who's ever tempted to think about,

oh, this might further my own personal heroism

or whatever else, should take a look at those pictures

and think very hard about what they're about to do,

because there are no heroes in this.

You know ultimately that all that is going to do

is lead to untold devastation, untold destruction.

We cannot predict the future.

But if one thing is for certain,

the threat of nuclear war hangs heavy over the human race,

now more than ever.