Nolan's Oppenheimer

[Sigmapolis]

Yes, all true, but the author of the biography I mentioned really leaned heavily into the idea that Oppenheimer regretted what he created, let top levels know, and got himself crosswise with Truman. It was probably a mix of a lot of things.

From the perspective described in American Prometheus, Truman does not come out looking good with his handling of nuclear power or weapons post WW2.

That period -- late '45 through the early 1960s if not the late '60s -- is criminally underappreciated for what a delicate and frankly dangerous time it as for the country and the world.

The popular image is something like --

We won the war! Yay!
Lots of kids being born!
Nice homes and white picket fences for the middle class!
Peace and stability abroad! USA #1!
Small misadventure in Korea but eh we can forget about that
Wasn't this just the best time ever we should aspire to return to this?

Reality --

Tens of millions were dead, most high-income countries were shattered
Soviet oppression in half of Europe, colonial oppression around the world
Oppression of nonwhite minorities and women at home... which would boil over in the 1960s
Mao won the Chinese Civil War
Decided to try to outdo Stalin on the brutality with the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution
3 million more people died in Korea (36,500 Americans)
Truman had to resist using nukes against the Chinese
Eisenhower had to resist using nukes against the Vietnamese
Soviets get the bomb in 1949... both sides pointing nukes at each other
Only would have taken one mistake or one madman to end the world
Fail Safe and Dr. Strangelove provide excellent examples of this playing out
Almost did play itself in real life over Cuba
Global geopolitical competition between the U.S. and its allies and the USSR
Incidents like the Suez Crisis almost blow up NATO
All sorts of CIA and KGB back and forth skullduggery
As Alan Dulles said, "The CIA is the Department of State for countries we don't like"

It was terrible. It was a mess. And it could have gone much worse than it did.

Truman and Eisenhower had a ******* lot to deal with and don't get credit for doing it as well as they did. It wasn't some idyllic time. It was going from the inspiring victory at the end of A New Hope into the true scope and scale of the universal conflict and the power of evil in The Empire Strikes Back.

 

[Cyclones_R_GR8]

He's putting together quite the career as an actor.

Will Hunting in Good Will Hunting

Private Ryan in Saving Private Ryan

Linus Caldwell in Ocean's Eleven

Jason Bourne across that series

Bryan Woodman in Syriana

LaBoeuf in the True Grit remake alongside Jeff Bridges and Hailee Steinfeld

Dr. Mann in Interstellar

Carroll Shelby in Ford v. Ferrari

Jean in The Last Duel

I know I am missing a few well-known ones, but those were just some favorites of mine.

 

[Sigmapolis]

Daniel Day Lewis?

He's retired -- had a heck of a run until then, obviously.

 

[Lexclone]

That period -- late '45 through the early 1960s if not the late '60s -- is criminally underappreciated for what a delicate and frankly dangerous time it as for the country and the world.

The popular image is something like --

We won the war! Yay!
Lots of kids being born!
Nice homes and white picket fences for the middle class!
Peace and stability abroad! USA #1!
Small misadventure in Korea but eh we can forget about that
Wasn't this just the best time ever we should aspire to return to this?

Reality --

Tens of millions were dead, most high-income countries were shattered
Soviet oppression in half of Europe, colonial oppression around the world
Oppression of nonwhite minorities and women at home... which would boil over in the 1960s
Mao won the Chinese Civil War
Decided to try to one-up Stalin on the brutality with the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution
3 million more people died in Korea (36,500 Americans)
Truman had to resist using nukes against the Chinese
Eisenhower had to resist using nukes against the Vietnamese
Soviets get the bomb in 1949... both sides pointing nukes at each other
Only would have taken one mistake or one madman to end the world
Fail Safe and Dr. Strangelove provide excellent examples of this playing out
Almost did play itself in real life over the Cuban Missile Crisis
Global geopolitical competition between the U.S. and its allies and the USSR
Incidents like the Suez Crisis almost blow up NATO

Truman and Eisenhower had a ******* lot to deal with and don't get credit for doing it as well as they did. It wasn't some idyllic time. It was going from the inspiring victory at the end of A New Hope into the true scope and scale of the conflict and the power of evil in The Empire Strikes Back.

David McCullough’s book on Truman goes a way to shown what he did to steady America and NATO through the early post-war. He points to Truman’s experience and first-hand witnessing of WW1 that gave him the willingness to bring surrender of the Japanese through demonstration of the new weapon.

Thankfully the world also learned its lesson and was less punitive towards the defeated parties versus WW1. It’s lucky we got what we got for sure in the post-war decades. What is also lucky, but also an issue is that a lot of today’s leaders are not as acquainted with the horrors and devastation of war. For all of the near misses you note, it is likely good that a Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, even Bush Sr. knew and had no love of war, or as Clinton had actively evaded it.

The most bellicose today are either still stinging from Vietnam or only know the Gulf and Afghanistan Wars, and that could be trouble for the world.

 

[Remo Gaggi]

As a history buff, it’s on my must see list. I wonder if they will give the scientists at Iowa State some credit for figuring out how to process uranium to get Fermi’s chain reaction going at the university of Chicago.

I also recommend the movie “Trinity and Beyond” to get an idea of the insanity of detonating hundreds of nukes in the Pacific and in Nevada. How many cases of cancer did all of that fallout cause? I can remember my mother telling me not to eat any snow because of the fallout.

 

[VeloClone]

As a history buff, it’s on my must see list. I wonder if they will give the scientists at Iowa State some credit for figuring out how to process uranium to get Fermi’s chain reaction going at the university of Chicago.

I also recommend the movie “Trinity and Beyond” to get an idea of the insanity of detonating hundreds of nukes in the Pacific and in Nevada. How many cases of cancer did all of that fallout cause? I can remember my mother telling me not to eat any snow because of the fallout.

That's not why she told you to not eat that yellow snow...

 

[CascadeClone]

Iowa State saved the ******* world from Nazi oppression and then feeds the entire planet all while handing humanity the first goddam computer.

So ******* forgive us if the football team had an off 100 years or so.

That should be printed in 20 foot high letters on a granite monument in every state capitol.

Or laser etched on the moon, even better.

 

[Gorm]

So far...not impressed with their stand in for the University of Chicago stadium.

The first nuclear reactor, explained

On Dec. 2, 1942, Manhattan Project scientists achieved the first sustained nuclear reaction created by humans in a squash court under the stands of Stagg Field.

news.uchicago.edu

 

[isufbcurt]

Great now I have Scotty doesn't know stuck in my head

 

[NetflixAndClone]

I hope this quote pops up in the movie.

 

[JimDogRock]

View attachment 112894

I hope this quote pops up in the movie.

Probably ends with it.

 

[CascadeClone]

View attachment 112894

I hope this quote pops up in the movie.

It popped up in Hunt for Red October.

 

[Sigmapolis]

Personally, I don't even think that was the main reason he opted for nukes. It was definitely a demonstration, but not for Japan's benefit. We knew the Soviets weren't far behind and Truman demonstrated that we both had the weapons and were willing to use them. The whole saga is trolley problem after trolley problem.

This is a conspiracy theory that historians have been fighting against for decades. There is no documentary evidence this was the thought process, and all the people involved always denied it.

Let me tell you a little story...

My wife and I visited Japan a year or two before the pandemic. As we always do, we compromised on our activities while there. I prefer history and high culture; she tends to prefer "urban exploration" or natural beauty. With one of "my" days we visited Hiroshima and the Hiroshima Peace Memorial.

It's a hard place to visit. Up there with the Sachsenhausen concentration camp we went to outside Berlin. Most people killed or wounded by the atomic bomb were civilians -- women, children, and the elderly with young men in military or industrial service somewhere else. Few of them individually did anything to deserve a nuclear weapon being dropped on them. They were going about their lives and trying to serve their nation, even if their nation somehow went insane in the 1930s and deserved what it received for it.

One note at the memorial enraged me, though, and it does to this day. It read something like --

"Hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians were the first victims of the geopolitical conflict between the U.S. and USSR that would come to be known as the Cold War. President Truman dropped the bomb on Hiroshima as a demonstration of American power and influence to the Soviet Union."

NO ******* WAY! **** YOU!

Truman dropped the bomb because the prospect of invading Japan was terrifying. Japan was an advanced and cultured nation before the war but, again, somehow went insane as a society. The atrocities committed in Korea, China, Indochina, and the South Pacific are every bit as bad as the ones the Germans committed in Europe and the Soviets against their own people and eastern Europe. Worst of all, they refused to admit when they were beaten to the point they were willing to commit national suicide before accepting defeat and indignity. In such a difficult situation, Truman did the rational thing we probably would have all done and decided to exhaust all other options before invasion -- so drop the big one and level a few cities of theirs.

See if that snaps them out of it.

Japan wasn't an innocent victim caught in the crossfire. They received what they deserved. Societies being unable to acknowledge and move on from past atrocities leads to present pathologies.

It is a stupid point anyways. To writ --

(1.) Truman didn't even know about the bomb until after he became president. There's this story about Henry Stinson, FDR's old Secretary of War, asking Truman to stay for five minutes after his first cabinet meeting as president and only then telling him about the Manhattan Project.

Which I bring up because...

(2.) Stalin already knew about the bomb when the U.S. dropped it on Hiroshima. He knew about the Manhattan Project in the early 1940s while Truman did not learn of it until early 1945. The NKVD had the project leaking like a sieve. There were many secret communists involved, though Oppenheimer was not one of them. There was not anything to be gained by a "demonstration" -- Stalin knew everything already.

 

[Sigmapolis]

It popped up in Hunt for Red October.

The great irony of the political officer being named "Putin" --

 

[stormchaser2014]

Although it sounds like his work in the trailer, Hans Zimmer did not compose the music for this.

 

[VeloClone]

This is a conspiracy theory that historians have been fighting against for decades. There is no documentary evidence this was the thought process, and all the people involved always denied it.

Let me tell you a little story...

My wife and I visited Japan a year or two before the pandemic. As we always do, we compromised on our activities while there. I prefer history and high culture; she tends to prefer "urban exploration" or natural beauty. With one of "my" days we visited Hiroshima and the Hiroshima Peace Memorial.

It's a hard place to visit. Up there with the Sachsenhausen concentration camp we went to outside Berlin. Most people killed or wounded by the atomic bomb were civilians -- women, children, and the elderly with young men in military or industrial service somewhere else. Few of them individually did anything to deserve a nuclear weapon being dropped on them. They were going about their lives and trying to serve their nation, even if their nation somehow went insane in the 1930s and deserved what it received for it.

One note at the memorial enraged me, though, and it does to this day. It read something like --

"Hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians were the first victims of the geopolitical conflict between the U.S. and USSR that would come to be known as the Cold War. President Truman dropped the bomb on Hiroshima as a demonstration of American power and influence to the Soviet Union."

NO ******* WAY! **** YOU!

Truman dropped the bomb because the prospect of invading Japan was terrifying. Japan was an advanced and cultured nation before the war but, again, somehow went insane as a society. The atrocities committed in Korea, China, Indochina, and the South Pacific are every bit as bad as the ones the Germans committed in Europe and the Soviets against their own people and eastern Europe. Worst of all, they refused to admit when they were beaten to the point they were willing to commit national suicide before accepting defeat and indignity. In such a difficult situation, Truman did the rational thing we probably would have all done and decided to exhaust all other options before invasion -- so drop the big one and level a few cities of theirs.

See if that snaps them out of it.

Japan wasn't an innocent victim caught in the crossfire. They received what they deserved. Societies being unable to acknowledge and move on from past atrocities leads to present pathologies.

It is a stupid point anyways. To writ --

(1.) Truman didn't even know about the bomb until after he became president. There's this story about Henry Stinson, FDR's old Secretary of War, asking Truman to stay for five minutes after his first cabinet meeting as president and only then telling him about the Manhattan Project.

Which I bring up because...

(2.) Stalin already knew about the bomb when the U.S. dropped it on Hiroshima. He knew about the Manhattan Project in the early 1940s while Truman did not learn of it until early 1945. The NKVD had the project leaking like a sieve. There were many secret communists involved, though Oppenheimer was not one of them. There was not anything to be gained by a "demonstration" -- Stalin knew everything already.

Did you see the bomb trees in Hiroshima? Apparently there are multiple trees that survived the bombing within a 2 km radius of the epicenter of the blast, even some less than 1 km. Amazing. There is a whole organization dedicated to the preservation of those trees.

Also, your point about the Japanese mindset of never surrendering is spot on. It ultimately took the Emperor speaking to the nation on the radio to finally bring the war to a halt. The Emperor had never spoken on the radio and most Japanese had never heard his voice. He knew that if he spoke to the Japanese people directly he could bypass his generals and the war machine and stop them from controlling the entire populace. Hirohito probably saved millions of lives by stopping the war at that point.

 

[Lexclone]

This is a conspiracy theory that historians have been fighting against for decades. There is no documentary evidence this was the thought process, and all the people involved always denied it.

Let me tell you a little story...

My wife and I visited Japan a year or two before the pandemic. As we always do, we compromised on our activities while there. I prefer history and high culture; she tends to prefer "urban exploration" or natural beauty. With one of "my" days we visited Hiroshima and the Hiroshima Peace Memorial.

It's a hard place to visit. Up there with the Sachsenhausen concentration camp we went to outside Berlin. Most people killed or wounded by the atomic bomb were civilians -- women, children, and the elderly with young men in military or industrial service somewhere else. Few of them individually did anything to deserve a nuclear weapon being dropped on them. They were going about their lives and trying to serve their nation, even if their nation somehow went insane in the 1930s and deserved what it received for it.

One note at the memorial enraged me, though, and it does to this day. It read something like --

"Hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians were the first victims of the geopolitical conflict between the U.S. and USSR that would come to be known as the Cold War. President Truman dropped the bomb on Hiroshima as a demonstration of American power and influence to the Soviet Union."

NO ******* WAY! **** YOU!

Truman dropped the bomb because the prospect of invading Japan was terrifying. Japan was an advanced and cultured nation before the war but, again, somehow went insane as a society. The atrocities committed in Korea, China, Indochina, and the South Pacific are every bit as bad as the ones the Germans committed in Europe and the Soviets against their own people and eastern Europe. Worst of all, they refused to admit when they were beaten to the point they were willing to commit national suicide before accepting defeat and indignity. In such a difficult situation, Truman did the rational thing we probably would have all done and decided to exhaust all other options before invasion -- so drop the big one and level a few cities of theirs.

See if that snaps them out of it.

Japan wasn't an innocent victim caught in the crossfire. They received what they deserved. Societies being unable to acknowledge and move on from past atrocities leads to present pathologies.

It is a stupid point anyways. To writ --

(1.) Truman didn't even know about the bomb until after he became president. There's this story about Henry Stinson, FDR's old Secretary of War, asking Truman to stay for five minutes after his first cabinet meeting as president and only then telling him about the Manhattan Project.

Which I bring up because...

(2.) Stalin already knew about the bomb when the U.S. dropped it on Hiroshima. He knew about the Manhattan Project in the early 1940s while Truman did not learn of it until early 1945. The NKVD had the project leaking like a sieve. There were many secret communists involved, though Oppenheimer was not one of them. There was not anything to be gained by a "demonstration" -- Stalin knew everything already.

Yep!

Also, the U.S. sent Japan communiques stating that the U.S. was in possession of weapons of such terrible destructive power and were prepared to use them without a full surrender. Japan was given a very fair chance to avoid the destruction, but they chose to ignore warnings. Culturally, surrender just wasn’t something Japan could do… until sadly, two cities were vaporized, innocent lives lost, and even more innocent lives altered forever. Japan had been unbowed through centuries of conflict, but this wound was too great to preserver further.

The likely other path was U.S. troops in pitched combat with what remaining army Japan had and women and children. Terrible choice either way.

 

[StClone]

Iowa State saved the ******* world from Nazi oppression and then feeds the entire planet all while handing humanity the first goddam computer.

So ******* forgive us if the football team had an off 100 years or so.

Feed 'em then give AI and the fissionable.

As a history buff, it’s on my must see list. I wonder if they will give the scientists at Iowa State some credit for figuring out how to process uranium to get Fermi’s chain reaction going at the university of Chicago.

I also recommend the movie “Trinity and Beyond” to get an idea of the insanity of detonating hundreds of nukes in the Pacific and in Nevada. How many cases of cancer did all of that fallout cause? I can remember my mother telling me not to eat any snow because of the fallout.

Not only cancer as there is a correlation between radioactive fallout causing thyroid issues for many
after 60's atomic tests. Iowa had several major fallout events: The NCI summary suggests that from 25,000 to 50,000 additional cases of thyroid disease and 2,500 deaths would be likely in fallout areas as diverse as New Mexico, New York, Massachusetts, Iowa, Oklahoma and Wisconsin. https://lasvegassun.com/news/1997/aug/04/people-exposed-to-above-ground-tests-seek-data/

 

[Remo Gaggi]

Feed 'em then give AI and the fissionable.

Not only cancer as there is a correlation between radioactive fallout causing thyroid issues for many
after 60's atomic tests. Iowa had several major fallout events: The NCI summary suggests that from 25,000 to 50,000 additional cases of thyroid disease and 2,500 deaths would be likely in fallout areas as diverse as New Mexico, New York, Massachusetts, Iowa, Oklahoma and Wisconsin. https://lasvegassun.com/news/1997/aug/04/people-exposed-to-above-ground-tests-seek-data/

There was a huge underground test shot named “Sedan” that left that famous crater at the Nevada test site that can be seen from space. There was a fallout map from this shot that showed the hottest regions - right thru central Iowa. Thanks AEC.

 

[CycloneVet]

On a side note, my former neighbor who is 87 was in the Navy on a destroyer when they were testing in the Pacific, their job was to keep other ships away from from the testing area. I believe he witnessed 3 or 4 bombs being tested.