On August 6, 1945, the day the atomic bomb exploded above the city of Hiroshima, Gen. Leslie Groves could easily have promoted himself as the man behind the making of the bomb. After all, as the head of the Manhattan Project, he had a clear claim to being at the top of the pedestal. Instead, he singled out the obscure theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer—among the thousands of other scientists and technicians involved in the Manhattan Project—as the inventor of this gruesome new weapon. Why? The reason was simple: Oppenheimer was to be in the service of the state propaganda of sugarcoating the bomb in the months and years to come.
Oppenheimer as state propaganda. It is a truism that history is written by its winners, and the history of the making of atomic bombs is no exception. It was the War Secretary, Henry L. Stimson, who first issued a statement pointing out Oppenheimer as the inventor of the bomb. “The development of the bomb itself has been largely due to his genius and the inspiration and leadership he has given to his associates,” he stated.
Stimson and his close staff, which included Groves, were well prepared. They not only had constructed the most destructive bomb known to humankind, they also had a winning story to tell in which this terrifying weapon emerged as a force of good, one that saved rather than destroyed lives, one that could help them achieve peace rather than war, and ultimately lead to economic prosperity, even if through momentary destruction. They were ready for this moment. At the core of their narrative was a report entitled Atomic Energy for Military Purposes prepared by the Princeton physicist Henry DeWolf Smyth who had advised the military on how to develop the bomb.[2] Known today as the Smyth Report, its central message was clear: In the hands of the Americans, nuclear bombs and nuclear power were an unambiguous force of good, and its making was a true intellectual achievement of the nuclear science community.
Oppenheimer was at the core of this positive narrative, but it was only for show.
Groves did not have much respect for Oppenheimer. He considered the scientists working in the Manhattan Project’s Los Alamos Laboratory “the greatest bunch of prima donnas ever seen in one place!”[3] Yet Groves felt that Oppenheimer had something over others: an overweening ambition that could serve the nation well. Thus began the promotion of Oppenheimer as a key figure, with the physicist first becoming a poster child and later a scapegoat, depending on the government’s priorities.[4] Despite engineers and chemists outnumbering physicists within the Manhattan Project, the physicists and Oppenheimer’s work at Los Alamos on the assembly and testing of the first atomic bomb is still at the core of popular atomic lore.[5] The deflection of public attention has been remarkably successful, with the narrative of the Smyth Report still prevailing in today’s scholarly as well as popular literature about the bomb. Oppenheimer has become a marker of scientific and cultural superiority, not so much as the “destroyer of worlds”.[6]
