Analysis by Amy Hadden Marsh
“What if?” is the haunting question throughout Christopher Nolan’s larger-than-life “Oppenheimer” and Steve James’ new documentary, “A Compassionate Spy,” about Ted Hall, the Los Alamos leak whom Nolan left out. “What if” was also a way government nuclear apparatchiks, scientists and workers at nuclear facilities justified their involvement in Cold War nuclear weapons production and the post-Oppenheimer arms race.
For Hall and some scientists portrayed in Nolan’s epic, “what if” meant what if the U.S. was the only nation on the planet with the atom bomb? Former President Dwight Eisenhower questioned this after President Harry Truman decided to drop the first bombs, dubbed Little Boy and Fat Man respectively, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. In his memoir, “Mandate for Change: The White House Years, 1953-1956,” Eisenhower wrote: “Japan was at that very moment seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of face, and dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary.”
But, despite general knowledge among Washington’s upper echelons about Japan’s imminent surrender, the powers-that-be, in their incessant quest for more power, ignored the consequences and the “what ifs” and flattened two Japanese cities, killing hundreds of thousands of people.
Oppenheimer’s estimates were way off. He told inquisitors at his 1954 national security clearance hearing that 70,000 were killed or injured. No one really knows how many died because not all of the deaths were a direct result of the explosions. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists puts the direct death toll between 110,000 and 210,000.
But, in 1945, it was power the U.S. government was after. Too late for second thoughts, which some of the Manhattan Project scientists, the greatest minds in the world, were beginning to have. Once it became clear that Hitler was not going to produce an atomic bomb, Hall’s “what if” kicked in.
Both films make mention of the U.S.S.R. as the main atomic target. The Russians were about to invade Japan and Truman wanted the world to know that it was an American bomb that ended WWII — not a Russian invasion. Britain and the U.S. wanted to shut out the U.S.S.R. from the spoils of Iranian oil.
But, according to Counterpunch, in the book “To Win a Nuclear War: The Pentagon’s Secret War Plans,” authors Michio Kaku and Daniel Axelrod wrote that the U.S. had ideas to use the atom bomb against the Soviet Union before the war in Europe had ended. The first plan was to drop 20-30 Hiroshima-sized bombs on 20 Russian cities in December 1945. But, the U.S. only had two bombs in its nuclear arsenal so that plan was delayed until 1953, then scrapped altogether when the Soviets detonated their first atomic bomb in 1949.
“Once Hall realized the scope of [the Manhattan Project] and the fact…that they were going to be successful, he started to think about, ‘Well, what’s going to happen with this bomb in the postwar world?’” said James in a recent interview with NPR’s Scott Simon. “The U.S. is going to have this awful weapon to themselves and he worried that [this] would be destabilizing, especially if a right-wing government came to power in the U.S.”
Basically, Hall thought that if other nations had nukes, the world would be a safer place. Oppenheimer believed that the Trinity test would convince the world not to use the atom bomb. So, Hall leaked information to the Soviets as did Klaus Fuchs, a German scientist, also involved with the Manhattan Project. Neither knew about the other’s Russian connection. Fuchs is featured in Nolan’s film perhaps as a composite portrayal of the intense espionage concerns swirling around Los Alamos.
Once the other Manhattan Project scientists realized that the U.S. government, represented by General Leslie Groves, planned to commandeer the project and weaponize the findings, suddenly they had qualms. Ernest Lawrence put forth the idea of inviting Japanese leaders to Los Alamos for a demonstration of the force that could devastate their country. That didn’t fly. Too many what ifs.
Following Leo Szilard’s lead, 70 scientists from Chicago’s Metallurgical Laboratory, a branch of the Manhattan Project, signed a petition in 1945, stating their concerns about weaponizing the bomb. They gave it to Groves who, because he didn’t agree, never gave it to the president. Too little, too late. Not even the “what if” of detonating the atmosphere with Trinity could stop the atomic juggernaut.
The government planned commandeering of the results of the Manhattan Project is evident in Nolan’s film — from the post-Trinity guilt and confusion besetting Oppenheimer to the revenge-fueled security clearance hearing that took him down in 1954. The American Prometheus, tortured for eternity.
Be it scientific hubris or naivete or patriotic greed that kept Fermi, Teller, Bohr, Groves, Oppenheimer and the rest engaged in the Manhattan Project, all the “what ifs” have evaporated, the consequences of “the gadget” writ large across the planet: Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Japanese Hibakusha (surviving victims) rendered obsolete.
Atmospheric testing ended in 1963. Nukes were tested in space in July 1962 and on animals and humans at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site (NTS). The Western Shoshone consider themselves the most bombed nation on earth; their lands, usurped by the NTS for seven decades, have suffered close to 1,000 detonations. Edward Teller’s Project Plowshare to use bombs to frack natural gas and create the Panama Canal, roads and harbors was a bust, but not before irradiating natural gas in New Mexico and western Colorado.
Underground testing wore on until 1992, but the U.S. government continues to conduct subcritical and stockpile stewardship tests. Depleted uranium has been used in weaponry and materiel from the Gulf War to the Ukraine/Russia conflict. The International Atomic Energy Agency reports that nuclear-generated electricity between 1954 and 2016 created almost 400,000 tons of spent fuel rods, most of which are still in storage. We are stuck with few places to store nuke waste; although, Japan would like to dump Fukushima’s leftovers into the Pacific Ocean.
What if the Manhattan Project had been scrubbed? Surely, it would have saved more lives than Truman’s faulty estimate of 20,000 American soldiers simply by avoiding Hiroshima and Nagasaki alone. But, all the testing and the disasters — Windscale, Chernobyl, the Hanford fire, Three Mile Island, Rocky Flats — have killed millions and made us all downwinders.
“Oppenheimer” screens at the Crystal Theatre daily Thursday, Aug. 24 through Saturday, Aug. 26 at 7pm, and a captioned show starts at 5pm Sunday, Aug. 27.
Activists led by Franciscan monk Brother David Buer begin to cross the cattle guard at the entrance to the Nevada Nuclear Test Site into the arms of Wackenhut security guards, 1989. Photo by Amy Hadden Marsh
Western Shoshone spiritual man Johnny Bobb leads activists in prayer and song at the entrance to the Nevada National Security Site (formerly the Nevada Nuclear Test Site) during the annual Sacred Peace Walk, 2017. Nye County sheriff’s deputies watch and wait. Photo by Amy Hadden Marsh