I grew up in Los Alamos and my dad did bomb tests in the Southern Nevada desert. The interesting thing is that while I was growing up, I never heard or participated in a conversation that raised the kind of moral issues that are raised in this movie. From Addison Graham at realclearwire.com:
“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
(Following is a text version of the July 19, 2023, episode of the RealClearDefense “Hot Wash” podcast with Addison Graham and John Sorenson.)
This weekend, thousands of Americans will go to movie theaters across the country to watch Christopher Nolan’s newest film, “Oppenheimer.” A star-studded cast of talented actors, including Cillian Murphy, Florence Pugh, Matt Damon, and Emily Blunt, will bring to the big screen the life of Robert Oppenheimer, the brilliant theoretical physicist often called “the father of the atomic bomb.”
The story of Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project is not merely a celebration of American ingenuity. It’s a story that altered the course of human history – a history we now inherit.
Fascinated by Oppenheimer’s story, Christopher Nolan sat down in the spring of 2021 to read “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer.” It’s a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin on the life and career of a man who was treated both as an American hero and later as a traitor.
Stalin said do it, use your weapon, thanks to the Rosenbergs he knew all about it.
The Einstein letter to comrade commissar FDR in 1939 is what really started the arms race.
The heavy water factory raid in Norway by resistance commandos shows just how important it was to stop der Adolf from getting it first before he could wipe out the City of London.
Watched a documentary years ago where they retrieved some barrels from a Norwegian fjord that were originally on a sunken ferry.