Editorial, Il Fatto Quotidiano

The remarkable film “Oppenheimer” has rightly garnered a great deal of attention regarding the atomic bomb and the role of those who built it. Setting aside cinematic judgments about such a demanding and complex film, I would like to delve into the context of bomb construction and its implications. An aspect that was necessarily overlooked in the film is that the atomic bomb project was the culmination of forty years of revolutionary discoveries in physics. To narrow it down to the 1930s, we recall the discovery of the neutron by Chadwick in England, the discovery of artificial radioactivity by Joliot-Curie in France, the discovery of slow neutrons by Enrico Fermi and his team at Via Panisperna in Rome, the discovery of uranium fission by Hahn and Strassmann in Germany, and the discovery of plutonium along with uranium isotope separation in the United States. A fundamental part of the Manhattan Project was the extraordinary achievement in 1942: the production of a self-sustained and controlled nuclear fission chain reaction. This was the work of a team of scientists, with Fermi, “The Last Man Who Knew Everything,” as indicated in the title of a recent biography by D. Schwartz (Solferino), undoubtedly serving as the undisputed scientific leader.

Enrico Fermi, upon arriving in New York in January 1939, began working with Leó Szilàrd, a visionary physicist of Hungarian-Jewish origin who first conceived the possibility of a nuclear chain reaction. Unlike Fermi, Szilàrd had a keen interest in politics and the events of the war. In October 1939, Szilàrd convinced Albert Einstein to sign a famous letter addressed to the then American President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The letter warned of the danger of the Germans potentially constructing a nuclear weapon that could enable Hitler’s Germany to conquer the world. This letter initiated the Manhattan Project, which began quietly in 1939 but gained momentum after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, eventually involving over 130,000 people and costing nearly 2 billion dollars (equivalent to around 23 billion dollars today). General Leslie Groves (played by Matt Damon in the film) was the head of the entire project, while Robert Oppenheimer served as the scientific director, playing a pivotal role in its organization. The uncertainty regarding the project’s scale, scientific and technological challenges, and the underestimation of its cost were truly immense. Scientists were navigating uncharted territories that didn’t even exist in science fiction at the time.

The Manhattan Project was far from the feat of a single individual. Hundreds of scientists and thousands of technicians, construction workers, human computers (individuals who performed scientific calculations by hand), secretaries, and low-level military personnel contributed to the effort. Many of these thousands of individuals only learned the ultimate purpose of their work in August 1945 when President Truman announced the use of atomic bombs on Japanese cities. It’s hard to imagine that the Manhattan Project would have succeeded without the contributions of these indispensable key scientists who were essentially motivated by the fear that the Nazis would reach the finish line first.

Fermi’s work was undoubtedly fundamental to their success. Historians believe that without Fermi, the Project would have progressed more slowly and certainly in different ways. Fermi was indeed one of the key figures in the entire project. He didn’t invent the atomic bomb, but he and Szilárd certainly realized the nuclear reactor where the first chain reaction occurred, a crucial step for the entire enterprise. After the war, Fermi believed that “the known uranium deposits in the world can provide us with sufficient energy for thousands of years. Energy that will be available to all peoples of the Earth because the atom is international, and no nation or group of nations holds a monopoly on uranium, atomic science, or atomic facilities.” It was an unrealized hope for peace and international cooperation; as we have seen, things have taken a different course, and today, nuclear energy is on the decline due to cost and safety concerns.

Decisions regarding the use of the bomb after Germany’s surrender were made at the highest level. The President of the United States, Harry Truman, who succeeded Roosevelt in the spring of 1945, knew that he alone had the responsibility of deciding whether to use these weapons against enemy cities. Over the last 75 years, the belief has spread that dropping atomic bombs on two militarily insignificant cities, Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and Nagasaki three days later, was the only way to end World War II without a full-scale invasion of Japan, which would have cost hundreds of thousands of American lives and possibly millions of Japanese lives. According to this narrative, the bombs not only ended the war but did so in the most humane way possible. However, many historical records from both American and Japanese archives show that Japan would have surrendered in that August even if atomic bombs had not been used (Russia declared war on Japan on August 8, 1945), and President Truman and his closest advisors knew this.

The fateful decision to usher in the nuclear age radically altered the course of modern history and continues to threaten our very survival. Szilárd realized the danger of nuclear weapons earlier and more profoundly than most and unsuccessfully opposed the use of atomic bombs, even launching a petition with other scientists from the Project. After the war, Szilárd changed his field of study but, along with his old friend Einstein, founded the Atomic Scientists Committee. Today, there is talk of “tactical” nuclear weapons to distinguish them from “strategic” ones, which are much more powerful, and some observers believe they might be used in the war in Ukraine. However, those who have been involved in nuclear arms control remember that there are no small or large nuclear bombs; there are only weapons of mass destruction, which, if used, can lead to an Armageddon. As warned by the Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the very organization founded by Szilárd and Einstein, the world is now closer to nuclear annihilation than it has been since 1947. The Committee has wisely decided to include other weapons of mass destruction (such as biological weapons) and climate change as elements in assessing the risk of extinction. In 2023, the Clock was set at 90 seconds to midnight – the end of the world. Dark horizons lie ahead of us.