The Doomsday Clock has been moved to just 89 seconds before midnight, a symbol of nuclear catastrophe. This clock measures the likelihood of a man-made global disaster, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the non-profit organization that has run it continuously since 1945, when it was founded by Albert Einstein and several former Manhattan Project scientists.

In public opinion, the atomic bomb has represented for physicists a kind of primordial sin: sorcerer’s apprentices who opened the doors of the atomic age. According to the official narrative, it was they themselves who gave the green light to the use of the weapon in order to traumatize the enemy, force unconditional surrender, and thereby save the lives of about a million young Americans—the number of casualties supposedly expected in the planned invasion of Japan. But how could great physicists like J. Robert Oppenheimer or Enrico Fermi bear the weight of such responsibility, with 100,000 deaths caused by a single bomb?

In the case of the atomic bombs, the discussion has focused above all on the role of physicists—and in Italy, on that of Fermi, a leading figure in the Manhattan Project. Yet, eighty years later, thanks to the release of many documents and the experience of other manipulations of public opinion, it is now clear that official versions of historical and military events must be critically examined. The story of the use of atomic weapons is no exception, as described in great detail in the monumental work of American historian Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb (Vintage Books, 1996).

Enrico Fermi and Leó Szilárd were among the main protagonists of the Manhattan Project. Two very different personalities: Szilárd, a Hungarian Jew, eccentric and politically engaged; Fermi, on the other hand, truly embodied “the last man who knew everything,” as the title of the best biography dedicated to him (Solferino, 2018) reads. After their 1939 experiments demonstrating the feasibility of a self-sustaining chain reaction of uranium fission, Szilárd persuaded Einstein to sign a letter to U.S. President Roosevelt urging the funding of an atomic bomb project, motivated by the fear that Germany—the leading scientific and technological power at the time—might get there first.

After Germany’s surrender in April 1945, however, it was clear that Japan was close to capitulation, especially in the face of the Soviet Union’s entry into the war. As Szilárd already noted in May 1945, Secretary of State Byrnes was not motivated by the need to use the bomb to win the war: he knew, as did the rest of the government, that Japan was already defeated and would be forced to surrender within months. His concern was rather the expansion of Russian influence in Europe: possessing and demonstrating the bomb would make Russia “more manageable.” Szilárd understood that the decision had in fact already been taken by the time the Soviets reached Berlin. He nonetheless attempted to resist, promoting a petition against the use of the weapon, for the record.

Officially, an Interim Committee was established, supported by a panel of four scientific advisers, including Fermi. But as General Groves, the military head of the Manhattan Project, later recalled in his memoirs: “The story that the Interim Committee had any influence on the decision to use the atomic bomb… is simply nonsense. The committee was carefully chosen and composed only of civilians, so as to exclude any claim that the military wanted to govern the country.”

Despite this, the narrative of using the bomb to prevent the invasion of Japan and save a million American lives has remained ingrained in the collective imagination. Fermi himself believed he had helped to “cut short a war.” In reality, the use of the bombs marked the beginning of a new conflict: the Cold War with the Soviet Union.

Physicists participated in the project to build the bomb for understandable reasons: fear that Nazi Germany would be the first to succeed. Once it was clear that uranium fission was possible, it became only a matter of time as to who would get there first, and Soviet physicists, too, entered the race. But they bore no responsibility for the decision to use the weapon.

Today, the memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has little to do with the past. What remains pressing, instead, is the manipulation of public opinion by ruling elites—a practice more present than ever.

Publishjed on Il Fatto Quotidiano