By Nitya Chakraborty
British-American filmmaker Christopher Nolan’s latest film ‘Oppenheimer’ is creating waves in the cinema halls all over the world, including India, bringing to the fore once again the history behind the making of the atom bomb that was dropped by the Americans on Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. The second world war was ending, Germany had by then surrendered, Hitler had died, and only the Japanese were holding back.
United States President Harry Truman ordered the dropping of the bomb on the two populated cities of Japan by arguing with his aides that this would only lead to the surrender of Japan; otherwise Japan would continue the war costing lives of thousands of American soldiers. Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the globally reputed physics professor of Uniiversity of California, Berkeley was chosen as the head of the bomb project under the supervision of the U.S. military and the project started at the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico area.
.Robert chose his own team which worked day and night to produce the bomb during the period 1943 to 1945 June. The Americans had the information that Germany was also rushing with the manufacturing of this destructive weapon under the leadership of Dr. Hisenberg, a great nuclear physicist known to Oppenheimer. This was a race against time, but finally, Germany could not make it. Manhattan Project team organised the atomic bomb test on July 16, 1945, successfully. The test was named ‘Trinity’.
Oppenheimer was initially against the dropping of the bomb on Japan since the Nazis had surrendered to the Russians and the allied forces in May 1945 but, he was overruled, it was a decision for the military and the U.S. Government to take. He was made to understand that his job was over after completing his task. When Oppenheimer met the President Truman soon after the dropping of the bombs and said, “Sir, I have blood in my hands”, Truman tersely said: “Nobody remembers who made the bomb, they remember who dropped the bomb”.
Oppenheimer became the hero of American people overnight from 1945 onwards but his travails also started simultaneously as the government as also some officials of the Atomic Energy Commission were bent on proving that the great scientist was a security risk and his connections with the communists should be investigated by the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities (HUAC). This HUAC was specifically set up in 1938 to probe the suspected connections of top scientists, academics as also film and theatre people with the Communist Party of the USA.
Oppenheimer and many of his close members of his family, colleagues and friends were under FBI radar from 1939 onwards, but their stature and the importance of them in American nuclear programme compelled the U.S. establishment to delay the action. The process was initiated after the successful dropping of the bomb and isolation of Oppenheimer from his fellow scientists including his own recruits in Manhattan Project who were demanding cessation of further bomb project work including manufacture of more powerful hydrogen bomb.
Oppenheimer resigned from Los Alamos Laboratory in October 1945 and went back to his professorship in Berkeley. In 1947, he was made the Director of the reputed Institute of Advanced Study attached to Princeton University. He retired from the Institute in 1966. He died on February 18, 1967 from oral cancer before he was 63. In 1947, Oppenheimer’s security clearance was not renewed, which was a big insult to the scientist, as he was not allowed to go through secret papers. He resigned from the advisory committee of AEC in 1949. In 1953 and 1954, he was called by the HUAC and the so called investigation turned into a trial when he was asked umpteen times by the prosecutors and the HUAC members about his loyalty to America and whether he had passed any information to the Soviets. The HUAC hearings ended on May 6, 1954. Nothing disloyal was found against him. He was declared a loyal American but his security clearance was not given. The entire exercise was done to denigrate and humiliate him before the American people.
But the US authorities were not successful in tarnishing his image. He came out as a scientist who had a vision of a war-free world. The reputed science historian Patrick McGrath wrote after the hearings: “Scientists and administrators such as Edward Teller, Lewis Struss and Ernest Lawrence, with their full-throated miltarism and anti-communism, pushed American scientists and their institutions towards a nearly complete and subservient devotion to military interests.” Globally most of the academics belonging to the scientific community stood by the side of the American Prometheus who was the target of the U.S. military establishment.
In order to understand the father of atom bomb and the American Prometheus, a look at the milieu of America’s political and social life beginning 1930s the period of Great Depression is essential. The period of utter misery, unemployment and poverty following Great Depression was being replaced by a period of hope and empowerment of common people following the election of liberal Democrat Franklin D Roosevelt as the new President in 1932. Soon, the New Deal was announced offering a big succour to the impoverished Americans hit by the Great Depression. But at the global level, there was a sea change.
The Nazis led by Adolf Hitler took power in Germany and started persecution of Jews and hounded the communists as also the other social democrats. The threat of another war in Europe loomed large. The communists and other parties and people opposed to fascism came together in many countries. The Comintern, the arm of the international communist movement came out with its thesis of forming broad front against the fascists in 1935-36. In America also leftism became popular and new dealers of the Democratic Party did not mind working with the leftists including the communists to fight for common causes.
Dr. Oppenheimer became close to the communists during this period in Berkeley. He was always a person with deep empathy and compassion for the common people. He and his younger brother Frank discussed about the political situation a number of times. The Spanish civil war turned him into a bit partisan. He not only contributed openly to the funds for helping the Spanish communists who were at the forefront of fighting the fascists led by General Franco, he talked to others also for funds. He was a close friend of many communist leaders of San Francisco and the Bay Area at that time. His house at Berkeley was the preferred venue for adda for many left and liberals of that period. After Oppenheimer’s marriage to Katherine, better known as Kitty, the power couple was the major attraction in the leading parties in San Fransisco They were known as good hosts. Just not from academic circles, lefties belonging to Hollywood also came to enjoy partying with Oppenheimer couple.
Two famous plays staged in American theatres soon after the HUAC hearings, vividly portrayed the McCarthy period and the witch hunt carried out against the leading intellectuals in the post second world war years. The first was the famous U.S. playwright Lilian Hellman’s ‘The Children Hour’ and great dramatist Arthur Miller’s ‘The Crucible’.. Miller in his play portrayed a dramatized and fictionalized story of the Salem witch hunt of 1692 in America. Through this, in the form of allegory, he showed how the McCarthy-led HUAC was persecuting intellectuals across the streams blaming them to have communist connection. Miller himself was called by the HUAC, but he did not testify about his friends in Hollywood who were connected to the Communist Party.
Christopher Nolan’s film has put the ‘father of atom bomb’ in proper perspective and shown in cinematic terms the scientist’s own battle with self, friends, family, and the military industrial complex. Was J Robert Oppenheimer a communist?. This question haunted not only the military but also his close friends. He was certainly never a member of the U.S. Communist Party but he shared his feelings about the causes the Party was fighting then. He enjoyed the company of the leftists, including the hardcore communists. Oppenheimer was a great party hopper. He and his wife Kitty enjoyed hosting parties of leftwing liberals in those days. From Hollywood also, lot of top writers who belonged to the blacklist of the McCarthy era attended his party.
Oppenheimer was a bit narcissistic. He was in awe of himself. He knew that he was the magnet in the party attended by the brilliant academics as also activists. Most of the wives of his friends with brain and beauty fancied him. Once his well-wisher and colleague Ernest Lawrence told him: “Robert why you are always having your lefties friends and spending time with them? Have some friends of opposite stream also.” Oppenheimmer reportedly replied: “I can’t talk to the right wingers for more than ten minutes.”
Oppenheimer especially felt for the Popular Front cause in Spain in the late 1930s. He made maximum contribution to the fighters of the Spanish Civil War through the US Communist Party, many of whose members went to Spain as volunteers. He had another special personal reason after he married Kitty in 1940. Kitty’s second husband Joseph Dallet died in Spain in the first phase of civil war in 1937. Kitty and her second husband were both party full-timers once, but Kitty left him for some time when poverty as a party member was too much. Very soon, they were united again before Dallet left for Span to fight against the fascists. Kitty wanted to go to Spain also as an ambulance driver later.. But before she started from Paris, the news came that her husband had been killed. Kitty was unconsolable when she was informed by her comrade. She carried a guilt within herself that Dallet had a premature death because of her leaving him earlier..
Oppenheimer was very sensitive to this side of Kitty. Once while the bomb-making process was on and he was hopeful of successfully testing shortly, he told one of his closes friends: “If only the Spanish Republicans could have held on for some more time, we could have sent both Hitler and Franco together to the grave.” He was idealistic. Hitler died of suicide but Franco reigned for another 30 years after the war ended, with the support of America. Oppenheimer was opposed to many of the policies of the Soviet Union and the Communst Party in his last years, but he always helped his old acquaintances of that Left period whenever they sought some assistance. He was a left-wing humanist till the end. After his death, The Times of London called him ‘quintessential Renaissance Man’, but the New York Times obit was far better. It said: “The world has lost a noble spirit of a genius who brought together poetry and science.” (IPA Service)
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