On an October day 81 years ago, a momentous letter was delivered to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Penned by Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard and signed by Albert Einstein, it was a stark warning regarding humankind’s future. The contents of the letter spoke of the possibility of a weapon of such immense power, capable of such terrifying destruction, that it must never come into the hands of an evil power. That the Nazis knew of such a weapon and were thought to be in the process of developing it, spurred the Allies into action. That weapon was the atomic bomb and the “action” was  the start of a program of intense research into nuclear fission in the United States. Informally and in secrecy, in the autumn of 1939, the Manhattan Project was born. The world has lived under an atomic shadow ever since.

Much new writing and research has been done in recent years regarding the development and use of the first atomic bomb. After German and Soviet archives were opened in the early 1990s, it was revealed that the Nazis resolutely did not have the capacity for developing nuclear weapons and many among the Allied top command knew this very early in the war. “Fallout, Conspiracy, Cover-up, and the Deceitful Case for the Atom Bomb” by Peter Watson dismantles the widely held belief that the Manhattan Project was purely a race against the Nazis. Several scientists and army engineers working on the project, including General Leslie Groves, knew that there was another far-reaching objective: to intimidate and eventually beat out the brutal Stalinist Soviet regime in the nuclear arms race. “Countdown 1945: The Extraordinary Story of the Atomic Bomb and the 116 Days That Changed the World” by Chris Wallace explores not so much the “why” behind the use of the atomic bomb as the “how.” Although covering previously well-trod territory, the book nonetheless reads like a fast-moving piece of historical fiction at times. To this day, it is stunning that the U.S. and its ragtag band of scientists could develop a doomsday machine and utilize it within such a short time frame. Continue reading “Literary Links: The Atomic Shadow”