This summer marks the sixtieth anniversary of the Allied victory in the Second World War. That victory followed the deployment of a terrible weapon of unprecedented power, a product of American science used against Japan at Hiroshima and again at Nagasaki. The use of the atomic bomb ended the world war and set the stage for the Cold War. It publicly began the nuclear age, an age which confounded every prediction as the world survived a massive arms race, the madness of Mutual Assured Destruction, and the global proliferation of nuclear technology. Today, nations can destroy one another from afar and terrorists can devastate cities; these are the post-atomic realities we must live with forevermore.<\/p>\n
The decision to use the bomb has always been controversial: Would Japan have surrendered without it? What justification was there for dropping the bomb so soon on Nagasaki? Should President Truman have ordered a public demonstration before using the bomb on populated areas? To what extent was Truman motivated by a desire to keep the Soviet Union from invading Japan? Yet despite the controversy and the second-guessing, there has been very little reconsideration by the general American public of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yes, there have been some serious moral reevaluations as well as some works of rank historical revisionism. But the overall sentiment of the American people, sixty years on, remains one of simple relief that the bomb ended the war.<\/p>\n
And what of the scientists who built the bomb? Most of them joined the atomic effort for noble reasons. And after the war, many of them became serious advocates or activists for or against atomic weapons. But during<\/em> the war, in the midst of the research, they were overcome by the thrill of scientific discovery \u2014 compelled by the sheer novelty of their work but unable to think clearly about its implications. \u201cDon\u2019t bother me with your conscientious scruples,\u201d Enrico Fermi told some of his colleagues, \u201cafter all, the thing\u2019s superb physics.\u201d Richard Feynman described the trancelike quality of research and development: \u201cYou see, what happened to me \u2014 what happened to the rest of us \u2014 is we started for a good reason, then you\u2019re working very hard to accomplish something and it\u2019s a pleasure, it\u2019s excitement. And you stop thinking, you know, you just stop<\/em>.\u201d Gerard DeGroot\u2019s new book The Bomb: A Life<\/a><\/em><\/strong> offers these and numerous other examples of the amoral lust for atomic discovery. The scientists and engineers who made the bomb were brilliant and they helped win the war, but they were the original \u201cnuclear giants and ethical infants.\u201d<\/p>\n As the behavior and beliefs of the physicists working on the Manhattan Project make clear, scientific insights do not imply moral wisdom. The lesson is simple: A scientist in the thick of things, in thrall to discovery \u2014 whether researching weapons, cloning, or anything else \u2014 cannot be relied upon for sound policy judgment or \u201cconscientious scruples.\u201d This grave task always resides, in the end, with statesmen and citizens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This summer marks the sixtieth anniversary of the Allied victory in the Second World War. That victory followed the deployment of a terrible weapon of unprecedented power, a product of American science used against Japan at Hiroshima and again at Nagasaki. The use of the atomic bomb ended the world war and set the stage for the Cold War. It publicly began the nuclear age, an age which confounded every prediction as the world survived a massive arms race, the madness of Mutual Assured Destruction, and the global proliferation of nuclear technology. Today, nations can destroy one another from afar…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"template":"","article_type":[4646],"noteworthy_people":[],"topics":[4999,5046],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/9819"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/article"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/9819\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"article_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article_type?post=9819"},{"taxonomy":"noteworthy_people","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/noteworthy_people?post=9819"},{"taxonomy":"topics","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topics?post=9819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}