American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer

This chapter demonstrates that J. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Manhattan Project laboratory that developed the first atomic bomb, was not a mythical hero but a damaged and limited human being. It stresses that his main problem was his prodigious brainpower, which made it hard for him to mix with other people, or even recognise them as the same species. His wealth was another isolating factor. The chapter narrates that the Oppenheimers were German-Jewish immigrants who had made a fortune in the garment business. Afflicted by social guilt, the chapter also analyzes how Oppenheimer, as a student and young academic, sought the company of communists and subscribed to party funds. But he was also ashamed of his Jewish background and craved acceptance by the Establishment. The chapter digs into his ‘triumph’ in July 1945 after the successful testing of the first atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert. It then assesses how he succumbed to the lure of the Establishment, and went along with the boneheaded generals and horror-comic politicians in countenancing a preventive nuclear airstrike that would obliterate every main Soviet city.