MR. OPPENHEIMER AND THE BOMB

     The past month's unrelenting succession of assignments prevented me from posting about the weekly readings in a more timely fashion, but they did not prevent me from thinking about them.  Two weeks ago we finished a gauzy, almost hagiographical film chronicling J. Robert Oppenheimer's work at Los Alamos; this was contrasted with readings from Stanley Goldberg and Thomas Hughes, both of whom assign far greater credit (or blame) to the organizational structure of the American industrial complex than to Oppenheimer's personal genius.  Goldberg in particular attributes the success of the Manhattan Project not to "the technical competence and ingenuity of the scientists and engineers" but to "a very large, complex industrial organization" ("General Groves and the Atomic West," 39). 
     Yet for all the undeniable logic of this systematic view, Oppenheimer remains an alluring figure.  His combination of acknowledged scientific brilliance with full measures of common sense and administrative ability was rare enough in itself to warrant attention, if not the near-mythical status accorded to him by the filmmakers.  On a more esoteric level, his unabashed patriotism and leftward-tilting politics seemed to symbolize the unfulfilled promise of the wartime alliance with the Soviet Union--a promise that was completely false, but no less attractive to a generation of New Deal intellectuals as fascinated by the promise of the socialist utopia as they were repulsed by the horrors of its fascist counterpart.
     Oppenheimer's own fall from grace after the war mirrored the abrupt end of the alliance and the rapid descent into nuclear-armed hostility--a standoff for which Oppenheimer himself had knowingly set the stage.  This is perhaps the saddest and most compelling facet of the soft-spoken physicist: his quiet awareness, and even careful consideration, of the true enormity of his great Project.  Thus did he quote the Bhagavad Ghita in recalling the first test of the atom bomb at Trinity Site: