The Ruin of J. Robert Oppenheimer

and the birth of the modern arms race

 

A book by Priscilla J. McMillan

In 1949, after the Soviets acquired the atomic bomb, a group of top US nuclear scientists met in secrecy to discuss a possible crash program to create a new, more powerful type of nuclear weapon.  The group, meeting under the veil of government secrecy, concluded that such a weapon met no useful military purpose.

 

President Truman overruled the committee’s recommendation and ordered the scientists at Los Alamos go forward with a crash program to develop the hydrogen bomb.  Just a few years later, in the climate of fear generated by McCarthy, the government began a security hearing against the chair of the group that opposed the HBomb development, J Robert Oppenheimer.

 

This website was created for students and scholars to aid them in their research of the HBomb, Oppenheimer and the McCarthy era.