Oppenheimer Movie Review

[dietert1]

They made the bomb since they were afraid of others having it first and then using it. Similar idea. They had no other choice.
In the end US leadership became the only ones who used nuclear weapons against humans (until today). Once more no other choice..

Regards, Dieter

[peter-h]

I recommend a book by Max Hastings: Nemesis. It covers the issue well.

Historians will debate for ever the point at which Japan would have capitulated "eventually".

[mendip_discovery]

There are also advantages to less security, or at least less classification.  UK industries were held back compared to US ones after World War 2 because the UK kept so much more wartime development classified.

You mean like the computer made by some post office people and a great mathematician.

Then there was the issue around Frank Whittle's little project.

Movies/ Film are made to Entertain the masses & rake in a lot of Moola for the producers

Yeah, that is working great at the moment. Can't wait for the reboot of BttF.

btw Tora!Tora!Tora! is a great film. I love all the older war films, they told a story and helped me get a general idea of what happened. I will hold judgement on this film as I may watch it and really enjoy it.

[DavidAlfa]

Once more no other choice..

I hope my irony detector worked...
Japan was already in ruins, nothing left except the pride and the honour built in their cultural roots, they had already accepted a conditional surrender, but US wanted it all at any costs, it was like beating a terminal person during his last breaths.
Nuke bombing should be considered War Crimes, but no problem because there was not Geneva Convention back then .
Unlike told in the film, Tokyo wasn't nuked because it was already flattened down by previous bombs, there was nothing left to destroy and show the nuke power, everything there had to be rebuilt after the war, including the ancient buildings.


The Air Force kept bombing, cities were dissapearing day after day, they literally had to beg to have something to drop the nuke at.

[David Hess]

Oppenheimer has a lot more to answer for.

[helius]

That's completely correct. The motivation for the two atomic bombs was as a "demonstration" to chasten Stalin (who cancelled plans for a Soviet invasion of northern Japan after Nagasaki). It had nothing to do with defeating the Japanese, although the civilians who survived the blasts were useful test subjects for studying radiation effects. The Manhattan Project itself was proposed to reduce the risk of Hitler building and using an atomic bomb: but in the end, after SHAFE had intelligence on the Germans (including Heisenberg's) ignorance about all the practical issues involved, so disposing of the threat of a Nazi bomb, the project was pushed on to completion and its patrons wanted a battlefield demonstration.

You see the same kind of thinking today, revealed by leaked State Department memos concerning the Ukraine SMO. The NATO policy was designed as a show of force to deter China exerting power in the Pacific; the prospects of actual victory on the battlefield aren't part of the calculation.

John Pilger made a much better documentary about nuclear weapons development.

[vad]

The justification for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was to prevent the Allies from having to invade Japan by land, which could have resulted in an estimated million deaths, including casualties on both sides. Additionally, it spared millions of Japanese from potential enslavement under the Soviet Union, had Russian soldiers invaded the island.

The number of civilian casualties in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was comparable to the casualties caused by conventional air raids on other cities during that time. Nothing out of ordinary that might have impressed Joseph Stalin, who was used to murdering millions without a hiccup.

It is a tragic reality that in war, civilian casualties occur, but it is essential to remember that those responsible for initiating the conflict bear the greatest responsibility for all the lives lost. The US did not attack Japan unprovoked; it was Japan that initiated hostilities. Therefore, Japanese leaders are accountable for all the casualties that followed.

Similarly, in the case of Ukraine and Russia, it was Russia that invaded Ukraine in 2014. The Russian regime must be held fully responsible for all the lives lost during this war.

In summary, while the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had devastating consequences, they were undertaken to avoid an even greater loss of life through a potential land invasion.

[langwadt]

That's completely correct. The motivation for the two atomic bombs was as a "demonstration" to chasten Stalin (who cancelled plans for a Soviet invasion of northern Japan after Nagasaki). It had nothing to do with defeating the Japanese, although the civilians who survived the blasts were useful test subjects for studying radiation effects. The Manhattan Project itself was proposed to reduce the risk of Hitler building and using an atomic bomb: but in the end, after SHAFE had intelligence on the Germans (including Heisenberg's) ignorance about all the practical issues involved, so disposing of the threat of a Nazi bomb, the project was pushed on to completion and its patrons wanted a battlefield demonstration.

it ended the war in the pacific and since then everyone knows starting world war isn't an option

stopping the project thinking that then no one else would figure out how to build a nuclear bomb would have monumentally stupid

[nctnico]

That's completely correct. The motivation for the two atomic bombs was as a "demonstration" to chasten Stalin (who cancelled plans for a Soviet invasion of northern Japan after Nagasaki). It had nothing to do with defeating the Japanese, although the civilians who survived the blasts were useful test subjects for studying radiation effects. The Manhattan Project itself was proposed to reduce the risk of Hitler building and using an atomic bomb: but in the end, after SHAFE had intelligence on the Germans (including Heisenberg's) ignorance about all the practical issues involved, so disposing of the threat of a Nazi bomb, the project was pushed on to completion and its patrons wanted a battlefield demonstration.

it ended the war in the pacific and since then everyone knows starting world war isn't an option

stopping the project thinking that then no one else would figure out how to build a nuclear bomb would have monumentally stupid

There are different opinions on whether the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki actually ended the war. After all, the Japanese where not very willing to give up and fought fiercely. The two nuclear bombs only affected a relatively small area of the country and it would have taken many more nuclears bombs to deliver a serious blow. Some say the Japanese would have surrendered to the US anyway because the Japanese feared the Russians attacking & occupying Japan more. History has shown that Russia is hard to beat due to the sheer numerical advantage where it comes to foot soldiers; the Japanese would not have stood any chance. In WWII the Russians lost most soldiers by far (around 8 times more compared to Japan). And the Russians where still standing strong...

[HuronKing]

The most sobering statistic about the US military's expectation of an invasion of Japan is the fact that, to this day, the Purple Hearts manufactured in preparation for the invasion are still being issued to American servicemembers (approximately 500,000 leftover by the end of WW2):
https://www.americanheritage.com/half-million-purple-hearts

One other thing that often gets brought up is this passage from the US Strategic Bombing Survey:

Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.

But, the war ended in August. I cannot fathom a scenario for either Japan or the United States in which it is preferable for the war to drag on through August... September... October... under relentless conventional bombing, with a naval starvation blockade of the Japanese home islands, and 1 million+ Japanese soldiers still fighting in China.

Bringing it back to Oppenheimer himself, he recognized the incongruity of everyone expecting him to feel guilty about developing the bomb when one city after another was being leveled by the USAAF as a matter of policy. He said later in life,

The whole damn thing [his security hearing] was a farce, and these people are trying to make a tragedy out of it. ... I had never said that I had regretted participating in a responsible way in the making of the bomb. I said that perhaps he [Kipphardt] had forgotten Guernica, Coventry, Hamburg, Dresden, Dachau, Warsaw, and Tokyo; but I had not, and that if he found it so difficult to understand, he should write a play about something else.

PS
I had the opportunity to meet Col. Paul Tibbets (pilot of the Enola Gay) as a youngster. He said he never regretted his role in ending the war.

[dietert1]

Todays news are "Explosives discovered at Zaporizhzhia plant" and Israel is becoming a nuclear monster similar to Iran or North Korea. It all started in Los Alamos, in Hiroshima and in Nagasaki. Nothing to be proud of.

Regards, Dieter

[SiliconWizard]

They made the bomb since they were afraid of others having it first and then using it. Similar idea. They had no other choice.
In the end US leadership became the only ones who used nuclear weapons against humans (until today). Once more no other choice..

Regards, Dieter

If you say so. We always have a choice.
But that's way beyond discussing a movie anyway.

[ledtester]

As reported in CNN... the US flag isn't correct for 1945:

[armandine2]

The cinema was packed, and when I came out I heard many say the likes of “that was dumb”, “that’s not what I expected”, “I didn’t get it”, “weird” etc.

That's going to be my response, when I see Barbie 

[Circlotron]

ABC radio had a good 52 minute long article on Oppenheimer's life.

https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/latenightlive/oppenheimer/102625158

[coppice]

Todays news are "Explosives discovered at Zaporizhzhia plant" and Israel is becoming a nuclear monster similar to Iran or North Corea. It all started in Los Alamos, in Hiroshima and in Nagasaki. Nothing to be proud of.

Regards, Dieter

Nothing to be ashamed of, either. The positions of Israel, Iran, North Korea (or did you mean Chick Corea?) and others would be pretty much the same today, with or without Oppenheimer and the team around him. You need an extreme level of arrogance to think progress depends on any one person or group. We celebrate the first, but the second is never far behind.

[David Hess]

There are different opinions on whether the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki actually ended the war. After all, the Japanese where not very willing to give up and fought fiercely. The two nuclear bombs only affected a relatively small area of the country and it would have taken many more nuclears bombs to deliver a serious blow.

The Japanese could not know how many bombs we had.

Some say the Japanese would have surrendered to the US anyway because the Japanese feared the Russians attacking & occupying Japan more.

The two dropped bombs could have provided the excuse the Japanese needed to unconditionally surrender before the Russians got involved without excessive humiliation.

[helius]

Rather, an extreme level of arrogance would more properly be defined as the stolid certainty that history is determined by impersonal forces; at one time this was called "dialectical materialism" and was the offical party line of a large swath of the planet.

[dietert1]

Today i learned that Oppenheimer and many others at the Manhatten project were jewish. Seems like they joined in order to nuke Hitler for revenge, yet they were late and the Soviets had already taken Berlin. Then unexpected things happened.

Regards, Dieter

[coppice]

Rather, an extreme level of arrogance would more properly be defined as the stolid certainty that history is determined by impersonal forces; at one time this was called "dialectical materialism" and was the offical party line of a large swath of the planet.

That makes zero sense. The Hegelian idea of a natural path of history, which uses people and then discards them has nothing to do with the block stacking nature of scientific and engineering progress. Unless there is a huge setback - e.g. the dark ages that followed the Romans - at any point in time most of the blocks are in place for something new, and there are always smart motivated people trying to put more blocks into place. They might succeed next year, they might do it in 10 years, but they won't take an awfully long time.

[EEVblog]

I discovered a new type of rabbid comment fanboy, Christopher Nolan fans 

[DavidAlfa]

I can't undertand how people switch sides so easily.
No doubt his last films were a bit flimsy, but how about Memento, The Dark Knight, Inception, Interstellar, Dunkerque... most were absolute masterpieces!

[KE5FX]

The Prestige puts them all to shame, IMO.

[HuronKing]

The Prestige puts them all to shame, IMO.

I once made my lab students watch that for extra credit. 

[HuronKing]

I can't undertand how people switch sides so easily.
No doubt his last films were a bit flimsy, but how about Memento, The Dark Knight, Inception, Interstellar, Dunkerque... most were absolute masterpieces!

"You're only as good as your last movie."