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Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? by Paul Gauguin, 1897'Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to man. For this he was chained to a rock and tortured for eternity.' These are the opening words of the 2023 film Oppenheimer written for screen and directed by Christopher Nolan, based on the book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. The first known documentation of the myths of Prometheus and Pandora are in Theogony and Work and Days written around 700BC by the Greek didactic poet Hesiod. Prometheus was a supremely clever Titan who stole fire from Zeus and gave it to mortals so that they would survive. In 1939 scientists in the United States began to investigate if the newly recognised fission process could be harnessed for military purposes. By 1940 it was known that Nazi Germany had the same idea. Unlike the Nazi research program in which scientists had to compete with each other, in the Manhattan Project and later at Los Alamos under Oppenheimer's direction, scientists from Britain, the American scientists and scientists who were refugees from fascist regimes all co-operated, sharing knowledge and resources, as well as living together. By time the US had developed the bomb, Germany had surrendered unconditionally and it was found that they had not been close to developing a nuclear weapon. However, though to all effect defeated, Japan had not surrendered and fearing that an invasion by land would be horrific, President Truman wanted the bomb tested in the desert of New Mexico before he met with Stalin at the Potsdam Conference. He needed to have something as leverage. At the time it was not known that information about the bomb had been secretly passed on to Moscow by the physicist Klaus Fuchs. While still at the conference Truman demanded an unconditional surrender from Japan. The rejection of this ultimatum resulted in the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Oppenheimer named the test site Trinity, an allusion to a John Donne poem, Sonnet XIV which begins: 'Batter my heart, three person'd God'. Another of the Holy Sonnets, VII, begins thus: At the round earth's imagined corners blow Before Roosevelt's death, before Truman became President, before the Potsdam Conference: On January 6, 1945, a tired and frail President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave what would be his last State of the Union Address to the 79th United States Congress. As Anglo-American-Soviet forces were closing in on Berlin, the President sent out a message warning the nations around the globe that the peace of the world can only be made and kept if countries are willing to respect, tolerate, and understand one another’s opinions and feelings.
Roosevelt could sense that Hitler’s “Thousand Year Reich” was crumbling rapidly and he knew that further decisions between his allies and him about military strategy would no longer be necessary. Instead, the leaders of the victorious nations would soon have to sit down to present their agendas, give their opinions, and make political decisions in a collective attempt to secure a lasting peace in a world without Hitler and the Nazis. https://potsdamconference.com/the-potsdam-conference-1945-introduction/ 'You can lift the stone without being ready for the snake that’s revealed.' This adage was spoken twice, though with different meanings, in the film Oppenheimer.'... we have made a thing, a most terrible weapon, that has altered abruptly and profoundly the nature of the world. We have made a thing that, by all standards of the world we grew up in, is an evil thing. By so doing, by our participation in making it possible to make these things, we have raised again the question of whether science is good for man ...'J. Robert Oppenheimer, Address to the American Philosophical Society, delivered 16 November 1945, University of Pennsylvania, PAhttps://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/robertoppenheimeratomicbomb.htm'Science has profoundly altered the conditions of man's life, both
materially and in ways of the Spirit. As well. It's extended the range
of questions in which man has a choice. It has extended man's freedom to
make significant decisions. No one can predict what vast new continents
of knowledge the future of science will discover. But we know that as
long as men are free to ask what they will, free to say what they think,
free to think what they must, science will never regress, and freedom
itself will never be wholly lost.' 'The main challenge of the 80 years since the Trinity atomic test has been that we do not possess the cognitive, spiritual, and emotional capabilities necessary to successfully manage nuclear weapons without the risk of catastrophic failure.' Jeffrey Goldberg, August 2025, 'Nuclear Roulette', The Atlantic 'Over the past 80 years humanity has been saved repeatedly by individuals who possessed unusually good judgment in situations of appalling stress.' One was Stanislov Petrov when he responded with skepticism to an attack warning. In September 1983 he was the duty officer at a Soviet command centre when there was a report that the US had launched five missiles at Soviet targets. He knew that the detection system was new and not fully tested. He also understood that an attack would consist of a lot more than five missiles. It was later discovered that a Soviet satellite has misinterpreted the interplay of clouds and sun over Montana. Another was John Kelly who served as White House chief of staff for part of Trump's first term, during the period when Trump was actively taunting Kim Jong Un. Somehow Kelly talked Trump into stepping away from that path and instead becoming, on Kelly's suggestion, the first president to positively reach out to North Korea. Herbert Hoover, Republican President 1929-1933, wrote in an open letter in 1951: 'The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul.' |
