Oppenheimer: How I learnt to stop worrying and win an Academy award
The curse of brilliance
After my morning session watching Barbie it was time for an evening watching what could only be described as the sheer stupidity of man.
The story is one of a handful of Jews, from Einstein to Oppenheimer and how they deal with the morality of their discoveries( and their fame) as the United States marches towards the Atomic bomb. All the while, Jews are being rounded up and slaughtered on the other side of the world and it is Hitler’s distrust of German Jewish scientists, leading the world in physics at that time, that hamstrings the Nazi’s efforts and allows America to pull ahead.
The recruiting and rounding up of scientists and those fleeing Nazi Germany as it expanded, is touched on several times in the movie. But I think even then it is understated and include the following to show the extent of the contribution:
In his book The Jews and the Japanese: The Successful Outsiders, Ben-Ami Shillony devoted a chapter to the Jewish scientists who played a central role in the development of nuclear physics and later in the construction and testing of the first atomic bomb. He correctly traced the well-known facts that among the leading nuclear physics scientists, there was an inordinately large number of Jews (Shillony 1992: 190–3). Many of them were German, Hungarian, Polish, Austrian and even Italian Jews. Due to the rise of virulent anti-Semitism in Germany, especially after the Nazi takeover of that country in 1933, most of the German-Jewish scientists found themselves unemployed, with no laboratory facilities or even citi- zenship, and had to seek refuge in other European countries. Eventually, many of them settled in the United States. A similar fate awaited Jewish scientists in other central European countries that came under German occupation, such as Austria, or German influence as in the case of Hungary. Within a short time, many of these scientists who found refuge in America were highly instrumental in the exceedingly elabo- rate and complex research and work that eventually culminated in the construction of the atomic bomb at various research centres and, since 1943, at the Los Alamos site. In this facility there were a large number of Jews occupying the highest positions. Of the heads of sections in charge of the Manhattan Project, at least eight were Jewish, led by the man in charge of the operation, J. Robert Oppenheimer. Among them Edward Teller, Eugene Wigner, Leo Szilard, all Hungarian Jews, stood out. From Vienna came Victor Weisskopf. Max Born, James Franck, Hans Bethe and Otto Frisch were born in Germany. Some of them studied under Niels Bohr, a Dane whose mother was Jewish. Others were native-born Americans — Isadore Rabi, Richard Feynman and Eugene Rabinowitz. Joseph Rotblatt came from Poland via Britain (Jungk 1958: 19–34).
Other well-known scientists involved in the development of nuclear power were also Jews; Albert Einstein led the list and he was the one who, at the insistence of Leo Szilard, wrote in August 1939 the famous letter that alerted President Roosevelt to the military uses of atomic power. Szilard was also among the scientists who met with Roosevelt later that year to discuss the significance of nuclear fission and its pos- sible use in the coming war (Lanouette 1992: 209–13). Other Hungarian Jews who figured prominently in the development of nuclear physics were Theodore Von Karman, George de Hevesy, Michael Polyani and John Von Neumann. Emilio Segre was an Italian Jew.
It is more than ironic that anti-semitism played a huge part in both Germany losing and therefore America winning the race to the Atomic bomb.
All must be put in the context of that time, that even splitting the atom was the edge of science and we can look at the US and Russia now with thousands of warheads each, plus another handful of countries with such weapons. But back then it was questionable if making a bomb would even work or the real risk that it might work too well and destroy us all.
Meanwhile, you have the Soviets as supposed allies and communism spreading througout the world and entering academia- causing alarm amongst law enforcement, the military and politicians.
All this leads to a thriller with all the elements. Spies and counter-espionage, suspicion and jealousy. Scientists working for its advancement and the military trying to hijack and recruit. The Japanese seem an afterthought, a convenient testing ground, but the focus of the program was clearly to beat the Germans, then beat the Soviets.
This eventually leads into the McCarthy era withhunts , the ‘reds under the beds’ of which Oppenheimer and many of the scientists were not immune.
This film is long, clocking in at 3 hours. It absolutely oozes atmosphere throughout. Oppenheimer is a tortured soul, understanding what needs to be done but knowing once that genie is out of the bottle- the world will never be the same.
Oppenheimer, our dark knight, could draw from another of Christopher Nolan’s films “ You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villian.”
It is clear the United States didn’t deserve Oppenheimer or many of his colleagues they hounded and investigated, despute doing everything for their country. And Oppenheimer was clearly a man of peace forced into developing the most horrible of weapons, lest the Germans develop it first.
He was a flawed man, and the film shows it, but he didn’t deserve his treatment at the hands of petty authorities.
Though Barbie can be seen in a theatre or can wait till it streams at home, Oppenheimer with its visuals and avoidance of CGI, the atmosphere and sound of the film- needs the cinema experience to truly capture it.
Highly recommend.
