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Led by J. Robert Oppenheimer, the members of the infamous "Manhattan Project" forever changed the face of warfare with the development and deployment of the first atomic bombs.
As World War II progressed, rumors were circulating that Germany was close to completion on a devastating weapon that would utilize the destructive powers of nuclear fission. Such a bomb, it was believed, could decide the fate of the war and the future of the world.
It was at this point that the government gave the green light to develop such a bomb before the Germans could. Oppenheimer, appointed the head of the project by General Leslie Groves, brought together many of the finest physicists working in America at the time, a group that included Edward Teller, Leó Szilárd, Enrico Fermi, Richard Feynman and Hans Bethe. Each man contributed a piece of the puzzle that would eventually produce the first successful atomic bombs.
After the first successful test of the bomb on July 16, 1945, President Harry Truman wasted no time in putting the weapon to use. Just three weeks later, on August 6, 1945, the uranium bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Three days later, a plutonium bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. While hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed by the blast and the radiation that lingered, the bomb was credited with the quick end to the war in the Pacific.
"We knew the world could not be the same," Oppenheimer said. "I remember the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita: 'I am became Death, the destroyers of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another."
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