Who’s Who in the Genesis of the Atomic Age

Who’s Who in the Genesis of the Atomic Age

Halberstam list the obvious players in the postwar nuclear arms race. There is the “accidental president;” Harry Truman who inherited the atomic mantle following Roosevelt’s death (Halberstam, 22). Enter his Soviet counterpart; Joseph Stalin, and the always present British PM Winston Churchill wielding influence from the periphery (24). Extrapolating further into the “milieu” we find that the great scientific minds of the era were focused on the atomic bomb and delivery systems. Robert Oppenheimer led the American effort from New Mexico. Government agencies, including the Atomic Energy Commission headed by David Lilienthal, advised the president who always underestimated Soviet technical prowess (26). Legislators such as Senators Arthur Vandenberg and Tom Connally argued when it was discovered that the U.S. no longer enjoyed the nuclear monopoly that the world has fundamentally changed now that “Russia had shown her teeth” (26). Military leaders, like Strategic Air Commander Curtis LeMay lamented the loss of this initial military advantage (26). The geopolitical make-up was evolving as well creating strange bedfellows. Former enemies like Japan, Italy and Germany were now allies and super-pacts of communist nations like China and the U.S.S.R. threatened the precarious peace (27). Advocates for a rebuilding of American defenses were climbing Capitol Hill. They were met with an “uninterested” congress, as Eisenhower, Marshall and Stimson were soon to discover (28). The House Un-American Activities Committee fashioned great dramatic theater from the public’s collective fear (27). Atomic scientist like Bainbridge, Conant and Kistiakowsky, realizing the implications of their success become prophets of the apocalypse warning that we are a “stone’s throw away from despair” (28). There were spies like Klaus Fuchs and his Soviet carrier; Harry Gold, and counter-spies like William Skardon who added an air of mystery, intrigue and suspense to the fray (40, 42). The players were many, for “…evil had been brought into human life…by men of the highest standing in science, education, and government” (44). The multiplicity of views, expertise, and power were all simultaneously vying for influence within the new world atomic weapons had created. Ultimately, the weight of nuclear implication rested (in this formative period) on one man…..Truman. The record demonstrates that this simple man understood and acted on the most complex of decisions in the most remarkable fashion. We owe a debt of gratitude to “the accidental president.”

Works Cited

Halberstam, David. The Fifties. Easton, CT.: Easton, 1996. Print.