Before leaving Truman’s office, Byrnes brought up a taboo subject. “With great solemnity,” Truman recalled, “he said that we [the United States] were perfecting an explosive great enough to destroy the whole world.” Truman was aware of this extraordinary project’s existence, he told Byrnes, but he knew few details. Byrnes believed the new invention had potential not just as a military weapon but as a political one as well—that “the bomb might well put us in a position to dictate our terms at the end of the war,” as Truman recalled Byrnes saying.
