American Prometheus

by Kai Bird

Mansfield told Borden, “that Oppenheimer regards war [with the Soviet Union] as unthinkable, a game hardly worth the candle.” I believe that he accordingly stops short of really thinking out the consequences of his policy of temperance and moderation. I also suspect that his fastidious mind finds the whole notion of strategic bombing essentially clumsy and heavy-handed. It is using the sledgehammer rather than the surgeon’s scalpel; it takes no great imagination or sophistication. Couple this with his moral sensibilities of the variety especially pronounced amongst scientists, add on his deep conviction that the Russian people are essentially victims of a tyrannical . . . government, compound this with his distaste for killing noncombatants—and his frequently reiterated stress on the importance of developing tactical uses perhaps becomes more explicable.