American Prometheus

by Kai Bird

What they had done was no less than an “organic necessity.” If you were a scientist, he said, “you believe that it is good to find out how the world works . . . that it is good to turn over to mankind at large the greatest possible power to control the world and to deal with it according to its lights and values.” Besides, there was a “feeling that there was probably no place in the world where the development of atomic weapons would have a better chance of leading to a reasonable solution, and a smaller chance of leading to disaster, than within the United States.” Nevertheless, as scientists, Oppenheimer told them, they could not escape responsibility for “the grave crisis.” Many people, he said, will “try to wiggle out of this.” They will argue that “this is just another weapon.” Scientists knew better. “I think it is for us to accept it as a very grave crisis, to realize that these atomic weapons which we have started to make are very terrible, that they involve a change, they are not just a slight modification.