Hacker News Reader

Comment by killjoywashere | Hacker News Reader

Do you know who motivated the US to take on the Manhattan Project? Albert Einstein. Life-long pacifist and, I've heard, reasonably intelligent human who knew something about quantum physics and relativity. Are you certain that you would have made a different decision?

View on HN

What are you talking about? Einstein's discovery motivated the project, but he was always against the bomb.

"Several weeks before America dropped the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Albert Einstein begged our government to reconsider."

"After he found out about Hiroshima in the news, Einstein was literally horrified. First, because he mourned for the more than 100,000 people killed at Hiroshima. But also, he and other atomic scientists knew that the promise of “benign” uses of atomic energy had been dealt a cruel blow, if not a fatal one. Einstein believed the decision to nuke Hiroshima would be a public perception disaster concerning his discovery"

https://www.hiroshimasyndrome.com/before-the-beginning.html

He was wrong, since the Manhattan project was and is still celebrated as a great achievement. Hiroshima is considered a regrettable necessity. Anyone willing to read about fire bombing of cities before the A-bomb would consider it a reasonable alternative.

> On the night of February 13, the British Bomber Command hit Dresden with an 800-bomber air raid, dropping some 2,700 tons of bombs, including large numbers of incendiaries. Aided by weather conditions, a firestorm developed, incinerating tens of thousands of people. The U.S. Eighth Air Force followed the next day with another 400 tons of bombs and carried out yet another raid by 210 bombers on February 15. It is thought that some 25,000–35,000 civilians died in Dresden in the air attacks, though some estimates are as high as 250,000, given the influx of undocumented refugees that had fled to Dresden from the Eastern Front. Most of the victims were women, children, and the elderly.

The letter signed by Einstein (1) was literally what motivated FDR to a course of action which became the Manhattan Project, as made clear by FDR himself (2).

As most will not read the links below, despite tremendous historical importance, Einstein specifically recommended 2 things:

* secure a uranium ore supply for the US, and

* speed up this line of research (that leads to a bomb).

Please explain to me how this isn't advocating for the development of a nuclear bomb?

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Szil%C3%A1rd_...

(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Szil%C3%A1rd_...

Feynman also worked on the Manhattan Project and was so horrified at the outcome he refused to work for the government again, up until the challenger investigation.

Lots of these guys thought they were doing it just to beat the Germans at it; they didn't expect it to actually be used. They thought they were the good guys!

"Lots of these guys thought they were doing it just to beat the Germans at it"

Well, they haven't stopped working on the bomb after Germany had capitulated.

Still nothing to suggest they would be participating in the murder of thousands.

Really? They were working on the bomb and nothing was suggesting that it will be used?

I guess not … scientists you know … they probably just thought they were doing cool stuff. Oppenheimer probably knew how it would all fit together though.

I suggest you read memories of any of the scientists who worked there.

I have done …

Which one?

>Do you know who motivated the US to take on the Manhattan Project?

Perhaps it was more like an austrian boi looking for mehr lebensraum, but who am I to say.

No, quite specifically, Einstein's letter to FDR is what motivated the Manhattan Project. Hitler (parent's "austrian boi") may well have had a tremendous weapons program in the works, but Einstein's fear was motivated as much by what he knew of his colleagues in Berlin and the German zeitgeist(1) as anything to do with Hitler specifically. What Hitler wanted would have been trivia if it were not for the capabilities of the scientists who elected to stay in Germany during the rise of Nazism.

(1) what an awful yet accurate application of such a nice word, but I digress.

Well, agreed, in last instance, the letter was responsible, but it wouldn't have been written if the authors were not concerned about the autrian boi misdemeanors.

>> Life-long pacifist and, I've heard, reasonably intelligent human

He was also a misogynist and a xenophobe.

I am not trying to whitewash his accomplishments in terms of physics, but frankly he's a questionable character in terms of morals or ethics.

I wouldn't trust that guy writing the laws for me, for example.

Source.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com