When President Truman met Oppenheimer

Submitted by redditor3000 t3_zpu30w in history

With the new trailer for Oppenheimer just out today I was remembering Oppenheimer's meeting with President Truman:

The meeting between Oppenheimer and Truman did not go well. It was then that Oppenheimer famously told Truman that "I feel I have blood on my hands", which was unacceptable to Truman, who immediately replied that that was no concern of Oppenheimer's, and that if anyone had bloody hands, it was the president. Oppenheimer felt as though the future was in the balance, and that the American government was using/would use the bomb as a political tool against the Soviets.

Truman had very little use for Oppenheimer then--little use for his "hand wringing", for his high moral acceptance of question in the use of the bomb, for his second-guessing the decision. Cold must have descended in the meeting, as Truman later told David Lillenthal of Oppenheimer that he "never wanted to see that son of a bitch in this office again". Truman would retell the story in different ways, but with generally the same result, waxing about how he dismissed the "cry-baby scientist."

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SteampunkDesperado t1_j0xd9ff wrote

Well, it was Truman who said "The buck stops here."

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redditor3000 OP t1_j0xdpzf wrote

This story made me really respect Truman. Though both him and Oppenheimer have a point.

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Sniffy4 t1_j0xzmwu wrote

Wild because it made me respect Truman a lot less.

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redditor3000 OP t1_j0y1h7v wrote

I'm sympathetic to that, but the history is more complicated than it might first look. I would listen to this about it, maybe you can find it for free somewhere.

https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-42-blitz-logical-insanity/

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Sniffy4 t1_j0y9p7p wrote

I'm fully aware of all the arguments for and against deploying the atomic bomb in Aug 1945 exactly as was done, but putting that aside, the fact that Truman was completely personally unaffected by all the civilian lives that were annihilated is fairly despicable.

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2rascallydogs t1_j0z6n9z wrote

4000 Chinese non-combatants had been killed every day for the past eight years, and another 4000 non-combatants (Filipinos, Indonesians, Burmese, Rōmusha) were being killed every single day for the past 44 months. The non-combatants killed in two atomic bombs didn't equate to an average month of non-combatant deaths during WW2 in the Pacific, and yet the Japanese seem to be the only victims of the war despite only suffering ~5% of non-combatant deaths.

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shantipole t1_j12s4w2 wrote

IMHO, there's a difference between being unaffected and refusing to dwell on "what might have beens." If Oppenheimer was as fixated on his own guilt (or "guilt") as the quote suggests, I can see a Truman who had made the hard decision to use the bombs being disgusted by a man who had made the decision to create them and after the fact constantly second-guessed the entire idea.

[edited to fix a typo]

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Sniffy4 t1_j12vp3d wrote

>Truman who had made the hard decision to use the bombs being disgusted by a man who had made the decision to create them and after the fact constantly second-guessed the entire idea.

The technical term for someone unaffected by 200k deaths they personally ordered is "sociopath."

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shantipole t1_j14cadm wrote

You're assuming your conclusion. There's still "a difference between being unaffected and dwelling on 'what might have beens.'" IOW there is a middle ground between sociopath on the one hand and endlessly rehashing important decisions on the other. It's actually a very large middle ground where you accept you did the best you could and you deal with the consequences. Oppenheimer seems to have gotten stuck in the "endless rehashing" end of the spectrum and Truman (and many others) think/thought less of Oppenheimer for it. None of which imply that Truman was a sociopath.

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andonemoreagain t1_j0yg6wj wrote

In a radio interview after his final term in office Truman would claim he had been misled about where they were going to drop the atomic bombs. He said he was told they would be dropped on Japanese naval bases, rather than on the residential areas almost entirely filled with sleeping women and children. I think this indicates that he did in fact experience remorse for what he and many other men were responsible for doing.

Even the most cursory reading of modern military history will show that there was no good reason at all to murder all these hundred of thousands of civilians when we did. And that’s not some liberal revisionist history. It’s the assessment of scholars at places like the army war college in Carlisle. It was a repugnant and unnecessary act.

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[deleted] t1_j0xgkyd wrote

[deleted]

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iAmHism t1_j0xkp0u wrote

Oppenheimer was right to make the bomb, it was a race to ensure the Nazis didn’t get it first. The atom bomb ushered in a new world order which has so far prevented the extreme deaths and horrors of WWI and WWII by giving saber rattling idiots a reason to avoid out right war. As scary as those weapons are, MAD is a legitimate reason for peace. Children were being indiscriminately killed all over the world as a result of the war for at least 9 years, ending WWII without a US invasion of Japan was a blessing despite the terrible way it was accomplished. I get the “US bad, anything they do is bad” modern filter, but your take is missing quite a bit of nuance here.

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AgoraiosBum t1_j13esvh wrote

There was a lot of that from the establishment to Oppenheimer after the war was over.

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