In casting his all-American hero J. Robert Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan forgets to get us behind the scenes on the true father of the American Atom Bomb!
And it's none other than...
Albert Einstein.
Read on:
"Jewish physicists played a leading role in the US atomic energy program during the war. The notable Jewish scientist and Jewish community leader, Albert Einstein, originally a pacifist, joined two other refugee Jewish physicists, Leo Szilard and Eugene Wigner in encouraging President Roosevelt to develop the atomic bomb in order to beat the German effort to build one. The scientific development aspect of the secret "Manhattan Project" that developed the bomb was led by the American Jewish scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) who, although relatively young at thirty-eight, had already gained the reputation as an accomplished physicist and administrator. He was joined by hundreds of American and notable former European Jewish physicists, including the brilliant Harold Urey, I.I. Rabi, John von Neumann, Leo Szilard, Victor Weisskopf, and Edward Teller. The latter went on to head the hydrogen bomb program.
Einstein (played by Tom Conti) was denied a secret clearance and kept out of the Manhattan Project by its director, General Leslie Groves (Matt Damon).
Groves, suspicious of all Jews, considered Einstein to be a communist because Einstein lauded Stalin out of thankfulness for the Soviets fighting Nazi Germany, who Einstein hated for what they were doing to his fellow Jews.
General Groves was never told of Einstein's role in proceeding with the bomb; Roosevelt had confided only to his closest associates that it was Einstein who had persuaded him to proceed with the atomic bomb development.
Roosevelt feared this information about Einstein's role would have been grist for the anti-Semites among those who opposed him politically."
~#RalphShapiro,
NASA scientist, Jewish thought leader, and author of Jewish History: 4000 years of accomplishment, agony, and survival.
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