You know how this works
How about this for a thought experiment: If you could go back in time, would you warn the Japanese before dropping the Atom Bombs?
You might be thinking, "warn the enemy of an attack?? Of course not!" But before you reflexively write the question off as absurd, let me tell you about the Szilard Petition.
The Race for the Bomb
A lesser-known contributor to the creation of the Atom Bomb, Leo Szilard was a Hungarian physicist who pioneered the nuclear fission reactor. He also deserves a ton of credit for the creation of the Manhatten Project. It was Szilard's appeal to Albert Einstein that prompted FDR to commission the project.
In 1939, Szilard wrote a letter to Einstein detailing the imminent possibility of bombs that could "very well destroy [an] entire port as well as some surrounding territory."
Szilard conceived the nuclear chain reaction in 1933 and later realized that uranium could be used to create a reaction yielding unprecedented power. This was news to Einstein.
When he read the letter, Einstein responded "Daran habe ich gar nicht gedacht", which means, "I did not even think about that."
Einstein signed and forwarded the letter to President Roosevelt and thus began the United State's journey toward the A-Bomb.
Testing… 1, 2, 3
The Manhatten Project successfully conducted several Atom Bomb tests, the first on July 6th, 1945, known as the Trinity test.
It was after the eye-opening results of the Trinity test when Oppenheimer quoted the Bhagavad-Gita:
Now I am become Death; The destroyer of worlds.
Many scientists felt the same as Oppenheimer. Their hearts were heavy. Before the tests, no one had quite realized the implications of their work. They knew it would result in a powerful weapon, but they couldn’t have imagined the ravaging capabilities of the final result.
Many had reservations about using the bomb, and still, some regretted their involvement entirely.
Leo Szilard was one of those scientists, and he decided to do something about it.
The Petition
He drafted the Szilard Petition on July 7th, 1945, just 20 days before the bomb detonated over Nagasaki, to try and stop the U.S. from using the technology he helped create.
More than 150 chemists, physicists, biologists, metallurgists, and scientists of other sorts echoed his feelings by signing the petition.
The petition did not say that the U.S. should never use the bomb, simply that the U.S. is morally obligated to warn Japan of the consequences of the bomb beforehand; that the U.S. should educate the Japanese on what they're about to get themselves into should they not surrender.
If you think about it, the petition was a fair suggestion. At the time, the Japanese did not have the context we have today. We all know how destructive Atom Bombs are, but in 1945, it was a novel, unused technology, and its impact was unknown to the rest of the world. So, there’s a solid argument to be made that a warning was warranted.
Obviously, the petition didn't work. The U.S. dropped two Atom Bombs on Japan in three days, killing over a hundred thousand innocent people. In fact, the petition never even made it to President Truman’s desk.
Impact
Ultimately, what's interesting about the Szilard Petition is how it challenges the historic consensus. It's widely accepted in the popular discourse, and even taught in public schools, that the U.S. had no choice but to bomb Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
It's often presented as a doom or gloom binary: Either drop the A-bomb or invade Japan which would have likely resulted in millions of deaths.
While there were no easy choices in 1945, it is patently untrue that the options listed above were the only two. The Szilard Petition shows that smart people had presented legitimate alternatives.
Sources:
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/manhattan-project-robert-oppenheimer
https://www.atomicheritage.org/key-documents/szilard-petition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Szilard
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Szil%C3%A1rd_letter#/media/File:Einstein-Roosevelt-letter.png
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