80 years ago this week, the U.S. altered the course of history when for the first time ever

it dropped the extraordinarily powerful atomic bomb on Japan. It ultimately led to the end of World

War II. The motivation and secrecy surrounding the development of that world-changing weapon

and the devastating consequences of its use are the focus of a new oral history out today from

author Garrett Graf. He recently sat down with Amla Nawaz to discuss his book, The Devil Reach Toward

the Sky.

Garrett Graff, welcome back to The News Hour. Thanks for being here.

Thanks for having me.

So you have compiled these incredible oral histories for some of the biggest moments in world history, D-Day, 9-11.

Why did you want to apply that approach to this, to the making and actual deployment of the first atomic bomb?

August, of course, marks the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, the bombing of Nagasaki, the end of World War II.

And so this is a moment where we have effectively every first-person memory of the atomic

bomb we're ever going to have. And so this is trying to sort of tell the story of the Manhattan

project through the eyes of the scientists at a moment when, like, they don't know who's going to win World War II yet.

They don't know whether Adolf Hitler is going to get the first atomic bomb.

They don't even know whether an atomic bomb will work.

And you do begin with the accounts and the stories of many of those scientists in Germany and in other nations.

Albert Einstein, as you mentioned, even Sigmund Freud is quoted in there in the early 1930s.

They're commenting on the rise of Adolf Hitler in that moment.

Why start with that?

Why are their voices sent to that?

When we talk about the atomic bomb today, we instantly think of Japan.

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