Oppenheimer: What If America Never Dropped the Atomic Bomb?

Dan Snow's History Hit

History Hit

History

4.7 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 26 July 2023

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The new Oppenheimer movie has everyone asking questions about the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945 - were two bombs necessary? Would the war have ended without it? Was there an ulterior motive? Would the Americans have dropped a third if they had it?

At the end of WWII, the Manhattan Project demonstrated the power humanity had harnessed for destruction. When the uranium bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on the 6th of August 1945, city residents saw a flash of light and a loud boom- virtually everything within a 2-mile radius was destroyed. Those who survived the initial impact were then caught in subsequent firestorms and after that, many succumbed to radiation poisoning. It's estimated 1 in 3 were killed. 3 days later, Nagasaki suffered the same fate.

At the time, it was said it was necessary to end the war and to show why these weapons should never be used again. But is that true? To answer some of the questions we've all been asking after learning about Oppenheimer, Dan is joined by Professor Paul Poast from the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago who explains how the decision was really made to drop the bombs, what would have happened if they hadn't and reveals that the Manhattan Project was actually more about impressing Stalin than destroying Japan.

Produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal Patmore.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Imagine you, you in a nice comfy seat with your hands behind your head,
0:07.6	taking in the views instead of taking on the road, maybe even taking a nap.
0:13.6	That's the bliss of getting where you need to go without worrying about driving.
0:19.2	Book your train journey via avantiwesscoast.co.uk and we'll take you there.
0:24.3	Avantiwesscoast, feel good, travel.
0:49.4	Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Head.
0:54.6	The night of the 5th to the 6th of August 1945,
0:59.5	had been a night of sirens in the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
1:04.1	But by 0700, the all clear had been sounded.
1:09.0	Around an hour after those sirens had quieted,
1:13.6	the American B-29 bomber, the Inola Gay, began its bomb run over the city.
1:18.8	And 815, the aircraft's bombardier, released one bomb from an altitude of 31,000 feet.
1:28.4	In the month's previous Japan had been incinerated by tons of bombs dropped in huge numbers
1:33.2	by vast fleets of American bombers. But on this day, on the 6th of August,
1:40.4	this single bomb would do the damage of thousands of conventional bombs because this was an
1:47.8	atomic weapon. Inside the casing of that bomb was not high explosives, but 64 kilograms of Uranium
1:55.4	235. It took less than a minute for that bomb to travel from 31,000 feet to 600 meters above
2:04.9	the city streets where it detonated. A nuclear reaction then took place.
2:11.2	Neutrons crashed into the nuclei of uranium atoms, causing a
2:15.7	efficient chain reaction, more neutrons splitting more and more atoms.
2:21.6	Uneimaginable energy was unleashed, and with it, enormous destruction.
2:29.1	The largest bomb ever dropped in history to that point had had the blast equivalent to 6.5 tons
	...

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