Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany by using fear
and propaganda. He became the chancellor of Germany in 1933. Hitler's
anti-Jewish system forced many of Germany's Jewish scientists to
become refugees
to escape the Nazi persecution. Ironically, many of these scientists helped with the
Manhattan Project that later, brought German's power to an end.
In
the late 1930s, the successful demonstration of fission
introduced scientists a whole new idea.
Leo Szilard, along with some of his scientist friends
agreed that the president must be warned of this new fission
technology. The
U.S. government had to be convinced of the need to fund a
project of developing an atomic bomb. The problem was to get the president to listen. In 1939, Leo Szilard and
his friends got the support of Albert Einstein, the most famous scientist of the time.
They used Einstein's reputation to get the president's attention. The four men
wrote a letter to the president, informing him that nuclear fission will become a source
of energy, and later, lead to the construction of very powerful bombs. The
president, caught up in European war affairs, gave Lyman Briggs the control of the Uranium
Committee. Briggs did not believe that fission would be useful in the near future
and since the U.S. wasn't involved in the war at the time, there was no need to hurry.
Then war broke out in Europe. This pushed research of the fission process a
little more, but it was not until the U.S. believed that Germany was carrying out nuclear
research at very high levels, that the U.S. started to turn its attention to nuclear
fission. Scientists, not knowing exactly how fast Germany was researching nuclear
energy, had to believe the worst. Later, it was found out that Germany was ahead in
their research but in 1942, the funding was cut, believing that there were more important
things needed to be done.
Japan's unexpected attack on Pearl Harbor pushed America into the war.
This gave the atomic bomb program additional urgency. Through 1941and 1942,
most of the researching was carried out at Universities. In no time, the atomic bomb
project code named Manhattan Project, was on its way. The Manhattan Project took
place at three main facilities. One in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, for the extraction and
production of uranium 235.
One in Hanford, Washington, home of nuclear reactors, where
plutonium was later developed and
produced. Finally, one in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where
scientists worked on theory and blueprint of the bomb.
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