I feel impelled to speak today in a language that in a sense is new--one which I, who has spent so much of my life in the military profession, would have preferred never to use. That new language is the language of atomic warfare. -President Dwight D. Eisenhower advocating for nuclear research and testing in his "Atoms for Peace" speech, claiming that nuclear development was the only way to defend against the Soviets and their developing technology. |
The effort to create the first atomic bomb, under the code name the Manhattan Project, is one of the most controversial endeavor that the Unites States has undergone. The idea for the Manhattan Project was proposed to President Roosevelt in 1939 by German scientist Albert Einstein and Italian scientist Enrico Fermi who had intelligence that Nazis had learned how to split a uranium atom, enabling them to potentially create a bomb of unthinkable power. The Manhattan Project's first test near Alamogordo, New Mexico was a success and would be implemented in the ending of World War II.
The morality of the building and use of the atomic bomb, and nuclear warfare in general, have been in discussion since the Manhattan Project. While some people give the argument that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki led to a quicker end to World War II, others argue that the war was already coming to a close and that the bombings weren't necessary. Since then, there have been many protests and other movements against the development of nuclear weapons through the Cold War and beyond. The United States now works to prevent the spread of nuclear research to other parts of the world so that the technology doesn't fall into the wrong hands. |