Customer Reviews

Biography - J. Robert Oppenheimer [VHS]

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J. Robert Oppenheimer is of course famous for heading the Manhattan Project in its successful mission to create an atomic bomb during World War II. Those of a younger generation may be surprised to learn of the taint that became associated with the man after the end of the war, as his career was to a large degree destroyed - unjustly, many would argue, but I'm not so sure. First and foremost, Oppenheimer must be honored for his theoretical sophistication, genius, and remarkable leadership qualities - it takes a special kind of leader to keep any two scientists working together harmoniously, yet he oversaw a top secret project including some of the most brilliant men in the field and a staff that came to number over 6000 people. His selection to head the project came as something of a surprise, as he was a purely theoretical scientist at the time. He was a precocious child who grew up in a well-to-do family and received his education at Harvard and Cambridge before joining the faculty at Berkeley. When the atomic bomb was successfully tested at Trinity, after two years of development, he achieved the pinnacle of success - but that soon changed.

Oppenheimer was much affected by the films of survivors at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and turned his attention to the dangers imposed by this new awesome weapon. At the time, he was director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and an advisor to Atomic Energy Commission, but his views on the moral implications of the bomb and his opposition to the creation of an H bomb frustrated the military. When he ridiculed the views of a prominent science at a hearing, he did much to seal his own fate. History reached out to pull J. Robert Oppenheimer into the abyss. America was horrified when the Soviets developed their own nuclear bomb, and suspicion and McCarthyism soon became the bane of Oppenheimer's existence. There can be no doubt that Oppenheimer had lived on the fringes of Communism; his brother and sister-in-law had been active in the Communist party, as had an early female associate of Oppenheimer's, as had his own wife. Only the insistence of General Groves had secured him a security clearance to work on the Manhattan Project in the first place, and he had been investigated several times in succeeding years. In 1954, his past came back to haunt him when the Atomic Energy Commission denied him clearance, branding him a security risk. Cut off from his field of expertise, Oppenheimer was in many ways a broken man until his death in 1967.

The one thing that comes through most clearly in this video is the Manhattan Project scientists' unifying fear of a nuclear Germany. Nuclear fission had been discovered in Berlin on Christmas day 1938, and everyone in science as well as government agreed that America could indeed lose the war if Hitler developed the atomic bomb before America did. If anyone wonders how the largest scientific project in world history was kept so very secret, the answer - the fear of Hitler with the bomb - is provided most forcefully here in this look at the life of Oppenheimer.

This video gives a most flattering portrait of the man, interviewing several of his surviving peers and former students who lauded the man and described his fall from grace as a travesty. While no one would seriously argue the man ever spied for the Soviets, I think a much deeper look into Oppenheimer's life is required before one can brand him the innocent victim of a witch hunt. Frankly, I can understand why the Atomic Energy Commission came to see him as a security risk, although this is not a popular opinion that I hold. This is a very impressive video of the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, but true insight into this famous and controversial scientific genius can only be found in a deeper, less one-sided study and analysis of the man who, as the father of the atomic bomb, changed the world forever in 1945.

Although this is a great video, Oppenheimer, a so-called genius along with Einstein, was obviously not as bright as he and others thought. First of all, they both thought that it would be used for good purposes (first mistake), and second, they thought that they could talk to their friends about it, who quickly gave word to German, Russians, etc. who in turn made the bomb. With that aside, I thought that the video was excellent and told the side of the story that you don't get from history books.