This is a really great video by Veritasium a physicist who creates youtube videos. He breaks down the research and physics history leading to the Atomic bomb and the Manhattan project.
[Why Oppenheimer Deserves His Own Movie - YouTube](https://Why Oppenheimer Deserves His Own Movie -Veritasium)
The thumbnail says “Destroyer of worlds”. Watching Timeghost has shown there were a LOT of people who deserved that title. From leaders of countries to people like Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer is described by physicist like Murray Gell-Mann and Wolfgang Pauli as being brilliant and having good ideas but when asked why he never won the Nobel they said.
"He didn’t have Sitzfleisch. He never wrote a long paper or did a long calculation. He didn’t have the patience for that. " - Gell-Mann
“His ideas are very good, but his calculations are always wrong.” -Wolfgang Pauli. If you know of Pauli then you know that to him being wrong is better than being “Not even wrong”. as he famously said about others.
It’s a great video to watch.
As for being harsh on Oppenheimer and others involved in the atomic bombing. I look at it this way. IF it were possible to know with 100% certainty that not dropping those bombs would result in the same outcome as dropping them then clearly they should not have been dropped.
However, we know the allies were planning operation downfall, a D Day like invasion of Japan. Projected casualties of 1 million.
We know (and I am certain the US knew, having cracked their codes) Japan had two massive type I-400 class submarines deployed with biological and chemical weapons slated to attack the continental USA on or around September 22nd 1945. https://www.history.navy.mil/about-us/leadership/director/directors-corner/h-grams/h-gram-057/h-057-2.html
We know Japan occupied massive areas of Asia and committed non-stop atrocities every single day against populations of 100’s of millions of people. As covered in many TimeGhost videos.
Any 1-2 of those means ending the war sooner, by any means necessary, was the lesser evil. There are no good guys. Just bad guys and worse guys. The bad guys won. Barring a great awakening to our common humanity, the realpolitk of war is that the lesser evil winning is all we can hope for.