ipl-logo

Manhattan Project: Race To Build Atomic Weapons Before Germany And The Soviet Union

1617 Words7 Pages

The Manhattan Project Ashten Jampayas 8A ELA April 15, 2024 The Manhattan Project was a US government program that was a race to build atomic weapons before Germany and the Soviet Union could. President Franklin Roosevelt initiated the project after being notified about the potential power and danger of such a bomb which Germany and the Soviet Union could build before the US. Led by General Leslie Groves, the workers of the Manhattan Project started work in 1942. The Manhattan Project brought about the end of World War II and helped the US win the atomic arms race. It had many complexities such as the spies and security, after effects of the bombings, and the ethics of making and using such a destructive weapon. The start of the project …show more content…

Most of the low-level workers, like construction workers, didn’t know that the eventual goal was to make an atomic bomb. “...mail coming in and going out of Los Alamos was meticulously censored. Security officials would inspect each and every individual piece of mail,” said the Atomic Heritage Foundation. Mail censoring helped keep the project a secret, but it didn’t prevent all information from leaving Los Alamos. The Soviet Union devised an elaborate spy system with hundreds of American and British spies (Unknown D 1). One of the most important spies was Klaus Fuchs, who passed pivotal information about the construction of the US atomic bomb to the Soviet Union (Unknown D 2). Fuchs often split his brain into two compartments, one where he could contribute to the project fully and another where he could pass information to the Soviets (Sheinkin 137). Theodore Hall, another high level Los Alamos worker, sent information about the US design for the atomic bomb to the Soviets because he wanted to prevent a US monopoly on atomic weapons (Sheinkin 132). After the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Hall and Fuchs sent nearly identical bomb designs to the Soviets,

Show More
Related
119 Words | 1 Pages

Klaus Fuchs was a German- born British scientist who had helped build the atomic bomb, was arrested in Great Britain for passing information about the bomb to the Soviet Union. The arrest of Fuchs had led authorities to several other individuals involved in a so called spy ring. Some of the other men that were involved were Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Fuchs arrest in 1950 had came after a routine security check of Fuchs father. The AMerican FBI had informed the British authorities that decoded Soviet messages in their possession indicated that Fuchs was a Russian spy.

Read More
395 Words | 2 Pages

President Franklin Roosevelt set up a research and development program for the atomic bomb, called the Manhattan Project. After gathering two billion dollars and two hundred thousand workers, the first atomic bomb was made and tested. Scientists working on the Manhattan Project were not only proud of their accomplishments, but also filled

Read More
1014 Words | 5 Pages

It was a project between the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Over 100,000 chemists, physicists, and researchers worked on the atomic bomb in the Manhattan Project, but only a few of them knew the true purpose of the project. The Manhattan Project was tightly kept a secret. Only officials such as President Roosevelt and some scientists knew. Truman himself was not aware of the Manhattan project until he became President.

Read More
877 Words | 4 Pages

This program remained a secret for over a decade and then after it ended and it was not actually declassified until 1995. These papers actually led to David Greenglass leak of information to Moscow. David Greenglass was charged with espionage because he turned over some materials used in the manufacture of the bomb, including a cartridge for the detonator, which was very useful for the Soviet Union and got them more than a few steps ahead of America. Although Greenglass provided the Soviet Union with some information about the bomb, it was not necessary to build the bomb, and they could have built the bomb without his nuclear

Read More
1121 Words | 5 Pages

Some of the greatest minds in physics collaborated together to create the bomb. The project was put under command of Leslie Groves, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Beyer 37). The amount of funding as well as political support provided to the Manhattan Project gave the researchers the ability to make technological breakthroughs at unfathomable frequencies.

Read More
678 Words | 3 Pages

After the secret information about the atomic bomb was leaked to the Soviets, the Soviets made and detonated an atomic bomb. The U.S. government conducted an investigation to find out who stole their information and gave it to the Soviets. They found hidden code messages between the Soviets and Julius Rosenberg (Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (d

Read More
926 Words | 4 Pages

More copious funds were given to the top secret Manhattan Project, nearly $2 billion was spent developing and building the weapons. [3] In 1943 a lab run by Robert Oppenheimer was built in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Here they would build the weapon in the form of a bomb, they had to devise ways to deploy and detonate it. By 1945 they created and tested the first ever atomic bomb. The plutonium bomb, named “The Gadget,” would be tested at a test site in New Mexico dubbed Trinity.

Read More
1181 Words | 5 Pages

Even with the research and studying the energy used to make the bomb, the people working on them were at great risks. The bomb was not only harmful to scientists when it was being made, but also when it was detonated. There was no way to defend a country from an atomic bomb. The bomb itself was more than 2000 times more powerful than a bomb the British bomb, "Grand Slam".

Read More
1068 Words | 5 Pages

The bombing of Pearl Harbor convinced Roosevelt that more had to be done on the atomic research. By the end of 1942, bomb research had become bomb production, Manhattan Project was ran by the military with Major Leslie Groves as officer in charge. Bomb production was carried out in three locations, Oak Ridge Tennessee handled production of the bomb fuel U-235, Hanford Washington handled production of plutonium fuel, and Los Alamos New Mexico handled bomb production and assembly. These three locations became huge cities due to size of and manpower required for this project. Once the project was at a larger scale the work in factories and producing the atomic weapons employed over 130,000 people.

Read More
626 Words | 3 Pages

The Manhattan Project was constructed during World War II by the United States to develop the first nuclear weapon/atomic bomb (The Manhattan Project” 2015).

Read More
894 Words | 4 Pages

Both nations wanted to be the first to have an atomic bomb because it would give them a significant advantage and ability to completely destroy the opposing power. The Manhattan project was kept under great secrecy to prevent any Axis power from attaining information about the project. The United States went to great measures to protect these secrets about the making of these bombs, they even censored everything that had any small bit of information about it. In 1943 it was found that the Soviets were trying to get spies into the ranks of the United States to get information about the bombs. There was an investigation in the Radiation Laboratory in Berkley because it was thought that there were Soviets spies working

Read More
1656 Words | 7 Pages

It was August, 1939. United States President Franklin Roosevelt reads a letter sent to him from prominent scientists Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard. The purpose of this letter was to inform the President that the Germans supposedly discovered the secrets to developing nuclear weaponry and to urge the President to do the same (1). This letter changed the course of human history; from this letter came the Manhattan Project. The Manhattan Project was the code-name given to the American research and development of an atomic bomb.

Read More
310 Words | 2 Pages

Scientists wanting not to have development of the bomb to be used for warfare, were kept from speaking with President Truman to give him an alternative perspective. Tight restrictions were implemented. The fact that intimidation of the Soviet Union was interesting. It provided another piece of

Read More
429 Words | 2 Pages

To accomplish this theoretical idea later turned into reality, many great minds were put together, such as director J. Robert Oppenheimer, Albert Einstein, Fermi, and Szilard. They delivered the atomic bomb in New Mexico, released

Read More
931 Words | 4 Pages

After the project was right about finished, nearly $2 billion had been spent on research and development of the atomic bomb. The Manhattan Project employed over 120,000 Americans” (http://www.ushistory.org). “Secrecy was very important in this project, neither the Germans nor the Japanese could learn of the project because the knowledge of the Manhattan Project

Read More

More about Manhattan Project: Race To Build Atomic Weapons Before Germany And The Soviet Union

Open Document