Set this up . Let them decide or let you decide. Well let the audience decide. Listen closely now. The decision is which man was the indispensable man of the Manhattan Project . Take it away. I guess ill start. Thats part of the title of my book actually. Ill just speak about two aspects of general groves. As you may or may not know, he grew up in the army. His father was an army chaplain. He was determined to go to west point and he graduated fourth in his class. At the time the automatic choice of anyone who was at the head of their classes at west point joined the corps of engineers. He graduated on november 1st 1918. War was over but 11 days later november 11th 1918, and hes now an engineer in a Peacetime Army and very slow to move through the ranks. And in the run up to world war ii after he served in various places around the United States, been getting bigger and bigger projects and getting good efficiency reports he is part of the Construction Division of the army corps of engineers, which is building all of the camps, the ordinance plans and erg for the run up to world war ii. So by the time theres pearl harbor. This infrastructure is much in place. He had a Million People working for him as head of army mobilization. Before he got. The job of building the bomb. And you may not know it but he wasnt the first choice. The first choice was a guy named james marshal, also west point and corps of engineers. He was chosen in the summer of 1942. And who was in this building, was unhappy with that choice. He wasnt moving very fast and he went to the army and he said to general marshal and another guy named brian summerville, we have to move faster on that bomb. So they said, okay, well give you or our best man and that turned out to be groves, who from day one put his foot on the accelerator and never let up. There are four other people here, so just a couple more minutes. If theres any secret to who he was and why i think the Manhattan Project was such a success, i think it has to be the corps of engineers. This is an amazing institution that i knew nothing about, es especially working at the Natural Resources defense council. But i tried to immerse myself as much as i could in sort of who these people were. This tiny, tiny, tiny group in at the time, a small army and even when it was a large army they still remained a small group, in the United States its almost unique. The french do a little bit, but we have combat engineers, which is all armies have engineers but we also have a civilian function for them and they build big, big things. You want the panama canal, heres the panama canal. Groves is a perfect specimen out of the culture of this place. And he in september 17th, 1942 testifying not far from here up on capitol hill and wants to go. Overseas and be a combat engineer. They are staging for operation torch, the invasion of north africa and basically his boss comes up to him and says aoife job for you. He says not that thing. Not that thing. I dont want that. Because he had been in the Engineers Office overseeing marshal at get. Ing things done on the bomb project, which is already underway. So from day one, groves puts his foot on the accelerator and never lets up and in a thousand days, as alex told us, speed was everything. The name of my book is racing for the bomb. The element of speed was always there from the outset. One other quick thing about groves and his indispense blt. Not only was he a pure product of the core of engineers which is part of the secret of the whole thing was his measure of people. He could spot somebody and know almost automatically whether or not this person was qualified to do a job or not. The best example of that is Robert Oppenheimer. They first met on october 8th 1942, less than a month after groves got the job and hes visiting all the laboratories and he meets Robert Oppenheimer in california on the berkley campus at a luncheon given by the president and oppenheimer had already been really part of the bomb program after Gregory Bright resigned oppenheimer was given the responsibility of research on neutrons. So he has a conference in california with his, what do you call shs the galaxy of luminaries and they discuss where are we in the bomb project. So im sure that the conversation that he had with groves was music to groves ears. He wanted to move fast, he wanted an isolated place where work could be done. These are just things that groves wanted to hear and he chose him, this is my man. His background was a little shady. Hes left us leanings, communists, none of that phased groves and he stuck with oppenheimer through thick and thin and put his foot down and said this is the person who is going to lead when others said he couldnt run a hamburger stand. That was how they viewed oppenheimer. So groves part of his indispense blt, and ill end here was his ability to size somebody up again and again he did it. Oppenheimer is just the best example of this, but he did it a dozen times with qualified people that e e he sent out, gave them responsibilities and they did the job and got the bomb built. So ill pass on the baton to ky bird. Well, obviously, stan has proven that groves was the indispensable man. Because he could because he was oppenheimer. Because he picked oppenheimer for the Manhattan Project and it was a most unlikely choice because oppenheimer had a vast experience in management meaning he had managed about 12 graduate students previously and thats about it. But he was charismatic. And very briefly i want to steal an anecdote from bob carter, who is sitting here in the front row whom i interviewed this morning. Hes a veteran of los alamos and he told e me the following anecdote which illustrates freshly our view of oppenheimer. And bob tells the following story. Soon after he arrived, he went to the post office and received a letter in the mailbox from his mother. And hes standing there in the post office. He opens the letter and whole words and phrases and sentences are cut out of the letter. Physically cut out. He holds up this letter full of holes and show it is to his friend standing there and his friend grab it is and says this is an outrage. We have to report this to him right away. They run over to oppenheimers office barged past his secretary and confront oppenheimer, who looks at this letter and grabs his hat, i assume the pork pie hat, and grabs these two young men who are all of 23, 24 and he takes them over to see some major or lieutenant kernel, head of security and oppenheimer is apparently visibly angry and he shows him this holey letter and says this is an outrage. This is a violation of our agreement on security. You cannot sensor incoming letters. Presumably outgoing letters. And he not only shouts at him about this, he says i want you to retrieve the missing pieces. I mean i was delighted to hear this story from bob carter this morning. It illustrates oppenheimers charismatic leadership qualities. It illustrates why oppenheimer could motivate people to work r for him long hours and it also illustrates his relationship with the other indispensable man, general groves because they were constantly battling over security and oppenheimer would often stand his ground. I think he thereby became the ultimately the indispensable man. And got. The bomb built in two and a half years, which was by all accounts a miracle. I now turn it over to marti sherwin, my more experienced and much more deeply knowledgeable scholar about oppenheimer. Yeah sure. The first thing i want to say is that stan is right. Oppenheimer could not have run a hamburger stand. It wouldnt have interested him. And i think thats one of the keys to understanding why oppenheimer who had no serious administrative experience before coming to los alamos was able to be such a successful leader. It interested him. If you look back at oppenheimers life which obviously we didnt do enough of because we didnt know this great story. But we got an x for research here. If you look back at oppenheimers life youll notice from the point of grade school he always had to be the best at things that interested him. And he was. And i think thats keet toy to understanding why he was such an infective leader. Infect effective leader. He was incredibly smart. He had all the information about what was going on in the Theoretical Division in his head. He knew what was going on in the machine shop. He knew peoples names. He devoted himself completely to the project. I think he lost 50 pounds from maximum weight of about 150 down to almost 110 pounds or whatever it was. He was just consumed by making sure this thing got done as quickly as possible. And the other thing about him is that he was a perfect partner for general groves. They both had the same goal and they worked extremely, extremely well together. Every physicist i interviewed who was at los alamos has said to me that if it was not for oppenheimer being the director, the bomb never would have been completed in august of 1945. Well, that was a source of great pride for him on the one hand. And it became a source of great sorrow for him on the other hand. Because he learned after the war, contrary to the thing thez said here that the bomb was not necessary to end the war. That the war would have been over at the same time because thats when the soviets entered the war. It was the entry of the soviet union into the war that brought the japanese to surrender not the atomic bombs. But thats a long and long argument that will go on forever, i think. I just want to quote something that oppenheimer said that i think is the great legacy of los alamos. You know when he came back on november 16th 1945 so receive certificate and award he said in his very brief remarks this is part of them, if atomic bombs are to be added as new weapons to the arsenals of the warring world, or to the arsenals of the nations preparing for war, then the time will come when man kind will curse the man names of los alamos and hiroshima. But people of this world must unite or they will perish. This war that has ravaged so much of the earth has written these words. And i submit to you in terms of the argument that Nuclear Weapons have been good because they have been a deterent that it is not Nuclear Weapons that prevented world war iii. It is world war ii. 20 million dead russians was enough for russia. The destruction of germany was enough for the germans. There would not have been a third world war in Nuclear Weapons were never invent order had never been used. And now charlie. Wow. How do i follow that . Marty, great quote. At the time before i knew that this was a debate between the independencible man oppenheimer which i never would have agreed to, i thought i was going to have to write a speech. I have that wrote in there about los alamos and then i crossed it out. Im glad you brought it up. So i guess two quick thoughts after hearing the talk. One is i want to throwin a word for general groves. One of the things i did is read a book by general groves. I think its groves himself not norris it was really good. And it was hundreds and hundreds of pages detailing the effort to you know the whole Manhattan Project. And as usual when i get a book, i scan through and look for oppenheimer and say where is my grandfather . And i think it was mentioned once or twice. And you really got you got a scope of how big a project it was. It was enormous. Are you saying that groves didnt think that oppenheimer was the indispensable man . I submit that you to yes. So i want to put and also my dad, he is not liberal with things to say. He has really nice things to say about groves. His eyes and his smile and he has really warm words about general groves which i was impressed with. Thats one of the things. But keeping this debate going, how about science as the independencible man . There is another oppenheimer quote about the great things in science where theyre not made because a man chose to. I dont have the exact words, but because theyre inevitable. That is certainly the situation there. So, yeah there was a thing with open oppenheimer that people like to still talk about. You can imagine the project going that way. Im not prepared to do this. I meant to sit up in the last row and just be a stranger to all of this. But i was born in 1946. And came to live with my grandparents here in washington when i was about 3 months old, waiting with my mother until we could go to germany to join my father who was in the corps of engineers. And so my grand i was the first grandchild. And i think i have a very high status. And i was very, very close to him. I was 24 when he died. I saw a great deal of him as a grandfather. And so addressing the issue the title of this debate, i would say that i would call it a tie. I always whenever you see the photos of famous photos, ive been out to los alamos the statues are there together. And i would call it a tie. Obviously i dont think it could have happened with the speed and the organization without both men. So my grandfather was a wonderful grandfather. He was very strict. He had an opinion on everything. And he thought he was an expert on fashion, romance. He was terribly worried i wasnt marry by the age of 22 and was always trying to think of somebody that he could fix me up with of course in the army who would be the perfect husband. He was we were very very close. And i actually saw i had lunch with him the day before he passed away. And so i miss him terribly. And i just dont know what else to say. Im not an expert on what he did during the war. But as a grandfather he was tops. If i could jump in, how could groves and oppenheim ver gotten along at all . They were complete opposites as far as i can see. They were different personalities. Well, i think it had to do with ambition and a common goal. And that each saw in the other the realization of what they were trying to do. I use the phrase each saw in the other their route to immortality. Anything oppenheimer wanted he would ask groves and groves would get it for him. Any person in the world any amount of money, any instrument, anything. And groves had put great stock in oppenheimers ability. And so i think his qualities in him and charismatic leadership came out and was a brilliant director at los alamos. So, you know, they were joined at the hip even though they were quite different backgrounds and they had this common purpose and i think thats part of groves secret here. He was able to entwine himself with other people and choose people who could get things done and saw in him they could get something from them. Oh, you mean the scientific director of los alamos. The question was, who else were on the short list or long list for being scientific director of los alamos . Well practically every physicist who ran a lab. You know lawrence compton. And so on. And the story as we came to understand it was that every time groves would talk to these other people who are very experienced administrators, he had the sense that there was kind of a organization in their minds and they didnt know how to go right to the heart of the problem. And oppenheimer wanted the job. And again when oppenheimer wanted something he was generally able to figure out how to get it. And when he talked to groves he impressed groves with the idea that this guy knows how to get this job done. And eventually that was true. But you know, at the beginning we tell the story when los alamos was first organized, oppenheimer said well you know we got 20 really smart physicists. Its like the psychics department and get this thing done. He had no conception of how to do it. And Robert Wilson who was an experimental physicist and much younger but did have a very good organizational sense, you know, would go to him and say we need a flow chart or Organization Chart who reports to oppenheimer. What you are talking about . We know each other. We report to each other everybody. But finally things got so out of control in these early months that oppenheimer realized he had better reset his orientation. And he did. And from that point on thinged got organized in a way that they had to be organized because he picked people to do it and he understood what had to be done. Marty said that opp itch chose groves. Its not the other way. Okay. I want to Say Something about groves also. I have to say, i was incredibly impressed reading about the oppenheimer hearings and how loyal groves was to supporting oppenheimer during those very dark very dark days. In the end, he was forced to Say Something that lewis straws and the fbi were pressuring him to say that in effect he wouldnt be able to choose oppenheimer under the current security regulations as opposed to what was going on before. But he was trying to stick with oppenheimer all the way. And that really showed character. In addition to being a fashion person, he was a good friend. He was loyal. Questioner. Why did you select the question of who was more important, oppenheimer or groves . Good question. Cindy did that. I think just to provoke controversy among i dont think it was more important. The question was independencible. I think there are people that are. [ inaudible ] as not independenceable butispensable put achieving the goal of it. And those four people are Groves Groves secretary of war Bernie Nichols and oppenheimer. And if you look at the way money was spent as indicative of the problems problems 85 went to the engineering district. That was nichols. Personally i think groves was head and shoulders above anyone else as far as achieving the goal. He was in charge of everybody else. And everybody else knew that. And im not saying this because he was no great joy for the sed. But nichols seems to be a forgotten man. I havent heard his name mentioned at this event. And he was responsible for the fuel in [ inaudible ] much more of a job, actual lyly the born bob [ inaudible ] it was a very difficult thing. And that was oppenheimers achievement. But they took quite a while until they got the whole mess to solve that problem. Groves ran the operation. And he was number one. And i think he was recognized. They should also recognize that the secretaries of war was the very important part of this. Thank you. Im really glad you brought up general nichols for a couple reasons. One, he was important in ways you said it. But did he not make any of the decisions on you know, the sort of primary level decisions. Those are made by groves. He carried them out