The Manhattan Project

The Manhattan Project was a research and development program, led by the United States with participation from the United Kingdom and Canada, that produced the first atomic bomb during World War II. The idea of forming a research team to create a nuclear weapon was endorsed in a letter than Albert Einstein sent to President Franklin Roosevelt in 1939. In 1942 physicist Enrico Fermi successfully controlled a nuclear reaction in his reactor called CP-1 (Chicago Pile 1) which was located at the University of Chicago under a squash court. Later in the project the first atomic bomb was exploded at Los Alamos, New Mexico on July 6, 1945. A month after the first bomb was tested, two nuclear weapons were exploded over Japan, at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The official reason is that it would immediately end the war, thus saving the lives of thousands of American servicemen. Immediate deaths from the bombings are estimated to be about 100,000 - comparable to the estimated number of casualties that would have resulted from a Allied invasion of the Japanese home islands. However, the choice to drop the bombs on Japan is very controversial and there are many people that feel they were unnecessary, that Japan would have surrendered anyway. At Los Alamos during World War II there was no moral issue with respect to working on the atomic bomb. Everyone was agreed on the necessity of stopping Hitler and the Japanese from destroying the free world. Soon after the Manhattan Project became a success, the Soviet Union developed their own atomic bomb. With these new weapons that could destroy entire cities and civilizations, the atomic arms race and cold war began.