This is a prime example of the winners writing history ( or more aptly those currently in power writing history ). Can you imagine a historian writing a book titled "The Eccentric Father of the Death Camp"?
The guy helped build a weapon which destroyed the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in a matter of seconds. Oh shucks, what an eccentric and quirky guy he was. Objectively, he is one of history's greatest villains and arguably the one of the greatest war criminals, but luckily, he was on the winning side.
If Oppenheimer was japanese and he helped build bombs for the japanese and the japanese dropped nukes on say Baltimore and San Fran during the war, he would have been tried and executed after ww2 by the victorious US. I doubt "The Eccentric Father of the Atomic Bomb" is the titled we'd use if he was japanese.
> If Oppenheimer was japanese and he helped build bombs for the japanese and the japanese dropped nukes on say Baltimore and San Fran during the war, he would have been tried and executed after ww2 by the victorious US.
Your hypothetical assertion is heavily undermined by the actual reality of what happened with Werner Von Braun and all the other Nazi Germany scientists recruited by Operation Paperclip.
> Your hypothetical assertion is heavily undermined by the actual reality of what happened with Werner Von Braun.
How so? Werner Von Braun didn't invent the A-Bomb. His rockets were more of a novelty than anything. A single firebomb killed more people and caused more damage than all the V2 rockets during ww2. And Von Braun's weapons weren't used against the US. It was used against britain.
If Werner Von Braun developed nukes and germany nuked San Fran and Baltimore, do you really believe he'd be a director of NASA? Rather than undermining it, your example supports my assertion.
Werner Von Braun was responsible for no american civilian death. If he was responsible for 200,000 deaths and poisoning hundreds of thousands of american civilians with radiation and we allowed him to be a director of NASA, maybe you'd be right.
von braun used jewish slave labor to build rockets used to terrorize civilians on behalf of the nazi regime. he's still generally remembered as a quirky scientist archetype, disconnected from the fruits of his labors.
Yes. That wasn't nice of von braun. But what does jewish slave labor in europe have to do with the US? Did Israel ask von braun to help them with their space/rocket programs? What does british civilians have to do with the US.
The point is if von braun had enslaved hundreds of thousands of americans and then killed them, we wouldn't have made him a director of NASA. If you can show me where von braun murdered hundreds of thousands of americans, I am more than willing to change my mind.
The fact that you are trying to equate v2 rockets with hiroshima and nagasaki shows that your innate bias is making to you grasp at straws and generate a false narrative. But then again, that's my point. Bias in history.
I don't agree with the bombing of civilians (nuclear or otherwise), and for that matter don't have any special respect for historians, but as for history I don't believe your response fits the world we live in. History was pretty unkind to Teller and plenty other bigger "winners". Of course I can imagine a historian attacking those scientists, it happens all the time. And that could easily have been the direction the mainstream history books went with. They probably will sooner or later, the way our society constantly finds new villains to decry. Give it a generation at most.
While he does bear some responsibility for the bomb, it's absurd to call him "one of history's greatest villains" or any sort of war criminal. The primary responsibility lies on the military and political leaders who made the decision to use it. Oppenheimer was a scientist who felt obligated to work on the bomb in case the other side got there first, and once it was developed, spent the rest of his life working to limit nuclear weapon use. He was painted as a Communist sympathiser and publicly humiliated over this, as the book "American Prometheus" details at length.
From an article [1] about Oppenheimer's (invited) visit to Japan in 1960:
> As Oppenheimer began his trip, he found the Japanese people grateful, even enthusiastic, at his presence in the country. Aspiring scientists were eager to learn from him, and the majority at least appeared to hold no ill will toward him for the bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki that killed hundreds of thousands of people.
The guy helped build a weapon which destroyed the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in a matter of seconds. Oh shucks, what an eccentric and quirky guy he was. Objectively, he is one of history's greatest villains and arguably the one of the greatest war criminals, but luckily, he was on the winning side.
If Oppenheimer was japanese and he helped build bombs for the japanese and the japanese dropped nukes on say Baltimore and San Fran during the war, he would have been tried and executed after ww2 by the victorious US. I doubt "The Eccentric Father of the Atomic Bomb" is the titled we'd use if he was japanese.