What Is Oppenheimer's Guilt

In order to cope with the guilt that Oppenheimer felt due to his involvement with the creation of the atomic bomb, he became a large advocate for international control of atomic energy. He made several attempts to make international control a reality. His most notable attempt being the The Report on the Control of Atomic Energy, conceived and largely written by Oppenheimer. The primary message of The Report on the Control of Atomic Energy, or the Acheson-Lilienthal Report as it would soon be known, was that the control of atomic energy through inspections and policing of operations was unlikely to be successful. The Acheson-Lilienthal Report proposed that there would be a single agency that would monopolize all aspects of atomic energy, including

Oppenheimer was the so-called father of the atomic bomb; he unleashed a force so powerful it could bring an end to humanity. The atomic bombs used in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were estimated to have an equivalent of 3 megatons of TNT. He deeply regretted his decision to help create the atomic bomb; he thought they were inherently evil and genocidal, saying, “It should have been visible to people at the time that this was a weapon from which nobody stood to gain… The whole idea that you could achieve anything of a positive nature by the development of these weapons seemed to me preposterous from the start.” (Bird 431). Shortly after Los Alamos, the Soviet Union tested their own atomic bomb very similar to the one detonated at trinity, and this news sent shockwaves of panic and paranoia throughout America and Oppenheimer fell prey to Senator McCarthy and his witch hunters during the second red scare after several witnesses, two of which, Paul and Sylvia Crouch, came forward claiming to have seen him at a high profile communist meeting in 1941 (“Oppenheimer, Reds”). In response to these allegations oppenheimer released a statement saying, “I have never been a member of the Communist Party. I never assembled in any such group of people for any such purpose in my home or anywhere else.” he then asserted that he did not recognise the name “Crouch” and went on to say, “I have made no secret of the fact that I once knew many people in left-wing circles and belonged to several left-wing organizations. The Government has known in detail of these matters since I first started work on the atomic bomb project.” (Bird 439). Lost somewhere in the middle of his so-called Communist ties and the atomic bomb lies Oppenheimer’s impact on nuclear proliferation. Oppenheimer shaped the way we think of science and public policy, by creating the Acheson-Lilienthal Report Oppenheimer opened a pathway for new ideas, his ideas became a bridge that linked