The world changed forever on August 6, 1945, when American bomber aircraft Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. An utterly new technology in warfare, with unprecedented destructive power, it ushered in a dangerous reality. Michael Joseloff, a television documentary producer who has won four Emmy Awards, is the ideal guide to the multifaceted story presented in The Greatest Scientific Gamble. He seamlessly weaves together its many strands while vividly conveying the day-to-day urgency of the race to be first in developing the epoch-making weapon.
The development of the atomic bomb involved some of the greatest scientists of the era, including Werner Heisenberg in Germany, Enrico Fermi in Italy, and Robert Oppenheimer and Niels Bohr in the United States. Joseloff is astute and perceptive in his examinations of their personalities, with keen insights about science as well. He also notes that Oppenheimer was raised in a Jewish family, and that Fermi’s wife was Jewish.
The creation of the atomic bomb was fundamentally a race between two nations — the United States and Nazi Germany. Both were leaders in atomic research and they became military enemies after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Joseloff captures the suspense surrounding their experiments as he describes their respective efforts to unleash the latent power of the uranium atom, and he explains the mechanism that ultimately succeeded. He also has an eye for dramatic moments, like the time Fermi — during an experiment with neutron bombardment — ran out of his laboratory clutching an irradiated sample of aluminum shouting, “Clear the way! Look out!”
Joseloff brilliantly conveys the pace and multiplicity of these efforts by telling the story in sixty-seven brief chapters each consisting of just a few pages. They move from scene to scene, each typically focusing on a specific event or individual: introducing General Leslie Groves, the head of the Manhattan Project; describing a test of a nuclear reactor at a football stadium in Chicago; revealing an American plot to kidnap Heisenberg.
He lends additional context by interspersing very brief “bulletins” about the war, such as a CBS Radio report on the Nazis’ annexation of Austria; a BBC news item on the German invasion of Denmark and Norway; and Winston Churchill’s broadcast announcing the start of the Battle of Britain.
The Greatest Scientific Gamble is an outstanding and compelling introduction to the personalities, politics, and technology which enabled the United States and its allies to win the Second World War.
Bob Goldfarb is President Emeritus of Jewish Creativity International.
