Einstein and the Manhattan Project

Summary: Germany, 1933. Hitler becomes Chancellor. Albert Einstein, a confirmed pacifist, flees Nazi Germany and takes refuge in the United States. He fears for his life, but also for his research, which he refuses to allow to fall into the wrong hands. However, even without him, Germany discovers how to split the atom, thanks to Otto Hahn. The Second World War is looming. The threat of a nuclear Germany is ever closer... In August 1939, under pressure from physicists Leo Szilard and Eugene Wigner, Einstein writes a letter to President Roosevelt warning him of the possible development by Germany of "new bombs of a new, extremely powerful type." While this letter's aim was to warn the American authorities of the dangers of nuclear arms, it will have the opposite effect: Roosevelt launches the Manhattan Project. The United States acquires stocks of uranium, furthers Enrico Fermi's research into chain reactions, and produces the first atomic bomb. On August 6, 1945, an American A-bomb falls on Hiroshima and ushers in the age of nuclear weapons. "I made one great mistake in my life-when I signed the letter..." Albert Einstein was later to say.