‘ #Oppenheimer’ Distorts History to Promote War

"It is unsurprising then that Oppenheimer felt he’d been deliberately misled by the White House and Pentagon, once these facts became public knowledge. His post-war peace activism was directly informed not only by the devastating impact of the atomic bomb on innocent civilians, but the grand deceit by which his acquiescence to their use had been secured. Not that one would know that from Nolan’s cinematic telling. ...

Accordingly, for many years, a nuclear weapons exhibit at the National Museum of the US Navy was replete with a plaque, which stated: “The vast destruction wreaked by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the loss of 135,000 people made little impact on the Japanese military. However, the Soviet invasion of Manchuria changed their minds.”

That plaque has now vanished. So too has all consideration of the Soviet Union’s enormous contribution to the defeat of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in Western public consciousness. This is no accident. Opinion polls in the immediate aftermath of the conflict show Europeans were contemporaneously under no illusion that Hitler, Hirohito, and Mussolini would’ve prevailed, were it not for the incalculable sacrifice of the Soviet people, and Red Army. The role of Britain and the US was considered effectively irrelevant.

Fittingly, one of the key mechanisms through which the US manipulates global audiences about the realities of World War II - and much, much else besides - is cinema. The CIA, FBI, Pentagon, and individual branches of the US military all boast dedicated “entertainment liaison offices”, which over the past century have influenced the content of thousands of movies, documentaries, TV serials and other entertainment products. As a result, a highly specific version of reality past and present, reflecting Washington’s national security interests, is constantly broadcast internationally. ...

A desire to show the Russians what nuclear bombs could do motivated Truman to strike Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Principled fears of a US monopoly on the weapon, and the risk it might be used against the Soviet Union, prompted Los Alamos theoretical physicist Klaus Fuchs to pass nuclear secrets to Moscow. Oppenheimer was accused of encouraging him to do so, although the charge was never proven.

Nonetheless, the details of American Prometheus strongly suggest Oppenheimer, who favored Soviet awareness of, if not outright involvement in, the US nuclear program, would’ve likely approved of Fuchs’ actions. After all, other countries developing nuclear weapons of their own was the sole effective means of ensuring the US would never use them again. Or so he hoped."