Inside The Centre: The Life Of J. Robert Oppenheimer - Plot & Excerpts
Stimson, recorded in his diary a conversation he had had that day with George Marshall, the Army Chief of Staff, in which the two had agreed that ‘now with our new weapon we would not need the assistance of the Russians to conquer Japan’. The following day, Truman told Stalin about the atomic bomb. Or rather, as Truman later recalled it: ‘I casually mentioned to Stalin that we had a new weapon of unusual destructive force.’ To Truman’s great surprise, Stalin showed little interest. ‘All he said was that he was glad to hear it and hoped we would make “good use of it against the Japanese”.’ Stalin, of course, already knew a great deal about the Manhattan Project, and the Soviets had been told by Fuchs in May that a test of the bomb was being planned for July. What Truman and his advisors did not know was that the Soviet Union’s own atomic-bomb project was already well under way, accelerated by the information provided by Fuchs, Greenglass et al. On the same day that Truman had this strangely muted exchange with Stalin, a directive – drafted by Groves and approved by Marshall and Stimson – was issued to General Carl Spaatz, the new commander of the Strategic Air Forces, which would be responsible for delivering the bomb.
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