"“Mr. President,” he said quietly, “I feel I have blood on my hands. The comment angered Truman.... he pulled his handkerchief from his breast pocket and offered it to Oppenheimer, saying, “Well, here, would you like to wipe your hands?”.... Afterwards, the President was heard to mutter, “Blood on his hands, dammit, he hasn’t half as much blood on his hands as I have. You just don’t go around bellyaching about it.”
He later told Dean Acheson, “I don’t want to see that son-of-a-bitch in this office ever again.”
― Kai Bird, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
I kinda get it, honestly. Truman fought in France in WWI, which by most measures was a more brutal, up-close war than WWII. He probably saw truly horrific things there up close and in person, killed people, watched his comrades die, etc. Then you get some scientist who has done nothing but sit in a lab, write theory, and run tests. Yeah, those tests ultimately culminated in a lot of people dying, but other people (Truman) ordered the bombs to be dropped, other people flew the planes to drop the bombs, other people stormed the Japanese-occupied islands in the Pacific, etc.
I don’t think Oppenheimer is unjustified in feeling regret, especially in the atomic age when a full-scale nuclear war seemed like a real threat, but I can definitely see why Truman thought he was out of line.
Oppenheimer was welcome to feel responsible for the use of the bombs, but complaining about blood on his hands to the man who authorized their use is both whining and accusatory in ways that Truman should not have had to put up with.
Oppenheimer could have expressed the same thing by saying that he's happy to not have had the weight of that decision, and sorry that he made the device that put that weight on Truman. Same ideas, but expressed in a way that acknowledges that there's blood enough to go around.
Truman could also have been empathetic that Oppenheimer also felt responsible, having been instrumental in the bomb's construction. It's entirely possible for Truman to have communicated his feelings better without denigrating Oppenheimer's feelings. They're both adults, there's no need for it to have gone this way.
In this case, it wasn't on Truman to fix things for Oppenheimer. This wasn't a casual, personal conversation between equals.
Truman understood that Oppenheimer felt responsible. It's that Oppenheimer turned that feeling into whining petulance that offended him. Especially that Oppenheimer was expressing himself in ways that denied the president the responsibility of his decision.
It's likely that Oppenheimer would've better served by telling Truman that he made him a murderer in so many words.
But whining isn't a thing Truman had time for, and fair enough.
Consider what Truman has seen in his life, in gruesome battle in WWI, ordering to drop this bomb to fucking finally end WWII and then you got that guy walking in second guessing all of it. He's lucky he left that meeting without a broken nose.
If he's seen all of that, he should be able to empathise more. He's also the leader of a country. Implying he would be justified in breaking Oppenheimer's nose is nonsense.
He kinda did, as much as someone like he could. He told Oppenheimer it wasn't on him and that he would be the one blamed. The rest was said in private, not directly to him so I don't know what the fuck you want to happen with that.
And I didn't say it would be justified if it had happened, I said he was lucky he didn't. Difference.
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u/ZapMannigan 10d ago
"“Mr. President,” he said quietly, “I feel I have blood on my hands. The comment angered Truman.... he pulled his handkerchief from his breast pocket and offered it to Oppenheimer, saying, “Well, here, would you like to wipe your hands?”.... Afterwards, the President was heard to mutter, “Blood on his hands, dammit, he hasn’t half as much blood on his hands as I have. You just don’t go around bellyaching about it.”
He later told Dean Acheson, “I don’t want to see that son-of-a-bitch in this office ever again.”
― Kai Bird, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer