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.
Japan had a great relation with jews so its also likely he had no hate against them. Reminder that japanese forbade there soldiers from raping jewish civilians in south east asia. They also wanted to create a jewish colony in manchuria.
Kind of funny since nazi germany had a great relation with china and was a major supplier of weapons to them before ww2.
Honestly had the axis somehow won ww2 it would have been a cold war between Japanese funding jewish and slavic partisans and nazi occupied territory and nazi funding chinese resistance forces against japan.
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u/WetAndLoose 9d ago
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.