History vs. Hollywood: Oppenheimer
historyvshollywood.com
historyvshollywood.com
History: Dozens of elite physicists and engineers.
EDIT:
Similarly...
Hollywood: Steve Jobs.
History: Steve Wozniak, Jonathan Ives, hundreds of engineers.
Fame is an industry. Like Kim Kardashian. They pick someone and generate a story, and that sells.
These names were known in an Australian household in the 1970s.
I can add more but they get increasingly obscure - but Flowers was as well known as Turing in the commonwealth in the 1980s.
Early peak Turing was when the Andrew Hodges book ('83 IIRC) got mainstream appeal later that decade, from there the myth grew.
I can't remember the film though, can believe it was more Turing-oriented.
I wonder if Hollywood writers just can't imagine having accomplishments that required work of many great people.
Not just the movie, many books and articles. They often give him credit for what a team of people did (in the war-time code cracking efforts) and barely at all mention the work for which he was uniquely¹ responsible. He deserves huge credit for his life's work, no one of a sensible mind would argue there, but many give him sole credit for the wrong things at the expense of acknowledging those he worked with. From what I know (or I am lead to believe, to be more accurate) of his character I think he would be rather miffed by this.
[1] “standing on the shoulders of past researchers/thinkers” arguments aside, in some places
I'd wager the writers are just pandering to the mores of their audience, who currently seem more inclined to an affinity for cult-like behaviour than sustaining an actual interest in the reality of history.
https://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/history/m....
Later tests at tropical islands respected human rights to a similar degree:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9199216
Tests in French Polynesia were just as shady, perhaps more so.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56340159
The two live 3–4-megaton Mark 39 nuclear bombs dropped on North Carolina didn't have quite the same effect:
Utilities and roads were built to access the seized land.
Maybe the process could have been more humane, but it is easy to sit back in the comfort of the 21 century and feign outrage. The nation was facing existential challenges and the war machine required sacrifice from all civilians.
This kind of context would go a long way in fostering better conversations. In regards to this tweet, it would have been nice for the author to acknowledge that while the Hispanos' grazing permits for the land were withdrawn, it was their sacrifice for the war effort.
Then there's all the Pacific islanders and the post-war nuclear tests, all the way up to the French government carrying out a lethal terrorist attack against New Zealand in 1985: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior
The horrors of the island wars against the japanese, and more to the point their immense almost religious commitment to opposing the US was a big factor in developing and using the bombs.
It wasn’t a “should I build this bomb and kill n civilians, it was a real consideration and waying of lives, both civilian and military.
Dan Carlin’s podcast about the pacific war kinda opened my eyes how dire the circumstances were really. Even more so it must have looked immensely so through the lenses of propaganda at the time … while the movie did touch a bit on all of that, it didn’t seem to me it did it justice, making it harder to empathize with Oppie, which in my mind is kinda a shame. Otherwise great movie!
In almost every way that matters (save at the end) the pacific war had little to do with the Manhattan Project and building of the bomb.
President Roosevelt approved the atomic program on 9 October 1941 and agreed to coordinate the effort with the British and maintained correspondance on that with Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
This was after a long sustained effort by commonwealth (UK, Canadian, Australia, New Zealand) and european nuclear scientists to convince the US nuclear scientist and DoD that a nuclear weapon was actually possible and feasible and likely being worked upon by the Germans.
Once started the project was a behemoth, a monster rolling downwards under it's own weight, with mining, processing, seperation, fabrication, testing, security and some 150,000 (IIRC) employed across multiple sites.
The only thing that prevented atomic weapons being used in the carpet bombing destruction of German cities was the surrender of Germany just a few months prior to the first protype being ready for testing.
The reasons for a new US President to sanction further testing of the new weapon he had only just barely first learnt about on two pristine Japanese targets remain somewhat hotly debated to this day.
Much has been written about this after the bombs fell.
I'd point out that anybody that has been exposed to massive projects understands one of the prime unspoken reasons, you cannot spend a massive proportion of GDP on a military project and not expect to see it used.
Further discussion on the breadth of the nuke or not debate: http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/03/08/the-decision-to-us...
The Soviet Union - and 8 other countries, to a lesser extent - also poured great resources into their atomic project, and then found the restraint not to use it in anger.
The other countries that joined the nuclear club all made prominent demonstrations of their ability to build and detonate atomic weapons .. there were > 2,000 detonations following H&N.
Many of those tests, including tests by the British, the French, and the Soviets, killed innocent civilians.
The only demonstrated restraint that I can see was the pivot to full blown MAD strategy .. and that came close to unravelling on multiple occasions.
At that time, nukes were simply a difference of degree, not of kind, from the ongoing use of strategic bombing with incendiaries and explosives against population centres by all sides in the conflict. Perhaps the real crossing of the line into mass murder was at Guernica, in 1937, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Guernica
The problem with trying to pick apart the morality of individual actions in WW2 is that wherever you look for context you find more atrocities.
You forget that Germany started the war together with Russia. In 1939 Russia has also invaded several countries and unleashed terror. There were plans to drop nuclear bomb on Moscow after Hitler was defeated, but instead the US and the UK thrown Eastern European countries under the bus and the war was frozen.
I wonder if Russia had received the same treatment as Japan, that we would have this ongoing threat for decades and now the invasion of Ukraine.
What horrible russian propaganda! The pact was about splitting Europe. That's why Russia invaded Poland[1], the Baltic countries[2], Finland[3], and Romania[4] after signing it.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Poland
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_the_Baltic_state...
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_War
[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_occupation_of_Bessarabi...
Citation needed. Stalin did things for his own reasons, and he didn't bother explaining them, so where are you getting this from? And if that were the case, why did the Soviet Union export so many crucial things (oil, tungsten, etc.) to Germany up to the very morning of Operation Barbarossa if they knew there will be used against them in the near future? And also, why was the Soviet Union caught off guard with the attack if they were expecting it and had mountains of intelligence showing it was imminent?
Also, invading Poland, Finland and the Baltics was certainly a choice by the Soviet Union. Yes, they're responsible for the start of WW2 because not only did they collaborate with Nazi Germany, they also gave Hitler and Germany a stable Eastern Front allowing them to focus on Poland and then Benelux and France.
> Soviet Union was an ally
Ally of convenience purely and entirely. They needed the other United Nations for the stuff and the other fronts, and the other United Nations needed them against the Germans (let's not forget, Germany lost the war on the Eastern Front). It shows in Soviet intentions and actions against Eastern European nations, like when then set up a puppet Polish government even though in theory they were allied to the actual Polish government in exile.
Pardon my French, but WTF are you talking about? Stalin took half of Europe.
It confounds me how people think WW2 ended with a success when millions were killed or enslaved as a result of the "victory".
In their mind it was the "price" to pay for relative stability in the west.
The status quo was sealed once Soviet Union has developed their own nuclear weapons using stolen IP. Had this not happened, most likely Stalin would have been pushed back.
The western front was already lost. The game was over. Germany won. Britain was pinned back and had no chance of invading France. If the soviets hadn't won at Stalingrad, turned the whole war and then slowly pushed back Germany... it was over. The US would've done absolutely nothing about it.
More Russians died at Stalingrad alone than Americans in the entire war. WW2 was, for most of it, just Germany v Russia. That's where all the losses were. Thats where all the fighting was. D-day was only in 1944... what was happening from the french surrender in 1940 until 1944? Who was fighting?
Honestly, Americans drinking their own kool-aid is mad to me. This is all basic history and a few hollywood films won't change that.
From France 24: "Just after the European fighting ended in May 1945, a poll by the French survey group Ifop found that 57 percent of the French thought Moscow had contributed the most to the war effort, compared with just 20 percent who named the United States.
But by the 60th anniversary of the Normandy landings by Allied forces in 2004 -- when Russia was represented for the first time, by Putin -- the figures were reversed, with just 20 percent putting the Soviet Union first.
Instead, 58 percent lauded the US, even though its total losses of 400,000 in both the European and Pacific theatres were just a small fraction of the dead in the Soviet Union.
"In 1945, the great ally was Stalin and the USSR -- their role was absolutely clear for the French," said Stephane Grimaldi, director of the Caen Memorial Museum for World War II in Normandy.
"But 50 years later, it's the US that won, for the very simple reason that in the meantime we had the Cold War," he said.
Hollywood also helped change perceptions with a string of hit films starting in the 1960s showing brave Americans fighting far from home.
"If you look at way it has been portrayed in popular culture, it's all about the battle in France and the Battle of Britain, but World War II was overwhelmingly Germans and Russians killing each other," said Jeremy Shapiro from the European Council on Foreign Relations."
Contributions aren't judged by polling random people.
Russia would have lost if it wasn't for American supplies. In fact the biggest US mistake was feeding 10 million reds a day during the 1921 famine[1].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Relief_Administration...
IMO the discussion often boils down to definition of words and emotional attachment to those words. I don't think people here disagree on the (most prominent) facts.
Because then it would have been an apologetic propaganda piece. It is, in my opinion, precisely much more interesting to look into the political and organizational factors for dropping the bombs, than to whitewash the USA into the world's benevolent savior once more. Enough such movies have been made.
What Oppenheimer actually said about the Gita in an interview
https://twitter.com/pun_fact/status/1680803902524989440
How Hollywood depicted it:
https://twitter.com/Nikhilsingh21_/status/168268543568707584...
Its not that its offensive. But more so its not factual because he didn't do it over a mating conversation. But in a serious video.
This can't be. I had read the statement but the final shot where he and Einstein talked near the pond, where we see the visions inside Oppenheimer's mind, had to have been CGI. Also, though I am not sure how they filmed the Trinity test practically, it had to be a smaller explosion made to look bigger, so it had to have required some compositing work. The rest of the movie did not really have all that much in terms of VFX since almost every other was scene was dialogue heavy and was mostly shot inside closed spaces. The scenes where Oppenheimer was giving a speech and was experiencing visions of an explosion also could have been done 100% practically.
This is not a slight on the movie or on Nolan, cause it would have been much easier for him to do the trinity test or the scene of Oppenheimer dreaming about atoms via CG (which I recently read was done by using an aquarium and glass balls). It was just Nolan doing his best to market his movie, considering the fact the cast nor his writers were available to market the movie.
As a side note, I want to add that I felt the scene with the Trinity test was fantastic, especially the fact that the hall went dead silent for a few seconds,but the actual shot of the mushroom cloud paled in comparison to the actual footage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dfK9G7UDok&ab_channel=atomc...
https://youtu.be/hyiXpECM7eg?t=224
This I felt that whenever we saw the actors reacting to the explosion, they are being bathed by the light from the explosion, but seeing the actual explosion itself did not live up to how Oppenheimer himself said that it looked like a thousand suns shining in the sky at once. But with the excellent music, acting, writing, direction, shot composition etc. it is easy to forgive.
In the case of Oppenheimer (and other Nolan movies) they use a lot of practical effects but they are eventually digitally composited, color corrected and edited.
> The director was not attempting to claim that there was no CGI in Oppenheimer at all. He was instead stating that there are no shots in the movie that were entirely created using visual effects.
But when he says "the movie is done without CGI shots", he can't ignore that most people will assume the movie is also made without digital editing and compositing.
The director says there is no CGI, why would he lie?
I’m inferring from this statement that the movie was somehow more successful due to its reliance on practical effects. That seems like a pretty good incentive to lie.
But I am eagerly awaiting the BTS to see how he pulled off that one without CG. I am planning a rewatch very soon in the hall to see if I can figure it out.