Those two cities getting wiped off the map is not an output of people thinking of physics as a discipline. There is no causal relationship between:

p1 - treat physics as a discipline p2 - two cities get wiped off the map

There are many more variables that are relevant here, and in times of justified war like WW2 things are different. Consider a war scenario where your physicists spent all their undergraduate study time learning about identity politics and writing political preambles on their papers in order to get their papers even looked at.