10. The Manhattan Project was maintained in a state of such strict secrecy that most of the people who worked on the nuclear bomb were unaware of that fact
The Manhattan Project was the United States research and development program during World War II that resulted in the creation of the nuclear weapon. Undertaken between 1942-1946, formally disbanded on August 15, 1947, the American program, with support of the United Kingdom and Canada, and led by Robert Oppenheimer in his capacity as director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, designed the nuclear bomb first tested on July 16, 1945, in addition to those dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Overall the Manhattan Project cost an estimated $2 billion ($31 billion in 2018) and employed more than 130,000 people during the program’s lifespan.
Despite this immense cost and considerable manpower, the Manhattan Project was kept in a state of near-total secrecy with “probably no more than a few dozen men in the entire country knew the full meaning of the Manhattan Project, and perhaps only a thousand others even were aware that work on atoms was involved”. This was considered of vital necessity to avoid forewarning the Axis powers, especially Germany, of the production of nuclear weapons and induce an acceleration in their own programs; equally, secrecy of the project was the best protection against potential sabotage from external agents. Life magazine reported in August 1945 that the overwhelming majority of the 100,000 employees “worked like moles in the dark”, monitoring “dials and switches while behind thick concrete walls mysterious reactions took place” completely unaware of the true purpose of their work; the curiosity of employees was notably dampened by the threat of a ten year prison sentence for disclosing information regarding their activities.
Also Read: What People Don’t Know About the World War II Race for Nuclear Weapons.