Scientists Try to Stop the Bomb from Being Dropped
There were scientists who opposed the bomb. Physicist Leo Szilard drafted the Szilard Petition, signed by 70 scientists, in 1945. The petition to President Truman acknowledges the need to end the war, but plead to give Japan a chance to surrender before using the atomic bomb. The petition detailed how the atomic bomb, given its ability to annihilate cities, would sink the United States into a new ruthlessness and put the USA under constant threat of their use from rival nations who developed their own atomic bomb. In short, without coining the name, a Cold War. Oppenheimer did not sign the petition. He wrote to the Secretary of War, “The safety of this nation…cannot lie wholly or even primarily in its scientific or technical prowess. It can be based only on making future wars impossible.” The petition never reached President Truman, and the A-bomb dropped in August 1945.