Unknown History Fact: Albert Einstein’s Slip-up

I once saw a great movie with Loretta Young called “Cause for Alarm!” a 1951 movie about a woman who frantically needs to get a hold of a letter, her crazy husband wrote and sent out to the prosecutor. Her husband commits suicide, and the letter incriminates her as his killer. A terrific movie. But what am I getting at? I thought about this movie when I read about Albert Einstein’s greatest mistake. In 1939 Einstein wrote a letter to FDR when he became concerned that Germany had been doing some nuclear research that could lead to Germany’s creation of “extremely powerful bombs of a new type.” In the letter he encouraged research be expedited in the US, or else the Germans would do it first. He also encouraged the US secure an ample supply of Uranium.

Well this letter made the US scramble and ultimately led to what is known as the “The Manhattan Project.” The Manhattan Project was basically an arms race. Did you know that there were 10,000 people involved in this project and only a handful knew what they were trying to accomplish?

By 1945 some scientists were concerned with the power of the atomic bomb, and by now they knew Germany wasn’t building any bombs of their own. Einstein wrote FDR another letter urging him to meet with those opposing scientist, but the letter got there too late. FDR died before he read it, and on August 6, 1945 the US dropped the bomb in Hiroshima. And we all know what happened there.

Einstein is quoted as saying that the first letter he sent FDR was “the single greatest mistake,” of his life. I assume the loss of life with his creation weighed him down. I’ve not done extensive research on WWII, but I know how hard it was for America to fight multiple fronts at once, and Japan was a strong foe. It doesn’t justify it, but war is ugly, and there was nothing Einstein could’ve done differently to change that…bomb or no bomb.

Uncategorized Albert Einstein