THREE TWO ONE ZERO

Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] It is Sunday, July 15th, 1945. No ordinary day. Some troops are being redeployed. It is the end of an era. It is 13 hours to zero. In most places, the weather is sunny and hot. No one wants to think of the Navy bombarding Japan. Why should they? Meat is more pitiful. And today, crearyy butter has been reduced eight red ration points. Maybe some will go to the movies and see Rap City and Blue or The Lost Weekend. And then again, maybe not. It's so nice just to relax and just have fun. It is 11 hours to zero. In New York, it begins to rain. Up at Yankee Stadium, the Bombers are playing a double header against the first place Tigers. 38,000 fans see the home team win the first game 5 to4, but the second is called at Hyde Park. Mrs. Roosevelt broadcasts in support of the UNO. At Dayton, the playoff of the PGA Finals. Byron Nelson is beating Sam Bird 4 and three. It is 9 hours to zero. [Music] The USS Augusta, Antworth, Belgium. President Truman, who has been in office only a few months, heads for his first big three conference at Potam. The issues to be resolved. The occupation of defeated Germany, the fate of liberated Poland, the war against Japan. As he walks down the gang plank to board his plane for Pot Stam, he moves toward the end of an age. It is 7 hours to zero. [Music] The Third Reich meant to live a thousand years is rubble at the end of 12. This is the havoc wrought by the mechanical age. This is conventional warfare at its worst. It is still Sunday, July 15th, 1945. The ban on fratinization is lifted by the army to a jive beat GI Joe can now jitterbug with his frow line. It is 5 hours to zero. And in London, the lights come on for the first time after 6 years of tears and blood. It is 3 hours to zero. [Music] Westward across the Atlantic, westward across the world, in the empty desert of New Mexico, another light is coming into being. A light that never was on land or sea. At ground zero, men work in secret at tasks that man has never performed before. The place is called Alamogordo, and the task is to release the energy of the universe locked within the atom since the beginning of time. It is 30 minutes to zero. Flat on the desert sands, the soldiers and scientists wait. Venevver Bush waits. James Conan waits for zero. [Music] Inside the control shelter, Robert Oppenheimer, the director, waits hardest. At 0 - 45 seconds, a robot mechanism takes over. The process is out of human control. [Music] in the tower. The bomb 15 seconds to zero. [Music] 3 seconds. 2 1 [Music] Potam later the same day. Stalin born when Alexander II was Zar of all the Russas. Churchill born during the reign of Victoria Queen of England, Empress of India. Truman born during the administration of Chester A. Arthur are yet unaware a new age is upon them. Then Harry Truman is handed a piece of paper. Now they know the bomb works. It will be used against Japan to terminate World War II. Unconditional surrender or the utter devastation of the Japanese homeland is the ultimatum sent from Potam to Tokyo. On far away Guam in the newly liberated Marianas, Fleet Admiral Nimttz, commander-in-chief Pacific Ocean area, prepares to execute the orders from Potam should Tokyo ignore the ultimatum. And Tokyo does ignore the ultimatum. The new ultra secret orders may make the old secret orders obsolete, but no one yet knows. The war continues with its conventional plans. Seaborn assault on the Japanese home islands. Kyushu, November 1st, 1945. Honu early in 1946 supplies are being stacked by the ton. A million and a half British and American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines will be casualties. More millions of Japanese will die. Invasions that have gone before Guadal Canal, Tarawa, Pelu, Iuima, Okinawa will pale in the light of Honchu and Kyushu. For months, the great fire raids of the B29s have been consuming the cities of Japan, softening up the island empire for the coming invasion. The vast air armadas do their worst. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Hey, [Music] [Music] [Music] Yeah. Heat. Heat. [Music] Now a single bomb. [Music] Now a single plane. Now a single air crew. [Music] 21 days after zero, the orders, the target. Hiroshima, vital to the Japanese war effort, city of fate. Its 245,000 men, women, and children have not yet known an all-out air attack. They respectfully call the American bombers be son, Mr. B. They wonder why he has never come to Hiroshima. They fear he's reserving something special, a nameless something for them in their city. They don't know what. They don't know when. [Music] The Japanese detect the approaching plane in time, but hundreds of bombers come to raid, and this is only one. Nothing is done. Nothing. [Music] August 6th, 1945, 8:15 a.m. [Music] August 9th, 1945. Nagasaki [Music] [Music] The foundations of the earth do shake. Earth breaks to pieces. Earth is split in pieces. Earth shakes to pieces. I look out on earth. Lo, all is chaos. I look at heaven, its light is gone. I look out on the mountains, they are trembling, and all the hills are swaying. I look out, lo, no man is to be seen. All the birds have flown, and the towns are raised. And for this the earth shall mourn, and the heavens above be black. The land is all in flight. Men taking refuge within woods and caves and climbing upon the rocks. Every city shall be abandoned, and not a man dwell therein. You ruined creature. What will you do? [Music] And this is atomic warfare. Two split seconds in time, two cities destroyed, 100,000 dead. World War II is over. This is neither the end of the story nor the beginning. The story began in ancient Greece, 400 years before the birth of Christ. The philosopher Democrus wrote, "In reality, there is nothing but atoms and space, solid and indivisible atoms in an infinite void. All things are one. That which seems solid is really in unending motion. But the magnificence of classical Greece gave way to Rome, whose conquest by the barbarians ushered in the dark ages and the decay of learning and taste. The alchemists spoke for science. Ignorance and superstition all but blotted out the nobility of Greek thought. Alchemy sought a magic formula that would transform base metals into gold. Through the centuries, the alchemists pursued the chimera of transmutation. sought the philosopher's stone which would perform that miracle. The secret things of Hermes Trismagist became their guide. And as all things were from one thing by the mediation of one thing, so all things were born of one thing by adaptation. Its father is the sun, its mother is the moon, the wind carried it in its belly, its nurse is the earth. You shall separate the earth from the fire, the subtle from the gross smoothly and with great cleverness. This is the strong fortitude of all fortitudes because it will overcome every subtle thing and penetrate every solid. But the Greek idea survived 17th century England slowly, how slowly returned the light. First Sir Francis Bacon and then Sir Isaac Newton, lone voyagers on the seas of thought, who between them cleared the rubble of magic to make way for the unfolding of modern science. The flood tide began rolling restlessly through the centuries, the 17th century, the 18th century, the 19th century toward the 20th century. And on the crest of the tide, Lavoisier, Dalton and Faraday, Mendelv, Beccre and Aston, Rutherford, Cockroft and Walton, Milikin, Chadwick and Plank, Pierre and Maricuri, Frederick and Iranolio. But the most profound insight will come in the 20th century in 195 to a young German Albert Einstein. His insight will be awesome in its simplicity. E= MC². Matter and energy are interchangeable. Almost none will know the meaning of this revelation, but one who does is Liisa Mitner, a great nuclear physicist who has fled from Hitler to Denmark to freedom to the laboratory of another of the world's greatest scientists, Neil Spor. Behind her in Berlin work two of her former colleagues, Otto Han and Fritz Strasman, whose difficult experiments Lisa Mitner and Neil Spore are destined to interpret. Han and Strasman published their findings in a scientific journal by [Music] it. It is January 1939. Without knowing it, they have split the uranium atom. [Music] Without knowing it, Hitler has the clue to the absolute weapon he needs to make him master of the world. But he is deafened by his own madness, by the screams of his own victims. [Music] Free science for Botan. Free thought for Botan Uden for Botan. along with the anonymous thousands who are beaten, bludgeoned, and driven out of the Third Reich by Hitler's insane theories of race and blood are some of the most brilliant scientists of our time. Zeke Hive. Then the Lord said unto Moses, "Go in unto Pharaoh and tell him, thus sth the Lord God of the Hebrews. Let my people go that they may serve me." To the fortunate United States come the fortunate few, and they come to work for their new country. Einstein is already here and to his modest house in Princeton, New Jersey, come the great scientists of the world to discuss the revolutionary interpretation Lisa Mitner and Neil Spor have placed on the German uranium experiments. Einstein instantly recognizes the magnitude of this information. He writes a letter to the president of the United States. The element of uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future. It may become possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction. October 11th, 1939. World War II is one month old. Einstein's letter is delivered by the scientist's friend and the president's adviser, Alexander Saxs. Not daring to gamble on Hitler's continued ignorance, the scientists fear that Germany may yet make an absolute weapon. Sax's mission must not fail. Franklin Roosevelt considers the words of Albert Einstein. It is conceivable that extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed. Will the president listen to the theoretical physicists? Will he support them in the development of nuclear energy? His answer, yes, he will. Chicago University, after one year's intensive research, after another year's intensive work, an abandoned squash court. Here Einstein's vision and Roosevelt's decision reached the test of verification. The time for theory is over. The time for fact has come. Can atoms be made to split each other continuously under controlled conditions to release usable quantities of energy? A chain reaction. Enrico Fermy, another refugee from fascism, is in command. It is December 2nd, 1942. The geer counters click and the boron trilouide neutron detector registers. The indium foil is irradiated. The K factor passes unity. The first chain reaction is going. A coded message goes out. The Italian navigator has landed in the new world. The army takes over. The atom has a new name and a new commanding officer. The name the Manhattan Engineer District. The officer Major General Leslie R. Groves. The atom started life with an appropriation of $6,000. No longer is it a waif trying to prove its strength. A million people will be mobilized to give it a hand. A billion, another billion, and many more billions will be spent to house and nourish it. Today's blueprints will be the world's greatest industrial complex tomorrow. at Oak Ridge, at Los Alamos, at Hanford, at Paduka, at Portsouth, Savannah River and Brook Haven, Berkeley, Argon and Ames, Iowa, at Skenctity, at Albuquerque and at Fenol, Ohio. Very roughly, very crudely, this is what belongs to the citizens of the United States. Here the industrial genius of America has come into full potential. Here the enterprise of a free society has found its maximum expression. Here, millions of tons of raw uranium ore produce mere ounces of fishable material. Here is being manufactured that which will influence the course of each and all our lives. [Music] The purpose is not meaningless confusion, but rather it is to learn as much about atoms as possible and put that knowledge to work. Behind these men and their paraphernalia stands the Atomic Energy Commission, which took control from the military on New Year's Day 1947. into the Atomic Energy Act, Congress wrote, "It is hereby declared to be the policy of the people of the United States that subject at all times to the paramount objective of assuring the common defense and security, the development and utilization of atomic energy shall so far as practicable be directed toward improving the public welfare, increasing the standard of living, strengthening free competition in private enterprise, and promoting world peace. [Music] Out of the minds of men have these things been wrought. The only familiar thing left is man himself. But man is neither accurate nor precise nor predictable. Neither is nature. For centuries, man has sought to transform base materials into gold. Now that he can change one thing into another, he does not find gold. Rather, he finds energy, and energy is power more powerful than all the gold in the world. This is one of the ironies in human history. What else he will find, no one knows. Here forever, solid matter melts into insubstantial radiation. Here forever, the tangible changes into the intangible. In quiet, in solitude, in mystery, scientists and their fellow workers continue their search. [Music] For men say oft that fire nor pride, but discovering may no man hide. Nor can he hide from the discovery that energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. Nor can he ignore what many consider the outstanding achievement of 20th century science, the recognition that we are not yet in contact with ultimate reality. And if the solidity of matter seems to have gone out from under you, don't for a moment think that this has impeded the advance of science, for quite the contrary is the case. According to Dr. Conan, and according to Dr. Oppenheimer. The future will be only more radical and not less, only more strange and not more familiar. It is all very simple, all very different. Everything is the same, but everything is different. First, there is the celestial cosmos with its suns, stars, planets, comets, and meteors about which man knows almost nothing. Then there is the solar system of which our earth is a part. The part and the whole are made of molecules which are varying combinations of 92 elements. These elements are made of atoms which range from the lightest hydrogen to the heaviest uranium. An atom consists of a positive nucleus around which are negative electrons. Electrons change, do not change, move, do not move. The nucleus almost all the atoms mass almost none its size consists of protons which have a positive charge and neutrons which have no charge at all. Then come the alpha particles, the beta particles and the gamma rays which of course are not particles. They are electromagnetic energy like x-rays and light. Then there are subatomic particles such as the posetron, the neutrino and the mason about which man always again knows almost nothing. But to help him find his way through the maze of matter and energy, there are such useful devices as a particles and cosmic rays, vandagramraph generators, linear accelerators, super accelerators, cyclotrons, synretrons, syncrocyrons, betatrons, cosmatrons androns. These oscillating magnetic apparatus indicate that the infinite universe and the finite universe are the same only they are different. Hence by making what is different really different we get a man-made element that is quite different. Transmutation takes place when uranium nuclei absorb neutrons making uranium a different kind of uranium throwing out electrons becoming neptunium. Neptunium throwing out electrons becomes plutonium. Plutonium or other elements radioactive or uranium of the right kind in critical masses. Fision and fusion, which simply means they release energy, which simply means they explode. [Music] And there were voices and thunders and lightnings, so mighty an earthquake and so great. Earthquake too has been wrought by the minds of men. China burns, Asia reels, the world trembles with unrest and strife. The grand alliance of World War II becomes a crumbling platform for propaganda and dissension. If the Russians can get enough manpower, natural resources, land under their control, this they believe will be one way to offset the industrial power of the West as symbolized by the atom bomb. China is among the first to capitulate to the communists and her new leader Maatung arrives in Moscow to pick up his orders. For the communists throughout the world, Moscow is general headquarters. Cold war has been declared. The campaign against the West is launched. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music]