 Hi, my name is Sandy Barrett and I'm here with the Vermont Institute of Community and International Involvement, talking about the current event, the Blockbuster film that's now currently in the theaters called Openheimer. I'm here with a number of guests, so I'm going to allow, hopefully, to introduce themselves and to talk a little bit about what Openheimer, the film, but also the man meant to U.S. history and to the history of the world and we're going to begin by having people introduce, the guests will introduce themselves and talk a little bit about their role and their thoughts about the film and about the period of history in which Openheimer was such an actor and then also what that meant for the history of the United States and the history of the world. Okay, but we'll begin with Robin Lloyd and once you can introduce yourself, right Robin? Okay, yes. Hi. Hi everyone. So I've been an anti-nuclear activist for a long time and in fact I really subscribed to the Catholic position that splitting the atom was a sin. Now what is a sin? That was, it was in violation of human nature and the universe. I mean that's sort of a far out position but I would like to just say also that a very trenchant part of the film I thought that sort of encapsulates the whole problem was when Openheimer was speaking to Einstein and he said, when I first talked to you about the atom bomb I told you the worst possible outcome was that it would start a chain reaction that could blow up the world. By that he meant that the single bomb was so powerful that it could literally trigger a series of other explosions upon detonation. He says while I was wrong about that one explosion the arms race has now created that chain reaction that we can't stop. And indeed we all know that nine nations have nuclear weapons and are building more and more nuclear weapons that chain reaction of preparing for war is out of control right now. And I'm so glad we're having this conversation. Thank you. Okay. Kurt. Okay. My name is Kurt Mehta. I'm an attorney in town and I'm looking forward to having a conversation with some friends here about this very interesting man and the role he's played in history. And you've read an 800 page biography of Robert Overton Hyde. Right. Right. Right. Written by Ray Monk. I really suggest it if you've got some time on your hands. A lot of time. 800 pages worth. Kai Bird. What? No. That's a different book. Oh, okay. What book are you talking about? The one I had heard was the one that this film was based on. The American Prometheus. Yeah. Yeah. That's not the book I read. I see. Yeah. Kai Bird is presently, he's a journalist, isn't he? No. He writes often for the nation as well. I think so. Okay. Anyway, Mark. I'm Mark Astin. I'm a novelist and I do happen to have an 800 page novel only about 350 pages of which are set in Los Alamos. And so I have done quite a bit of research about the people and the goings on in the making of the Atom Bomb and watching this Oppenheimer film. I'm very, very aware of things that were left out that were extremely and continue to be extremely important. And if there's time, I'd like to mention a few of those. Okay. And again, my name is Sandy Barrett and I am an attorney like Kurt. I'm also, I would say a citizen activist. And I'm also, I used to and I still do teach history a lot. So the movie was fascinating to me in its view of history of that particular era. And I also would like to talk a little bit about that because I think it told many things that were true and that Americans really don't know about. And that is the position of the United States vis-a-vis the Soviet Union. But anyway, so let's begin, I guess. Kurt, if you could talk a little bit about the man and what you learned about him. I mean, not the details of his life, but what was his mission, in other words, in the project which developed the Atomic Bomb? First, let me ask you a different question. What was so different about the atomic bomb in the first place that people felt, as Robin does, that it was, it should be illegal? What sets it apart from conventional bombing that was taking place, I'm going to specifically talk about Japan in this instance. What we were mostly doing was, the United States, was implementing a strategy of dropping a tremendous number of conventional bombs on Japanese cities. In Germany. Yeah, I meant after the victory in Europe. Can I stop you for a minute? The victory over Germany occurred in April of 1945, is that correct? In May, the first week of May 1945, the Germans formally surrendered. So the Germans surrendered in 45. But yet the atomic bomb was used by the United States against Japan in August. And that's why we're here too, because it is the anniversary, August 6th, of the dropping of the first bomb on Hiroshima. On Hiroshima, correct. Okay, all right, so go ahead, I'm sorry. So over the course of that summer, the United States had bombed 68 Japanese cities to a point where they were destroyed to a greater extent or equal to Hiroshima. This was accomplished by conventional bombing. Tokyo was bombed. Tokyo, the number of people killed in the Tokyo bombing in one night was double what were killed during Hiroshima, and triple the number that were killed in Nagasaki. There was a plant that essentially destroyed every Japanese city, and apparently, by the time they had gotten to Nagasaki, supposedly there were only four cities in Japan with a population greater than 30,000 that were in existence. So there were only about four cities left on the preliminary list that the United States had at that point called the Department of War, not the Department of Defense. They called them the Virgin Cities because they were saving them for the big bomb. Right, right. Really? Yeah, so I mean, I think one of the interesting things about Oppenheimer that we can talk about was after August 6th and August 9th, there's a philosophical question that arose at that time frame in the 1940s when you had a lot of these great men and women who were extremely intelligent scientists. And the question that arose was whether or not these people can continue to hold on to the science that they were developing or whether it was basically considered the intellectual property of the government at that time. So Oppenheimer's objective after the war was over was to create a commission to share this technology with other countries, notably the Soviet Union, but as well as other countries, so that there could be essentially an international détente where no one would actually go to war again. Again, that was his objective. That's what he claimed. And it was something that he shared with President Truman a couple of weeks, I think, after the 1st and the 2nd bombs were actually dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And he also claimed that he felt that he had blood on his hands. And I think to quote Truman, he told Dean Atchison that he never wanted to see the son of a bitch in this office again. In the movie, he says, cry, baby. Okay, well, okay. So that was dismissed this goal of having this shared technology to hedge the possibility of another war between any great power from happening by sharing this technology and to use it for even peaceful means for energy distribution. But that was quickly dismissed over a series of events after that. Oppenheimer continued to essentially disappear from the forefront of not only the scientific community, but the way he was viewed politically within the Truman administration. Well, a lot of that had to do with his objection further of developing the hydrogen bomb, which was a project of Edward Tellers, who was a violent anti-communist. And so that got all mixed up there. But that's the objection to continuing the development of the hydrogen bomb was what really got him in trouble. Essentially, Mark, he wasn't a good soldier. He wasn't towing the line. He had his own points of view with respect to the science where he wanted to take the science. And the government looked at it as this is our science now. And we want to continue to develop a stronger device, a thermonuclear device, nuclear device, namely the hydrogen bomb. Okay, but one thing that is... But Oppenheimer developed the atomic bomb during World War II. No. Well, he was the head of the project. Yes. Well, he was the head of this... Manhattan Project. Well, not the Manhattan Project, but the Los Alamos Labs. Right. Manhattan Project, we think of it as everyone working in a single building and coming up with this amazing weapon, fearsome weapon. But Oak Ridge, Tennessee had a part to play. There were a lot of different cogs. And for Washington, did the plutonium. Right, right. Okay, so the question's been asked, so what? You know, the fire bombs destroyed German cities. Certainly. So what's the deal? This didn't even, as you say, destroy as many people as did the fire bombing of Tokyo. So what was different then about this particular weapon? Because I do think it's like qualitatively different, even though all the weapons are horrible, but this weapon, why was this considered such a horrific development? There was also, I mean, one of the distinctions, you know, is that there are significant, significant long-standing after-effects. Right, that's what... I mean, it was a war against... Distinguishes it from conventional bombings. Okay, so it was a weapon against future generations. And actually against nature as well, right? As far as I could tell. Isn't that what makes it, in your mind, illegal? I mean, you're not talking about making all weapons illegal, although that would be a nice goal. But what you are saying is there is something that should be illegal about the atomic bomb. And I just want to point out that this slogan here is something that Oppenheimer would not have been aware of because it's a part of the treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons that passed in the United Nations. And 50 nations have agreed to that. And in the United Nations, when 50 nations, it's ratified by their governments, then it becomes law. So this is law by the United Nations. But the United States has its own laws, although we are part of the United Nations. So I think this is part of a sort of a legal war that's actually very deep between what is legal or not. Surely something that can destroy this many people at once should be viewed as being illegal. Not only destroying that many people in a moment, but for the future. That's what gets me is that it's a war against people in the future as well because it causes cancer, sicknesses, and it destroys nature, doesn't it? So that, to me, is what makes it different and therefore illegal. But what you're talking about is the United States, Russia, none of the major nations have made it illegal, if you think about it. There's now a nuclear arms race. They have it, but there was that moment of opportunity right at the end of World War II that was proposed to share it and control it. You probably know the story of that. Yeah, I think this is a very questionable sentence. And also we need to look at the development of the bomb, some unique grotesquery of humanity, but it was a tremendously logical and applauded step in the discovery of atomic physics. Starting in Lucretius, but really in the 30s, and one of the things I have to suggest about the film is that a very, very important character was left out of the film, and that is Leo Zillard. And Leo Zillard in the 30s conceived of the idea of a self-generating and widening fission reaction whereby the product of the fission would create more fission. And then that in the 40s was put into practice by Fermi with this huge atomic pile at the University of Chicago. And so then all of us, and then out of that, and then at the same time the discovery of plutonium by bombarding uranium with neutrons. So this is all a big, this is without we're going to kill anybody. Right, that's what I'm wondering. This is what the world is made of, you know, and all the radiation stuff, nobody knew what was, we didn't do it to affect future, we didn't know what future generations were about. And after the war there was a lot of medical work done and discoveries about radiation sickness and the timing of these things. But what you're saying therefore is that the development is rather innocent? No, yes, in a certain way it's part, it's a logical development, the history of atomic physics. Yeah, I mean the science, that's the direction that science was going in. I mean the weaponization of that science was the Manhattan Project. Okay, that's what's important though, to me. No, one of the things is because Oppenheimer did contribute to the weaponization of this atomic study, correct? Certainly, I mean even after, you know, when the bomb was initially dropped, you know, before he made the comment to Truman about blood being on his hands, he wanted the weapon to have been implemented in Germany. Against Germany, right, correct. That was fine with him. That's one of the points of the history of all this. The point it was fine with him. Yeah, yeah, but it's interesting that he didn't see it in the same context as we're now seeing that the whole weapon itself should be illegal. But that could be said of, you know, early bacteriology, right? Early experiments with gases and the effect of chlorine in the first World War and all of that. Much of science, and somebody was saying before about how, you know, we love science or whatever, much of science is easily turned into destructive means because we sort of understand the nature of the human organism and the nature of these other organisms and how they interact in destructive ways. But what you're saying is something that's interesting to me about Oppenheimer. I mean, I think you're right. As little as I know about it, the initial experiments, the initial study was rather innocent, correct? Well, I mean, what Mark is saying, though, this was a long series of, you know, even preceding the 30s, you know, research that a lot of, correct, correct. Right, okay, but who came up with the idea of it being weaponized is the point, yeah. There's an important point in the film that speaks to this question you're raising. At one point... Say your name. I'm Barry Snyder. There's a point in the film where they become aware that fission has been discovered. And it makes a point that instantly all the physicists knew what that meant. Which was? That it was going to... Weaponization. Okay, you're right. Yeah. So, but Mark is saying, which seems to be the case, that that science developed earlier was rather neutral. Was not the idea of creating a weapon. Is that correct? No, nothing has been neutral. As soon as you developed a car, you had a tank. Right, but I think she means, yeah, the intent. The intent was not to create a weapon. Is that true? It depends on whose intent you're talking about. Okay, but I'm talking about the original scientist. The point that I think the film makes is that Oppenheimer and the Truman Administration developed the bomb. Well, the Manhattan Project started, yeah, during Roosevelt's administration. Okay, and they deliberately did that. The Manhattan Projects, I mean, if you take a step back earlier, there was a whole political brouhaha about how to notify President Roosevelt once fission had taken place that what that meant to a layperson, you know. And they all recruited... Right, so they recruited Albert Einstein to author the letter. Who recruited him? Right, Zillard, right, in large part. Zillard wrote the famous Einstein letter to Roosevelt. Right. And he got Einstein to sign. Yes, Einstein, Albert Einstein, you know, a preeminent physicist at that time, world-renowned, signed that letter and let President Roosevelt know what the scientists, you know, working together the fission that... But in that letter, was there the idea that this could become a very... Correct. There was... That was the intent of the letter to let the President of the United States know that not only had this scientific development taken place, but it could be weaponized and used as a strong potential, you know, game changer in the context of war. And it had taken place in Germany. Right. It was developed by German scientists. Right. And, well, that's in Britain, no. But all the atomic physics went on in Germany. Sure. I mean, Oppenheimer himself, you know, he went to the University of Gattingen and spent a fair amount of time. He left Cambridge, Britain, because it wasn't challenging enough. The best and the newest scientific developments were taking place in Germany at the time. Right. But the idea of it being weaponized, well, it definitely was at a pretty early stage because to have a bomb, to have the uranium, you have to separate uranium 235 from 238, and that is an enormous, difficult process. And that's what went on in Oak Ridge, I think. Yes. Hundreds of people, mainly women, were seated at machines that were somehow separating the two kinds of uranium. Only one kind was suitable for a bomb. So it was mass production down there. Where? In Oak Ridge. Oh, okay, go ahead. Yeah. Tennessee. And so the fact that that was going on, I don't know exactly at what stage at 42 or 43, to my mind is proof that the whole project was focused on creating a bomb. That's really important. There was a world war going on at the time. Yes, I know. So the objective was to prevail. And the letter to Einstein, I mean the letter from Einstein to Roosevelt, from Zillard, actually, was that we have to get on this bomb. We have to get on making a weapon before the Germans do. Before the Germans do. And interestingly enough, the other thing was the Japanese had a nuclear program also. It wasn't as advanced as the German program at the time, but this was where science was going. But that's exactly, is that the German program almost didn't exist. I know. And that's what we found out after the war. After the war. But they knew it during the war. I mean, I think Oppenheimer knew it. And part of one of the articles is one of the scientists resigned from the project because he became aware that the Germans were not developing a bomb and he didn't want to be part of something like this. I forget who. Rothblatt? Rothblatt, yeah. And the thing was that in the middle of the war, we had this information project to follow the advancing U.S. armies through into the German territories, specifically to look for what the atomic work had been. Yes, right. And city by city by city, zilch. Nothing. And then the question was whether Heisenberg, in his enormous capacity in German science at the time, and he had chosen to stay in Germany, unlike many of the scientists who left under Hitler, whether Heisenberg was responsible for keeping the... For stalling, essentially. For stalling the project. Was he in Germany or in Denmark? He was in... Yeah, you're thinking of Niels Bohr. So he was a spy for the West? Still don't know what his position was, because a lot of contradictions that he did in this famous visit with Niels Bohr. What went on at that conference? That's still a big mystery. And Niels Bohr was in Denmark, right? Cindy, about this subject, I think in the movie I heard someone say that Hitler didn't take it seriously, because he was coming from a Jewish... The anti-Semitic. No, from a scientist that was a Jew. So he was like... It was kind of racism that... Oh, really? That's in the film. In areas of art as well as science, the Nazi party derided a lot of material, strictly because it may have originated from someone who was Jewish. That's in the film. And that's also a very political point, because what Oppenheimer appeared to want to do was to use the bomb that he was helping produce against the Germans, because he himself was Jewish and felt like defeating Germany was the main task, and at the time it was. But there's something else in that that is not quite accurate, because the United States and Britain, I don't think regarded Germany as the only enemy. They really regarded their ally, the Soviet Union, as also an enemy. So while I believe Oppenheimer... I shouldn't say I believe, because I don't know enough to believe or not believe, but there's evidence in the film, I think to show that Oppenheimer would gladly have used the bomb against Germany, but not against the Soviet Union, while the United States really wanted, ultimately, to destroy the Soviet Union, and I think that comes out after the war is over, more in the Cold War. There was a meeting at Potsdam. Yeah. And which... Here. 1945. 1985 was Potsdam. July. Yeah. So the question was, could Los Alamos and the Manhattan Project come up with a demonstrable weapon during that meeting, so that Truman would know and be able to have that in his pocket to get Stalin in the right place? Exactly. During the Potsdam conference, I mean, one thing that happened was midway into the conference, they reached out to Hirohito, the Emperor of Japan, and Suzuki, the Premier, and asked that Japan unconditionally surrender, to which Suzuki said no. At the same time, Truman allegedly whispered to Stalin that we have this weapon, because the Trinity test had already taken place and he felt it was important to let Stalin know that they had this weapon that could essentially result in the kind of destruction that the weapon was capable of. The answer to why is that Stalin needed to know two things, that it was the U.S. that won the war. Yes. Even though they put in all of these... Well, we felt that Stalin needed to know that. Right. And they also needed to know that we had this weapon that could be turned against them. Damn, right. I think the latter point is probably even more important than the former. I mean, there's question as to whether or not the bomb actually ended the war. Right. There's a great deal of scholarship out there that states that the Soviet Union's entry into the war against Japan, which they said that they were going back to... You're not due. Oh, no. Going back to Tehran, going back to Yalta, they said that they were not going to get involved against Japan until at least three months after Germany's defeated. They already knew this by 1943 that this was in the works to take down that Germany was going to go down. Yeah. So they actually stuck to their word. Three months after the Germans surrendered unconditionally or in early May, that was when the Soviet Union declared war on Japan. Right. And there's a great deal of scholarship out there that states that that was the decision that the Supreme Council in Japan digested and decided to surrender. It wasn't necessarily the Hiroshima bomb because the United States was killing 100,000 people a night by conventional bombing. It was the entry into the war of the Soviet Union, which was the game changer for Japan and Japan's leadership. And that we knew that they were about to surrender and the only thing on the agenda was the disposition around the emperor how the emperor would be treated. That was a really big point. Because the war crime trials in Nuremberg had already, at least the creation, the structure of Nuremberg had already started and there was fear that this divine individual in Japan was going to be treated as a war criminal like garing or, you know, harass. So the general excuse that we used the bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the war is simply not the case. The war was about to be over. We knew that. But why did we do that? And why we did it is because this bomb that had to be tested, there was no security at the enormously complex engineering of the plutonium bomb. The uranium bomb was simple. You figure out on paper what the critical mass is, you shoot a bullet of uranium into a perceptical of uranium and you reach critical mass of explosives. Nobody had any question. That didn't need to be tested. What needed to be tested was the plutonium bomb because in order for the plutonium bomb to work, you had to compress this sphere of plutonium and it required a lot of absolutely precise electrical and explosive directions to get that compression to work and nobody knew if that really worked. And so the plutonium bomb had to be tested. And if you just talk about one bomb as it is, the bomb, it isn't. There were two bombs. It didn't have to be tested. And the reason for Nagasaki was the second bomb. That there were two bombs. That this second bomb was very complex engineering and we needed to test it. And we needed to test it in a war situation and not up on a tower in a bomb that could be dropped and triggered. I think Mark raises an interesting point in that the Hiroshima bomb, which was on August 6, there's questions as to whether or not if the sole purpose of this was a demonstration of power to not only the Japanese but the Soviets, if that was going to be a means to be used to make the Supreme Council of Japan and the Premier to surrender unconditionally, why was the second bomb implemented so quickly, less than three days after the Hiroshima bomb, and I think it's largely what Mark is saying, that was more of a test for ourselves to see how that second more complex bomb works and if it works. Okay, I would like to get back a little bit to the historical context also. The film seems to indicate that during the war Oppenheimer wanted to share nuclear technology with the Soviet Union. Did you get that? Yeah. Okay, now that's really important to me to remind Americans of why that would have been the case because at that point, and I don't think many Americans even know this, at that point the Soviet Union and the United States were key allies, supposedly, correct? What's amazing in this film is the way in which the security hearings that took place and that's really sort of the structure of the film. I was going back to the hearings before the Atomic Energy Commission or see, I don't know exactly what group was persecuting. No, because they were secret. But this attitude towards the Soviet Union was so baked into so many officials in the government and it goes way back. As soon as the Russian people overturned the Tsar in 1917, by a couple of years from then, there was already what's called a pomerade and my grandfather was involved in it. He was a communist and he was put on something called the spider list, which was created by anti-communist forces to show what interconnections there were interlinking between people who were sympathetic to the Soviet Union. It was so quickly that the dismay at what communism is and what is it? It's against capitalism. Fascism is not against capitalism and that's why down under, it seems as though the American government is more happy with fascism with communists. Would anyone agree with that? I would. In fact, there's kind of evidence again to suggest that what Winston Churchill wanted out of World War II was that Bolshevism and fascism, in other words, Germany and Russia or the Soviet Union, just kill each other off rather than any intervention on the part of the British or the United States that both were considered enemies in a way, although clearly the anti-communist movement has always been stronger, I think, in the capitalist countries. In other words, the capitalist countries have always been much more anti-communist than anti-fascist. It seems to me. And I think that's what the film shows and it shows it from Oppenheimer's point of view. In other words, he is accused throughout the film of being pro-communist and that's what... I mean, to me, the film... Okay, because he had friends who were in the party. And what does it mean to be... Pro, I know. What did it mean then, in particular? What I really loved your comments about, Robin, is that the whole movie seems to point out the history of the Cold War. The fact that right away in 1945 we began this war against our former ally called the Soviet Union. After we'd been allies throughout World War II and after the Soviets had essentially beaten the Nazis. And lost so many people. 22 million people. You know who points this out in the speech that he gave in 19, maybe 62? It's JFK. He produces... I just saw it recently actually because of the candidacy of Robert Kennedy. So I re-saw the JFK peace speech and he says in that speech, put yourselves in the shoes of the Russian people. They lost 22 million people in World War II. They were the allies of the United States. You could make the argument that they defeated Nazi Germany. And yet, throughout the war, they were also deeply anti-Soviet, no matter what they did. And that, as you point out, happened right away in 1917. And I think it continues today in this war against Russia in Ukraine. I mean, I think it is, though, important to, you know, the nuance and this alliance that we had during the Second World War. You know, it was largely because this alliance was created, in part, because the Germans, in part, double-crossed the Soviets. They actually had a, you know, the Molotov-Ribbentrop, you know, a treaty, essentially, was a non-aggression pact between the two. The Soviets, and they had a similar non-aggression pact in 1941 that they signed with the Japanese. So they were kind of playing both sides, the Soviets, the Stalin. But also, let's go back a little bit in history. The Soviet Union had also been, not the Soviet Union, but Russia, had also been defeated by the Germans. Probably with the celebration of the British and the French a lot. The Russian people had been also defeated by the Germans in World War I, correct? Right. And that was the, and that, you're talking about that Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. To separate Poland and the non-aggression pact. To separate Poland, but you could argue, and that's why I would hope that people had read that counterpunch argue. This is going to be very controversial. But you could argue about World War II and that pact. The French and the English nor the United States was going to help Russia if it got attacked by Germany again. They were not going to. They were going to let that happen. You could argue, therefore, that that was a defensive pact on the part of Stalin. Well, that's probably the most controversial thing that an American can say. But I'm going to say it because it's a different way of looking at history. That might be, at least there's evidence to support that it was defensive on the part of Stalin against a reinvasion by Germany. It gave him a couple of years. Yes. And then, of course, Germany then did break it. Right. It was Germany who broke it in June of 1941. They invaded the Soviet Union. I mean, I don't know. I mean, I heard also that that pact was also the destruction of the Communist Party here because there were so many Communists here who said that Stalin shouldn't be making any pact with Germany. That's the way it was viewed. You're right. Stalin was accused, then, of double-crossing, I guess, Britain and France. I don't know. But there's another way of looking at it. And that was in that article that you read in the Counterpunch. It was an alternate way of looking at the history of World War II, which is really, really what I got mostly from the Oppenheimer film a lot. I mean, I already had read a lot about all of this stuff, but it was kind of a reconformation that the United States throughout World War II and the British viewed the Soviet Union as a key enemy as well, even though we were allies. Is that what you got? I don't know. I think it's generally understood. It's not generally understood by Americans, but it is not. By people who study history. I mean, another way to sort of even a bigger way to look at it is we were a powerful country. We had discovered this bomb. We were going to use it and obliterate all possible enemies, and we did. And we are now to this day heganomic, is that the right way to say it, position where we are basically globally in charge and we refuse to acknowledge this slogan. But we're not the only people in charge of nuclear weapons. No, but we we see that there will be no talk about getting rid of them. We determine how nuclear weapons are dealt with in the United Nations and so on almost always. We are the head of it. We're the big nuclear we have the most. We have the most bombs. Russia has a few more bombs than us. What difference does it make? It's an elite club. But I think we're the chair of the commission we're the head of the club. Well, I want to get back a little bit because to me also the movie points out that immediately in 1945 immediately after the war, then begins the Cold War against the Soviet Union but also against communists in this country or people who are labeled communists like my father. I don't think it took a break during the war. I don't either. That's what I'm saying. I think it was evident during the war. In fact, that's one of the things that Oppenheimer after the war was persecuted about because he is perceived as being pro-communist. That's what the hearings were all about. So what I'm saying is this war against Russia has been going on really since 1917 with a big break of World War II but it wasn't really a break anyway. Somehow, the United States has been at war with Russia for a very long time. Now Russia is not a communist country so why do we continue to have this hostility? Well, I think, I mean, I could give my opinion one could even argue that it precedes communism. It does precede communism. If you think about the first invasions of Russia or probably by Napoleon correct? And it's such an easy way to overcome Russia because there's all those planes of fleet in Ukraine. But what is it that's why Russia feels vulnerable now? Because they always have. You know, Ukrainians are supported by our military now and they feel threatened. So they've attacked. Okay, I just briefly because I don't know if this is the major thing. I think Putin said an interesting thing lately. Which when the Russians occupied or reoccupied the eastern part of Ukraine and he said why. And he said Russia will not be a colony of the west. I think that almost since the beginning of time or since the beginning of the superiority of the capitalist countries, France, England eventually the U.S., eventually Germany. That Russia has been seen as a huge area of natural resources that the United States and the western West countries want to occupy and want to own just like they did in Africa. Russia is perceived almost the same way as Africa and Latin America is. As a huge area of natural resources which should be owned and used by the western capitalist powers. And I think the other thing was there was always a fear of historical and we're probably going before 1917 that there would be a new international player on the world stage that could potentially be a colonizer and they wanted to keep the numbers low to the existing countries. Who was the existing Chinese? No, no, no. Britain, France Belgium, the Spanish the Portuguese. I think we're going off topic. Yeah, no, I know. We are and we're not. Because I think that the most curious part of the film, in some way, not the most, one of the most curious parts of the film is that Oppenheimer didn't regard the Soviet Union in that way. I mean he was in favor of a lot of left-leaning clauses I'm sorry in the United States. He was never formally a member of the Communist Party. Yeah, his girlfriend was I believe his brother was and he didn't have a knee-jerk aversion to communism that many government officials at the time and people in general in the United States had. I want you to talk about that. Before the nuclear bomb appeared in our world there's no way the Soviet Union could have invaded the United States. I mean, they're way over there. There's a big a big lake between us and so the Soviet Union was no threat until nuclear weapons until they got nuclear weapons in 49 I guess a couple of years after we did and so then anti-communism became really more virulent because of feeling that the Soviets could just bomb our country. Well wait a minute. I think even before that when Europe was divided up and a lot of it goes back to a lot of it existed even before the defeat of Germany and Japan there was a great deal of disappointment on the part of the Soviet Union how quickly the United States and Britain had re-embraced at that point the western part of Germany and there was no significant de-nazification that was taking place as was taking place in the eastern part of that country. Yeah we got Van der Fond Bram but we got others. The head of the rocket program that the V-2 rockets and V-1 rockets that were developed in the Second World War in Germany and could have delivered atomic weapons. And eventually put us on the moon. That technology. We got a lot of outstanding scientists Yeah they came from Nazi Germany. They came from Nazi Germany. Dr. Strangelove, right? Dr. Strangelove is very serious about that. But Robin you wanted to mention also how the anti-communism and the McCarthy hearings how they worked in this country to destroy really leftist movements here, right? And Oppenheimer personally. In so many areas I mean in Hollywood in the kind of movies we would see a number of really progressive and brilliant writers were blacklisted Belton Trumbo, right? Yeah, yeah. And had a hard time coming back and creating plots and what did come back is the military is very involved now with collaborating with Hollywood and filmmakers to make sure that the military perspective gets conveyed. What about with your family? Well, they were they were wealthy enough to be not thrown in jail although actually that grandfather was put in jail for a few days. Your grandfather? Yeah. For what? For making a speech to overthrow the United States in Chicago in 1917 or something. And so he was he was arrested. It was only the the governor that said we should not have a millionaire in jail. That's not right. That was all killed, right? Wasn't it? I would like to talk a little bit about Barbenheimer. Oh, okay. Barbenheimer is started Barbenheimer is this conflation in American culture and enthusiasm and press and all of that about the movie about Barbie the Doll and the movie Oppenheimer which premiered on the same day. Right? And it started out as a theater between two studios. You're going to do this, we're going to do that. We'll see who wins this one. In a largely failing industry at this point. Yeah, unfortunately. To the theaters. And so via some you know smartass on online this got conflated and somebody started talking about Barbenheimer as a phenomenon. And then the press started talking about it. And then the actors in each of the films started talking about it. The day before the Hollywood strike, Barbenheimer was a big deal and then they couldn't talk about it for three weeks. So Barbenheimer is a really interesting phenomenon in American culture. It has several obvious results. One is that you take the whole happens thing and you mix it up with a doll and all of a sudden it doesn't become important. It's just a joke. And it's American culture. And it's plastic and plutonium versus plastic. They're both polluting the planet. So I think this is very serious conflation that's going on with Barbenheimer. It's seen as a joke but I think we have to be very careful about trivializing the whole nuclear scene with Barbie. And so that's all. If I could just make one comment about Barbie because I feel I don't know her and Ken that well enough but I was expecting at least that they would be friends and they might actually make love in the movie. And of course that didn't happen and therefore the very last sentence which Barbie is going to the gynecologist I found that as a quite strange conclusion and wondered whether young people even know what a gynecologist is and why one would go to it. You saw the film? No, I haven't seen it. They know what Chlamydia is. Oh, okay. Anyway, sorry to distract from the thing but I was really sort of confused with that detail about Barbie. I just wanted to we don't have a whole lot of time left but I wanted to sort of conflate what happened in the McCarthy hearings, what happened to Oppenheimer, the anti-communist fervor that developed this country immediately after World War II. Immediately. The development of the CIA in 1947. The develop of the National Security Council the idea of permanent war only came into being right after World War II. No way, Hoover emerges in the 20s. I know that. But this is a permanent military, industrial establishment and endless war. Hoover was in the 20s. Hoover wanted that. It was confirmed though after World War II really in the creation of NATO really in the creation of the CIA. Really in the creation of the warfare state was firmly in place by 1945 and it was all directed against the Soviet Union. And communists here are people who are pro-communist like your family. My family. My father was a bolsterer but he was too drunk to make a disciplined bolsterer. He was one. He was from Scotland. Very pro-labor. Very pro-Russia. Very pro-Soviet Union. He wasn't destroyed by that. He destroyed himself. However communists here and movements here were destroyed by McCarthy but destroyed by this whole idea that the Soviet Union was evil. And how did this happen so immediately after World War II? It didn't happen immediately. I know it happened during 1917 and it's happening again to me in the war against Russia which is occurring in Ukraine. Continuous. And know that, that's my point. It didn't let up when we were even allies. I mean look, the prospect of the organization of labor is a scary thing for corporations and for big business. Well I guess that's the case. And when you say Robin, why there's a couple reasons. One is that Russia has always been perceived as the colony of the west. Two, because Russia was also anti-capitalist eventually. The Soviet Union was not a capitalist country. Right? But anyway, so maybe we should have a few concluding remarks. If I could make an announcement even, which is that next weekend in Rochester, Vermont there will be a discussion called Voices for Peace and it's Medea Benjamin who is a activist and has written a book, War in Ukraine, Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict. She supports not sending weapons to Ukraine. And when I brought this up to the seven days, I said that, well that's not a theme that we can cover. She comes from outside of Vermont and we don't know how to evaluate the issue of who really controls the Soviet Ukraine and why we're giving weapons. And I was kind of astonished by that because when this all started so many Vermonters were into Ukraine and I think some of them are having different opinions now. I don't know. We'll see who turns out on the 12th in Rochester, Vermont. Hey, there were a lot of people at the time who had differences with that decision. It was an article, believe it or not CNN today saying that there are more Americans that are against further funding and supporting Ukraine than are for. Check it out on CNN. I bet if there was a referendum they would win those who are against weaponizing Ukraine. I bet. Well there's no oversight by our government as to where the weapons are going anyway and who are these people that run the government in Ukraine. I mean Zelensky is a very charming fellow but who else is there behind him? But there's a whole different question in my mind which I've always been of the opinion that this is really against Russia. The war is really a proxy war against Russia and if you listen to the rhetoric from essentially our leaders in Washington that's even what they say. It's not that different than Afghanistan. No, it's not. You're absolutely right. It's a war to destroy Joe Biden said it to have regime change in Russia. What? Yeah, it's incredible. It's incredible and that's what I found in some ways most current about this film is that we've been at war with the Soviet Union and with people who have supported communism for a very long time. I'd just like to say about the film that one of the things that I felt was most lacking was the intensity of the objection on many scientists both in Chicago and Los Alamos I don't know so much at Hanford about using the bomb. Objections? Objections to using the bomb. And Leo Zalard was the leader of that. Leo Zalard created the petition that was circulated through the Manhattan Project that he signed you know against using the bomb and that's important and it's not in the film and that's important. Why not? Okay, so we have one minute left any final thoughts? That was a final thought for me. Okay, anybody else? My final thought is I think people should see this film just to become more the bomb, the development of the bomb and all the real controversies about World War II and the period of the Cold War that people seem studiously unaware of at this moment. I guess my closing thought is I'm glad that there is a relatively intelligent film out there. I know this is a lot Mark says it's tough to get history in three hours but the fact that there's an intelligent film out there that's also a blockbuster that doesn't involve superheroes it's a good thing. That's all. My interest what revealed to me that I wasn't aware of it all was I think Oppenheimer was kind of a Buddhist even though he quotes Hinduism because the way he sat in the back of that hearing and just listened to all this crap being poured on him and then shook hands with one of the people who would betrayed him it was as if he was you know his personality was as a brilliant scientist someone who you know he didn't need to be he was being removed from the security security clearance he had it all in his head he didn't need to be upset about that that he accepted the way in which his friends turned on him I just was astonished at that his personality he didn't represent any anger and it was his wife that said you should not shake hands with that guy so that was an interesting part of it it did psychologically destroy him though losing those security clearances he had a very difficult several years after that I will say one of the most interesting things that I've noted my grandson 22 wants to see this film I know it but I'm astounded I don't know why I asked him and he said that he was interested I don't know why because he's a blockbuster he's a Barbie because he's a guy well then I would think he would want to see Barbie yeah I mean when you think about it it was all built by men I mean everyone there were wives that they got drunk about it they had no role in the act okay so we have 30 seconds thank you very much for being with us for this Vermont Institute of Community and International Vermont right and so we will be back maybe in a month or so