Reading List: The Bastard Brigade and Oppenheimer

The best kind of stories are the ones that make you a little bit uncomfortable. And if those stories are the best, uncomfortable stories based on real events are even better. The discomfort and introspection sparked by these stories is, after all, the whole point of history: to warn us of the ramifications of our actions and to offer discernment so that we can change things going forward.

In the last few months, I’ve been sitting in one of the most uncomfortable true stories I’ve ever come across. It all started when I read a book called The Bastard Brigade by Sam Kean. I didn’t know what to expect from this book, but I knew the topic would be fascinating: the Nazi atomic bomb and the Allied attempts to sabotage it. Whatever my expectations were, they were blown away (pun intended lol). This was one of the best books I have ever read.

Then, just after I finished The Bastard Brigade, I learned about the Oppenheimer movie coming out this summer. I’ve been excited about this movie for months now, and it did not disappoint.

Together, The Bastard Brigade and Oppenheimer have caused me to embark on a deep evaluation of myself and my own morality, as well as of the larger morality that governs government, politics, and war in our world and how we as individuals must interact with all of that. They have forced me to consider what it means to be a Christian in a broken world, and what it means to evaluate the decisions of others when I know I don’t agree with their morality.

But before I get to that, let me first tell you about these two works of art. The first thing I loved about The Bastard Brigade was the tone in which Kean writes. Even though this is a history book at its core, Kean’s writing is so engaging that I felt like I was sitting around a campfire listening to a seasoned old man relate epic tales of his exploits. It was too good to put down.

What’s more, Kean’s storytelling is supported by diligent research. Altogether, this book turned out to be a true story of intrigue and adventure that is engaging, thought-provoking, and inspiring – well worth anyone’s time.

Kean tells the story of the Nazi atomic bomb project (called the Uranium Club) in essentially two parts. First, he details the events prior to the war in the European scientific community. These events encompassed the progression of science from the discovery of radioactivity by Marie Curie in the late 1800s all the way to the atomic bomb projects of the 1940s. The stories themselves are captivating, but they also lay the groundwork for the story that Kean tells in the second part of the book.

This part of the story is set in the context of the mounting tensions in Europe as Hitler rose to power. Kean describes the corresponding pressure on the scientific community to protect scholars of radioactivity (and their labs and materials) from falling into the wrong hands (Nazi hands) and becoming dangerous beyond imagination. The scientific community knew that radioactivity would lead to an atomic bomb with the right combination of resources both physical and mental. This potential was of particular concern because the vast majority of these scientists and their labs, as well as many of the natural resources required to build an atomic bomb, were located in the areas of continental Europe that were eventually occupied by Nazi Germany. In response to this danger, one of the most significant and secret roles of the American atomic bomb project (called the Manhattan Project) was to seek out the scientists whose expertise was commandeered by the Nazis and sabotage their efforts. Kean’s history (dare I say Kean’s novel) chronicles the events of this ongoing secret mission and captivates readers with challenging inquiries into the morality of those on both sides.

It was with these ponderings of morality and historical critique in mind that I sat down to watch Oppenheimer a few weeks ago. I was hoping for more space to meditate on the discomfort I felt reading Kean’s book, and this movie did not disappoint. After three hours of sitting in the movie theater, I wanted to sit on the floor and weep. Just as I hoped, Oppenheimer added more layers to the unanswerable questions that The Bastard Brigade sparked. Even better, it brushed the intellectual landscape of the issues at hand with an emotional glaze that complicated my ruminations on the subject in the best way possible. I left the movie theater with a deep sense of sorrow.

This movie is less about the atomic bomb than it is about the life of the man who led the Manhattan Project, J. Robert Oppenheimer. As a biographical film, it tells the story of Oppenheimer’s scientific career starting with his fascination with theoretical physics and his unquenchable passion to know what the universe was made up of. The movie excellently demonstrates his intensity as a person, his hesitancy to commit to ideas and causes, and his near-manipulative shaping of his own opportunities and the scientific world as a whole even before the Manhattan Project. The superb storytelling in this movie argues that the decisions Oppenheimer and those around him were forced to make should bring discomfort to any person with a moral compass, even those plagued by extreme narcissism. The screenplay in this movie was incredible (as pointed out to me by my friend Emily), the actors were perfectly selected, the narrative choices were impeccable, and the story that resulted was one of the most powerful I have heard in a long time. I left with more questions than answers, and that’s the highest recommendation I can give for any movie.

One thing I’ve been scrutinizing in light of these stories is the morality of the radioactivity research that led to the eventual construction of the first atomic bombs. If you’re ever interested in having your brain tickled, scour the internet for articles about Oppenheimer and Heisenberg. You’ll find that many of those articles laud Heisenberg (German scientist and foremost member of the Uranium Club) for working with minimal urgency to frustrate the construction of a Nazi atomic bomb. From this perspective, Oppenheimer in America made a less moral decision because he actually built the bomb. Oppenheimer’s initial justification of his actions as an urgent effort to beat Hitler to an atomic weapon proves insufficient to these arguments. This conclusion shocked me; it flies in the face of the history that most of us are taught in the American education system.

This comparison between the two scientists can be extended to the two sides in this war and even to wars in general. The Bastard Brigade first made me think about the disturbing fact that maybe we (the Allies) were not in the right when it came to this decision; Oppenheimer only reaffirmed this lack of confidence in my understanding of history as I’ve always been taught it. The movie hauntingly depicted Oppenheimer’s own doubts that his status as “one of the good guys” justified his actions. It forced me to ask: what if we (Americans) have been on the “good side” less than we think we have? What if we’ve been the bad guys more often than not? And what if our assumption that we are inevitably the good guys has caused us to justify the very decisions that have made us the bad guys? Oppenheimer and books like The Bastard Brigade are absolutely critical because they force us to ask questions like this.

The question at hand comes down to this: how do we keep good but potentially dangerous technology in the right hands, and how do we determine whose hands are right and whose are wrong? These questions are particularly potent for scientists, researchers, and entrepreneurs. Individuals in these fields must face the fact that their discoveries have the potential to be twisted into components for the worst possible outcome they can imagine.

Consider “designer babies,” a possibility based on technology that could eradicate genetic disease while also enabling horrific eugenic applications. Or consider the manipulation of social media and technology to brainwash entire generations and spread dangerous propaganda – and don’t just think about communist China. Or the field of psychology, rife with helpful tools that are often employed toward malevolent ends on a domestic scale. In the wrong hands, the right psychological theory or practice could create a world of horrors. But who is to determine which hands are the wrong hands? To stick with World War II history, even Himmler seemed to feel justified in his horrifying experiments and blood-curdling concentration camps. He would even have argued that his hands were the right ones. The question seems to be unanswerable by any human because every human is biased toward themselves.

And that, I think, is why stories like these are so important for us to sit in. For everyone, but especially for us as Americans. Our simplistic, one-sided, Western history education has caused us to be irrevocably and irreparably biased toward ourselves as the good guys. But are we? Are we really the good guys?

I remember in high school when I learned about the Cold War and was convinced that it would not have escalated to the extent that it did if the American government and media had not made it out to be us vs. them, the good guys vs. the bad guys. Whether or not that understanding of the Cold War is valid, almost every other interaction of the United States with the rest of the world makes me question our self-described status as the saviors of the world.

A lot of people I know would agree with that sentiment. But are these people willing to sit with the discomfort that stories like these cause by calling to attention the incongruity of our American moral compass in the current geopolitical climate? Am I? Am I willing to actually feel that discomfort and allow it to impact the way I interact with the world? Are you? Because any story from our history, told from any other perspective, will make you start to question everything. Are you prepared for that?

I first loved the historical thrill that these stories gave me, and how they forced me to think deeply and evaluate impossible questions like the ones I just pestered you with. But the bigger takeaway for me now is this: nothing is safe from being corrupted as long as we live in a fallen world.

Any researcher has to be prepared for this; any of their work could be manipulated and misused by the wrong hands, and those wrong hands might be the ones you always thought were the right ones. They might even be your own. Like Oppenheimer says in the movie, we tend to use the weapons that we have at our disposal. As we all know, absolute power (and really any power at all, without lots of accountability and wisdom) corrupts absolutely. Unfortunate as it is, this is the reality that we live in between the fall and the second coming. Creation groans in agony; the whole world wails as though in childbirth because this is simply not as it should be (see Romans 8). Everything humanity touches is ruined and broken and marred by the worst parts of us all. It’s all fallen apart and falling apart and broken and warped and worth weeping over.

But this is why our hope in the death and resurrection of Jesus is hope at all. We wouldn’t need hope or saving or rescue if things were swell. It is precisely our brokenness that points us to the rescue that we desperately need, both right now and in the future. Because here’s the truth: no matter how corrupted everything is, our rescuer is coming back for us, and he’s going to make everything new. There will be no more grief or war or crying at all because everything will be as it should be.

This is our hope, but it’s not our current reality. Right now, it’s all still a grimy mess, and bombs still go off, and children still die, and cancer still grows. Our responsibility as followers of Christ is not to bypass this fact about our reality. Instead, we must as a matter of urgency tell the news of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that gives us hope even in the midst of a world ripping apart at the seams.