Oppenheimer, as well as many other Manhattan Project researchers (eg Rabi & Weisskopf), were first or second generation German-Jewish immigrants/refugees. Max Bonn, Oppenheimer’s mentor, was also a refugee in the end; Oppenheimer was born to immigrants in the US but studied under Bonn in Germany prewar.
Moreover, the physical foundation for atomic power was largely the work of German, often German-Jewish, scientists.
So it’s plausible to suppose a counter-factual in which Germany, one less crippled by bigotry (and it is a disability…), develops the bomb.
And it’s not just the bigotry: it’s the anti-intellectualism. Einstein could write a letter to a well-educated patrician of the New York Dutch aristocracy (FDR), and so help change the world. The pig farmer and the corporal would never have read such a letter (even if were they not already trying to murder the writer and all his cousins for nonsense reasons).
Moreover, the physical foundation for atomic power was largely the work of German, often German-Jewish, scientists.
So it’s plausible to suppose a counter-factual in which Germany, one less crippled by bigotry (and it is a disability…), develops the bomb.
And it’s not just the bigotry: it’s the anti-intellectualism. Einstein could write a letter to a well-educated patrician of the New York Dutch aristocracy (FDR), and so help change the world. The pig farmer and the corporal would never have read such a letter (even if were they not already trying to murder the writer and all his cousins for nonsense reasons).