In August 1942, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers established the Manhattan Engineer District — the Manhattan Project — to develop an atomic bomb before Nazi Germany could. Under the scientific direction of J. Robert Oppenheimer and the military command of General Leslie Groves, the project grew to employ over 125,000 people across 30 sites, including secret cities at Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, and Hanford. The project's $2 billion budget (roughly $28 billion today) funded unprecedented scientific and engineering feats: producing enriched uranium and plutonium, solving the physics of nuclear chain reactions, and building the first nuclear reactors. On July 16, 1945, the first atomic bomb was detonated at the Trinity test site in New Mexico. Oppenheimer, watching the mushroom cloud, recalled the Bhagavad Gita: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
The Manhattan Project Begins
The United States launched the Manhattan Project, a secret program to develop the atomic bomb that would employ 125,000 people and cost $2 billion — and change the world forever.
Historical Context
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