Beyond The Lines | Race for the bomb: Nolan’s Oppenheimer and the bomb factory of Xinjiang

Oppenheimer - Christopher Nolan’s $100m epic is expected to put the nuclear bomb question back on the table. In the early 1940s, at his Los Alamos home, when Robert Oppenheimer raised a toast with his favourite signature martini - four ounces of gin and a dash of vermouth in a glass rimmed in honey and lime juice –vowing to make a bomb that could stop Nazi Germany, any dilemma on the outcome of the bomb may have been far from his mind. On the back of Nolan’s genius and the mysterious allure of Oppenheimer (the protagonist), the film, based on a Pulitzer winning book, promises a retelling of important history through the filmmaker’s distinctive, layered style. The subject stirs interest about a man who was at the centre of a project that changed the way nations approached self-preservation. There is a lesser known fact around the race for the atom bomb that Nolan’s film doesn’t discuss. The role of Xinjiang and the great game that was being played in the region to India’s north is another absorbing and mystifying story. Let’s get back to the film first. The Film and the Manhattan Project The film is about Julius Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan project – a scientific exercise that created the first atom bomb in the world. Oppenheimer, an American physicist, was the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II. He is known to have been the brains behind the project and is referred to as the father of the atom bomb. In 1939, American intelligence discovered that a research program on uranium had secretly begun in Germany. That October, Albert Einstein would meet with Alexander Sachs, an economist and advisor to American President Roosevelt to explain that the German government’s research on fission chain reactions using uranium could produce large amount of power which could, in turn, be harnessed to make powerful bombs. Paranoid that Hitler was about to possess the bomb, the Americans began an expensive project to deter him. In August, 1943, Oppenheimer would join the this ‘Manhattan project’. On the other hand, German scientists on their project, including Heisenberg were morally opposed to it. Finally, Hitler and Nazi Germany could not develop a bomb. But with Roosevelt’s support to the Manhattan project and Oppenheimer’s role, America did develop the bomb and use it. The unseen game in the East The Manhattan project was kept a top secret since the Americans were always wary of Soviet agents. Though they were allies in the world war during the 1940s, the Soviets were trying to acquire intelligence about a ‘special’ American research project they had heard about. The Soviet Union had also begun to eye the possibility of developing its own bomb. The path to the bomb, unlike the American ‘Manhattan project’ lay in faraway Xinjiang. The Russian empire had historically identified Xinjiang as a crucible for minerals and was planning to gain greater political control over the region so that the resources could be directed towards the one mission the then global powers were chasing. The atom bomb. By the start of the Second World War, the Soviet consul in Xinjiang became its de facto ruler. In his book Red Fear, Iqbal Malhotra writes in detail about the race for the resources in the region of Xinjiang that involved Russia and Britain, and the role of the local warlord Shen Shicai who leveraged his pro-Soviet connections to rule the region. During the early 1940s, Shicai gave the Soviets the rights to the region to mine the resources. What was an American spy and a Russian miner doing in Xinjiang, China? The Soviets sent large scale exploration expeditions that discovered deposits of uranium, beryllium and other minerals used in making a nuclear bomb. Xinjiang had become an important destination for Moscow. The Russians threatened the Xinjiang administration and desired mining rights for 50 years. In Delhi, the British government was alarmed by the information that the Russians had found uranium deposits in Xinjiang. Together, history and geography had hitched Xinjiang’s legacy to Soviet ambitions. The Russian empire once thought to acquire it. The Soviets were interested in the region, given the vast potential for minerals. In the 20th century, as uranium was discovered in the region, Soviets began mining here to develop an atom bomb. In response, a concerned and curious British government in Delhi sprung into action. In his book ‘Contested Lands’, Maroof Raza writes how the British built a ‘network of couriers to bring back excavated minerals from Kashgar and carry them across the border to Gilgit, to be transported to the US for tests’. In the north, Gilgit was placed under Colonel Roger Bacon who ran a spy network alongwith the US consulate in Xinjiang to obtain information about the Soviets, uranium mining and the atom bomb. OSS, the American wartime predecessor of the CIA, set up a base ahead of Ladakh to spy on the Soviet plan. At that time, when the focus of the world was on Nazi Germany and the Manhattan project, there was a secret atom bomb project underway in Xinjiang. It involved the Soviets with their mines and the Americans and the British with their spies. Truman and Stalin: Ace of the race The race to the bomb was not restricted to Germany alone. The allies had seen a competition coming, once the war was over. The Xinjiang project was a post-war bomb making project that was planned ahead of its time – while the world was obsessed with Hitler. America believed it was leading the race, while the British aspired to follow them as the second nation to build the bomb. Incidentally, the fear was that the Soviets could upstage both of them and lead the world. Once President Harry Truman told Stalin that he had a new weapon of ‘unusual destructive force’. Apparently, according to Truman’s memoirs, Stalin is said to have said that he hoped it was used against the Japanese. Winston Churchill, who was an earshot away believed that Stalin hadn’t quite understood that Truman was referring to the atom bomb. Given the fact that the Soviets were already working on a bomb, Stalin’s sarcasm was probably lost on Truman. In fact Harry Truman, who was Vice President to President Roosevelt earlier, had no idea about the project on the bomb till he became president. When he did learn about the bomb, he used it within four months. After the war, Oppenheimer had changed his stance on nuclear weapons and believed that they were instruments of aggression and terror. He abhorred the weapons industry that a new America had excitedly founded and began to thrive on. At a meeting in October 1945, he famously told President Truman: “I feel I have blood on my hands.” Whether the use of the bomb was the actual trigger for a nuclear race between nations is always up for debate but the incontestable truth is that hundreds of thousands Japanese citizens were killed as an outcome of the Manhattan project. However, on the other hand, it is quite certain that the Soviets were on their way to developing a bomb of their own, which they ultimately did. Xinjiang became a crucial ground of control as Mao and Chiang Kai-Shek jostled to control political power in Beijing after the war. Soviets who were controlling Xinjiang during the war, later helped Mao’s rural China develop the knowhow for a bomb, even as millions in China died of hunger. The Asian connect to the bomb would begin with China. India would follow soon after in 1974 with its first test. Robert Oppenheimer, a student of Sanskrit, quoted lines from the Gita after testing the world’s first atom bomb, “Now I am death, the destroyer of worlds.” A cruel irony of advent of peace and the end of war was that the atom bomb became the war’s greatest discovery. The discovery, in turn, birthed the growth of a nuclearized region that used destructive capability both in the form of a neutralizing tool and a deterrent security blanket. Oppenheimer may have turned away from the bomb after the war, but alongside sparking Christopher Nolan’s curiosity, he triggered an unending nuclear race which began with the mining and spying in Xinjiang while Oppenheimer ran his Manhattan project. The writer is the author of ‘Watershed 1967: India’s Forgotten Victory over China’. His fortnightly column for FirstPost — ‘Beyond The Lines’ — covers military history, strategic issues, international affairs and policy-business challenges. He tweets @iProbal.Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views. Read all the Latest News, Trending News, Cricket News, Bollywood News, India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.