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Nate

Before The War There were numerous brilliant scientists that were working on the atomic bomb during the first World War. Some scientists such as Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, David Bohm, Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, Otto Frisch, Rudolf Peierls, Felix Bloch, Niels Bohr, Emilio Segre, James Franck, Enrico Fermi, Klaus Fuchs, and Edward Teller were a part of the Manhattan Project. The Manhattan Project was introduced by General Leslie R. Groves, and the research was directed by project member Robert Oppenheimer. The main goal of the Manhattan Project was to create an atomic bomb and, of course, be the first country to do so.

The first major step in developing the bomb was made even before the Manhattan Project was introduced. The atom was first split by John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton in 1932. The next year, in 1933, Leo Szilard proposed that if a neutron-driven process released more neutrons than were necessary to start it, the end result would be a massive chain reaction. This chain reaction would split more and more atoms around it, leading to mass destruction. Niels Bohr and John Wheeler found that uranium-235 would be needed for this new bomb to work. These scientists were desperate to continue their work in the U.S., and wrote a letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt known as the Einstein-Szilard Letter. This letter is famous because it was the first time that the making of a new bomb was confirmed to the president. This letter stated that "extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed" and it convinced the president to give more money to establish funds for further research on the new bomb.

Enrico Fermi Known by many as "the father of the atomic bomb", Enrico Fermi was one of the most important scientists in the Manhattan Project. He was the scientist who discovered nuclear fission. Nuclear fission is the separation of an atom and the beginning of a nuclear chain reaction and without the discovery of nuclear fission, neither the atomic bomb nor the hydrogen bomb could have been made. It was the reason that the United States got the bomb so quickly, and the discovery was made by a man who wasn't even born in the U.S. Enrico Fermi was, in fact, born in Rome, but he moved to the U.S. to escape from Mussolini's fascist dictatorship.

He won the Nobel Prize in 1938 for his demonstrations of the existence of new radioactive elements. He did more than just the one discovery, though. He was part of the Manhattan Project and also one of the leaders. He died in 1954, just nine years after the atomic bomb was first dropped on Hiroshima. Today there is a lab named after him in Illinois. Fermilab is one of the country's biggest labs and today, scientists are still trying to break up the atom into smaller and smaller particles, which is exactly what Enrico Fermi became famous for in the first place.

The End of The War The United States became the first country to acquire an atomic bomb in the war, thanks to Fermi's discovery and many other brilliant discoveries by other Manhattan members. We immediately bragged to the public of our new powers, and Japan still would not stop fighting even when they knew they were up against the most powerful country in the world by far.

On August 6th, 1945, we dropped the first bomb ever dropped in anger by any country. We dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. The effects of the bomb were so terrible that Japan surrendered and there were more than 80,000 people killed in the first bombing. If any other country were to get hold of the bomb, the war could have gone in completely the opposite direction, and the United States would not be the word power that it is today.