The Manhattan Project was the secret name for the pre-World War II American project to design and build a nuclear weapon. With the fission breakthrough in 1939, scientists realized that nuclear and radioactive materials could be used to make bombs of epic proportions. The idea to build such a weapon originated with Albert Einstein, who shared his idea with President Franklin Roosevelt in 1939. The first atomic bomb was detonated at Los Alamos, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945. months after the launch of the first atomic bomb. disabled; the United States dropped two atomic bombs on the Japanese islands of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why violent video games should not be banned"? Get the original essay In 1938, many people believed that Adolf Hitler produced an atomic bomb in Germany with his scientists capable of splitting uranium . Hitler's racism toward Jews, however, caused many Jewish scientists to seek refuge in the United States. One of those scientists who looked to America for protection was physicist Albert Einstein. Einstein, a known pacifist, ignored his beliefs and wrote a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt. In his letter, Einstein advised President Roosevelt to develop an atomic bomb before Hitler could do so. Soon, Roosevelt rallied behind Einstein and developed the Manhattan Project, a secret project designed to build an atomic bomb. The Manhattan Project was not known to many people. It was conducted privately through numerous agencies and was not shared with the public. By 1945, the Manhattan Project had up to 40 active laboratories and up to 200,000 employees tasked with building the first atomic bomb. Before the Manhattan Project began, the study of physics and reactions of different elements was underway. Despite these scientific discoveries, the political fabric of countries was torn apart. Japan began its military expansion, eventually invading Manchuria in 1931. In Europe, Hitler's rise to power began and his expansion of Nazism reached beyond Europe. The breakdown in political stability did not occur only in these countries. Italy was suffering from the change of fascist government under dictator Benito Mussolini. Other countries experiencing political instability have occurred throughout Central Europe and Spain. The rise of Stalinism in the Soviet Union led to the Great Purge of 1936 to 1938, during which the people of the Soviet Union faced political oppression and discrimination. The rise of Hitler and Japan caused political unrest around the world. Hitler began instituting the Nuremberg Laws, thereby triggering the persecution of Jews in Germany. In March 1936, Germany began its invasion of Europe by seizing the Rhineland. In July 1937, Japan invaded China, causing a change of power in Asia. In November 1937, the Axis Alliance was created by the countries of Germany, Italy and Japan. In March 1938, Germany took control of Austria and captured Czechoslovakia in September. The actions of the Axis Alliance marked the beginning of what is now known as World War II. This time in the world has many other countries fearing the possibility of an atomic bomb. The power to create such a weapon became more and more plausible as the war continued. The discovery of fission occurred when Germany began to resort to conquest by force, rather than simpleintimidation. Although at the time it was unclear whether it was possible to control the release of atomic power, many European physicists did not want to find out the hard way with Hitler in power. European scientists Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard sent a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt addressed by Einstein, which warned the United States of the possibility of nuclear weapons use by the Axis Alliance. The letter, now known as the "Einstein Letter," was delivered to the President on October 11, 1939. The President then called a meeting of the Uranium Advisory Committee, also known as the Briggs Uranium Committee. , in Washington DC. Mainly due to a continued lack of interest; progress on the subject was timid and questionable for the United States. The next step in nuclear weapons plans took place in the United Kingdom, when the United States was not seriously considering nuclear war. In 1940, the German army invaded Denmark. Denmark was home to one of the world's greatest atomic research scientists, Niels Bohr. The Allies feared that Germany would overtake Denmark and its country, and were subsequently forced to work for Nazi Germany to build an atomic bomb for Germany. Before he could be captured, British intelligence helped him escape to Sweden, which allowed him to escape to the United States in order to escape Nazi Germany's takeover . Throughout the 1940s, Germany and its scientists were working on a project similar to the Manhattan Project. If German scientists had completed their project before the United States, the war could have ended in disaster for the Allies. On June 18, 1942, Brig. General Wilhelm D. Styer asked Colonel James Marshall to form a district of the Army Corps of Engineers to occupy and consolidate the development of the atomic bomb. In August 1942, Marshall formed a new district group under the misleading name "Manhattan Engineer District", which is now known as the Manhattan Project. Although the Manhattan Project was formed in August, real work did not begin until September. Groves' aggressive and forceful behavior did not make him a fan among the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project. Many scientists hated Groves and his technique. However, after the war, many scientists appreciated Groves and his attitude because they realized how important his executive and decision-making intelligence was to the Manhattan Project. Scientists from around the world contributed to the Manhattan Project to help dismantle the Axis powers under Groves' command. Scientists from the United States, Hungary, Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, Great Britain and Italy worked on the Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb. Winston Churchill, the British leader, and President Roosevelt were both concerned about the possibility that Germany would produce a nuclear weapon before the Allies. The possibility of Germany obtaining nuclear weapons worries many Allied leaders. The two leaders, Roosevelt and Churchill, met in Canada in August 1943. At the meeting, it was determined that they must do everything they could to disrupt Germany's race to obtain nuclear weapons. In February 1943, Special Operations Executive saboteurs carried out a bomb plant at the Rjukan nitrate industrial unit in Norway. After the factory was rebuilt, 150 American planes managed to bomb the factory, destroying it once again. In January 1944, a group of Norwegian resistance fighters sank a German boat whichcarried many vital resources for a nuclear program. By 1944, work on the Manhattan Project was in full swing. The process consisted of achieving the actual development of the weapons, the construction of the fissile material and the transportation of the weapon. In July 1944, the Manhattan Project became the priority project in the United States. The project cost two billion dollars to obtain the materials and equipment needed to make the Manhattan Project a success. The Manhattan Project had many laboratories, but three of the major ones were Hanford, Washington, Los Alamos, New Mexico, and Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Each of them was given different responsibilities throughout the Manhattan Project. Oak Ridge Laboratories were to supply the element uranium 235, while Hanford scientists supplied the United States with weapons-grade plutonium. Los Alamos Laboratory was the critical site used to manufacture nuclear weapons used during the war. Four of the atomic bombs produced by the United States were produced at Los Alamos, New Mexico. Uranium 235 is the main component in making an atomic bomb. Chemically, uranium 235 cannot be separated from its more abundant cohort, uranium 238. The only way these two elements can be separated from each other is physically. The Manhattan Project looked for many different ways to split the two elements, choosing two of the processes. One way to split the two elements is to use the electromagnetic process. This process of dividing elements was discovered by Earnest Orlando Lawrence of the University of California. The other process is the diffusion process which was made available at Columbia University. Both processes mentioned require huge and difficult facilities and buildings, and both processes require extreme use of electricity to be able to achieve them. The diffusion method particularly required large amounts of electricity to succeed. Both processes require these facilities and large amounts of energy to produce only a small amount of the separated element, uranium 235. A third process was created by Phillip Abelson, called thermal diffusion, which was used for a while to separate the elements. These methods were primarily used at the Oak Ridge, Tennessee facility. Another essential element in the manufacturing process of the atomic bomb is plutonium 239. The method for obtaining this element was developed by Arthur Compton in a laboratory at the University of Chicago. The procedure involves modification in a uranium-238 reactor cluster. In December 1942, Enrico Fermi finally succeeded in performing and managing a fission chain reaction in this reactor stack in Chicago. Valuable production of plutonium-293 required a large building and energy capable of discharging 25,000 kilowatt hours of heat for each gram of plutonium manufactured. This included creating chemical removal methods that would work in ways never before possible. An intermediate step in carrying out this process relied solely on production at the Oak Ridge Laboratory, while the larger reactors were built at the Washington Laboratory at Hanford Engineering Works. In the summer of 1945, the Manhattan Project finally received enough plutonium-239 to produce a nuclear-grade explosion from Hanford Engineering. Advancement in weapons development and innovation in weapon design, as well as obtaining the elements necessary for the nuclear bomb, have been sufficiently achieved that a test of the nuclear weapon can be carried out...