Bomb Power,Fatal Miracle"Manhattan Project"

In the first chapter of "Bomb Power" by Garry Wills,he writes about the conversion from a peacetime economy to a war economy during WWII.Automobile companies,shipyards,corporate and university laboratories turned their attention to military inventions and technology.All of the conversion was fueled by a massive(stimulus) injection of government money and the imposition of government regulation and rationing.Businessmen who had resented and resisted government activism in the peaceful days of the New Deal were forced at first,and glad afterwards,to accept federal intervention on a scale never before dreamed of in America.They accepted the new rules gladly since they prospered greatly under them.The GDP doubled during the war and real wages rose dramatically.The U.S. was producing an astonishing fifty percent of the world's goods and services at war's end.

The war revealed the "dirty little secret" of American capitalism,according to Wills.The myth of capitalism is that the free market is the most efficient economic system.It was proven that governmental sponsored and regulated production is far more efficient.In wartime,the government can compel the collection of raw material,channel research,subsidize new production methods without taking time for them to prove profitable,redistribute labor pools,eliminate distracting competition by the incompetent.During wartime,governmental interference with business competition is always adopted.When it is important to get things done,and done fast,the government must be relied on(maybe we should do this today for energy,agriculture and housing))War is always good for the economy for those who win wars and avoids destruction of assets(we should increase revenues today through tax credits(stimulus)  for the majority and taxes for the wealthy minority and have a new,larger stimulus that rebuilds America and increases jobs and more importantly wages).

The "Manhattan Project" was part of the stimulus program for WWII.After President Roosevelt secretly authorized the effort to produce a bomb,it was his decision,and that of his advisers,that the project must not be trusted to civilian management.One of the main reasons for putting the operation under military discipline was to hide the funding($2 billion).Brigadier General Leslie Richard Groves was put in charge of the project.Groves wanted Congress to know nothing about the Bomb until it was not only completed but used on the enemy(start of executive power not supported by the constitution).Groves was supported by Henry Stimson(Sec. of War),George Marshall(Chief of Staff)),Vannevar Bush(Chairman of the National Defense Research Comm) and Brehon Somervell(Army Chief of Supply).President Truman didn't know of the bomb until twelve days in office when Roosevelt died.The degree of silence was astonishing given the size of the operation.It is true that some British scientists and Russian spies became aware of the project but no one knew of it's destructive power until Hiroshima.

Groves built up three industrial sites.Hanford in Washington State collected,extracted and purified plutonium.Oak Ridge in Tennessee for enrichment of uranium and Los Alamos in New Mexico for the construction of the Bomb.Another site in Alamogordo,N.M tested delivery planes while the Tinian Islands was developed as a staging site to launch attacks on Japan.Hanaford alone employed 132,000 people,Oak Ridge had 200 buildings on 825 acres while Los Alamos had 3,500 scientists,soldiers,construction workers,staff,and families living inside a triple ring of fences.

More from "Bomb Power" soon.