'Oppenheimer,' greatest movie ever made, haunts us with biggest of big questions
Would Joe Biden have dropped the atomic bombs had he been in Truman's shoes? I asked Biden in 2019
WAUKEE, Iowa
John J. Schumacher didn't accompany me to Fridley Theatres' Waukee IMAX for the magisterial movie "Oppenheimer."
But the words of this late World War II veteran from Coon Rapids, Iowa, and those of hundreds of veterans of that war sat with me, ran and rummaged about my head, rousing ghosts of history and long-lingering ruminations, as I absorbed what I think is the greatest film ever produced.
In this era of near-universal moral certainty (thanks to smart phones everyone is sure they are good and right on all things) the movie "Oppenheimer" spotlights the anguished conflict of its protagonist, physicist Robert Oppenheimer, with the most consequential invention in the history of man to that point, possibly ever.
The film, 3 hours in duration, and not a minute too long, demands to be seen on the hulking IMAX screen for full absorption in the director and screenwriter Christopher Nolan's brilliantly crafted work.
I've seen it twice — first for the whiz bang, second for the nuance — and it is the latter that sticks with you.
The film centers on the Manhattan Project, the American development of the atomic bomb after leading us through the fascinating biography of Robert Oppenheimer, who helmed the project's Los Alamos Laboratory
The film is based on the Pulitzer-winning book "American Prometheus."
The desert detonation of the bomb in New Mexico, an episode that captures man's brilliance and menace all at once, leaves questions and questions about President Harry Truman's decision to kill tens of thousands of Japanese civilians with the rationale that it would end the war, save lives on both sides by preventing an Allied land invasion of Japan.
The third act of "Oppenheimer" deals with the scientist's tortured efforts to reconcile his role as father of the atomic bomb.
Through the years, from the late 1980s until now, I’ve asked dozens of veterans about Truman's decision — and even the steadfast Republicans among them, almost to a man, grew teary eyed at the mention of Truman's name. Several Republican veterans told me Truman is the only, or one of the few, Democrats, they ever voted for because his decision to deploy the bombs, they believed, prevented that land invasion of Japan many felt they were surely headed for in 1945.
The debate rages historically, morally and in military terms.
Would Biden Have Dropped The Atomic Bomb? I Asked Him In 2019
Arguably, the hardest foreign policy call in American history was President Truman’s decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Did Truman make the right call? During a breakfast interview at Queen Bean coffee house in Carroll, Iowa in December of 2019, I asked Biden that very question — did Truman do the right thing with the atomic bomb?
“You’re not going to get me into that argument, as much as you’d love to,” Biden said.
Biden said after arriving in the U.S. Senate in 1973, he immersed himself in arms-control work involving nuclear weapons
“I spent a lot of time not only understanding it, but actually learning how to make an atomic weapon,” he said.
Biden said he spent decades working to move the world in the direction of reducing nuclear weapons.
“What happens if any of this got in the hands of a terrorist?” he said. “It’s not 1944. We are in a situation now where you can go online and know how to make a nuclear weapon.”
The United States and its allies must maintain a nuclear umbrella because Japan and other nations might develop nuclear weapons if they were not sure of protection from the United States, Biden said.
“Everything we’ve worked toward is to move it off of a hair trigger, reduce the total number of weapons available, prevent the material that is available to make a nuclear weapon from being able to be proliferated,” he said.
On The Front Lines of World War II
In the early morning of March 23, 1945, John J. Schumacher (pronounced “shoemaker”) joined thousands of Allied troops in Operation Varsity, an airborne assault on Germany along the Rhine River in Wesel. With a stomach full of a steak that tasted an awful lot like a “last meal,” Schumacher rode in the driver’s side of a Jeep carried by a CG-4A glider, towed behind a C-47 plane, from France to hostile German territory.
No seat belts. No parachutes.
“For 40 years, we tried to forget it,” Schumacher said in a 2013 interview with me. “Once you get to this point, you realize how lucky you were to survive something like that.”
Schumacher, a private with the 194th Glider Infantry Regiment, 17th Airborne Division, said he doubts the existence of a rougher riding craft than the glider — “which was no more than a welded tubular frame stretched with canvas, a plywood floor and a nose section with room for two pilots.”
Within the first 12 hours of Operation Varsity, casualties were high for the 17th — 1,080 killed, and up to another 4,000 wounded or missing or captured.
Schumacher landed safely and proceeded with the mission: Securing key territory in western Germany.
Only weeks earlier, Schumacher served at the Battle of the Bulge, the bloodiest battle for Americans in World War II, one in which about half the 14,000 men on the 17th Airborne Division’s payroll wound up as casualties — and more than 80,000 Americans were killed, injured or captured.
Official Airborne statistics show that 92 percent of the field troops suffered frostbite.
Schumacher — who drove a Jeep and served as a mortar man — was among them. Seventy years later, he would continue to experience frequent foot pain as a result.
During the Battle of the Bulge, in the Ardennes Mountains, Schumacher served in the lead infantry, attached to Gen. George Patton’s Third Army.
At one point, he joined three other soldiers in pushing Patton’s Jeep from the snow, amid enemy fire. Schumacher vividly recalls Patton shouting, “You men take cover!”
“I had a lot of respect for George Patton,” Schumacher said. “He handled himself well most of the time. He was a cocky guy, and he knew how to handle a tank battle.”
Schumacher returned from the war and married his high school sweetheart, Wanda (Shride), on Valentine’s Day 1946. The couple was married for 64 years until Wanda’s death on May 7, 2010. He was a 1943 Coon Rapids High School graduate. She was a member of the Class of 1945. The two attended First United Methodist Church in Coon Rapids as kids.
“I had my eye on her in 1941,” Schumacher said. “She waited for me.”
Near the end of his life I ran into Schumacher at an event for then U.S. Rep. Steve King, a Republican firebrand who represented our county in Congress for two decades. Schumacher strongly supported King.
After the town hall in Carroll, I approached Schumacher as a friend and joked of King, "Well, John, he's no Harry Truman."
Schumacher laughed. Then his face grew serious.
"There's only one Harry Truman, Doug," he said.
Epilogue: American Prometheus
During both of the showings of "Oppenheimer" I attended I sat next to young people who couldn't keep themselves from violating movie theater policy (and common courtesy) to check their cell phones dozens of times — not just for texts but for videos on their social media feeds — such is the addictive quality of this invention, arguably worse for humankind, if you view it on scale, than the atomic bomb. Doubt that? Check the U.S. Surgeon General's report on the destruction of lives at the hands of social media.
Oppenheimer, one of the more brilliant people in American history, had more humility about his the development of the bomb than most ordinary Americans do today as they believe they have God in their pockets in the form of a cell phone — they just tap to get the gospel on anything, from how long to smoke ribs to the value and decency of their elected officials. Christianity, other faiths, step aside, the algorithm is here.
Prometheus, the God of Fire, stole fire from the Gods and gave it to man — as the movie "Oppenheimer" references in one of its first scenes.
We have a fire in our hands today, the smart-phone-driven social media, and it is largely unregulated, a state of affairs that would be unthinkable with the atomic bomb.
Oppenheimer spent years of his life in a chase for reconciliation with his historical role. Most Americans don't second guess a thing they say or do once their phones give them the marching orders. It all gives progress a bad name.
Douglas Burns is a fourth-generation Iowa journalist. He is a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. Please follow other members of the collaborative. Click here to sign up for the weekly round-up column of all the writers in the collaborative.