Every nation denied A-Bomb by America should fall on its knees and thank God (and Washington DC)

The biggest single attraction of the A Bomb for America, circa 1945, was how expensive it was.

So expensive that only America could seem to afford it.

A de facto economic atomic monopoly.

Only America couldn't afford it, could it ?

The Path not Taken : Pax Penicillia ,1945

How different our world would have turned out to be if the selfless and open morality of the Manhattan Yellowmagic project had been the path 1945 America had continued down.

Instead it chose to turn to the selfish secrecy of the Manhattan Yellowcake project as its reigning ethos.

Japanese human germ warfare experimentation , too, becomes 'Born Secret' in the Yellowcake Pax Americana

In 1945, two possible approaches to implementing the Pax Americana lay before America : the selfish secrecy of the Manhattan Yellowcake project or the selfless openness of the Manhattan Yellowmagic project.

An early test of 1945's Pax Americana was how American's scientific establishment would handle news of Japan's truly horrific germ warfare efforts from its UNIT 731.

Tragically for Pax Americana , "Could we keep the Bomb a secret ?" misheard as "Should we keep the Bomb a secret?"

Recipe for a world tragedy :

In one bowl : top American scientists , privy to the details of the Manhattan Project and well aware of the long ongoing world-wide scientific quest for the atom's inner secrets.

In the other bowl : the top American political leadership, extremely well versed in conventional military thought , economic hardball and winning elections (but who knew rather less than zero about the current hot topics in the scientific world.)

Mix the two at a top secret meeting and stand back.

Yellowcake factories visible from Space - Yellow Magic factories barely visible in microscope

After the Jews , what being did the Nazis plan to 'holocaust' next ?

My view is that the natural Atlantic Lobster couldn't have been far down their list.

Memo to Nazi nuclear spies : read the student newspapers ...

ADDENDUM :

I wrote this post in haste on my way out the door and re-read this morning - at leisure. So :

I didn't mean to imply that Alex Wellerstein was only interested in how secret the WWII Bomb was but rather that he is interested in the various (usually negative) affects secrecy had and is still having on nuclear weapons and nuclear energy issues around the world.

And I wondered about the accurate spelling of Norman F Ramsay's last name - it is really "Ramsey" and he ultimately won a Nobel prize and headed the team set with actually dropping the Bombs over Japan.

Of greater interest to me,  he thought a Canadian-made Lancaster would be a far better Bomb dropper than the American-made B-29 , which at that time of the war was almost more lethal to its air crew than the enemy.

Americans would probably would have marched off quietly to the Nazi ovens rather than admit the Canadians built better airplanes than themselves - so this idea was a total non starter.

General Groves had been well coached by his ultimate bosses, Bush and Conant , on the need for an all American Bomb , (after the other Allies had provided most of the ideas and much of the materials needed to make it work.)

My revisionist point being that the Ally cum commercial and scientific rival the Americans really seemed most worried about was the British Commonwealth - not the USSR.

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Alex Wellerstein is a historian and blogger (RESTRICTED DATA) intensely interested in examining whether nuclear bombs were ever as secret as general opinion holds them to be.

His blog is highly informative and great fun to read.

As part of my overall interest in whether 'secrecy' is ever truly possible or easy, I am casually interested in instances when nuclear secrets were revealed inadvertently , despite heavy security efforts to contain them.

But I must admit that my real interest in secrecy is whether the other Manhattan Project, wartime penicillin, was ever as secret as it too is reputed to be.

Which PAX AMERICANA : 1945 America's moral descent AND ascent

At the very beginning of WWII, America's leadership wwas convinced that, morally, only the Norden Precision Bombsight would allow it to win at war with minimum civilian casualties for the other side.

But by 1945, America's leadership had decided that its new chief weapon was to be a weapon of mass terror and mass destruction, The Bomb.

Its only truly unique capability was its ability to burn alive all the residents of a large city at one go.

And with only America possessing it, America could become God's terrifying Avenging Angel over the whole world .

From plan A's Norden precision killing to plan B's Yellowcake mass killing, it is easy to see a steep moral fall in America's moral leadership.

The most powerful figure in wartime America vs an unknown dying doctor

It wasn't a fair fight : the unknown dying doctor won.

It was a classic Hollywood-type story of powerless, selfless , agape-good triumphing over all-powerful evil of the most banal kind.

Yellowcake (and Yellow Magic) Diplomacy : Plan B of a Plan B

It never was supposed to end up like the way it all did in 1945.

The original Plan A for America, from 1938 to late-1942, was to rely on the Norden Bombsight and the Sulfa Drugs to see America safely through any dangerous faint echoes from a possible European war.

Both inventions failed to work out anywhere as well in the field as they had been touted they would work by their starry-eyed promoters.

So, from late-1942 to mid-1943, there was an improvised Plan B.

The Jekyll and Hyde Manhattan Projects : Yellowcake or Yellow Magic ? (Pax Americana 1945)

Many US cities are much better than New York at symbolizing various facets of America but none is capable of symbolizing, all by itself , what the rest of the world sees as both the best and the worst aspects of America.

It truly is Janus Manhattan ; truly is Jekyll and Hyde Manhattan.

Equally part Gordon Gekko and part Emma Lazarus.

Janus Manhattan 1945 , part 1 : FDR's OSRD rends the human fabric ...

Memo to basic scientists :

General Leslie Groves doesn't deserve your bad press, for the same reason that Vannevar Bush doesn't deserve your good press.

It was Bush, the head of the wartime OSRD (and reputed to be the most powerful un-elected man in Washington) who carved in stone America's selfish postwar determination to keep the atomic bomb and atomic energy a secret American monopoly -- General Groves was merely following Bush's orders.

I repeat - it was a scientist, one of your own, who carried on the old Republicans' policy of selfish Isolationism (albeit in a new guise).

Janus Manhattan 1945 : Atomic ISOLATIONISM & Penicillin's NEW DEAL

Janus Manhattan Island had something for everyone in 1945.

The spirit of ISOLATIONISM , last seen going under in the wake of Pearl Harbour, was back stronger than ever , albeit in a new Easter bonnet.

For God's America had decided its role was no longer to stand above and away from a wicked, wicked European-dominated world.

Rather it was to become God's avenging angel , benevolently ruling over a badly fallen world , with a velvet fist in a nuclear glove.

Weft over Warp is ....

....the agape triumph of the other Manhattan Project over the atomic Manhattan Project ; the triumph of selfless sharing over selfish secrecy ; the triumph of the actual penicillin of veterans over the virtual penicillin of chickenhawk shirkers ...