Movie Review

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Movie Review | The Journal of American History, 86.3 | The History Cooperative

Race for the Superbomb. Prod. by Thomas Ott. 51 Pegasai Pictures, 1999. 120 mins. (PBS Video, 1320 Braddock Place, Alexandria, VA 22314-1698)

There is a large historical literature on the development and use of the first atomic (fission) bombs, in striking contrast to the paucity of books and articles on the early hydrogen (fusion) bombs. A notable exception is the superb Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb (1995) by the award-winning author Richard Rhodes. A similar contrast could have been made of videos about the two weapons; a number of quite good documentaries depict the Manhattan Project and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while until now virtually nothing existed for the superbomb. The work under review, based in significant part on Dark Sun, goes far to rectify the imbalance. 1

American and British scientists believed they were in a race with the Nazis for the atomic bomb, but they were wrong. At first, only Edward Teller seemed to think the United States was in competition with the Soviet Union for the superbomb, but he was correct. "Race" was an appropriate term. The accuracy of Teller's view, however, did not mean everyone agreed that the weapon was needed. The physicists Enrico Fermi and I. I. Rabi, for example, labeled it genocidal, and J. Robert Oppenheimer thought that fission bombs were adequate. . . .

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