I'd be interested in the movie drama, and also the documentary to be shown next Sunday night at 10 p.m. EDT on TV -- see your local listings.
Oppenheimer was a complicated person taking on an even far more complicated military and moral conundrum, but if he hadn't done it, there were plenty who would have, so he was hardly the "only man."
The Nazis had the necessary theory and concept, so the Manhattan project was essentially playing what its leaders thought was catch-up. Hitler started out so far ahead on technology with aircraft and submarines, he didn't consign the resources for a super bomb.
Oppenheimer thought humankind wouldn't graduate from atomic to hydrogen bombs, because that would make war impossible. We see how that worked out. We now face potential human extinction, the extinction of many other species, and maybe of life itself. Good job.
However, to the Marine Corps assault troops in the Pacific before the end of the war, faced with endless massive assaults on the Japanese homeland, the bomb was a blessing. One older WWII Marine Corps veteran friend carried a photo of the Enola Gay, one of the bombers that dropped one of the bombs, in his wallet like the photo of family. For him, it was his ticket back to life.
In terms of civilian casualties, I believe the firebombing of Japanese cities toward the end of the war was greater than the atomic bombs. The U.S. Army General Curtis Lemay who coordinated that bombing said, if we lost the war, he'd be tried as war criminal.
