As a group of historians and a top biographer square off, proponents of a middle path see a tangled life in which the superstar of science was, and was not, a true Communist at the same time.
Revisiting Oppenheimer's Communist Ties: A year after Nolan's movie on Oppenheimer, William J. Broad revisits An Old Clash [Which] Heats Up Over Oppenheimer’s Red Ties in the New York Times.
J. Robert Oppenheimer teemed with contradictions. …
… In a universe of contradictions, the physicist himself grew famous as an American hero and infamous as a red sympathizer. The question of his true loyalties rang alarms 80 years ago as the Federal Bureau of Investigation probed Oppenheimer’s Communist past — and is now — surprisingly — gaining new attention.
This fall, months after Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” won seven Oscars, the Journal of Cold War Studies, a quarterly publication of Harvard University, is revisiting the Oppenheimer case.
Four historians argue that the physicist was not just a Communist ally but a full-blown member of a secret Berkeley unit who ultimately perjured himself in a federal hearing that had dug into his past. As evidence, they cite a substantial body of letters, memoirs and espionage files, some postdating the movie’s source material.
“Historians have to go where the evidence takes them,” said Gregg Herken, who leads the reassessment and is emeritus professor of history at the University of California.
In sharp disagreement is Kai Bird, co-author of “American Prometheus,” the 2005 biography of Oppenheimer on which Mr. Nolan based his film. The biographer denied that, in the 18 years since his book’s publication, any evidence has come to light confirming that the superstar of American science was in fact a true Communist.
“The only reason these folks are revisiting this issue is because of the Nolan film,” Mr. Bird said. “They’re pushing their own little crusade.”
The trouble with Kai Bird, of course, is that he and Martin J. Sherwin, i.e., The Authors of the Book Behind Nolan's "Oppenheimer" Were Both Editors and Writers at "The Nation" (something the mainstream media members, even William J. Broad in this article, have gone out of their way to downplay).
A middle path also exists. Some scholars, not unlike the quantum physicists, see both claims about Oppenheimer as possibly true — that he was and wasn’t a dedicated Communist. Potential clues, they say, can be found in his tangled life.
“He may have wavered,” said Thomas L. Sakmyster, an expert on underground Communist units. He said that flexible rules let members see their red ties as blurry.
Oppenheimer and others, Dr. Sakmyster said, “may have thought of themselves as fellow travelers” — that is, sympathetic to Communism but not formal party members. “Probably quite a few vacillated in this in-between state.” In the idiom of the day, they were pink individuals in red groups. …/…
Pink versus Red
… Amid the social upheavals of the Great Depression, [Julius Robert Oppenheimer], like many 1930s liberals, belonged to leftist groups that denounced fascism abroad and sought economic justice at home. Even so, the elite physicist had little in common with the “card carrying, dues paying” Communists of his day. The workers joined picket lines, went to rallies and sold newspapers that reliably echoed Moscow’s line.
The ranks of the party soon expanded, however. In the 1930s, it began to court doctors, lawyers, professors, filmmakers and other members of the middle and upper classes. Many were leery of party affiliation. In response, the American party encouraged them to join underground units where members could study Marx, adopt pseudonyms and work in secret to aid the party. They carried no cards, unlike their worker comrades.
“It was risky and thrilling,” said Dr. Sakmyster, a emeritus professor of history at the University of Cincinnati. The secret members, he added, tended to be “very idealistic, very romantic.”
This was the moment in which Oppenheimer embraced Communism. His wife, his former fiancée, his brother, his sister-in-law and some of his best friends were party members. He called himself “a fellow traveler.” He subscribed to People’s World, a Communist newspaper, and each year gave the party up to roughly $1,000 — today the equivalent of more than $20,000.
That might have raised eyebrows in some circles, but it was not illegal. And Moscow would soon be Washington’s ally in World War II. After the war, however, Moscow got the bomb and quickly built a threatening arsenal. In 1954, at the height of the McCarthy era’s anti-Communism, Oppenheimer faced a secret hearing to determine if he were a security risk.
Under oath, repeatedly, the scientific head of Los Alamos denied ever belonging to a secret Communist unit or having any kind of formal Communist affiliation.
Dr. Herken, who wrote a 2002 book on Oppenheimer, said the trail of contrary evidence starts with two unpublished memoirs.
The first, by Haakon Chevalier, the physicist’s best friend at Berkeley, told of the two men joining the secret unit. The other, by Gordon Griffiths, a graduate student who became a University of Washington historian, said that he had been the Communist liaison to the group and that Oppenheimer was a member.
“American Prometheus,” which won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in Biography, dismissed such evidence as insubstantial. “Quite bluntly,” Mr. Bird and his co-author Martin J. Sherwin declared, “any attempt to label Robert Oppenheimer a Party member is a futile exercise.”
New clues, however, kept coming to light. In 2009, John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, historians of American Communism and Soviet espionage, cited old Soviet intelligence reports they saw as clearly indicating that “Oppenheimer had lied” to American officials about his party affiliation.
Barton J. Bernstein, an emeritus professor of history at Stanford University who has studied the Oppenheimer case for decades, said he was skeptical at first of the physicist’s formal Communist ties but now sees the evidence as “overwhelming.” …
Think about it: isn't it somewhat disconcerting — to say the least — that in the 2020s, a major motion picture, one that is highly praised and that has won the highest awards, has as its central tenet a tendency to downplay the malignancy of Stalin while accentuating the (alleged) guilt of America and the free world?
A discussion was arranged in the Fall of 2024, featuring Dr. Herken, Dr. Bernstein, Dr. Haynes and Dr. Klehr.
Dr. Kramer said that Mr. Bird, the biographer, had declined an invitation to address their comments and that Mr. Nolan did not respond.
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