Manhattan Project: People > Administrators > FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

(President of the United States, 1933-1945)

People > Administrators

Bush, Vannevar

Compton, Arthur H.

Conant, James B.

Groves, Leslie R.

Lawrence, Ernest O.

Oppenheimer, J. Robert

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

Truman, Harry S.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born in Hyde Park, New York, on January 30, 1882, to a wealthy and influential family. He earned a B.A. degree from Harvard in 1903 and attended Columbia Law School, beginning to practice law in New York in 1907. In 1910, he entered politics as a New York State Senator and five years later married Eleanor Roosevelt, a niece of former president Theodore Roosevelt. Woodrow Wilson tapped him to be Assistant Secretary of the Navy in 1913, and by 1920 Roosevelt had become vice-presidential nominee of the Democratic Party and a national political figure. Though this political aspiration did not succeed, in 1930 he was elected governor of New York, an office he successfully used as a springboard into the presidency two years later. In the late 1930s, as international tensions mounted, Roosevelt quietly began preparing the nation for war. When hostilities broke out in 1939, he kept the nation officially neutral, while aiding the British and accelerating military rearmament.

Roosevelt may have first learned about the discovery of fission in uranium and the possibility of a chain reaction producing an atomic bomb as early as March 1939 when the Navy, following a briefing by Enrico Fermi, decided not to pursue uranium research. More successful was a direct approach to Roosevelt on October 11th by Alexander Sachs, Wall Street economist and longtime friend and unofficial advisor to the President, who carried a letter by Albert Einstein warning that the construction of "extremely powerful bombs" was conceivable. Initially, Roosevelt was noncommittal and expressed concern over locating the necessary funds, but at a second meeting with Sachs over breakfast the next morning he became convinced of the value of exploring atomic energy. Roosevelt appointed an Advisory Committee on Uranium to investigate the problem in cooperation with Sachs. On November 1, the Uranium Committee reported back to Roosevelt recommending that the Government support a thorough investigation. White House involvement through spring 1940 was minimal, but the President's "deepest interest" in the project was enough to provide limited research funding.

Uranium research received an increase in support and visibility within the Administration in June 1940 when Roosevelt transferred the Uranium Committee to the newly created National Defense Research Committee (NCRC) under the leadership of Vannevar Bush. From mid-1940 to mid-1942, Bush, first at the NDRC and then, after June 1941, as head of the Office for Scientific Research and Development, was Roosevelt's key official guiding atomic energy research, periodically updating the President and seeking approval for expansion of the program. In July 1941, Bush, after receiving a draft copy of the British MAUD Report projecting an atomic bomb within two years, told the President that "new knowledge" made "it probable that the production of a super-explosive may not be as remote a matter as previously appeared." Bush, at the same time, briefed Vice President Henry Wallace, for he was the one person at the highest level who had the scientific background to grasp the subject readily. On October 9, Bush conferred at the White House with Roosevelt and Wallace. Bush summarized the British findings, discussed cost and duration of a bomb project, and emphasized the uncertainty of the situation. He also received the President's permission to explore construction needs with the Army. Roosevelt instructed him to move as quickly as possible but not to go beyond research and development. Bush, then, was to find out if a bomb could be built and at what cost but not to proceed to the production stage without further presidential authorization. Roosevelt indicated that he could find a way to finance the project and asked Bush to draft a letter so that the British government could be approached "at the top." The President also designated a Top Policy Group to be headed by himself, although he never participated in its proceedings, and consisting of Bush, Wallace, James Conant, who had succeeded Bush as director of the NDRC, Secretary of War Henry Stimson, and Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall. When a National Academy of Sciences Committee in November largely confirmed the MAUD report, Bush sent a copy to Roosevelt. The President sent it back on January 19, 1942, with a handwritten note that read, "V. B. OK - returned - I think you had best keep this in your own safe FDR." Roosevelt thus took the first steps in implementing a maximum effort to develop the atomic bomb as soon as possible.

During 1942, the atomic bomb project transitioned from the funding of scientists doing research at various universities to Army control of the development and production of an actual weapon. Bush kept Roosevelt apprised, sending him reports for approval on March 9, June 17, and December 16. The President continually responded with calls for speed and decisive action, and, in his last approval on December 28, he authorized $500 million to build full-scale gaseous diffusion and plutonium plants and a compromise electromagnetic plant, as well as heavy water production facilities. No single decision created the American atomic bomb project. Roosevelt's December 28 decision was almost inevitable in light of numerous earlier ones that, in incremental fashion, committed the United States to the pursuit of atomic weapons. The approval of $500 million was a step that followed directly from the commitments made in January of that year and stemmed logically from the President's earliest tentative decisions in late 1939.

With most major decisions having been made, the Manhattan Project in early 1943 moved ahead at full speed over the next two-and-a-half years to produce a useable weapon. Roosevelt was kept informed by Bush and the military, and the President continued to approve expenditures that eventually totaled more than $2 billion. Yet, Roosevelt was more than just a facilitator approving money for the project. So, too, did he use his influence to urge the project toward completion. In a letter dated June 29, 1943, to Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Los Alamos laboratory, Roosevelt wrote,

I wish you would express to the scientists assembled with you my deep appreciation of their willingness to undertake the tasks which lie before them in spite of the dangers and the personal sacrifices. I am sure we can count on their continued wholehearted and unselfish labors. Whatever the enemy may be planning, American science will be equal to the challenge. With this thought in mind, I send this vote of confidence and appreciation.

In addition, after 1942, the President was heavily engaged in international aspects of atomic energy, especially in atomic cooperation with Great Britain involving his personal diplomacy with Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

Roosevelt's health had been deteriorating for years, but his death due to a sudden and massive brain hemorrhage on April 12, 1945, shocked the nation and left open questions about the fate of the bomb project. Though there is every indication that Roosevelt intended to use the atomic bomb as soon as it became available, the difficult decision eventually fell on the shoulders of his unlikely successor, Harry S. Truman.

Bush, Vannevar

Compton, Arthur H.

Conant, James B.

Groves, Leslie R.

Lawrence, Ernest O.

Oppenheimer, J. Robert

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

Truman, Harry S.