The documentary “Einstein and the Bomb”, which arrived on Netflix this Friday (16), portrays the period in the scientist’s life in which he was forced to leave Germany due to the spread of Nazism.
Produced by BBC Studios, the film uses only Einstein’s words in real-life speeches, letters and interviews to compose the plot’s dialogue and expose a lesser-known period of his life.
In 1933, Albert Einstein was already the most famous scientist in the world, but he still found himself threatened by the systematic persecution of Jews that began in his country. He then decides to take refuge in a cabin in the countryside of Norfolk, England.
It is during his refugee status, in which the scientist is located between Europe and the United States, with the world on the brink of war, that Einstein becomes indirectly involved with the invention of the atomic bomb.
The scientist’s relationship with the Manhattan Project and the bomb’s creator, Robert Oppenheimer, has already been covered in Christopher Nolan’s film “Oppenheimer”.
The documentary delves into Einstein’s reasons and regrets at the time, in a mix of archive footage and recreations.
The letter signed by Einstein
On the brink of World War II, the discovery of the splitting of the atom made the scientific community realize the devastating potential of nuclear technology.
“Einstein and the Bomb” tells the story of the scientist’s indirect involvement with the creation of the atomic bomb. / Courtesy of Netflix
In 1938, Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard, a Hungarian physicist living in Germany, sent a letter to the then president of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, to warn about the military potential of this discovery and the possibility that Nazi Germany would be able to develop a bomb. atomic.
The two scientists had left Germany after the rise of Nazism and were currently working at American universities. His warning caused the American government to take action: in October of the same year, the United States began to allocate the first funds for nuclear research for military purposes.
Such research would give rise to the Manhattan Project and, consequently, the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in Japan, killing more than 110,000 people.
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