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Leslie Groves

Lieutenant General '''Leslie Richard Groves''' (August 17, 1896 – July 13, 1970) was a United States Army Engineer Officer (armed forces)|officer who oversaw the construction of the Pentagon and was the primary military leader in charge of the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb during World War II.Robert S. Norris, ''Racing for the bomb; General Leslie R. Groves, the Manhattan Project's Indispensable Man'', 2002, Steerforth Press, 722 pages, is the definitive biography.

Biography

Descended from French Huguenots who came to America in the 17th century, Leslie Groves was the son of a U.S. Army chaplain. He was born in Albany, New York, and educated at the University of Washington and Massachusetts Institute of Technology|MIT before attending United States Military Academy|West Point. Groves graduated in 1918, fourth in his class, and was commissioned into the Army Corps of Engineers, completing his engineering studies at Camp A. A. Humphreys (now Fort Belvoir), 1918–21. He married Grace Hulbert Wilson in 1922. Groves worked in various assignments throughout the United States and served with distinction in Nicaragua. In October 1934, he was attached to the Office of the Chief of Engineers and received a promotion to captain (U.S. Army)|captain. Following courses at the General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth (1936) and the Army War College (1939), he was promoted to major in 1940 and posted to the General Staff in Washington. He was deputy to the Chief of Construction and oversaw a number of projects including the construction of the Pentagon in 1940. In the same year, he was promoted to colonel. By this time, Groves had developed a reputation as an officer of high intelligence, tremendous drive and energy, and great organizational and administrative ability, as well as considerable ruthlessness, arrogance, and self-confidence. His success in overseeing a huge number of construction projects costing billions of dollars during the mobilization period between 1940 and 1942 made him a natural choice to take charge of the fledgling atomic bomb program.

Manhattan Project

In September 1942, he was made a temporary Brigadier General and appointed military director of the nascent Manhattan Engineer District of the US Army Corps of Engineers, replacing the first director, Col. James Marshall, who had proved indecisive and slow in getting the project moving beyond the research stage. He provided the code name "Manhattan" himself from the Corps practice of naming districts after their headquarters' city. He had been seeking action overseas and was initially dubious about attaching himself to a controversial weapons project. Nevertheless he quickly threw himself into the project with all his energy. Groves was important in most aspects of the bomb's development, including determining the sites to be used, finally deciding on Oak Ridge, Tennessee, Los Alamos, New Mexico, and Hanford Site|Hanford Engineering in Washington state, as the primary sites for theoretical research and materials production. He made critical decisions on prioritizing the various methods of isotope separation, acquiring raw materials needed by the scientists and engineers, and in creating the army air force bomber unit which would deliver the finished bombs to their targets. He advocated the choice of Kyoto as lead target, citing its tremendous cultural importance; he reasoned that the city's highly educated population would better appreciate the significance of the new weapon, thereby increasing its political impact. His wish to destroy the city was overruled by Secretary of War Henry Stimson, who had honeymooned there. He was involved in collecting military intelligence on German atomic research and helped determine which cities in Japan were chosen as targets. Groves also blanketed the Manhattan Project with an unprecedented degree of security (which, however, failed to prevent the Soviets from conducting a successful espionage program that stole some of its most important secrets). Though his conservative, rigid temperament and cold, blunt manner alienated some of the scientists he worked with, he also worked with J. Robert Oppenheimer, the eminent University of California, Berkeley|Berkeley physicist who was in charge of Los Alamos, where the bomb was designed and assembled. Oppenheimer's brilliant, charismatic leadership was decisive in creating workable designs and getting them transformed into usable bombs. Groves was promoted to temporary Major General in 1944. After the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war with Japan, Groves was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal (United States)|Distinguished Service Medal. As chief of the atom bomb program during the wartime emergency, Groves accrued an enormous amount of power. In the words of a subordinate, he "... planned the project, ran his own construction, his own science, his own Army, his own State Department and his own Treasury Department". In doing so Groves ran roughshod over many people and made many enemies, some of them quite powerful. These enemies eventually succeeded in drastically reducing Groves's power and authority as control over nuclear power was transferred from military to civilian hands (from the Manhattan District to the United States Atomic Energy Commission|Atomic Energy Commission) in January, 1947. For a time, Groves continued to play a role at Los Alamos as head of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, but he eventually realized that in the rapidly shrinking postwar Army he would not be given any assignment approaching in importance the one he had held in the Manhattan Project (such posts would go to combat commanders returning from overseas). He decided to leave the Army. He was promoted to Lieutenant General (United States)|Lieutenant General just before his retirement on February 29, 1948 in recognition of his leadership of the bomb program. Some activists believe, incorrectly, that Groves was one of the early proponents of using depleted uranium. A memo alleged to be on that subject is often cited on the Internet. However, a close reading of the memo, which is actually a composite of several documents, including some pages not attributable to Groves, shows that the material under discussion was fission products, not uranium.Brigadier General Groves Memo http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/Groves-Memo-Manhattan30oct43a.htm

Post-retirement

Groves went on to become a Vice-President at Sperry Rand. He moved to Darien, Connecticut in 1948.Colgate, Bernice, editor, "Our Interesting Neighbors", articles reprinted in book form (no year of publication or publisher given) from ''The Darien Review'' (1954-1957), "General Leslie R. Groves", from March 31, 1955 He retired from Sperry Rand in 1961 and moved back to Washington, D.C. He also served as president of the West Point alumni organization, the ''Association of Graduates''. He presented General Douglas MacArthur the Sylvanus Thayer Award in 1962, which was the occasion of MacArthur's famous Wikisource:Duty, honor, country|''Duty, Honor, Country'' speech to the United States Military Academy Corps of Cadets in 1962. His account of the Manhattan Project, ''Now It Can Be Told'', was originally published in 1962.Groves, L. R., ''Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project'', Perseus Books, New York, 1975, ISBN 0-306-70738-1 In 1955, a reporter asked Groves how the secret of the atomic bomb was "so well kept" (apparently forgetting that it wasn't well kept from the Soviets) and recorded this reaction: "If you have ever been the object of his direct look, you will know why I dropped my pencil in utter confusion when he said, 'Mainly by not talking to reporters.'" The reporter laughed, Groves laughed and the interview went on. Groves suffered a heart attack caused by chronic calcification of the aortic valve on July 13, 1970. He was rushed to Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where he died at 11:15 PM that night.Norris, ''Racing,'' 537. He is memorialized as the namesake of Leslie Groves Park along the Columbia River, not more than five miles from the Hanford Site in Richland, Washington|Richland.

Popular culture depictions

Leslie Groves's role in the Manhattan Project has attracted a continuing interest in film. These actors have portrayed Groves:
- George R. Robertson in the NBC television film ''F.D.R.: The Last Year'' (1980)
- Manning Redwood in the BBC miniseries ''Oppenheimer (TV miniseries)|Oppenheimer'' (1980)
- Richard Herd in the NBC television movie ''Enola Gay: The Men, the Mission, the Atomic Bomb'' (1980)
- Maury Chaykin in the CBC television epic Race for the bomb (1987)
- George Murdock (actor)|George Murdock in the ABC TV miniseries ''War and Remembrance#Television adaptation|War and Remembrance'' (1989)
- Brian Dennehy in the CBS television production ''Day One (film)|Day One'' (1989)
- Paul Newman in Roland Joffe's feature film ''Fat Man and Little Boy'' (1989)
- Richard Masur in the Showtime television miniseries ''Hiroshima (film)|Hiroshima'' (1995) Eric Owens (bass-baritone)|Eric Owens portrayed General Groves in John Adams (composer)|John Adams' opera ''Doctor Atomic'', in which Groves is a lead character. Leslie Groves is a key figure in alternate history (fiction)|alternate history novels including Harry Turtledove's ''Worldwar'' series and Newt Gingrich's ''1945''.

Footnotes

External links

- Annotated bibliography for Leslie Groves from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues
- "The Atomic Bomb," (Jan 18, 1946). A speech by Leslie Groves from the Commonwealth Club of California Records at the Hoover Institution Archives. Category:1896 births Category:1970 deaths Category:American people of World War II Category:Manhattan Project people Category:People associated with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Category:Recipients of the Distinguished Service Medal (United States) Category:United States Military Academy alumni Category:People from Albany, New York Category:People from Darien, Connecticut Category:United States Army generals Category:University of Washington alumni Category:American military engineers Category:United States Army Command and General Staff College alumni

Related Images

- Groves and Robert Oppenheimer

Sources: StartLearningNow, Wikipedia | Usage license: GNU FDL

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