this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2023
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It was above his security level.
This I can absolutely believe. You really think the entrenched MICC is going to give him access?
MIster Chief Collection
Correct, Truman was not allowed to know about the Manhattan project until it was already viable and needed to be known.
Truman became president on April,12 1945. He was given a full briefing on the Manhattan project on April 24,1945. That doesn't seem like he was being kept in the dark.
It was one of the most important and costly projects of the war, 12 days is a lifetime during a war quite literally. That's also ignoring the fact that the vice president was kept in the dark until after FDR died and Truman took office.
That was the full briefing and Truman had been told about it earlier. And him not being told while he was vice president is irrelevant to information being withheld from a president.
That's dated April 24.
It's not, the administration by in large knew FDR was dying and would likely die before leaving office. Truman effectively was a president in waiting rather than a vice president.
Yes that he needed to speak about something important. Draw your own implication but it doesn't actually say what your implying it says.
And if you wanted to know what Truman thought of not being told as vice president. (from the same link)
Yes there was a very ambiguous statement about a secret project, that's not the same as being read in.
What he was told about could have been a large conventional bomb like the grand slam, tallboy, or firebats which were also secret at the time, there's a pretty big difference between them. I imagine there was probably quite a bit of hyperbole from secret project directors just as there is today so that's not a super great metric to judge things on.
You failed to quote the July 25th 1945 entry when he wrote about what he was actually told and shown which is as far as I'm aware the first definitive proof he knew exactly what it was.
That's Truman's reaction to the trinity test and is irrelevant to when he was told about the research. Obviously he had a different reaction to the actual bomb compared to a hypothetical bomb, but I would think that would be expected.
Yes the first mention of atomics and the first verified point he knew the full scale of the program, I just said this.