48 pages • 1 hour read
Chris Wallace, Mitch WeissCountdown 1945: The Extraordinary Story of the Atomic Bomb and the 116 Days That Changed the World
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: Countdown: 116 Days
On April 12th, 1945 Harry Truman becomes the 33rd president of the United States after the sudden death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. At the time, the Second World War is still raging. Truman intends to continue the agenda of his predecessor—telling his cabinet officials he wants everything to continue “just the way President Roosevelt wanted” (5)—and after being sworn in reiterates this intention. After the inauguration, Henry Stimson, the secretary of war, takes Truman aside and briefly mentions that he has an urgent matter to discuss with him in the coming days.
Chapter 2 Summary: Countdown: 113 Days
J. Robert Oppenheimer is the director of the Manhattan Project, “America’s massive secret effort to develop an atomic bomb” (7). Oppenheimer, one of the most brilliant physicists in the world, was appointed by Roosevelt. A highly idiosyncratic character, Oppenheimer is known to be quite charming and yet prone to melancholy and arrogance. Oppenheimer considers the development of the atom bomb to be the best way to end the war, and so he takes up his place at the head of the project in Los Alamos, New Mexico with a sense of determination and purpose.
Hearing of the death of FDR, Oppenheimer is worried about how Truman will view the project, especially since Roosevelt was so instrumental in smoothing over the tensions between the scientists and the military leaders. In addition, some of the scientists on the project—such as Leo Szilard—have started to have ethical reservations about developing and employing an atomic bomb in war. Oppenheimer still clings to hope: “Roosevelt was a great architect. Perhaps Truman will be a good carpenter” (16).
Chapter 3 Summary: Countdown: 105 Days
In Utah, Colonel Paul Tibbets has been driven to boredom and restlessness training his squadron for a secret bombing mission that may or may not ever happen. He knows that the crew for the atomic mission would have to be perfect in order to drop the bomb accurately and to successfully avoid the after-effects of the explosion. Tibbets is highly qualified: he entered the Army Air Corps at the age of 21, and since then has flown dozens of missions in combat before his transfer to the B-29 flight-test program.
In September of the previous year, Tibbets was briefed on the experimental Manhattan Project, as well as warned of a swift court-martialing if he ever spoke of it to anyone. He was then commanded to begin assembling a team to fly the mission, should it ever come about. At the same time, “commanders had been busy preparing a new home for the 509th on the tiny, strategic Pacific island of Tinian” (26). By now, however, Tibbets was tired of waiting and requested that his unit be deployed to Tinian in anticipation of the mission.
Chapter 4 Summary: Countdown: 104 Days
In Okinawa, meanwhile, Commander Draper Kaufmann spends his time defending the island fortress that cost the US so much to invade and capture. Kaufmann founded a bomb disposal school back in 1941, just weeks before the bombing of Pearl Harbor at the start of America’s involvement in the war.
Kaufmann’s recruits—affectionately known as “frogmen”—are the best of the best, undergoing “a grueling training program” (32) known as Hell Week. Okinawa was chosen as the ideal place from which to launch a counteroffensive against the Japanese mainland, being less than 400 miles from the southern tip of Japan. Kaufmann contemplates the eventual invasion: “If they thought Okinawa was hell, they were in for much worse” (35).
Chapter 5 Summary: Countdown: 103 Days
Back in Washington, D.C., Truman finally gets a debriefing from the war secretary, Henry Stimson. Stimson reveals the greatest wartime secret in US history: “Within four months, we shall in all probability have completed the most terrible weapon ever known in human history” (40).
The circle of those with this knowledge is very small. General Groves, for instance, is one of the few other people with explicit knowledge of the Manhattan Project’s true objective. Groves was placed in charge of the construction of the Pentagon from 1941 to 1942, and was immediately set to work on supervising the work on the atom bomb upon the Pentagon’s completion. There is also Leo Szilard, a Jewish refugee from Berlin, who first theorized the possibility of splitting an atom and harnessing its energy. Szilard eventually pushed his friend and colleague Albert Einstein to help him persuade President Roosevelt that the US needed to master atomic energy before its enemies beat them to it.
For his part, Groves hired Oppenheimer and also decided on the various locations that would become a part of the operation: Project W in Hanford, Washington; Project X in rural Tennessee; and Project Y in Los Alamos, the eventual site of the first atomic bomb test.
Chapter 6 Summary: Countdown: 90 Days
On May 8th, 1945, President Truman is able to announce that the war in Europe has ended: Germany has surrendered. During the liberation, the Allied forces discover the hidden atrocities of the Nazi regime in the concentration camps. However, even with the German defeat, Truman reminds the nation that the war is still not over since they have to deal with the threat in the pacific theater: Japan.
One woman who is intimately involved in the war effort is Ruth Sisson, a young woman from Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Her boyfriend is an army medic, and while she waits for him to come home, she works in a machine shop. Ruth becomes a “cubicle operator” (59), helping to monitor the machinery that is used in developing the atomic bomb. All of the cubicle operators, however, are kept in the dark as to what they are actually doing: they are simply told to monitor their assigned machinery and to report any changes in the machine readings.
Chapters 1-6 Analysis
Wallace creates a timeline in Countdown 1945 between the inauguration of Harry Truman as the President of the United States and the nuclear strike on Hiroshima, using a narrative device of counting down the 116 days from Roosevelt’s death to the infamous attack. The narrative framework creates momentum through recounting the race to complete the atomic bomb in time to prevent a full-scale invasion of the Japanese mainland. The narrative also reveals the secret workings of the Manhattan Project—the code name for the multi-year plan to develop nuclear weaponry—at the same time the new president hears hints about it on his very first day as acting president.
The man in charge of the Manhattan Project is the enigmatic physicist, J. Robert Oppenheimer, who was selected by Roosevelt himself when the project began. Though Oppenheimer would later question his involvement in the project and the Justification for the Use of Nuclear Weapons (a key theme throughout the book), his focus at the start of the endeavor is on finding a way to end the war as quickly and efficiently as possible. At the start of the narrative, Oppenheimer’s greatest source of anxiety is due to the sudden death of Roosevelt, who was the one to authorize and encourage the project. Now that there is a new president, Oppenheimer is not convinced that they will be able to continue their work. He simply hopes they will be able to finish what they started.
Eleven days into Truman’s term, Colonel Paul Tibbets puts in a request for his squadron to be moved to the island of Tinian, located about 1,500 miles south of the Japanese mainland. Tinian is an important strategic location that the Allied forces set up due to its close proximity to Japan; it will be home to the military base from which the B-29 Superfortress bombers will take off on their way to launch the nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Tibbets is one of the few people who has always known the true nature of what he is preparing for, having been briefed in detail the previous September. His mission—known by the codename “Silverplate”—has top priority status. Tibbets requests a transfer not just because he has grown tired of waiting, but because he knows the time is approaching where they will either have to fly the mission or abandon their plans altogether. By requesting a transfer, Tibbets is ensuring his crew will be ready and waiting to fly out as soon as possible.
At the same time, the island of Okinawa has become a major military base for Allied forces after a grueling battle to take the island from Japanese control. For more than two months in the Spring of 1945, Allied forces assaulted the island until finally gaining victory, but by the end they had waged the bloodiest battle the pacific theater would see: 95,000 Japanese soldiers and over 20,000 American soldiers died. The Human Cost of War—something the book emphasizes throughout—was enormous. Once the island was under Allied control, it became the principal location from which to launch an invasion against the Japanese mainland. At this moment in the narrative, it is also being used as a training ground for a special amphibious combat unit nicknamed the “Frogmen”, who are being trained in underwater demolitions to assist a possible invasion.
The battle to take Okinawa, however, plays a very special role in the lead-up to the nuclear strike on Japan: due to how difficult it was to take the island, the Allied forces are very hesitant to launch a land offensive against Japan itself. If taking Okinawa was a struggle, then nobody wants to contemplate just how difficult and violent an eventual full-scale invasion is going to be. It is this reluctance that will persuade Truman and others to use the atomic bombs to bring the war to a swift and decisive end.
When Germany finally surrenders, ending the European part of the war, the focus immediately shifts to Japan as the primary enemy force. All across the nation, various groups and committees are involved in helping to build the nuclear weapons, even when they are unaware of the mission’s true nature. Withholding information about the bombs from civilian workers will prove to be controversial later on, as Popular Attitudes Regarding the Atom Bomb will shift. Many who unknowingly participated in developing the nuclear bombs will have to wrestle with their own complicity in the bombings in the years to come.
