The beginning or the end

Teaching Film Custodians classroom film of excerpts from the 1947 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer feature film, “The Beginning or the End”. Traces the development of the atom bomb from the earliest intelligence reports in World War II that the Nazis have been conducting research on nuclear fission, through the establishment of the Manhattan Project by President Roosevelt to the destruction of Hiroshima. Addresses the early concern of scientists involved in atomic energy research, the realization of the political implications of the A-bomb and the construction and work of Oak Ridge and other research plants. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Albert Einstein, General Leslie R. Groves, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Vanevar Bush and Enrico Fermi are portrayed in the film. Presents the testing of the bomb, its deployment and the resulting devastation as witnessed by airmen over Hiroshima.

In 1941, with the United States at war, President Roosevelt authorizes up to two billion dollars for the Manhattan Project to develop an atomic bomb. In December 1942, at the University of Chicago, under the watchful eyes of observers such as Colonel Jeff Nixon, scientists create the first chain reaction, under a stadium at the campus. In 1945, following the death of Roosevelt, the new president, Harry S. Truman, continues to support the atomic project, now moved to Los Alamos, New Mexico. The following day, on August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay, a Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber