The Nation : Oppenheimer Letter Cited
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U.S. military experts considered poisoning 500,000 Germans during World War II with radioactive food, according to a letter from A-bomb father J. Robert Oppenheimer to physicist Enrico Fermi. Oppenheimer wrote Fermi in 1943 about the plan, recommending that Fermi delay work on it until some technical problems could be solved. There is no evidence the plan was attempted. Barton J. Bernstein, professor of history at Stanford University who discovered the letter, said Oppenheimer’s request for the delay might have indicated an attempt to sabotage the plan.
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