On 2 August 1939, Albert Einstein sent US President Franklin D Roosevelt a letter. In it, he warned that the recent discovery of nuclear fission in Nazi Germany could lead to the creation of “extremely powerful bombs of a new type”. The letter, which had actually been written by Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard, then hinted that the Germans were currently trying to develop such a weapon. Szilard believed that the only way to stop Hitler was to beat him in the race to build an atomic bomb. His hope was that by leveraging Einstein’s fame, they could convince Roosevelt to start a US atomic programme. It worked. Roosevelt’s Advisory Committee on Uranium held its first meeting on 21 October 1939, just weeks after the outbreak of the Second World War.
When the US eventually entered the conflict two years later after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, it found itself fighting a war on two fronts: one against Nazi Germany in the west, the other against Japan in the east. Roosevelt now prioritised the atomic project and tasked the US Army Corps of Engineers with building a bomb. They set up offices on the 18th floor of a skyscraper on Broadway in New York City and began work on what was to become the largest government-backed science programme in history. To keep the purpose of their work a secret, it was named after the district they looked out over. So, on 13 August 1942, the Manhattan Project was born.
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NAUMACHIA TRUTH BEHIND ROME'S GLADIATOR SEA BATTLES
In their quest for evermore novel and bloody entertainment, the Romans staged enormous naval fights on artificial lakes
OPERATION MANNA
In late April 1945, millions of Dutch civilians were starving as Nazi retribution for the failed Operation Market Garden cut off supplies. eet as In response, Allied bombers launched a risky mission to air-drop food
GASSING HITLER
Just a month before the end of WWI, the future Fuhrer was blinded by a British shell and invalided away from the frontline. Over a century later, has the artillery brigade that launched the fateful attack finally been identified?
SALAMANCA
After years of largely defensive campaigning, Lieutenant General Arthur Wellesley went on the offensive against a French invasion of Andalusia
HUMBERT 'ROCKY'VERSACE
Early in the Vietnam War, a dedicated US Special Forces officer defied his merciless Viet Cong captors and inspired his fellow POWs to survive
LEYTE 1944 SINKING THE RISING SUN
One of the more difficult island campaigns in WWII's Pacific Theatre saw a brutal months-long fight that exhausted Japan’s military strength
MAD DAWN
How technology transformed strategic thinking and military doctrine from the Cold War to the current day
BRUSHES WITH ARMAGEDDON
Humanity came close to self-annihilation with the Cuban Missile Crisis, Broken Arrows’ and other nuclear near misses
THE DEADLY RACE
How the road to peace led to an arms contest between the USA and USSR, with prototypes, proliferation and the world’s biggest bomb
THE MANHATTAN PROJECT
Einstein, Oppenheimer and the race to beat Hitler to the bomb. How a science project in the desert helped win a war
