"ME? WITNESS WHAT?":

Oppenheimer's sophisticated social circle of Communists and other pro-Soviet leftists recalls the magnetic pull of the USSR and of Marxism-Leninism on many, many smart people in the 1930s and 1940s.  Their choices perplex us today.  Wasn't Stalin murdering millions in the 1930s?  How could any decent person possibly sympathize with such a regime?

For Oppenheimer's smart set, and for many others, the Soviets offered, at least from afar, a vision of justice that seemed elusive in Depression-era Western capitalist economies.  Capitalism seemed to be self-destructing while the Soviet Union offered cohesion and confidence, if drenched in blood.  That the Soviets, at least initially, opposed Naziism and the Axis powers, while the West appeased, also added to their luster.  Many communists in the West awoke from their delusions after Stalin's pact with Hitler, which launched WWII.  But the German invasion of the Soviet Union reignited old sympathies.  Some Americans and others who leaked atomic secrets to the Soviets believed America's allies had a right to such technology. Afterall, the Soviets were bearing the brunt of Nazi fury.  America was collaborating atomically with the British, they reasoned, so why not the Soviets?

The American and other Western communists of the 1930s and 1940s of course are without excuse.  They were seduced by a murderous great evil. Their willful naivete was sinful and disastrous.  The spies who leaked the atomic secrets to the Soviets were especially reprehensible.  

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