Explore how one man's relentless drive and invention of the atomic bomb changed the nature of war forever, led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and unleashed mass hysteria.

J. Robert Oppenheimer was a national hero, the brilliant scientist who during WWII led the scientific team that created the atomic bomb. But after the bomb brought the war to an end, in spite of his renown and his enormous achievement, America turned on him - humiliated and cast him aside. The question the film asks is, "Why?"

A rare view from within, as several of the Manhattan Project scientists, including Hans Berthe, Robert Serber, Edward Teller, Robert Wilson, and more, speak of their experiences on the path to a terrible shared destiny. As their lives and work at Los Alamos are revealed, they relate stories of contradictions and jealousies, and how each came to terms with the atomic era's most immediate consequence: the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.