“Eighty years ago this week,” writes Vermont journalist Garrett Graff, “a group of physicists and military leaders changed warfare — and the world — forever.” August 6 marks the 80th anniversary of the United States atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, which was followed three days later by the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. These two bombings are estimated to have killed over 200,000 people. Graff recounts the scientific and political backstory of the dawn of the nuclear age in his latest book, “The Devil Reached Toward the Sky: An Oral History of the Making and Unleashing of the Atomic Bomb.” This exhaustive work includes testimonies from 500 people who “tell the intertwined story of nuclear physics, the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1930s, the arrival and advance of World War II in the Pacific, and the tremendous effort of the Manhattan Project to deliver two atomic bombs that helped end the war, as well as the haunting on-the-ground stories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki themselves,” writes Graff. Graff says that the story of what gave rise to the nuclear age is “as important now as ever,” as countries around the world, such as Iran, are racing to start or expand their nuclear arsenals. “The world actually stands much closer to the edge of nuclear danger than we have for most of the 80 years since the end of World War II,” Graff told The Vermont Conversation. “This year has already seen two major world conflicts set against nuclear tensions. We've seen open warfare between India and Pakistan already this spring, the two largest nuclear arsenals to ever come into open conflict in world history. And we also saw, of course, the US and Israeli strikes against the Iranian nuclear program.” “There's a possibility, ironically, 15 years after Barack Obama tried to set us on a path toward nuclear abolition, where in the 2020s and 2030s we may actually see more countries join the nuclear club than have ever existed before.” Garrett Graff describes himself as a historian whose work is often filed under current events. He writes about inflection points in history with an eye towards how they impact the present and future. This includes his 2024 book, “When the Sea Came Alive: An Oral History of D-Day,” and his 2022 book, “Watergate: A New History,” which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History. He is also the editor of an oral history of the COVID-19 pandemic in Vermont that was published earlier this year by the Vermont Historical Society. Graff has had a busy 2025. This spring, his 7-part podcast series dropped, “Breaking the Internet.” In it, he explores how a tool that promised to bring people together has instead driven them apart and has fueled authoritarian movements. This is the fourth season of Long Shadow, Graff’s award-winning history podcast. Graff also shares his writing about current politics in his online newsletter, Doomsday Scenario. Graff said that as the U.S. approaches its 250th anniversary, “We are witnessing an unraveling of our small-d democratic traditions in the United States and sort of backsliding in our democracy and the creeping approach of authoritarianism.” “It doesn't feel [like] a coincidence to me that we are watching this backsliding in our democracy at the precise moment 80 years later where we are losing the last members of the Greatest Generation,” those who lived through the Great Depression and World War II. “There is no preordained rule that America remains a democracy," Graff said. "And there's no preordained rule that we remain an economic hegemon. We let both of those things disappear at our own societal and national peril.”
