page_title: Leslie Groves
section_title: Manhattan Project
hierarchical_section_title: Leslie Groves / World War II / Manhattan Project
caption_attribution_description: English: The Harry S. Truman Building located at 2201 C Street, NW in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of Washington, D.C. It is the headquarters of the United States Department of State.
context_page_description: Lieutenant General Leslie Richard Groves Jr. was a United States Army Corps of Engineers officer who oversaw the construction of the Pentagon and directed the Manhattan Project, a top secret research project that developed the atomic bomb during World War II.
  The son of a U.S. Army chaplain, Groves lived at various Army posts during his childhood. In 1918, he graduated fourth in his class at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and was commissioned into the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. In 1929, he went to Nicaragua as part of an expedition to conduct a survey for the Inter-Oceanic Nicaragua Canal. Following the 1931 earthquake, Groves took over Managua's water supply system, for which he was awarded the Nicaraguan Presidential Medal of Merit. He attended the Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in 1935 and 1936; and the Army War College in 1938 and 1939, after which he was posted to the War Department General Staff. Groves developed "a reputation as a doer, a driver, and a stickler for duty" and in 1940 he became special assistant for construction to the Quartermaster General, tasked with inspecting construction sites and checking on their progress.
context_section_description: The Manhattan Engineer District (MED) was formally established by the Chief of Engineers, Major General Eugene Reybold on 16 August 1942. The name was chosen by Groves and MED's district engineer, Colonel James C. Marshall. Like other engineer districts, it was named after the city where its headquarters was located, at 270 Broadway. Unlike the others, however, it had no geographic boundaries, only a mission: to develop an atomic bomb. Moreover, Marshall had the authority of a division engineer head and reported directly to Reybold. Although Reybold was satisfied with the progress being made, Dr. Vannevar Bush was less so. He felt that aggressive leadership was required, and suggested the appointment of a prestigious officer as overall project director. Somervell, now Chief of Army Service Forces, recommended Groves. Somervell met Groves outside the hearing room where Groves had been testifying before a United States Congress committee on military housing and informed him that "The Secretary of War has selected you for a very important assignment, and the President has approved the selection ... If you do the job right, it will win the war." Groves could not hide his disappointment at not receiving a combat assignment: "Oh, that thing," he replied.
  Groves met with Major General Wilhelm D. Styer in his office at the Pentagon to discuss the details. They agreed that in order to avoid suspicion, Groves would continue to supervise the Pentagon project. He would be promoted to brigadier general, as it was felt that the title "general" would hold more sway with the academic scientists working on the Manhattan Project. Groves therefore waited until his promotion came through on 23 September 1942 before assuming his new command. His orders placed him directly under Somervell rather than Reybold, with Marshall now answerable to Groves. Groves was given authority to sign contracts for the project from September 1, 1942.
  Under Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson (retrospectively) delegated his authority from the President under the War Powers Act of 1941 in a memorandum to Groves dated April 17, 1944. Groves delegated the authority to Nichols, except that contracts of $5 million or more required his authority. The written authority was only given in 1944 when Nichols was about to sign a contract with Du Pont, and it was found that Nichols original authority to sign project contracts from Colonel Marshall was based on a verbal authority from Styer, and Nichols only had the low delegated authority of a divisional engineer.
  Groves soon decided to establish his project headquarters on the fifth floor of the New War Department Building (now known as the Harry S Truman Building) in Washington, D.C., where Marshall had maintained a liaison office. In August 1943, the MED headquarters (and Nichols, who was in charge of the production facilities at Hanford and Oak Ridge) moved to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, but the name of the district did not change.
  Construction accounted for roughly 90 percent of the Manhattan Project's total cost. The day after Groves took over, he and Marshall took a train to Tennessee to inspect the site that Marshall had chosen for the proposed production plant at Oak Ridge. Groves was suitably impressed with the site, and steps were taken to condemn the land. Protests, legal appeals, and congressional inquiries were to no avail. By mid-November US Marshals were tacking notices to vacate on farmhouse doors, and construction contractors were moving in.
  Meanwhile, Groves had met with J. Robert Oppenheimer, the University of California, Berkeley physicist, and discussed the creation of a laboratory where the bomb could be designed and tested. Groves was impressed with the breadth of Oppenheimer's knowledge. A long conversation on a train in October 1942 convinced Groves and his deputy Kenneth Nichols that Oppenheimer thoroughly understood the issues involved in setting up a laboratory in a remote area. These were features that Groves found lacking in other scientists, and he knew that broad knowledge would be vital in an int
caption: Groves ran the Manhattan Project from the fifth floor of the New War Department Building.
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