Here is an upcoming event I wish I could attend: the George C. Marshall Foundation in Lexington, Virginia is hosting chemistry professor and author Frank Settle this coming Thursday, August 6. That is of course the 70th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Dr. Settle is the author of the forthcoming General George C. Marshall and the Atomic Bomb. As this article from the Richmond Times-Dispatch makes clear historians have largely overlooked Marshall’s outsized role in the planning and construction of the Bomb. The undertaking lasted several years and involved over half a million military and civilian personnel at a cost of $30 billion in today’s dollars. This was all taking place in secret while he and Secretary of War Henry Stimson were carrying out a two-front war in Europe and the Pacific.

Army Chief of Staff Marshall and Secretary of War Henry Stimson confer in early…