Nolan mentioned the indigenous population of New Mexico a few times, but without details. Obviously the US, Soviet Union and to the lesser extent the UK and France did a lot of terrible things to native people of various regions in the world, just to test the A bombs... Here's how they were treating native people from the Bikini Islands:
However, I don't think that Oppenheimer was the war criminal himself. When it comes to the unfair treatment of New Mexico residents, it's the US Army to blame. Yes, the atomic bomb has killed about 220-250 000 people, however it also prevented a lot of big wars, in which the loss of life would be far, far greater in numbers.
Had there been no bomb, millions of people would have died during the invasion of Japan. And the Soviets, more likely then not, would have launched a ground invasion of Europe in late 40's or early 50's...
Thanks for your comment. You make alot of unfounded/inaccurate comments and I would suggest you read up on your history.
The atomic bomb did not prevent the Korean war in the early 1950s or the war in Vietnam which started in the late 1940s (when its was a French colony) and then continued into the 1960s when the US invaded South Vietnam.
You repeat the myth that the bomb needed to be dropped to save US soldiers lives who would have died during an invasion of Japan. Absolutely not true. Japan was on the verge of surrender in 1945 its population was going hungry as was its army. When the Soviet Union attacked Japan's army in Manchuria during the early summer of 1945 it collapsed like a pack of cards.
A US invasion would have met similar success at a low cost in casualties.
The second myth you repeat is that the USSR would have invaded central Europe if the US did not have a nuclear bomb. Absolutely untrue once again. The Nazi invasion of 1941 killed 27 million Russians and left tens of thousands of villages, towns and cities destroyed. The USSR took 20 years to recover from the destruction of the German genocidal invasion. Moscow had no interest in invading central Europe its hands were full of rebuilding the USSR. NATO was formed in 1949 as an offensive alliance and the Warsaw Pact was created later in response to this US military alliance.
The Oppenheimer film is Hollywood's attempt to whitewash history.