83 Facts About Leslie Groves

The son of a US Army chaplain, Groves lived at various Army posts during his childhood.

Leslie Groves 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.

Leslie Groves developed "a reputation as a doer, a driver, and a stickler for duty".

In September 1942, Leslie Groves took charge of the Manhattan Project.

Leslie Groves was involved in most aspects of the atomic bomb's development: he participated in the selection of sites for research and production at Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Los Alamos, New Mexico; and Hanford, Washington.

Leslie Groves directed the enormous construction effort, made critical decisions on the various methods of isotope separation, acquired raw materials, directed the collection of military intelligence on the German nuclear energy project and helped select the cities in Japan that were chosen as targets.

Leslie Groves wrapped the Manhattan Project in security, but spies working within the project were able to pass some of its most important secrets to the Soviet Union.

Leslie Groves then headed the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, which had been created to control the military aspects of nuclear weapons.

Leslie Groves was given a dressing down by the Chief of Staff of the Army, General of the Army Dwight D Eisenhower, on the basis of various complaints, and told that he would never be appointed Chief of Engineers.

Three days later, Leslie Groves announced his intention to leave the Army.

Leslie Groves was promoted to lieutenant general just before his retirement on 29 February 1948 in recognition of his leadership of the bomb program.

Leslie Groves went on to become a vice president at Sperry Rand.

Leslie Groves was half Welsh and half English, with some French Huguenot ancestors who came to the United States in the 17th century.

Leslie Groves was posted to the 14th Infantry at Vancouver Barracks in Washington state in 1897.

Chaplain Leslie Groves was hospitalized with tuberculosis at Fort Bayard in 1905.

Leslie Groves decided to settle in southern California and bought a house in Altadena.

In 1911, Chaplain Leslie Groves was ordered to return to the 14th Infantry, which was now stationed at Fort William Henry Harrison, Montana.

At Fort Harrison, the younger Leslie Groves met Grace Wilson, the daughter of Colonel Richard Hulbert Wilson, a career Army officer who had served with Chaplain Leslie Groves during the 8th Infantry's posting to Cuba.

Leslie Groves entered Queen Anne High School in 1913, and graduated in 1914.

Leslie Groves earned a nomination from the President, Woodrow Wilson, which allowed him to compete for a vacancy, but did not score a high enough mark on the examination to be admitted.

In 1916, Leslie Groves tested again, attained a passing score, and was accepted.

Leslie Groves finished fourth in his class, which earned him a commission as a second lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers, the first choice of most high ranking cadets.

Leslie Groves was sent to France in June on an educational tour of the European battlefields of World War I After returning from Europe, Groves became a student officer at the Engineer School at Camp Humphreys in September 1919.

Leslie Groves returned to Camp Humphreys in February 1921 for the Engineer Basic Officers' Course.

Leslie Groves was then posted to Fort Worden in command of a survey detachment.

In November 1922, Leslie Groves received his first overseas posting, as a company commander with the 3rd Engineers at the Schofield Barracks in Hawaii.

Leslie Groves earned a commendation for his work there, constructing a trail from Kahuku to Pupukea.

Leslie Groves's duties included opening the channel at Port Isabel and supervising dredging operations in Galveston Bay.

Leslie Groves's superior wrote a critical report on him, but the Chief of Engineers, Major General Edgar Jadwin, interceded, attributing blame to Leslie Groves's superiors instead.

In 1929, Leslie Groves departed for Nicaragua in charge of a company of the 1st Engineers as part of an expedition whose purpose was to conduct a survey for the Inter-Oceanic Nicaragua Canal.

Leslie Groves attended the Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in 1935 and 1936, after which he was posted to Kansas City, Missouri, as assistant to the commander of the Missouri River Division.

Leslie Groves, who "had a reputation as a doer, a driver, and a stickler for duty", was one of a number of engineer officers brought in to turn the project around.

Leslie Groves was tasked with inspecting construction sites and checking on their progress.

On 12 November 1940, Gregory asked Leslie Groves to take over command of the Fixed Fee Branch of the Construction Division as soon as his promotion to colonel came through.

Leslie Groves assumed his new rank and duties on 14 November 1940.

Leslie Groves has the guts to make difficult, timely decisions.

Leslie Groves knows he is right and so sticks by his decision.

Leslie Groves ruthlessly protected the overall project from other government agency interference, which made my task easier.

Leslie Groves seldom accepted other agency cooperation and then only on his own terms.

Leslie Groves installed phone lines for the Supervising Construction Quartermasters, demanded weekly reports on progress, ordered that reimbursement vouchers be processed within a week, and sent expediters to sites reporting shortages.

Leslie Groves ordered his contractors to hire whatever special equipment they needed and to pay premium prices if necessary to guarantee quick delivery.

On 19 August 1941, Groves was summoned to a meeting with the head of the Construction Division, Brigadier General Brehon B Somervell.

Leslie Groves steadily overcame one crisis after another, dealing with strikes, shortages, competing priorities and engineers who were not up to their tasks.

Leslie Groves worked six days a week in his office in Washington, DC During the week he would determine which project was in the greatest need of personal attention and pay it a visit on Sunday.

Leslie Groves felt that aggressive leadership was required, and suggested the appointment of a prestigious officer as overall project director.

Leslie Groves 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.

Leslie Groves therefore waited until his promotion came through on 23 September 1942 before assuming his new command.

Leslie Groves's orders placed him directly under Somervell rather than Reybold, with Marshall now answerable to Groves.

Leslie Groves was given authority to sign contracts for the project from 1 September 1942.

The 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 17 April 1944.

Leslie Groves delegated the authority to Kenneth Nichols, except for contracts of $5 million or more that required his authority.

Leslie 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, DC, where Marshall had maintained a liaison office.

The day after Leslie 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.

Leslie Groves was suitably impressed with the site, and steps were taken to condemn the land.

Meanwhile, Groves had met with J Robert Oppenheimer, a physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, and discussed the creation of a laboratory where the bomb could be designed and tested.

Leslie Groves saw that Oppenheimer thoroughly understood the issues involved in setting up a laboratory in a remote area.

Leslie Groves detected in Oppenheimer something that many others did not, an "overweening ambition" which Leslie Groves reckoned would supply the drive necessary to push the project to a successful conclusion.

Leslie Groves became convinced that Oppenheimer was the best and only man to run the laboratory.

Oppenheimer's Communist Party connections soon came to light, but Leslie Groves personally waived the security requirements and issued Oppenheimer a clearance on 20 July 1943.

Leslie Groves made critical decisions on prioritizing the various methods of isotope separation and acquiring raw materials needed by the scientists and engineers.

Between 1944 and the time he resigned from the Trust in 1947, Leslie Groves deposited a total of $37.5 million into the Trust's account.

Leslie Groves informed him the first workable bomb was months away.

Leslie Groves created Operation Alsos, special intelligence teams that would follow in the wake of the advancing armies, rounding up enemy scientists and collecting what technical information and technology they could.

Leslie Groves was hoping that the Boeing B-29 Superfortress would be able to carry the finished bombs.

Leslie Groves attempted to get him to change his mind several times and Stimson refused every time.

Leslie Groves was promoted to temporary major general on 9 March 1944.

Leslie Groves's was the responsibility for procuring materiel and personnel, marshalling the forces of government and industry, erecting huge plants, blending the scientific efforts of the United States and foreign countries, and maintaining completely secret the search for a key to release atomic energy.

Leslie Groves accomplished his task with such outstanding success that in an amazingly short time the Manhattan Engineer District solved this problem of staggering complexity, defeating the Axis powers in the race to produce an instrument whose peacetime potentialities are no less marvellous than its wartime application is awesome.

The achievement of General Leslie Groves is of unfathomable importance to the future of the nation and the world.

Leslie Groves had previously been nominated for the Distinguished Service Medal for his work on the Pentagon, but to avoid drawing attention to the Manhattan Project, it had not been awarded at the time.

Leslie Groves had already made a start on the new mission by creating Sandia Base in 1946.

Eisenhower recounted a long list of complaints about Leslie Groves pertaining to his rudeness, arrogance, insensitivity, contempt for the rules, and maneuvering for promotion out of turn.

Leslie Groves realized that in the rapidly shrinking postwar military he would not be given any assignment similar in importance to the one he had held in the Manhattan Project, as such posts would go to combat commanders returning from overseas, and he decided to leave the Army.

Leslie Groves went on to become a vice president at Sperry Rand, an equipment and electronics firm, and moved to Darien, Connecticut, in 1948, and retired at age 65 in 1961.

Leslie Groves served as president of the West Point alumni organization, the Association of Graduates.

Leslie Groves presented General of the Army Douglas MacArthur the Sylvanus Thayer Award in 1962, which was the occasion of MacArthur's famous Duty, Honor, Country speech to the US Military Academy Corps of Cadets.

In retirement, Leslie Groves wrote an account of the Manhattan Project entitled Now It Can Be Told, originally published in 1962.

Leslie Groves suffered a heart attack caused by chronic calcification of the aortic valve on 13 July 1970.

Leslie Groves was rushed to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC, where he died that night at age 73.

Leslie Groves is memorialized at a namesake park along the Columbia River, near the Hanford Site in Richland, Washington.

In 1995, Leslie Groves was portrayed by Richard Masur in the Japanese-Canadian made-for-television movie Hiroshima.

Leslie Groves was portrayed by Eric Owens in the 2007 Lyric Opera of Chicago's work Doctor Atomic.

Leslie Groves is played by Matt Damon in Christopher Nolan's 2023 film Oppenheimer.