Why Did Lewis Strauss Hate Oppenheimer? Atomic Feud Explained

While Oppenheimer depicts many different parts of the famous physicist’s life, from his romances and his time at Los Alamos to his ties with Communism and his later political activism, there is one vital part of the film that is a crux which the movie relies on from the beginning to the end: the feud between Lewis Strauss and J. Robert Oppenheimer. Though this rivalry could be seen as overdramatized for the sake of the film, the reality is that this strained relationship truly did happen in real life, and did have major consequences for both parties. Ultimately, the feud continued to hurt them a decade after it started.