Lieutenant Colonel Leslie Grives, working for the Army Corp of Engineers, had just completed The Pentagon, the largest office building in the world. Groves had his sights on Europe. He knew he would need to get into the middle of World War II if his burning ambition for advancement was going to be fully realized.
His superiors had other ideas. On September 17, 1942, 75 years ago today, he was told he was being reassignment. He would stay stateside to run a top secret scientific/industrial project. He knew the general objectives of the project. The project was under the Army Corp, and Groves was involved to provide expertise about a project which would be larger and more complex than the building of The Pentagon. Privately, he thought the project was a boondoggle which, if it failed, would have him testifying before Congressional Committees for decades after the war.
But he was a soldier. He accepted his new job with a grim determination to make it a success. Less than a month earlier, the project had been renamed: The Manhattan Engineering District.
It would be difficult to impossible to imagine any other American who could've brought The Manhattan Project to a successful conclusion. He was blunt. He worked constantly. He rubbed everyone the wrong way, but he got the job done.