On this day in 1939 the German born American physicist Albert Einstein wrote a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt concerning atomic research and the atomic bomb. Einstein was afraid that Nazi Germany had begun work on the bomb. Urging ‘watchfulness and if necessary quick action on the part of the United States in atomic research” Below is the first letter Einstein sent to FDR.
slicethelife 
he was correct they had started, but they were not going to get there because it was almost certain death to admit failure.