Scientists on the Manhattan Project continued developing the atomic bomb even after it was clear that there was no need to

Note: I'm not a WWII history buff, so if there's any significant misinterpretation of relevant history here, I welcome corrections in the comments. In December 1944, Joseph Rotblat, a physicist working on the Manhattan project, resigned. He had reasoned that Germany had most likely abandoned its bomb project, and so his initial reason for working on the bomb was no longer valid.[1] He would later ask himself: > Why did other scientists not make the same decision? [...]there were many scientists for whom the German factor was the main motivation.[2] Why did they not quit when this factor ceased to be? According to him, conversations with the other scientists suggested the following reasons (emphasis mine): > The most frequent reason given was pure and simple scientific curiosity—the strong urge to find out whether the theoretical calculations and predictions would come true. [...] > > Others were [...] persuaded by the argument that many American lives would be saved if the bomb brought a rapid end to the war with Japan. Only when peace was restored would they take a hand in efforts to ensure that the bomb would not be used again.[...][3] > > Still others, while agreeing that the project should have been stopped when the German factor ceased to operate, were not willing to take an individual stand because they feared it would adversely affect their future career.[...] > > The majority were not bothered by moral scruples; they were quite content to leave it to others to decide how their work would be used. Here's some corroborations of this perspective from other scientists: Richard Feynman: > The original reason to start the project, which was that the Germans were a danger, started me off on a process of action which was to try to develop this first system at Princeton and then at Los Alamos, to try to make the bomb work. All kinds of attempts were made to redesign it to make it a worse bomb and so on. But what I did, - immorally I would say – was to not r