Did Nazis invent the Atomic Bomb?

reply to post by seagull

The ultimate outcome was never really in doubt, though there were some shakey moments early in 1942 . . the Atlantic -vs- the U-boat. . Coral Sea and Midway were the turning point in the Pacific War. Had Coral Sea not happened or ended differently, who knows... but that's a moot point . . once the US industry was ramped up, there was no doubt.

Wham! Wham! Wham! Coral Sea, Midway and the Atlantic - as in three nails, all struck right on the head and hard too! Mr S/G, I think you have summed up WW2 in as few words as I have ever seen!

Yamamoto was indeed psychic, he predicted 6 months, and for six months the Japanese Imperial Navy ran wild. Japanese tactical mistakes made Midway almost an even fight, when it shouldn't have been remotely even. Luck, and the skill to take advantage of the luck, played a huge part.

LUCK is the operative word! And the courage to take a calculated risk when the opportunity presents. You cannot win wars (or turning point battles) without both in the proper order. At Midway, we did indeed, get lucky! And we never looked back.

Aside: I recommend Stanley Weintraub’s stupendous book, “Fifteen Stars: Eisenhower, MacArthur and Marshall; Three Generals Who Saved the American Century.” NY, Free Press, 2007.

Book Review from Booklist
Weintraub, who has written many World War II histories, here inspects the interrelationship of the U.S. Army's three highest-ranking generals of that war: Douglas MacArthur, George Marshall, and Dwight Eisenhower. Ike's story bounces between those of the other two, for he served directly under them before Marshall selected him in mid-1942 to command American forces in Europe.

MacArthur, by then already a military celebrity, was commander in the Southwest Pacific; Marshall managed the two from the newly built Pentagon. This geography makes Weintraub's narrative resemble a Venn diagram, existing at the intersections of the three generals' activities during the war.

These took various forms, including visits from Marshall; messages about strategy and allocation of resources; and Marshall's disposition of personnel decisions that Ike or MacArthur referred to him. After the war, as the three assumed posts in the developing cold war, each took on an aura of presidential possibility.

Culminating with the Korean War's ramifications for the trio, Weintraub's densely detailed chronicle can prime readers for future reading, whether individual biographies or battle histories. By Gilbert Taylor

RESUME: Weintraub gives Marshall 96% of the credit for winning the war, Eisenhower gets 6% and MacArthur is a minus 2%. See Note 1. A notable quotation from Stanley Weintraub, “Peace is harder to make than war." From “A Stillness Heard Round the World: the End of the Great War, November 1918.”

Note 1.
The landmark civil rights case, Brown v. Topeka Board of Education, was handed down May 17, 1954. In short, the case overruled the Jim Crow case, Plessey v. Ferguson, 1896, which had declared “separate but equal” complied with Constitutional guarantees especially found in the 13th 14th and 15th Amendments. Everyone who KNEW anything knew that - separate but equal - was a white man’s JOKE on America’s BLACKS.

There was a brief window of opportunity for America’s president to speak out. To accept, to endorse, and to pledge to enforce the law of the land as the Supreme Court had at last found the courage to recite it.

But no, IKE stood by silent. As America’s president, he continued to frequent the Augusta Georgia golf course where BLACKS were admitted only in menial job levels. It was not until the Little Rock High School case in 1957 that IKE belatedly and lamely backed the Supreme Court.

Ike reminds me of slave owner Andrew Jackson when Chief Justice John Marshall said the Congressional Act of Removal of Cherokee from the Carolinas to Oklahoma was ILLEGAL, and who said, “Now let him enforce it!”

I attribute today's Red state Blue state divide in America to Eisenhower.


[edit on 4/29/2009 by donwhite]

Hitler’s own claims about testing nuclear weapons:

On 5 August 1944 Hitler Ribbentrop and Keitel met with Romanian Marshal Antonescu. Before the month was over Roumania had revolted against the Nazis and Antonescu had become a prisoner on trial for war crimes. During this time he divulged the following conversation with Hitler.

Hitler told Antonescu of Germany’s atomic bomb. He described Germany’s latest work on “new explosives, whose development was already advanced to the experimental stage,”

Hitler confided his view that the jump from modern explosives to this one was the biggest since gunpowder. Hitler said these were...

...new explosives, whose development was already advanced to the experimental stage
Hitler confided his view that the jump from modern explosives to this one was the biggest since gunpowder.

Antonescu later quoted Hitler when arrested by the Russians and questioned for war crimes saying:

These weapons, for example, have such colossal force that all human life is destroyed within three, or four kilometres of its point of impact.

Source:

Germany and the Second World War: Organization and Mobilisation of the German sphere of Power..., Volume 5, Part 1, by Bernhard Kroener, Rolf-Dieter Müller, Hans Umbreit, Oxford Uni Press 2003

In addition Mussolini is also recorded rreferring imminent use of the Nazi atomic bomb. A diplomatic signal from Japan's embassy in Stockholm during December 1944 also refers to previous use of uranium atom splitting explosives of collossal power on the Russian front during 1943 and 1944.

reply to post by donwhite


Hitler did have the means sorry to disappoint you Don.

Hitler was threatened with massive retaliation to deployment of a Nazi atomic weapon by the British with Anthrax sewn by RAF bombers all across Germany and by the Americans who threatened through Lisbon in July 1944 to destroy Dresden with an Atomic Bomb.

Hitler was not limited by delivery systems, but rather by Hitler's anxiety about threatened retaliation.

Among the delivery systems which Germany had, or were close to fielding in 1944 were:

1. He-277 high altitude bombers
   
2. V-2 - with Tabun-B Nerve gas, or tactical nukes
   
3. V-1 - D model with Tabun-B warheads
   
4. Do-217P with tactical nukes
   
5. U-boat towed Lafferentz capsules with V-2 rockets
   
6. Mistel Ar-234 with atomic bombs in fuselage
   

I realise you will not accept Don that Germany had tactical nukes, but there is evidence these weapons were developed and tested at Rugen in October 1944 and at Ohrdruf in March 1945. The Japanese described these in diplomatic signals as 5kg Uranium atom splitting explosives. There were patents filed during WW2 by Nazi scientists describing workable tactical nukes.

A former Nazi nuclear scientist now living in Argentina has indicated in correspondence that germany built fifteen nuclear weapons before the war ended.

It is quite plausible that Hitler witheld use of Nazi nukes against England after entering negotiations with Western Allies. The Soviets during and after the war accused the west of entering separate peace negotiations with Hitler and would not have made such accusations without plausible grounds.

ATOMIC WEAPONS

reply to post by FredT


When I learned that the Manhattan Project consumed 10% of all the electricity in the US in the 1942-1945 time frame, I realized that neither the Germans, Japanese nor Russians could have done that then. The TVA had surplus plower to run Oak Ridge, and the Columbia River Authority had power to run Hanford. Los Alamos of course, as the assembly point, did not need much electricity. I don’t know when we learned that centrifuges are cheaper than gaseous magnetic defusion, so that now almost anyone can make an A-bomb. You know if NK and Pakistan can make one, Iran (and almost any other country) can do it too. So what’s all this blow-hard BS about Iran over anyway? Is it to jack-up Americans into a We Want War mode?

Perhaps some of you would enjoy reading, "Brighter than a Thousand Suns," by Jungk, which does not mention the submarine, but has a lot of info on the US Manhattan Project as well as some comments about the German program. After the war, the head of the Nazi Atomic Bomb program, Noble Prize winner Werner Heisenberg claimed that he had intentionally delayed the German program. He told some of the more rabid Nazi types inside the program they should not confide the potential of the Atomic bomb to Nazi higher ups because of the amount of pressure the Nazi's would put on scientists to create the bomb. He claimed he kept moving the technical people and equipment around to delay experiments. Surely, after the war was over, it was to Heisenberg's advantage to make such a claim to the Allies.

One of the interesting stories related is about how, the enormous amount of Uranium needed by the US bomb program was found. At that time the US had not developed Uranium mines and the big deposits were overseas, just when shipping was becoming very dangerous. A huge stockpile was found, already imported. At first the owner of the Uranium refused to sell it to the procurement officer, even though the Uranium had been storage for years, and he was offered a substantial amount of money. Why he relented was very interesting. When the procurement officer said, "I can not even tell you about what this Uranium is to be used for." To which the business man, who had always wanted to be a scientist looked him in the eye and said, "I know what it is going to be used for." Seems unbelievable that a well to do business man would have had the foresight to help his country before the war even started.

The worlds largest Heavy Water plant was in a Norway. The local resistance fighters were commanded by Allied Intelligence to carry out an operation that required killing innocent local civilians to prevent some of the heavy water from being shipped into Gerrnany.

In any event, building an Atomic Bomb takes an enormous, spectacular amount of manufacturing type things as well as brain power. It requires a cast of thousands, as well as a huge amount of money. If it was not so hard, then Iran would have already built one. Naturally, Iran having a working reactor will help supply the electricity to refine Uranium. What I do not understand about Iran, they have a huge amount of natural gas that can be used to generate electricity, so they need reactors to make electricity for what reason?

One wonders why countries like Iran do not spend more time on what are called cheap WMD's, Biological weapons, Chemical weapons, Electromagnetic Pulse (EMF), rather than Nuclear Weapons.

I believe the History channel (US) had a program on this particular sub. I understand the Mercury is still down there, and I am not sure there is a good plan to keep it from leaking, or retrieve it.

The problem with the German Nuclear Bomb effords where who was in charge of every project: they had the knowhow and some say the matterial. OSS/OSE/MI and report intercepts and attacks on production sites lead to Germany never having a Strategic weapon, but dirty and small area denial weapons could have been tested!

reply to post by Osmoses


Which means that in your ignorance you have never read the correspondence between General Shytkov in charge of the captured Japanese Nuclear laboratory at Hungnam and Stalin which were declassified from KGB files in 2005.

Nor have you bothered to read the declassified interrogations of Japanese Chemist Otogoro Natsume who escaped Soviet captors at Hungnam and fled to south Korea in 1946.

Nor have you bothered to read the USN Intelligence report "German Technical Aid to Japan: a Survey" dated June15 1945, which at Chapter 14, page 177 cites that Japan received from Germany in 1944 the design for a small "atom smashing" weapon with a blast radius of 1000 metres. This was a tactical nuke described being the size of a matchbox.

Nor have you read the 1944 MAGIC decrypt of a signal from Japan's embassy in Stockholm to Tokyo declassified 1978, in which the embassy described a small "Uranium atom smashing" nuclear weapon used several times on the Russian front by the Germans.

Your ignorance does not qualify you to use the word never because you clearly don't know too much. That's all you can claim.

reply to post by 13py6eh12


Perhaps you should start by actually reading the Cordell Hull Papers a series of OSS reports from Sam Woods in Switzerland describing the German nuclear weapons project?

For Example: Sam Woods memorandum pp.18-19 Hull papers. Series of earthquakes in Schwabian alps 4th 14th and 22 July 1943 at 9 degrees east, 48.2 degrees North, close to Bisingen where German atomic scientists had relocated. (1943 intelligence reports of Woods in NA, RG 59) described as underground nuclear weapons tests.

There are persistent rumors. After all, the Germans were highly advanced in technology and physics before the war. To the question, COULD they have built an atomic bomb? The answer is a resounding, "Yes." To the question, DID they build an atomic bomb? The answer is, "probably not." Now, the question is, Why?"

Despite the folly of Hitler, the German high command was not stupid--just ruled by an idiot. Their calculus went this way:

1. We are capable of building an atomic bomb.
2. Doing so will take a few years. (Witness: The Manhattan Project)
3. If we are going to win the war, we must do it fast.
4. Therefore we will skip the bomb.

Of course, they did not win the war quickly. It dragged on and they lost--as they knew they would if it did. Had they made the opposite decision and done a Manhattan Project of their own, they would have been able to come up with a bomb just about the time the war ended, assuming we didn't carpet bomb the project.

which was too late.

What's interesting is nazis were defeated in april 1945, in june 1945 the first atomic bomb was tested by america. Some comments and questions about this:

Was this coincidence, or did the defeat of nazi Germany in some way pose a breakthrough for the atom bomb? Afterall why wouldn't the allies do everything possible to atom bomb Germany rather than Japan? Even if you go with the official narrative that the bomb was used as a quick way to end the war, it is a remarkable coincidence the bomb was first tested after germany's defeat and only a few months later.

Were nazi scientists recruited under project paperclip to give final insight on the completion of the bomb?

If Germany had the atomic bomb, they probably would have used it. So that makes me think they never got that far. However, considering the timing of the fall of nazi germany and the first atom bomb test, it is not unimaginable to believe German scientists and american industrial power created the first atomic bomb. Nazi scientists would more likely work for america than russia. And we know that project paperclip did in fact recruit nazi scientists, mostly under secretive terms.

reply to post by filosophia


One old WW2 History book, read many years back, partially explained as much as they were then allowed to. It states in one line how 'Had the Norwegian plant together with the one and only submarine to sink a submarine not taken place, then 90 days later Germany would have Atom bomb no1 to drop on the UK or Russia.'. It goes on to explain how the German submarine - sunk - i believe by Venturer - was ;loaded with Nuclear material, later labelled as Red Mercury' - that was heading for Japan.

En.wikipedia gives further details concerning such.

reply to post by filosophia



news.bbc.co.uk...

The above -BBC - gives a more detailed update.

It is also stated - in History books - How Dresden was bombed so heavy to make sure no Nuclear weapon could be made by Germany. Tragic part is how its said that More people were killed in Dresden than in Hiroshima.

reply to post by FredT

They never were able to enrich uranium nor get a working reactor beyond the crude pile discovered in a cave by US forces. I dont think they got far.

Actually the Monsanto Report commissioned by Dr Arthur Compton for the Manhattan Project at the end of WW2 warned that the germans were more advanced than the Manhattan Project and that therefore Nazi nuclear technology had to be kept secret to prevent nuclear proliferation.

Heisenberg's speech notes from the Harnack Haus conference of July 1942 were declassified in 2005 by the KGB.

In his speech he advocated three methods for developing fissile material for a bomb.

1) Enrich Uranium 235

2) Use a nuclear reactor to obtain Plutonium 239 (Germans referred to this as "Element 94" or "Eka Osmium")

3) Harvest Protactinium


Protactinium is obtained by bombarding thorium 232 with X-rays of 6,4 MeV. After 27 days it degrades into pure bomb grade Uranium 233. At the Dahlem bunker in Berlin, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute (KWI) had a 6.4 MeV Van der graff generator.

From 1943 the Nazis also had four 18 MeV particle accelerators one of which was installed in an underground laboratory at Roggendorf, near Melk. It's purpose was to breed Neptunium 239 from Uranium 238. This would degrade into Plutonium 239.

Three of these powerful particle accelerators were captured by ALSOS one at Bissingen, one at Roggendorf and another at Burggrub. You will never read about these from ALSOS files because it remains classified, since it discloses the process used was Photochemistry.

At the end of the war ten leading nazi nuclear scientists were interred at Farm Hall Cambridgeshire. The entire residence was bugged with secret microphones and the transcripts of their conversations are now declassified and published. in the Farm Hall transcripts, three scientists Harteck, Diebner and Gerlach all refer to harvesting fissile Uranium by a Photo Chemistry method.

Thus the Germans did have the technology to obtain Uranium 233 and Plutonium 239.

One final point Heisenberg was not in charge of Nazi efforts to build the atomic bomb. Heisenberg was leader of the civilian KWI project to obtain fissile Uranium and that was only briefly in 1942-43 with three successors.That project was taken over by the SS in August 1944.

Prior to this German Army Ordnance controlled the Nazi atomic bomb project led by Diebner. After WW2 diebner came to the states to teach Americans how to build smaller more efficient nuclear weapons.

Originally posted by sy.gunson

At the end of the war ten leading nazi nuclear scientists were interred at Farm Hall Cambridgeshire. The entire residence was bugged with secret microphones and the transcripts of their conversations are now declassified and published.

You really should not make things up, as they are easily checked.
www.aip.org...

It shows that they did not have a bomb, and were not even working on it....

HEISENBERG: Well, that's not quite right. I would say that I was absolutely convinced of the possibility of our making a uranium engine, but I never thought we would make a bomb, and at the bottom of my heart I was really glad that it was to be an engine and not a bomb. I must admit that.

www.military-quotes.com...

gives a good explanation for the claims the Germans had the bomb.

reply to post by schuyler


They did and in fact there is considerable evidence for this about the tests at Rugen in October 1944. These tests are corroborated by multiple sources including eyewitnesses like Luigi Romersa and Hans Zinsser. That weapon was a tactical nuclear weapon intended to arm the V-2 rocket, designed by Schumann & Trinks..

SS Oberscharfuhrer Leo Zippermayer and an SS Major Dr Alfred Klemm developed a different type of thermonuclear weapon tested at Ohrdruf in March 1945.

in 1943 there was a meeting between an Abwher agent Edgar Klaus and a representative of the Soviet Union near stockholm at which the soviets were presented with evidence of nuclear weapons and proposals for a peace deal with Germany restoring the former boundaries of 1914, excluding the Ukraine.

Through this and other intelligence the western allies also learned of Nazi nuclear weapons. In July 1944 Germany was threatened with nuclear attack by USA through Lisbon and Churchill warned Hitler through Antonescu that Britain would retaliate with Anthrax if a single nuclear weapon was used against British soil.

Hitler did have nuclear weapons but he was too intimidated to use them.

reply to post by hellobruce


Perhaps you should read further into Farm hall transcripts where heisenberg and Diebner were recorded discussing the fact that they were probably being secretly recorded.

The Interned scientists also discussed at farm hall the likelihood thay would all face trial and probable execution for war crimes at Nuremberg. Good incentive don't you think to spin a yarn for hidden microphones?

Originally posted by sy.gunson
In July 1944 Germany was threatened with nuclear attack by USA

Again you are making things up, the first bomb was not detonated until Jult 1945, 1 year later....

reply to post by hellobruce


I make up nothing. I cite from sources in previously classified intelligence files.

June Rittner was responsible for the installation by MI-6 of concealed microphones in all the bedrooms and living spaces at Farm Hall, near Godmanchester, Cambridgeshire. Ten German nuclear scientists who had been gathered up by ALSOS and kept in a hotel at Luxembourg were flown from Belgium to RAF Temspford on the 3rd of July 1945. Three days after their arrival, the hidden microphones recorded:

DIEBNER: “I wonder whether there are microphones installed here?”

HEISENBERG: “Microphones installed? [Laughing]. Oh no, they’re not as cute as all that. I don’t think they know the real Gestapo methods; they’re a bit old fashioned in that respect.”


Notwithstanding Heisenberg’s reply Heisenberg whom KGB archives released in 2005 disclose was an ardent advocate of developing nuclear weapons in July 1942 played up for the microphones, pretending at Farm Hall to have been opposed to the whole idea of nuclear weapons. For the benefit of listening ears he pretended not to understand many basic things about critical mass which we now known he was aware of from a Paper by Houtermanns in October 1940. (refer 1944 reprint of his earlier paper - Houtermanns’s August 1944 paper “Zur Frage der Auslösung von Kernhettenreaktionen” found in Oak Ridge file box G-267 )

Indeed at one point Heisenberg pretended that he believed the critical mass for Uranium was 2 tons. Hahn innocently asked Heisenberg then why had he always told him it was about 50 kilograms?

Hahn's embarrassing correction to Heisenberg is clear indication that throughout their Farm Hall, Heisenberg was faking it.

It is clear if taken in the wider context that both Diebner and Heisenberg had guessed from 6 July 1945 onwards that they were being bugged and decided to play along with the ruse and tell the British a load of old Cobblers to mislead them.

During the first few days of their stay Heisenberg lamented that the Potsdam meeting would determine their fate and they might all be sent back to Berlin to face punishment.

On the night 6-7th August 1945 in conversation with Von Weizäcker, Heisenberg after mentioning American efforts to build a bomb said:

HEISENBERG: in July 1944 a senior SS official had come to him and asked him whether he seriously believed that the Americans could produce an atomic bomb. He said he had told him that in his opinion it was absolutely possible as the Americans could work much better and quicker than they could.

VON WEIZSÄCKER: again expressed horror at the use of the weapon.

HEISENBERG: replied that had they produced and dropped such a bomb they would certainly have been executed as War Criminals having made the "most devilish thing imaginable".

At Farm Hall, upon learning of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Otto Hahn, who discovered atomic fission in Uranium, commented,

HAHN: “They can only have done that if they have uranium isotope separation.”

To which Karl Wirtz agreed by responding, WIRTZ: “They have it too,”

PHOTOCHEMISTRY:

GERLACH: “It is not true that we neglected the separation of isotopes. On the contrary, we discussed the whole thing at Tubingen in February and there was a meeting at Munich. Clusius, Harteck and I said that this photochemical thing must be done. It took until the end of the year before the people who could do it were got together and the spectrograph obtained and special accommodation acquired, as the Litz Institute had been smashed up.

CONVERSATION 6-7 AUGUST 1945:

HARTECK: They have managed it either with mass-spectrographs on a large scale or else they have been successful with a photo-chemical process.

WIRTZ: Well I would say photo-chemistry or diffusion. Ordinary diffusion. They irradiate it with a particular wave-length. – (all talking together).

HARTECK: Or using mass-spectrographs in enormous quantities. It is perhaps possible for a mass-spectrograph to make one milligram in one day – say of '235'. They could make quite a cheap mass-spectrograph which, in very large quantities, might cost a hundred dollars.

ALSO:

HAHN: I think it’s absolutely impossible to produce one ton of uranium 235 by separating isotopes.

WEIZÄCKER: What do you do with these centrifuges?

HARTECK: You can never get pure “235” with the centrifuge, but I don’t believe that it can be done with the centrifuge.

WIRTZ: No certainly not.

HAHN: Yes but they could do it with the mass spectrographs. Ewald has some patent.

DIEBNER: There is also a photochemical process.



Photochemistry is the process of using high speed collisions between Protons to create Neutrons. By exposing various elements such as Thorium 232 to such slow neutrons they can uptake an extra neutron to become Protactinium and this was precisely what Heisenberg proposed harvesting in 1942 at Harnack Haus.

The real genius at the heart of this process was Dresden based Professor Max Steenbeck who went over to the Russians in 1945. The Swiss scientist Dallenbach also helped the SS develop a heavy particle accelerator at Bisingen.

I would consider myself an field scholar on the subject of the A-Bomb.

The biggest reason the Nazi's did not create the atom bomb first was because of the conscious of those scientist working on the Nazi program. It is true that Hitler had to be apprised on the possibility of the atom bomb and came to the table late in the game as an advocate for the bomb. He was much more enthused with the V-rockets at the time as they were providing immediate results.

However, Werner Hiesenberg was the lead scientist on the Nazi program and many people think that he played a major role in sabotaging the program (by not doing enough). Heisenberg was a very prolific and well regarded German scientist. He came up with the highly touted "Uncertainty Principal."

Nonetheless, The general consensus is that the worlds scientist would rather see the Allies get the bomb first before Hitler. And I believe that is the number 1 reason the Nazis did not procure the bomb first.

But the real story of espionage and the secret war behind the war is a fascinating story in itself. It can truly be said that America Stole the bomb. We sent out spies to locate the atomic scientist in nazi occupied Europe and then sent in special forces to break them out of jail or occupation.

I am a big fan of this era so any one with questions I would love to answer (if I can).

AAC