Nazi Germany and the Atomic

Nazi Germany and the Atomic Bomb

Abstract/Overview- With all the power in the Nazi regime, why were they unable to produce a successful nuclear program? Fortunately for the Allied forces, German efforts were a huge failure, as the United States was the first nation to drop an atomic bomb. Germany could have been successful; they had both the resources and the personnel, but instead put too much energy and resources into their rocket project and evicted some of the greatest scientific minds out of Germany into Allied hands.

There is a great body of research to lend information on such an examination. The current body of resources was acquired through the use of the online scholarly databases, Questia and JSTOR. The main key words used included Nazi, Germany, atomic power, and nuclear power. Utilizing these key words produced an interesting body of research that helped shape the environment of the Nazi nuclear program.

The Nazi regime had an impressive set of researchers and experts within the scientific world to lead their wartime programs. Yet, first-hand accounts of the Nazi nuclear program seem unimpressive in the scope of creating and pushing a strong nuclear program. Overall, based on the lack of motivation and commitment to a strong nuclear program, Germany was unable to compete. Yet, there are still many questions involved in the exploration of this topic. For instance, what the German scientists at the time thought of the lack of commitment to a strong Nazi nuclear program? The review of the literature provided little information to answer this question. Additionally, there are little primary accounts of what German scientists did after they fled Nazi Germany in fear of persecution of war crimes. Although it is known that many Nazi scientists fled to South America, where some were said to have a hand in the creation of South American nuclear programs, such as the one in Argentina in the 1950s, there is little historical evidence to back it up. Thus, even almost half a century later, there are still major questions involved in the failure of the Nazi party to acquire nuclear power.

The Nazi Uranium Project -- One of the major unanswered questions from World War II revolves around the question of whether Nazi Germany could have triumphed and won the War. Of course, there are a number of details and suppositions that come into play with such a complex question. Hitler, despite his megalomaniacal tendencies, was a skilled politician and strategist. His strength and public speaking abilities allowed him to lead a downtrodden population and failing economy into one of the most rapidly advanced militarization the world has ever known. In addition, one can certainly never deny the strategic skills it took to gain power, then channel it, then invade two countries without firing a shot.

Indeed, Hitler's strategy through mid-1940 was almost flawless. He isolated and absorbed state after state in Europe, gained the Soviet Union as a willing ally, destroyed France's military power, threw the British off the Continent, and was left with only weak and vulnerable obstacles to an empire covering most of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. This empire not only would have been unassailable from the outside, but would have put him into the position, in time, to conquer the world.

That this did not happen, some believe, was a testament to chance, luck, and the workings of a sociopathic personality. Instead of concentrating on the strengths of his armies and technological advancement, Hitler believed the French and British problems were solved, and so turned his attention to ridding the German State from all undesirables and focusing on the idea of conquering the Soviet Union. Hitler did not believe the United States would enter the war, and did not believe his supply chains in Central Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa would run into problems. Instead, then, of using resources appropriately, he squandered them on political and social paranoia. However, the question remains, if Hitler had nuclear weapons in his arsenal -- would he have used them? First, yes -- it is likely he would have used every means at his disposal to retain power -- whether that be nuclear or otherwise. Second, it is still important to categorize that there was a clear difference between the "Manhattan Project" and the "Uranium Project." While likely that Nazi scientists, as early as 1942, had solved some of the conceptual problems regarding a nuclear bomb, their research, and testing was of a device far different that those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In fact, while sketches have been found for mini-nuclear missiles, the only actual test that can be forensically verified is of what we might call a "dirty" bomb -- an explosive that would spread radiation and certainly damage a city, but not the harnessing of atomic energy to the level of "Fat Man" or "Little Boy." Too, we must remember that there is a great deal of difference from the development of theoretical nuclear energy, sketches for proposed weapons, and an actual usable weapon -- in fact, scientists in Los Alamos were unsure whether their devices would work as planned.

Primary documents from the Nazi era, though, show the scientists involved in the German Uranium Project were some of the major physicists of the time.

Part of the fission process necessary within the creation of an atomic bomb is using a heavy water source. Germany itself did not have a heavy water source. However, in the regime's heyday, their empire stretched to areas where cultivation of heavy water was possible. With a Nazi station in Norway, heavy water was readily available until heavy Allied bombing destroyed the plant later in the war.

Additionally, the Nazi party did have impressive minds involved in the acquisition of nuclear power. The Nazi regime initially had a lead in the race to capitalize on the domination of holding nuclear weapons.

It was German and Austrian scientists who first discovered fission in 1938.

Research regarding the power of the atom began under the control of Werner Heisenberg at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute.

Later, when the first team provides less than stellar results within the short time scheme demanded by the Nazi regime, a second program was formed under Professor Kurt Diebner.

Second hand accounts of primary sources show how German scientists were initially quite optimistic in regards to the potential of the Nazi regime to acquire nuclear power.

However, it also suggested that the seminal problem was that Nazi paranoia caused scientific research to be fragmented -- a negative approach to uncovering the secrets a very complex and demanding problem. Overall, however, the research states that the German minds new quite well how to actually make the bomb, but were not so properly allowed to flourish.

Scholars, however, have confirmed that the project, called Uranverein (the Uranium Club) began officially in April 1939, just months after the discovery of nuclear fission in January of that year. This first effort, badly disorganized and without a true leader, ended in months. Understanding the potential, though a second effort began anew in September 1939, on the exact day Germany invaded Poland. This program had three major thrusts, none of them weapons based: a working nuclear reactor, heavy water production, and the separation of uranium isotopes. Somehow, by 1942, the expense and lack of focus convinced some of the Party bureaucracy that nuclear fission was not the answer necessary to end the war. At that time, the Army turned the program over to the Reich Research Council, which was split between nine major institutions whose individual directors controlled their own objectives. Too, the number of scientists working on applied nuclear fission began to diminish as Germany required them to deal with problems of fuel, food, utilities, and congenital weaponry.

The Historiography of the Nazi Bomb -- in December 1938, chemists Otto Han and Fritz Strassman sent a manuscript to a German scientific journal announcing the had detected barium after bombarding uranium with neutrons. They also communicated these results to Lisa Meitner, who had fled to Sweden because of her Jewish heritage. She and her nephew, Otto Frisch, interpreted the Hahn/Strassman results as nuclear fission, confirmed by Frisch with additional experiments in January 1939.

Archival research shows that the Director of Physical Chemistry at the University of Hamburg, upon hearing of these results, sent word to the RKM (Reich Ministry of War) to suggest that there were a number of potential military applications of nuclear chain reactions. By the end of April, a group of physicists, organized by Abraham Esau, met and began preliminary work at the University of Gottingen. Oddly, the three principal scientists were called to military training, and their work discontinued.

The entire first Uranverein lasted from April 24, 1939 to August 1939.

The second Uranverein was formed on September 1, 1929 under military, not academic, control. This was a robust group, centered at the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Berlin, Kurt Diebner administrator. The focus was on nuclear energy, but the scientists themselves, spread over several institutions, were really trying to make sense of this new process, and were not focused upon a single goal. In January 1942 the military became impatient with a lack of a single military application being developed appropriated, and was recategorized. Still, it was understood that the potential for energy was vast enough that funding continued under the kriegswichtig (vital for the war effort) designation.

On June 9, 1942, Adolf Hitler issued a decree for the reorganization of the RFR as a separate legal entity under the Ministry of Armament and Munitions under Reich marshal Hermann Goering. It was hoped that Goering would manage the effort as aggressively and efficiently as he had the Air Force. This was also a key moment in the history of German science -- there was recognition that it had been a mistake to exclude Jewish scientists from the product, and Abraham Esau was back as Goering's assistant, later replaced by Walther Gerlach.

The administrative control over the project is one of the areas that scholars point to as being a "crux point." Goering was certainly quite an efficient administrator and had he had control over the project earlier he might have seen the need to focus his scientists, or at least bring the teams together to work. It is also likely that Goering would have discussed the nuclear issue with Reichsmarshal Albert Speer, who as a brilliant architect and innovator, would surely have seen the greater applications for nuclear energy.

Nazi Aerospace Engineering -- Could the Bomb have been dropped? An interesting but often ignored side note regarding using a nuclear bomb in wartime was the delivery mechanism. We do know Hitler had an advanced rocketry program, and some research indicates that there may have been speculation on equipping them with "dirty" bombs. However, it was the realization that something new and advanced was needed aeronautically to reshape the war. The result, a stealth fighter the HO-229, which used wood and carbon, to increase radar absorption, and jet engines integrated into the fuselage. The plane would have been over London 8-10 minutes prior to being detected, and was probably 24-36 months ahead of the Allies in technological development. Understanding that the Battle of Britain was lost because of British Radar, Goering commissioned the 2-29 which, under reconstruction, looks amazingly like the stealth bomber of today. Most analysts do believe this could have changed the course of the war, but for our purposes the importance is in the captured notes that this plane was also tasked to the delivery of "a lethal new explosive" device over major European cities.

The Nazi "Brain Drain" - Germany lost many great scientific minds to their political ideology. The stifling atmosphere of Nazi Germany wiped out intellectual undertones in many cases with its sheer brutality and intolerance for the differing people and races within Europe. As rising inflation hit, academic institutions were some of the first to feel the impending suffering with severe funding cuts.

In fact, some of the scientists were German who first split the atom in the early 1930s. However, these successful German scientists actually conducted their work under Allied flags.

This intellectual and highly motivated population then came to the United States and elsewhere. While in the safety of Allied hands, these great German minds insisted powers like the United States and Great Britain to pursue the quest to split uranium atoms in order to harness such mass destruction.

According to research, "Refugee scientists fleeing Hitler's Germany […] soon brought the revolution in physics to America."

Eventually, all German academic institutions suffered great losses in the midst of an over-powering political ideology. Research states that "German universities shriveled as centers of learning as many of their illustrious scientists emigrated to Great Britain, the United States, Switzerland, and elsewhere."

This major problem within the set-up of the Nazi regime; "Later, the Nazis tried to implement their lunatic program of 'Aryan physics,' deliberately hobbling their scientific research by purging physics of the influence of Jewish Scientists."

Eventually, the nuclear program all but fell apart.

One of the major reasons this occurred was that most Nazi resources available were funneled too much into researching rockets and missiles. According to research, "Whereas the United States invested $23 billion of today's dollars, in this project, German funding for nuclear research was sporadic and the Germans made the mistake of having at least two competing teams of ill-equip scientists working at the same time."

Funding for the initial project led by Werner Heisenberg was eventual cut in 1942, as it was believed to be relatively unnecessary by the grander scheme of the Nazi war strategy.

Yet, this funding was once again sporadically replaced and cut at several intervals during the entire length of World War II. To add to this fragmentation, there was a third group established in order to work specifically on implementing nuclear weapons on German U-boats.

Besides this fragmentation, the 1933 law "Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service" politicized the educational system in Germany. Essentially, this law hobbled much of German scientific advancement by removing anyone from faculty who was not Aryan, and changed the way admission to the University was handled. Many brilliant minds were not pedigreed. Some examples collected after the war show that:

14% of German University Faculty were driven from their posts, 1932-33.

Of the 26 German nuclear physicists cited in the professional literature prior to 1933, over half (50%) emigrated elsewhere.

10 physicists and 4 chemists who had won or would win the Nobel Prize emigrated from Germany shortly after Hitler came to power -- most coming to Britain or the United States (this included Einstein, and Hans Bethe; both important in the research that would eventually lead to an Allied bomb).

8 students or assistants of Max Born at the University of Goettingen eventually found work on the Manhattan project (Fermi, Oppenheimer, and Teller).

Max Planck, father of quantum physics, met with Hitler and told him by forcing Jewish scientists to emigrate would severely hinder Germany's ability. Hitler ranted against the Jewish issue, could not see past ethnicity.

The "Heisenberg" Affair - the unfortunate socialist policies regarding the politicization of science had severe consequences for National Socialism. Walter Heisenberg was a prime example of a "White Jew" (one who could be made to disappear), and who, had he been nourished intellectually and funded, would likely have driven the nuclear program far ahead of the Allies.

During the Second World War, Werner Heisenberg was one of the most influential scientists in Germany and its leading theoretical physicist. He had won a Nobel prize for his work on quantum mechanics and the uncertainty principle, had become one of the youngest full professors in Germany when he began teaching at the University of Leipzig, and in 1942 at the age of 40 was appointed director of the prestigious Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics as well as professor at the University of Berlin. Heisenberg was a German theoretical physicist who made numerous contributions to quantum mechanics. He was awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize in Physics, but came under fire in an academically political debate with the Deutsche Physik movement. It took four years, and finally a visit between Heisenberg's mother and Himmler's mother, longtime friends, to convince Hitler himself to end the affair. Hitler did so -- a letter to SS Gruppenfuher Heydrich indicting that Germany could not afford to lose Heisenberg, he would be useful in teaching several generations of new physics students; and one to Heidrich encouraging Heidrich to make "a distinction between professional physics research results and the personal and political attitudes of the involve scientists."

While overall this was an academic victory, the timing was "too little, too late." Interestingly enough this entire idea of making science political caused there to be, at the close of the war, almost no physicists left in Germany born between 1915 and 1925.

In February 1942 Heisenberg gave a popular lecture to an influential audience of politicians, bureaucrats, military officers and industrialists. At the time, the future of Germany's uranium project was in doubt because the Army was only interested in weapons that could be delivered in time to influence the outcome of the war. As we know from a transcript of the talk, which was discovered by the historian David Irving in the 1960s, Heisenberg emphasized both the potential of nuclear weapons and how difficult it would be to make them. His conclusion was clear:

Energy generation from uranium fission is undoubtedly possible, provided the enrichment of isotope uranium-235 is successful. Isolating uranium-235 would lead to an explosive of unimaginable potency.

Common uranium can also be exploited to generate energy when layered with heavy water. In a layered arrangement these materials can transfer their great energy reserves over a period of time to a heat-engine. It thus provides a means of storing very large amounts of energy that are technically measurable in relatively small quantities of substances. Once in operation, the machine can also lead to the production of an incredibly powerful explosive.

By the summer of 1942, the uranium project had been transferred from the German Army to the civilian Reich Research Council and the German uranium-project scientists once again enjoyed secure institutional support. In June of that year Heisenberg gave a lecture at the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in Berlin before Speer and other military and industrial leaders of the Nazi state. The lecture has become famous because of the story that Heisenberg responded to a question about the size of an atomic bomb by saying that it would be about as big as a pineapple.

This anecdote was first reported in Irving's 1968 book the Virus House, but a transcript of the talk had never been found. However, it has now been discovered in the new Russian documents. The text of the June lecture - entitled "The work on uranium problems" - differs significantly from the February talk. Heisenberg begins by mentioning the discovery of nuclear fission in 1939, noting that interest in this new development had been "exceptionally great," especially in the U.S. "A few days after the discovery," he notes, "American radio provided extensive reports and half a year later a large number of scientific papers had appeared on this subject."

Heisenberg continues by describing Germany's work on isotope separation and nuclear reactors since the start of the war, cautioning that "naturally a series of scientific and practical problems will have to be cleared up before the technical goals can be realized." Mid-way through the talk, Heisenberg makes his only mention of nuclear weapons in a rather understated way. "Given the positive results achieved up until now," he says, "it does not appear impossible that, once an uranium burner has been constructed, we will one day be able to follow the path revealed by von Weizsacker to explosives that are more than a million times more effective that those currently available."

The U.S. Manhattan Project - the U.S. "Manhattan Project" was well-funded, employed thousands, and was a concerted effort focused at one objective -- the development of a functioning nuclear weapon that could be used to end the war. There were four criteria present in the Manhattan Project that, because of National Socialist policy, political and academic infighting, and jealousy, never manifested in the German Uranium clubs:

A strong initial drive, from a small group of scientists, to launch the project -- Many of the scientists who drove the project, Oppenheimer, Fermi, etc., had seen first-hand what the Nazi regime was capable of. They had more than an intellectual interest in stopping Hitler, and despite the tremendous power they were about to unleash, they knew that this new weapon might be the last effort to stop Hitler.

Unconditional governmental support -- the uranium project never had the full support of Hitler or the Nazi elite. Had it been one of Hitler's pet projects, or at least something high-level where, if you didn't perform quickly enough, there were dire consequences, it is likely it would have logically progressed to the point of building a small nuclear device -- as we've seen, likely to the eventual use over London.

Essentially unlimited manpower and industrial resources -- the United States devoted millions of dollars and thousands of personnel to the effort. Being the only country not physically near the battle lines meant that Allied scientists had the economic and cultural support to complete their jobs.

A concentration of brilliant minds devoted to a single project- This is perhaps the most important aspect of the differences between the uranium Clubs and the Manhattan Project. Germany had spread its scientists all over the country to protect them from easy assault, but also to keep tabs on them. There were not enough minds working on certain solutions that had to be mastered prior to the use of a nuclear weapon; which, under a central "roof" would not have happened.

However, that being said, it was not until the War in Europe had concluded that all four criteria existed in America to conclude with a bomb. and, if we compare that to Nazi view of the Uranium Club, you may see that item 3 -- the need for unlimited resources and manpower was simply not available after 1929-1930. and, toward the end of the war, really after 1944, there were so many other priorities faced by Germany that a focus on one project would've been suicidal. Condition 4 allowed the U.S. To recruit and concentrate a number of capable, even brilliant, scientists in one location. Of course, the political officer's job was difficult, but the ability to even recruit and maintain such a group after 1942 in Germany was impossible. Thus, Germany met only one of the criteria, and even that was pulled and returned, almost a circular cycle -- almost condemning it to failure.

German Science and Heavy Water Experimentation -- the rumors of the power of a mysterious substance called "heavy water" so enraptured the Allied resistance fighters in Norway that they were willing to do whatever necessary to keep it out of Nazi hands. Physically, heavy water is a form of water with a unique atomic structure and properties coveted for the production of nuclear power and weapons. Like ordinary water -- H20 -- each molecule of heavy water contains two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. The difference, though, lies in the hydrogen atoms. In ordinary water, each hydrogen atom has just a single proton in its nucleus. In heavy water, each hydrogen atom is indeed heavier, with a neutron as well as a proton in its nucleus. This isotope of hydrogen is called deuterium, and heavy water's more scientific name is deuterium oxide, abbreviated as D20. Heavy water is a form of water with a unique atomic structure and properties coveted for the production of nuclear power and weapons. Like ordinary water -- H20 -- each molecule of heavy water contains two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. The difference, though, lies in the hydrogen atoms. In ordinary water, each hydrogen atom has just a single proton in its nucleus. In heavy water, each hydrogen atom is indeed heavier, with a neutron as well as a proton in its nucleus. This isotope of hydrogen is called deuterium, and heavy water's more scientific name is deuterium oxide, abbreviated as D20. Heavy water's use for nuclear power is due to the fact that Nuclear power plants harness the energy of countless atoms of uranium splitting apart, or fissioning, in a chain reaction. Heavy water can help keep such a chain reaction going. As each uranium atom breaks apart, it shoots out neutrons that can go on to split other atoms. But the neutrons are much more likely to trigger new fission events if they are slowed down. Like traffic cops, heavy water's deuterium atoms effectively curb the pace of neutrons without capturing them.

Nuclear power plants harness the energy of countless atoms of uranium splitting apart, or fissioning, in a chain reaction. Heavy water can help keep such a chain reaction going. As each uranium atom breaks apart, it shoots out neutrons that can go on to split other atoms. But the neutrons are much more likely to trigger new fission events if they are slowed down. Heavy water's deuterium atoms effectively curb the pace of neutrons without capturing them. Nuclear reactors that use heavy water can employ a form of uranium commonly found in nature (U-238) rather than requiring so-called enriched uranium, which contains a higher percentage of easily split uranium atoms (U-235) but is expensive to produce.

On the eve of World War II, scientists both in Germany and Great Britain realized that heavy water could be used in this way to make nuclear weapons. When Norsk Hydro began producing heavy water in 1934, Norway became the first country with a commercial heavy-water plant. The Nazi invasion of Norway in 1940 transferred control of the plant -- and most of the world's heavy water -- to Germany. In the early 1940s, Allied countries joined the race for heavy water, and by 1944, the Manhattan Project had made 20 tons of the precious liquid, more than enough to fill the first heavy-water nuclear reactor. Both British and Norwegian loyalists were involved in this joint effort. Luckily the men who created the Norsk plant were in England and could give detailed instruction to the men who were to sabotage the plant. The first attempt at gliding British into Norway ended in disaster, when the gliders crashed, and those who survived the crash were murdered by the Germans. The second attempt, made up of all Norwegians, was more successful, and they not only blew up important parts of the plant, but made it home to Britain in safety. Unfortunately, the Germans were able to get the plant up and running sooner than expected, and were sending heavy water to Germany for safekeeping. This meant that another sabotage needed to be planned, one that would sink the barrels of heavy water in the deep part of a fjord. And this time the lives of innocent Norwegians were lost as they could not take the chance of alerting civilians and having the Germans suspect something.

New Archival Evidence and a German Nuclear Test? The newest archival evidence suggests that by 1941, plutonium experiments had progressed theoretically to allow conversations about weapons grade material. In fact, there is controversial new evidence that in March 1945 Germany did, in fact, test a nuclear weapon.

For most of the war, there were two competing groups working on nuclear reactors: a team under the Army physicist Kurt Diebner in Gottow near Berlin; and scientists directed by Werner Heisenberg in Leipzig and Berlin. Whereas the experiments under Heisenberg used alternating layers of uranium and moderator, Diebner's team developed a superior 3D lattice of uranium cubes embedded in moderator. Heisenberg never gave Diebner and the scientists working under him the credit they were due, but the Nobel laureate did take up Diebner's design for the last experiment carried out in Haigerloch in south-west Germany. RK now reveals that Diebner managed to carry out one last experiment in the last months of the war. The exact details of the experiment are unclear. After a series of measurements had been taken, Diebner wrote a short letter to Heisenberg on 10 November 1944 that informed him of the experiment and hinted that there had been problems with the reactor. Unfortunately, no more written sources have been found relating to this final reactor experiment in Gottow. Industrial archaeology done at the site during 2002 and 2003 suggests that this reactor sustained a chain reaction - if only for a short period of time - and may have ended in an accident.

In 1955 Diebner submitted a patent application for a new type of "two-stage" reactor that could breed plutonium. An internal section would use enriched uranium to achieve a self-sustaining chain reaction, while a much larger external section would surround the internal reactor and run at a subcritical level. Plutonium could then be removed from internal section. It appears likely that Diebner's 1955 patent application drew upon his last wartime experiment.

It also appears a group of scientists under Diebner built and tested a nuclear weapon with the strong support of both Walther Gerlach - an experimental nuclear physicist who by 1944 was in charge of the uranium project for the Reich Research Council. (Hahn, Heisenberg, von Weizsacker and most of the better-known scientists in the uranium project apparently were not informed about this weapon.) This device was designed to use fission reactions, but it was not an "atomic" bomb like the weapons used against Nagasaki and Hiroshima. And although it was also designed to exploit fusion reactions, it was nothing like the "hydrogen" bombs tested by the U.S. And the Soviet Union in the 1950s. Instead, conventional high explosives were formed into a hollow shape, rather than a solid mass, to focus the energy and heat from the explosion to one point inside the shell. Small amounts of enriched uranium, as well as a source of neutrons, were combined with a deuterium-lithium mixture inside the shell. This weapon would have been more of a tactical than a strategic weapon, and could not have won the war for Hitler in any case. It is not clear how successful this design was and whether fission and fusion reactions were provoked. But what is important is the revelation that a small group of scientists working in the last desperate months of the war were trying to do this.

Conclusions - There are a number of factors that are interdependent on whether Germany would've won the war based on their use of nuclear weapons. However, the situation is far more complex -- and really dependent on timing. What is likely, though, is had the Russian push not been as aggressive, or the United States so crucial to the supply chain, Hitler may have had an additional 6 months to at least "throw" a bomb at London or Moscow and cause grave damage.

Shortly after the end of the war in Europe, an unknown German or Austrian scientist wrote a report that describes work on nuclear weapons during the war. This report, contains both accurate information and less accurate speculation about nuclear weapons, and may well include some information from the Manhattan Project - the word "plutonium" is used, for example. Unfortunately, the title page is not included and there is no other evidence of who composed it. However, this individual does not appear to have been a member of either the mainstream German uranium project or the group working under Diebner.

What the report does demonstrate is that the knowledge that uranium could be used to make powerful new weapons was fairly widespread in the German technical community during the war, and it contains the only known German diagram of a nuclear weapon. The new report is also interesting because it makes clear that German scientists had worked intensively on theoretical questions concerned with the construction of a hydrogen bomb.

Could Germany have completed and delivered a working nuclear device? The answer is most assuredly "yes," it was possible. However, under the system of National Socialism, the vehement hatred of Judaism, and the lack of a strong and cohesive project leader, it was unlikely. Therefore, looking at the point from a post-revisionist historical light; it was unlikely that the social and academic policies of National Socialism would be different, thus the domino effect of losing scientists, lacking focus, and vision, and an inability to community a strong and determined economic and social thrust for such a project is likely to have prevented its fruition.

APPENDIX a -- Outline

1. Conventional wisdom, most collected just after the end of World War II, holds that the Nazi Uranium Project was scattered and primarily focused on the development of a nuclear reactor, with weaponry only a sideline.

2. An overview of the Nazi Uranium Project shows that there were a number of inconsistencies between the initial published data and data that has turned up in modern archival research.

3. Germany did have an advanced aeronautic program, and likely a method to deliver a "type" of nuclear device over London. Hitler was probably inclined to use such a weapon, especially closer to 1945.

4. Germany's "Brain Drain" hampered their ability to move as technologically fast as expected by Nazi war planners.

5. The unfortunate socialist policies regarding the politicization of science had severe consequences for National Socialism. Walter Heisenberg was a prime example of a "White Jew" (one who could be made to disappear), and who, had he been nourished intellectually and funded, would likely have driven the nuclear program far ahead of the Allies.

6. The U.S. "Manhattan Project" was well-funded, employed thousands, and was a concerted effort focused at one objective -- the development of a functioning nuclear weapon that could be used to end the war.

7. The newest archival evidence suggests that by 1941, plutonium experiments had progressed theoretically to allow conversations about weapons grade material. In fact, there is controversial new evidence that in March 1945 Germany did, in fact, test a nuclear weapon.

8. There are a number of factors that are interdependent on whether Germany would've won the war based on their use of nuclear weapons. However, the situation is far more complex -- and really dependent on timing. What is likely, though, is had the Russian push not been as aggressive, or the United States so crucial to the supply chain, Hitler may have had an additional 6 months to at least "throw" a bomb at London or Moscow and cause grave damage.

APPENDIX B -- Nazi Germany's Timeline to Atomic Weapons

National Socialist Party gains power in Germany.

Hahn, Meitner and Strassmann discover nuclear fission in uranium

2 August 1939 Einstein warns President Roosevelt of dangers of an atomic bomb

1 September 1939 Germany invades Poland and launches "uranium project"

3 September 1939 Britain and France declare war on Germany

1941

Von Weizsacker files a draft patent application that refers to a plutonium bomb

March 1941 Von Weizsacker visits Bohr in Copenhagen

June 1941 Germany invades Soviet Union

September 1941 Von Weizsacker visits Bohr again, this time with Heisenberg

6 December 1941 Manhattan Project begins in Los Alamos

7 December 1941 Japan attacks Pearl Harbor

8 December 1941 U.S. enters Second World War

1942

Heisenberg gives popular lectures on nuclear weapons

Bohr visits Los Alamos

March 1945 Germany tests a nuclear device in Thuringia, eastern Germany

7 May 1945 Germany surrenders

16 July 1945 Trinity test - world's first atomic blast

August 1945 U.S. bombs Hiroshima and Nagasaki; Japan surrenders

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