|
|
Post by fr33dom on Mar 13, 2014 7:59:47 GMT -5
When Rainer Karlsch published his book Hitler's Bombe, I found his reference to nuclear test blasts at Rugen in October 1944 and again at Ohrdruf twice in March 1945 fascinating but I was also dismissive of a diagram widely published online for a Plutonium weapon. It ran contrary to everything I knew or understood to accept that Germany acquired Plutonium so I dismissed Karlsch's conclusions whilst accepting his claims about Rugen and Ohrdruf.
Part of the difficulty is that his book was written in German and a great deal of the commentary in English about his book was selective in what was disclosed.
Recently I managed to struggle through the book in German sufficiently to grasp that the commentaries in English left out important qualifications.
What became apparent to me is that German scientists Schumann and Trinks, building upon research by Otto Haxel about superheated Lithium, came up with several patent applications during WW2 for what we'd call today, tactical nukes.
These were based on two opposing conical shaped charges. The cones were fabricated from Lithium6. They blasted two molten slugs of Lithium together into a cavity containing a near vacumn. Placed at the centre of the cavity was a small quantity of fisslie material (233U or Pu239) in combination with other compounds of Lithium deuterides with Beryllium etc.
These weapons when detonated created a Deuteron beam which prompted a neutron flux in the fissile core at a level of radioactivity similar to that in the core of a critical mass warhead.
It is a contentious issue and if Germany did develop the bomb an even bigger question than how did they do it is why didn't they use it, or did they?
Sources: Karlsh, Rainer. Hitler's Bombe, pub 2005
|
|
|
|
Post by superxsoldier on Mar 13, 2014 8:32:01 GMT -5
Having the design for a weapon, having the capability to produce it, and actually building it are three very different things. There is no question in my mind that Germany attempted to build a nuclear device during the Second World War. Their production and stockpiling of "heavy water" clearly points toward such a project.
However, it seems German efforts towards building a weapon were, for some reason, fairly half-hearted. The all-out prioritization of resources seen for the American Los Alamos Project seems never to have been paralled in Germany.
I doubt Germany even came close to having the bomb.
|
|
|
|
Post by missionximpossible on Mar 13, 2014 14:37:17 GMT -5
Exactly Germany may have been aware of the technology, but they had there funds in other toys like the V2, and ME-262's, Other Jet aircraft, helicopters and even flying saucers, and other wonderful weapons bought to you by the wonderwaffe. The point is these weapons were realistically to be achieved and be of use to Germany, while Nuclear weapons would require a massive amount of time and funds to build, and Germany was running short on both.
|
|
|
|
Post by markedman on Mar 13, 2014 14:46:24 GMT -5
Its a known fact that the germans did have a edge in several technologic aspects.
There are many books written about the research that the germans did during WOII with many facts.
Personally iam not an expert in the specific field, but from what i have been told and what i did read is the fact that the germans did have some technolgical blue prints of the A-Bomb or prints that could lead to building the bomb.
There are also rumors that the V-Rockets (V1, V2 and V3?) would be suitable to deliver a warhead or chemical agent, the same rumors tell the story about american soldiers that found secret documents during the war on various locations in the "German Reich" that helped the amerikans to build the bomb them self, its even said that it was only a matter of time before the germans would have a A-Bomb like Bomb or rocket as their proffesors and research labs did create some horrific stuff.
Wich to believe? iam not sure and i leave this open to debate, however fact remains that it has been proven that the germans where mutch further with their research levels then the allies and that it took some serious time for the west to catch up.
There are hundereds of scenatio's we can come up with but IMO lets assume that if time would permit hitler would have acces to some crazy weapons afterall it took the americans and other allies 4 years massive production and research to match hitlers levels because when the war started hitlers army did hit europa like a storm with some very hightech weapons for its time and in the beginning there where only a few that could put up a fight against his armor for example.
Also his airforces and other military stuff did have a edge towards "his victims" when it comes to technological power, at least thats what is written in the many history books.
So to me personal i would not be amazed if it turns out that given the time and given the right scenario hitler would have acces to nukes, and iam pretty sure that IF he would have 1 or 2 nukes that he probably would have used them, and who knows what would have come from it.
But rumors, fact and fact based rumors there are loads of them and for the most part we can only guess whats true and whats wrong as not all details have been released about hitlers research levels as has been shown in the past, so who knows?
But iam sure that the guys on this forum can come up with some nice info as some of them have acces to real data.
|
|
|
|
Post by nsainvader on Mar 13, 2014 15:03:32 GMT -5
Germany never managed to accumulate enough fissile material for a bomb.
German efforts were fragmented, with the Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe & SS running competing programmes, none of them adequately resourced. The main project, the one for which Werner Heisenberg was the chief physicist, was working along the wrong track, as Heisenberg realised only in mid-August 1945, when interned in Britain, & he heard about the Hiroshima bomb. We can't say when or if he'd have realised if it hadn't been for that revelation, which depended on the prior existence of the Hiroshima bomb, & the discovery that its critical mass was orders of magnitude smaller than Heisenberg & his team had previously assumed. They'd assumed that tons of U235 were needed. The scale of that error shows how far they were from having the understanding needed to make a workable bomb.
The leading German team was less advanced in their understanding of how to make a bomb in 1945 than the British were in 1941, when they already had a good idea of the necessary critical mass, due to a superior understanding of the fast neutron chain reaction.
Note that there was no serious attempt to build up the stock of tons of U235 that Heisenbergs mistaken calculations said were needed for a bomb. Nor were experiments carried out to verify his calculations. Graphite rather than heavy water as a moderator was mistakenly dismissed for a long time, due to failure to conduct thorough experiments, & the shortage of heavy water made it impractical to build a heavy water reactor .
They had a better understanding of the critical mass of plutonium, but there was no significant progress towards making any.
Germany had the technical & scientific resources, but they were poorly applied. There was no urgency, largely because the task was seen as even more difficult than it was in reality.
None of the other projects were ever going to get anywhere. Theoretical papers by people with no resources to test their ideas do not make a bomb.
|
|
|
|
Post by specopsgirls on Mar 13, 2014 15:23:53 GMT -5
I read a book earlier this year (Hitler's uranium club : the secret recordings at Farm Hall / by Jeremy Bernstein) which claimed to be based on interviews of Nazi scientists taken to England. The big clue: when they saw coverage of the bombing of Hiroshima they couldn't believe it!
According to that book, the German scientists were well behind the allied effort. While it is common knowledge that discoveries by German physicists in the 1930s first suggested the possibility of an atomic weapon, there were a couple of decisions made by the Germans that sent them down the wrong track, and they were, IIRC, still working on those dead-end areas when Berlin fell.
Of course, it didn't help matters that they were getting bombed, etc (that was a major problem for the Japanese nuclear program, apparently), and because of their lack of success funding was diverted to higher priority areas.
Without having read Karlsch's book (I took German for a year at Massey, but all I remember is that the gender for 'shotgun' is female), I would be very skeptical of the claim that Germany had successfully tested/developed/built a working nuclear weapon of any type; anything beyond a proof-of-concept demonstration does not fit with my knowledge of the facts.
|
|
|
|
Post by davinci on Mar 13, 2014 15:38:59 GMT -5
It's not 'claimed'. It really is based on those recordings, as are some other books. And the most interesting parts aren't the interviews (except for the light they throw on the attitudes of the German scientists), but the secret recordings. Every room was bugged, & every word recorded, & the Germans didn't know. A great deal was learned about the Nazi atom bomb project from those recordings.
|
|
|
|
Post by superxsoldier on Mar 13, 2014 18:00:34 GMT -5
Just being careful...with so much hyperbole and flat-out bollocks on the 'net, you should never discourage people from acknowledging the limitations of what they 'know'
|
|
|
|
Post by nsainvader on Mar 13, 2014 18:09:38 GMT -5
Academically correct. Most experts (scientists and scholars) are of this view. So am I.
One major reason could be that German generals probably failed to grasp the idea and capability of an A-Bomb. Their orientation was conventional and objective was wide area (geographic) conquest. So they might have convinced Hitler to put more resources into reach then firepower - hence the V2 missiles.
The American generals had the same issues, even after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It were the scientists who knew what it could do and convinced the FDR on it.
I think if Hitler had been convinced by his scientists we would have seen some slave labor Jewish scientists in Germany. Eisenstein amongst them.
|
|
|
|
Post by augustusmasonicus on Mar 13, 2014 18:29:21 GMT -5
It was only in 1942 that scientists enjoyed the eureka moment with fission chain reaction. There was concern over the public publication which went ahead anyway but no one in Germany picked it up. In any case Germany was heading in the wrong direction with the focus on heavy water instead of graphite. It took Fermi to demo in US that graphite based nuclear chain reactions could be sustained on a large scale. Nuclear Chemistry - First Chain Reaction (1942)Germany would have to replicate too many eureka moments before a weapon could be functional. Add that to the constant aerial targeting of nuclear facilities, it thankfully never materialised. |
|
