That's why Hitler didn't have an atomic bomb - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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The Second World War (1939-1945).
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#14759022
This is a rather lengthy article in German by the nuclear scientist Manfred Popp:

Darum hatte Hitler keine Atombombe

It's too long to sum up in detail. Anyways, he claims that previous theories about the presumed lack of material resources or conscious decision by scientists not to develop the bomb are wrong.

He believes that the oppressive Nazi regimes prevented scientists from daring to invent. "Their fear was greater than their curiosity." In addition, many probably didn't believe in the Nazi regime like the scientists of the Manhattan project believed in the righteousness of what they were doing. They also feared for their personal safety, since instead narrowing the focus of research on one project (an atomic bomb would have entailed) they continued to pursue numerous different projects during the war, which kept them from being sent to the front. It was probably Heisenberg's opinion that an atomic bomb would take too long to develop that informed the Nazi's decision to concentrate on missile development instead.

A number of nuclear scientists was imprisoned in the UK after the war and their conversation was secretly recorded. This is a partial transcript.
Transcript of Surreptitiously Taped Conversations among German Nuclear Physicists at Farm Hall (August 6-7, 1945)

According to Hans-Peter Duerr, a disciple of Heisenberg, the British (and therefore the US) knew that the Nazis weren't in the process of developing an atomic bomb from what Heisenberg had said during visits to Copenhagen and Switzerland.

Hans-Peter Dürr. "Heisenberg (1)
Hans-Peter Dürr. "Heisenberg (2)
#14759090
viewtopic.php?f=63&t=160344&p=14514285&hilit=Heisenberg#p14514285

Towards the end of World War II, many of Germany’s nuclear scientists were captured and brought to Farm Hall in England. Recently declassified documents suggest that under a wiretapped environment, much was learned about the German’s effort to build the bomb, including new evidence that Heisenberg tried his hardest to develop nuclear weapons and failed. The largest piece of evidence was that Heisenberg had miscalculated the critical mass needed to achieve an atomic bomb, and thus still believed that tons of U-235 was necessary to create the bomb. When hearing from Farm Hall the news of a fission bomb being dropped in Hiroshima, Heisenberg was quoted as saying “Some dilettante in America who knows very little about it has bluffed them. I don’t believe it has anything to do with uranium.” [4] Among other things, the Farm Hall transcripts establish that the Germans on August 6, 1945 did not believe the Allies had exploded an atomic bomb over Hiroshima that day; they never succeeded in constructing a self-sustaining nuclear reactor; they were confused by the differences between an atomic bomb and a reactor; they did not know how to correctly calculate the critical mass of a bomb; and they thought plutonium was probably element 91.
#14759108
"According to Hans-Peter Duerr, a disciple of Heisenberg, the British (and therefore the US) knew that the Nazis weren't in the process of developing an atomic bomb from what Heisenberg had said during visits to Copenhagen and Switzerland".

In FACT, the NAZI's were advanced in their nuclear weapons development.

The thing is though, it would never have succeeded for one simple reason, they were using too much Uranium in the core, though,I am certain, given enough time, it would have been successful.

The Manhattan project succeeded using just 1/25th of the Uranium that the Germans experimented with & was used against Japan.

To compress that amount of Uranium in order to achieve a sustainable chain reaction would have required phenomenal amounts of high explosive.

The location of their research was beneath a castle, it was a case of creating dangerous levels of radiation, or blowing the castle up, I'm not too sure which result it merited most, either would have been hilarious for our propaganda machine, not so for Goebbel's or Hitler.

'War' creates the necessity for invention, the post war nuclear experiments was an extreme abuse at nature's expense.

Out of insatiable curiosity, I have always wondered what a nuclear detonation in space would look like, perhaps triggered on the other side of Jupiter, it would be very interesting to obtain data & visual observations from a great distance of such an event.

I think that Wernher Von Braun was an extremely fortuitous rocket scientist, to escape the nightmare with which he was involved, along with the cruelty or tragedies he helped to make, then to achieve his dream in America.

I am, without condoning or condemning his past, expressing my satisfaction with that turning of 'swords into ploughshares' & that it has produced enormous long term benefits for mankind's knowledge.
#14759113
I think that Wernher Von Braun was an extremely fortuitous rocket scientist, to escape the nightmare with which he was involved, along with the cruelty or tragedies he helped to make, then to achieve his dream in America.


Gather 'round while I sing you of Wernher von Braun
A man whose allegiance
Is ruled by expedience
Call him a Nazi, he won't even frown
"Nazi, Schmazi!" says Wernher von Braun

Don't say that he's hypocritical
Say rather that he's apolitical
"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
That's not my department!" say Wernher von Braun

Some have harsh words for this man of renown
But some think our attitude
Should be one of gratitude
Like the widows and cripples in old London town
Who owe their large pension to Wernher von Braun

You too may be a big hero
Once you've learned to count backwards to zero
"In German, oder Englisch, I know how to count down
Und I'm learning Chinese now!" says Wernher von Braun
#14759143
Wernher von Braun gave his autobiography the title, I Aimed For the Stars.... But Mostly Hit London Instead. True story. :D
#14759260
@quetzalcoatl, @Nonsense, Popp refutes the idea that they weren't capable of developing an atomic bomb. "When Heisenberg was told about the US bomb after the war, it took him only a week to work out the fundamentals." Popp takes this to prove that they didn't try during the war.

The fact is that they didn't try. In the first video I linked, Duerr claims that Heisenberg was very relieved when he learned that the Nazis wanted a bomb in two years or less. This allowed him to say that it wasn't possible within that time-limit. He and his colleagues continued work on a nuclear reactor and most of the funding went into launcher technology.

In the Video, Duerr also claims that allied intelligence services knew by Feb. 1942 that the Nazis weren't developing a bomb and that that knowledge was withheld from the people working on the Manhattan project. He said the allies also abandoned their plans to assassinate Heisenberg in Switzerland because they knew he wasn't working on the bomb.

I think there can be no doubt that the Nazis abandoned the atomic bomb because of advice from nuclear scientists (especially Heisenberg). The only question is their intention. Was it opposition to the Nazis, or was it fear, as claimed by Popp.

Did Heisenberg reject the Faustian pact with the devil while his colleagues in the land of the free had no such pangs of conscience?

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