Hitler Was Against Developing Nuclear Weapons - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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The Second World War (1939-1945).
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#14513967
I am listening to an interview with Annie Jacobsen about her book Operation Paperclip which is about the USA taking German scientists to America after ww2. She was asked if she was surprised America developed nuclear weapons before the Germans considering the fact that the Germans were more advanced than the Americans in terms of most of the weapons they were developing. She mentioned that Hitler sabotaged nuclear research because he said that theoretical physics was "a jewish science" and the nazis stopped funding research into theoretical physics at the universities.

Theoretical physics though is a science. It's not "jewish" or "german" or anything. Science is science. Einstein was jewish but he based many of his ideas on prior works by other European scientists. All sorts of scientists were involved with the development of theoretical physics.

Many people try to say Hitler was some sort of evil genius but I really think we have to question the idea he was a "genius". Dropping funding for theoretical physics based on an uninformed whim?
#14514054
Just because you're a genius doesn't mean you can believe and do some real dumb shit. Obviously Hitler's an interesting character because of his place in history, but its very difficult to get any sort of objective judgements of him because most commentators are usually intent on grinding one ideological axe or another.

But there's something very odd here, you see while as I said Hitler is inevitably an object of fascination, why should he matter. Why an earth does it matter whether Hitler was an evil", inhumane", virtue-less psychopath or whether he was a wonderful, loving caring gifted individual. You see Hitler was a nobody in July 1914, so for me, the obvious, key, historical questions are why did this nobody end up ruling an Empire from the Atlantic to Stalingrad and why did this nobody retain power up until the end of April 1945, when Germany lay in ruins with the inevitable consequence that most of Eurasia was left under the tyranny of an evil totalitarian Communist Empire.

When we ask these questions then we start to see the responsibility of western aggressive, racist, nationalist, bigoted empire building leaders like Poincare, Grey, Churchill, Wilson and FDR. And the whole western moral supremacist narrative starts to fall apart.
#14514058
Well for starters he was a gifted speaker. He was a gifted leader in that he could inspire incredible loyalty in a vast range of supporters. Kindness, caring and consideration seem to have been the qualities that his closest associates most consistently report. He was an adept political strategist. That doesn't mean he didn't make mistakes or wasn't lucky, but to rise as he did he had to be touched by genius. He had a phenomenal memory for detail.

It seems to me that the Nazis were thought leaders when it came to politics (as opposed to policy). I'm not not an expert on politics but I wonder how much real advance in political understanding was made between the Nazis and Bill Clinton. The Clintonite and New Labour revolutions in political campaigning really seemed to be going back to the fundamental Nazis political campaign philosophy that everything is narrative.
#14514080
It's basically a problem of looking at your ideology and reality when they conflict, and choosing ideology. People do it all the time. Hitler was a great orator in the right time and place to get a whole country. I don't think he could of done it if he weren't intelligent.
#14514095
lines wrote:She mentioned that Hitler sabotaged nuclear research because he said that theoretical physics was "a jewish science" and the nazis stopped funding research into theoretical physics at the universities.

So he was against theoretical physics (as a Jewish science), not developing nuclear weapons, actually. I guess it tells a lot about how intelligent he really was.
#14514097
Yes it really is time to put a kibosh on the demonisation of Hitler and the Germans. Its like people are saying what on earth's the cause of the catastrophe of WWII, as if it was some sort of unpredictable, remarkable event.

Intelligent people at the time, not with hindsight but at the time, recognised that the Versaille treaty would almost inevitably lead to another war. That it was too harsh to reconcile the Germans and that it wasn't harsh enough to keep them down. Twenty twenty five years was predicted. Also it didn't take brain of Europe to work out that if World War I was utterly ghastly round two was almost certainly going to be utterly horrific.
#14514119
lines wrote:Many people try to say Hitler was some sort of evil genius but I really think we have to question the idea he was a "genius". Dropping funding for theoretical physics based on an uninformed whim?

Yeah, nuclear weapons rock. What a dummy.

Is this really your point?

Rich wrote:Intelligent people at the time, not with hindsight but at the time, recognised that the Versaille treaty would almost inevitably lead to another war. That it was too harsh to reconcile the Germans and that it wasn't harsh enough to keep them down.

True. An Empire would have to kill millions of Germans, destroy their cities, and cut the country in half to truly "keep Germany down" so that they can't interfere with Russia, UK, France and USA's colonial activities and bankster fraud.
#14514231
Werner Heisenberg chaired the German nuclear weapon project called Uranium Club but he expected that the project would not be completed before 1945 due to the shortage of manpower and financial resources. Hitler was keen on developing the atomic bomb as the ultimate weapon against the West but the National Socialist regime's anti-science policies had driven many nuclear physicists out of Nazi Germany and many capable scientists were also conscripted from universities by the German military and an entire generation of physicists were lost in this manner under the Nazi regime. Annie Jacobsen is a young female journalist who does not have a background in military history and she may have misspoken when she said that Hitler sabotaged the nuclear project if that was what she actually said during the radio interview. Heisenberg lobbied against the Deutsche Physik nonsense and the Nazis eventually understood that it was more important to use science to win the war rather than to distort it in the name of ideology and Nazi racial laws were not applied to prominent research projects or scientists, some of whom were part Jewish.

Image

A labyrinth of secret underground tunnels believed to have been used by the Nazis to develop a nuclear bomb has been uncovered. The facility, which covers an area of up to 75 acres, was discovered near the town of St Georgen an der Gusen, Austria last week, it has been reported. Excavations began on the site after researchers detected heightened levels of radiation in the area - supporting claims that the Nazis were developing nuclear weapons.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... stria.html

On 26 February 1942, Heisenberg presented a lecture to Reich officials on energy acquisition from nuclear fission, after the Army withdrew most of its funding.[76] The Uranium Club was transferred to the Reich Research Council (RFR) in July 1942. On 4 June 1942, Heisenberg was summoned to report to Albert Speer, Germany's Minister of Armaments, on the prospects for converting the Uranium Club's research toward developing nuclear weapons. During the meeting, Heisenberg told Speer that a bomb could not be built before 1945, and would require significant monetary and manpower resources.[77][78] Five days later, on 9 June 1942, Adolf Hitler issued a decree for the reorganization of the RFR as a separate legal entity under the Reich Ministry for Armament and Ammunition; the decree appointed Reich Marshall Hermann Göring as the president.[79]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Heisenberg
#14514285
Although Heisenberg was one of the top handful of theoretical physicists in the twentieth century, he was not an exceptional administrator or applied scientist.

Why the Germans Failed to Accomplish a Nuclear Bomb

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.


The Germans never devoted sufficient resources to a fission bomb, nor did they have the large team of scientists and engineers of the Manhattan Project.
#14514528
Rich wrote:Hitler was a nobody in July 1914, so for me, the obvious, key, historical questions are why did this nobody end up ruling an Empire from the Atlantic to Stalingrad and why did this nobody retain power up until the end of April 1945, ...


Simple! The feudal ruling elite together with an imbecile Kaiser had lost credibility because it had led the country into the catastrophe of 1914 out of shear stupidity and incompetence. In this political vacuum, for a populist to rise and lead the disgruntled astray with simplistic solutions is not a great achievement. He retained power by a coup and a reign of terror in the absence of any substantial democratic traditions.
#14648560
He was a bit of a clown, Hitler. This along with his stupid and stubborn effort to invade the Soviet Union is the reason they lost the war. If the country was led by a leader with more of a brain, who wasn't clinicaly insanse they could have held Western Europe, and dug their heels in until they developed nuclear weapons. The world would be fucked. Thank god Hitler was a clown. God doesn't exsist, it's just a saying.
#14648570
Quetz is correct. Hitler had nothing to do with the German failure to make a bomb. Vanderbilt University dude says:

Simply put, Germany was incapable of developing an atomic bomb during World War II. They did not have the people. They did not have the cooperation among the people they did have. They did not have the money. They did not have the laboratory or factory space. Lastly, late in the war, they did not have the power to prevent the Allies from destroying what they did have. Whether Heisenberg or Weizsacker or whomever secretly sabotaged the atomic bomb is immaterial. The industrial and scientific capability of Germany was insufficient for the scope of this project. Thus America dropped the atomic bomb on August 6th, not Germany.


The original premise is faulty.
#14648670
lines wrote:Many people try to say Hitler was some sort of evil genius but I really think we have to question the idea he was a "genius". Dropping funding for theoretical physics based on an uninformed whim?

He certainly was not a genius, as he often demonstrated logical fallacies and inability to accept facts. He probably was in the upper third of the population given that he still demonstrated capacities to painfully cope with academic training, but this is no big deal.

However he had a magnetic personality, both very alien and assertive, full of misplaced, egotistic, confidence. He was the kind of man who could convince a physicist that he knew nothing about physics and that Hitler was right. In last resort he was the kind of man who would deport the physicist to the Russian front should he not agree.

It is interesting to note that the allies deemed that it was a good thing for them that Hitler was leading the Axis's armies.

Finally, Hitler was not just against physics, he also believed that it would not be possible to increase agricultural productivity to feed German people in the future. He seemed to be the kind of man who instinctively reject what he does not understand.


Rich wrote:Intelligent people at the time, not with hindsight but at the time, recognised that the Versaille treaty would almost inevitably lead to another war. That it was too harsh to reconcile the Germans and that it wasn't harsh enough to keep them down.

You implicitly assume that it would have been possible to reconcile with Germany. I do not think so.

I doubt that Germans would have accepted this defeat. They wanted revenge and they did consider themselves as the legitimate rulers of Europe, and the Alsace and Lorraine as rightful parts of their empire.

Germany changed only after it suffered a second crushing defeat and lost the two thirds of its territories in thirty years, and because it became a monster that grew horrified of itself after being forced to publicly recognize its own face through foreign propaganda, foreign trials and foreign control. In other words they changed after a forceful reeducation/brainwashing that took many years, after being imposed a self-chastising behavioral therapy. And I will not be surprised if tomorrow many of them decide to revert to what they were.

Anyway it's not the first time you expose your delusional historical theories.
#14648693
My opinion is that Germans are not people who do well at accepting the unpleasant. Nor are they a people who do not value their unique societal features, however small. For this reason I am concerned that the refugee debacle will accomplish exactly what you fear Hartmann.

But there's something very odd here, you see while as I said Hitler is inevitably an object of fascination, why should he matter. Why an earth does it matter whether Hitler was an evil", inhumane", virtue-less psychopath or whether he was a wonderful, loving caring gifted individual.


Good grief. Get a grip. Do you have any serious questions to ask?


When we ask these questions then we start to see the responsibility of western aggressive, racist, nationalist, bigoted empire building leaders like Poincare, Grey, Churchill, Wilson and FDR. And the whole western moral supremacist narrative starts to fall apart.


We, on POFO, have a quality-of-trolling standard and you have fallen short this time. I know you are capable of subtlety and nuance. Work on it.
#14648796
SD92 wrote:He was a bit of a clown, Hitler.

I'd say you're closer to the truth than anyone else has come ... He wasn't the funny "ha-ha" clown ... he was the "scary father" clown. His could mesmerize a crowd like a great Orator, but he wasn't one ... Orator's have something, meaningful to say about something meaningful ...(!) Hitler seldom made much sense, it wasn't WHAT he said, it was HOW he said it.

SD92 wrote:This along with his stupid and stubborn effort to invade the Soviet Union is the reason they lost the war.

Yes ... The two front thing was his BIGGEST mistake and doomed Germany. BUT ... (call it all conspiracy) Eliminating the Soviet Union was the task he, and Germany, were chosen for ... I'm always stunned by how seamlessly the US was adapted into that role and a little surprised that we actually avoided immediate hostilities against the soviets ... The war in the pacific may have been America's salvation.

As for German Atomic research, yeah they crippled themselves when they allowed those Jews to escape ... Even so, geology is what REALLY brought the USA out on top. We had domestic sources of uranium, the Germans didn't. I don't think Hitler had anything to do with the decision to sideline atomic research. He instructed Speer to prioritize projects that would produce the fastest results, Germany was growing desperate.

Zam
#14648917
Rich wrote:Intelligent people at the time, not with hindsight but at the time, recognised that the Versaille treaty would almost inevitably lead to another war. That it was too harsh to reconcile the Germans and that it wasn't harsh enough to keep them down.
Harmattan wrote:You implicitly assume that it would have been possible to reconcile with Germany.
I assume no such thing.

Harmattan wrote:I do not think so.

I doubt that Germans would have accepted this defeat. They wanted revenge and they did consider themselves as the legitimate rulers of Europe, and the Alsace and Lorraine as rightful parts of their empire.

Germany changed only after it suffered a second crushing defeat and lost the two thirds of its territories in thirty years, and because it became a monster that grew horrified of itself after being forced to publicly recognize its own face through foreign propaganda, foreign trials and foreign control. In other words they changed after a forceful reeducation/brainwashing that took many years, after being imposed a self-chastising behavioral therapy. And I will not be surprised if tomorrow many of them decide to revert to what they were.
I agree, excluding the pro French bias. All the Great Powers felt they had the right and even duty to lead the world. All espoused a form of exceptionalism, which of course is just a cloaked supremacism. One thing could be said with certainty, once the Great European civil war started, it wasn't going to end well. The earlier American Civil War's legacy of bitterness and sense of injustice survives to this day.
Harmattan wrote:Anyway it's not the first time you expose your delusional historical theories.
Keep up the good work exposing these imagined delusions.
#14649179
Quetz and DrLee just pull a text out of some of the War Victors' university manuals, and say: "Look. This says what REALLY happened."

Because war brings out the truth in our writers?

Because our economy and foreign policy could handle the truth?


Answer: we can't believe our texts regarding all our wars too much. Hitler was a terrorist, like so many trade union founders.
#14649194
QatzelOk wrote:Quetz and DrLee just pull a text out of some of the War Victors' university manuals, and say: "Look. This says what REALLY happened."

Because war brings out the truth in our writers?

Because our economy and foreign policy could handle the truth?


Answer: we can't believe our texts regarding all our wars too much. Hitler was a terrorist, like so many trade union founders.


I think you need to come back after the mushrooms wear off. Ya know?

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