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Regarding the WWII Meeting of Bohr & Heisenberg
HarlanC writes: "The NY Times has an article (registration required) discussing the famous meeting between Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg in Copenhagen in 1941. The conclusion is that Heisenberg revealed to Bohr the existance of a Nazi atomic program in an attempt to obtain assistance from Bohr. The Times of London article is here (long registration process required)" The play "Copenhagen" was based on a fictionalization of this meeting, it was much better than "Proof", I assure you.
I'm quite glad I got the opportunity to see Copenhagen recently at the Wilshire theater in LA, the play kicked ass. At least I thought so. My wife was too busy being distracted by the druggie making weird gestures in the on-stage seating; plus she wasn't big on the whole science aspect and said "well couldn't they have just done that whole play in 5 minutes and be done with it?" Oh well. Definitely not for everyone, but almost definitely for the /. crowd! If you've got a chance to see it, it's cool.
In fact, the thrust of the articles is that Powers was too sympathetic to Heisenberg, and that in fact he would have developed the Bomb had he been able.
The author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb is Richard Rhodes, not David Rhodes. The book is within view on my bookshelf.
Heisenberg's War: The Secret History of the German Bomb,
Thomas Powers provides lots of interesting detail, citations, background. From reading various sources, I see Heisenberg as badly misjudged and misrepresented. I think he was basically a good guy in a very bad situation and, integrating all the available material, it feels like he basically did the Right Thing, and played a key role in keeping the German nuclear program working in directions other than building a bomb.
-- We all have enough strength to endure the misfortunes of other people. La Rochefoucauld
Shortly after WWII, Werner Heisenberg was held captive by the British government at Farm Hall along with several other top German scientists. The British secretly taped the conversations at Farm Hall, and these tapes were declassified in 1992. (It took prolonged and strenuous efforts by several historians, and members of the Royal Society to persuade the government.) Heisenberg was at Farm Hall when the US dropped the bombs on Japan in August of 1945. When he heard the news, he was astonished that the US had separated sufficient U235 from U238 to obtain critical mass. He was also surprised that the US also made a plutonium based bomb. (The methods used to extract U238 and Pu were made by a chemist working under Enrico Fermi in Chicago. Without the knowledge provided by that chemist, the US would not have had either bomb for perhaps another year.) Since Heisenberg was surprised, we may assume he simply did not know how to get enough weapons grade uranium. Nor could he make enough and separate enough plutonium for a bomb. He had enough uranium to make a small nuclear reactor. Which he did create in a cave in southern Germany. The US army found the cave and removed the materials. The assessment by US scientists was that the reactor was never put to use. Apparently war efforts hindered Heisenberg's attempt to get all the resources he needed. And, towards the end of the war, the effort was abandoned. It is likely that Heisenberg knew he could not make a bomb and persuaded the Nazi government to allow him to make a reactor instead. Whether he had only technical reasons for the change in policy is unknown. He may have had moral reasons for preventing the Nazis from getting a bomb, but there is no public source of information to support that hypothesis. In 1941, he may have wanted to make a bomb, or knew that the Nazis wanted him to make one. In either case, I think he went to Copenhagen to ask/tell/warn Bohr about the Nazi plans. During that evening, he and Neils Bohr went for a walk. Bohr's wife, Margerethe, reported that they both left the house that evening in a good mood. The walk in the dark was short, only a few minutes. Neils Bohr came back quickly, and in a foul mood. Heisenberg followed him back inside. They did not talk about much later that evening. Later in the war, Bohr's family secretly got into a boat at night and left for England, and then America. Heisenberg stayed in England for some time, as a "guest" of the British government. In 1947, he was allowed to visit Bohr, and his British handler went with him. During that meeting, he and Bohr agreed that "we both came to feel that it would be better to stop disturbing the spirits of the past." (From Heisenberg's memoirs.) Bohr and Heisenberg continued their friendship after 1947, and until Bohr died in 1962. Bohr kept that friendship even though most Allied scientists shunned Heisenberg.
If you read the (can't remember where, but they are published) transcripts from Heisenberg's conversations with his fellow German physicists in Allied custody at the end of the war, it's impossible to believe that H was trying to build the bomb. Clearly H knew a lot more about how to build a bomb than he let on to his Nazi masters.
besides your valid points, I will also point out that the Japanese Army had few equals when it came to butchering civilians... In just a few weeks in Nanking, they killed more chinese civilians (through beheadings, torture, and rape of children followed by murder) than both the allied atomic blasts killed, and their total toll on civilian populations around the world is much, MUCH higher than any reported allied caused civilian death tolls (depending on how you view russia, and whose "ally" they really were).
In any case, huge numbers of civilians were killed around the world (FAR outstripping battlefield casualties), in very large part due to German and Japanese policy. It was not a very honorable war, on any side, but the stakes became too high to expect much compassion.
IMO, it is a wonder that Japan is not a charred cinder annexation of China, as retribution for WWII. (They should be sending thanks to Taiwan every day, for helping to divert national aggression.)
"It's overkill, of course. But you can never have too much overkill." - Anonymous Slashdot Coward
Not true. In fact, German infrastructure was in fine fettle throughout the war until the invasion of Germany proper. One reason for this is that the Nazis refused to allow Germany to be put on a war footing until after the initial thrust of Barbarossa failed, in 1941. From that time, German industrial production more than tripled, reaching a peak in late 1944/early 1945.
The Sunday Times and The Times have always been separate publications. Nowadays Rupert Murdoch owns them both, and has been combining some of their operations. But that's a recent development.
The Sunday Times registration process has an amusing flaw. Tried to tell it I was born in 1830. Not acceptable. 1890? Nope. 1899? Get serious. I meant to try "1900" next, but typed "2000" by mistake. That was acceptable! Apparently 1-year-olds read the Sunday Times, but not centenarians!
Despite the after-the-fact romancing (of a guy who would very probably have delivered the Nazis an atomic weapon if he could have) there's good reason to believe that the only thing preventing Heisenberg from developing the bomb were his own miscalculations. Not the least of which was his determination that the amount of fissionable material required to create a critical mass was much greater than was actually required (there's a fascinating theory vs. engineering story behind that, but you can probably look it up.) This calculation led him to believe that any atomic weapon would be enormous and hard to deliver.
After the war Heisenberg was taken to a detention center in the UK where he was surveilled with listening devices. When the he learned that the US had dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, he was stunned, and (IIRC) initially remarked to his co-detainees that we must have found a way to deliver a colossally huge bomb or something of the sort.
Some have theorized that Heisenberg was both extremely clever and extremely loyal to the German people-- so much so that he deliberately foiled the Nazi research effort, then faked disbelief in order to mislead the Allied eavesdroppers. Personally, I think he just blew it.
But you're right. Judge for yourself.
From what I understand USSR entering the Pacific war had more effect on the United States than it did on Japan. The US saw that Japan wouldn't surrender unconditionally and with the USSR in the theatre they'd want Japan split like Germany. Since Japan's demands for the emperor staying in power as a figure head weren't that unreasonable to the US, the US caved and let japan surrender conditionally to the US and the US only before Russia could really get involved. Else we'd have a North Japan and South Japan. Because the war ended when it did we only Korea and Vietnam split and Russia got the Kuril Islands. So it wasn't as bad.
At the time the bomb was dropped there were two amphibious operations planned: OLYMPIC, the invasion of southern Japan in late 1945, and CORONET, the invasion of Kyushu, Spring 1946. Preparatory carrier air strikes were already being done.
Allied casualties (US/UK/Commonwealth) were projected in the tens of thousands. Japanese civilians were being instructed in the use of satchel charges and sharpened bamboo sticks for use in repelling the invaders.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
I just finished reading "Inside the Third Reich" by Albert Speer. Speer was Hitler's architect and later Minister of Armaments and War Production. Thus any program to develop an atomic bomb was under Speer's ministry. He said that they were working on one, but due to Hitler's poor leadership and executive decisions, it never got the priority it should have. Speer claimed that Nazi Germany could have produced an atomic bomb by 1947. That of course, he said, was inconsequential because the United States produced theirs by August of 1945.
It's even more complicated than that ...
British ant-aircraft systems were well integrated, and benefited from Hitlers insistence that the Luftwaffe switch from military targets to cities. Had the Luftwaffe continued their attacks on British airbases and defence installations as they had at the start of the Battle of Britain then the outcome would have been decidedly different. Despite outnumbering the Luftwaffe (a little known fact) at the start of the Battle of Britain, RAF losses had almost crippled defence activities prior to Hitlers directive.
As for the technical superiority of aircraft, it varies from model to model. The Me109 had too short a range for really effective bomber escort, but with the was well matched against most enemy fighters until quite late in the war. The Focke-Wulf Fw190 (which was eventually renamed the Ta152 for its final versions) was far superior to British aircraft, and an equal to the American mustang. What the Germans lacked was large, long range bombers, and a really good close support aircraft like the Russians crude but heavily armoured Shturmovik.
As for tanks, the Tiger I, Tiger II and Panther were the best tanks of the war. They suffered from being too complicated, and thus slow to build. The Russians could produce vast numbers of the crude T-34, and afford to lose them and their crews. The Germans escelled at recovering damaged tanks, but this couldn't counter the Russians massive numerical superiority. Earlier tanks like the Panzerkampfwagen IV, which formed the backbone of the Panzer divisions, could hold its own even towards the end of the war. The PzKW IV had some trouble against the T-34 when it first encountered it, but its better trained crews and good armenent countered this.