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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.
It doesn't matter what happened and if someone decided to sabotage the bomb in German or not.
The Reich would not have been able to build an atomic bomb because they couldn't have set up the infrastructure without it being bombed to support the atomic bomb creation.
In Richard Rhodes' "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" he goes into alot of detail about how much industrial infrastructure was needed to make the Uranium and Plutonium for the 3 American atomic bombs.
And don't forget the amount of money and metals it took to make the equipment. The United States built 2 cities of 50,000 people each, one at Oak Ridge and the other at Hanford.
Germany didn't have the manpower, materials or bomb-proof infrastructure during the war to produce an atomic bomb.
The book making of the Atomic bomb is also quite interesting as it goes into a great deal of detail about the Bohr-Heisnberg relationship. NY times misread the book , I believe, when they said that heisenberg simply failed. In actuality the book paints a picture of Heisenberg not wanting to develop the bomb at all - and turning the german research team away from a number of key discoveries. Now the book doesn't say that this was intentional - perhaps heisenberg was simply mistaken. Judge for yourself.
The most interesting fact I learned from that book was this:
To seperate,process, and manufacture the uranium nad plutonium neccassary for the a-bombs it required 32% of the United States Electrical output, 23% of the US's Silver output (144,000 Troy Ounces was the figure I believe), and 14% of the US's aluminum output to construct the plants (at Oak Ridge, Tennesse and Hartford, Washington). Remember this is 1944 people - height of america's industrial might. Now ask yourself if germany could've done the same...
You say that like it's a bad thing...
Many people feel that saving approximately 1 million American lives was more important at that time than a percentage of the populations (both military and civilian) of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You should also consider how many Japanese would have been killed without the surrender (nuclear weapons are not needed for massive destruction...see Dresden for instance).
Do you seriously think the Japanese would have hesitated to kill any number of American civilians if they had the means? It was a vicious war, and both sides were concerned about victory (and survival) above all else.
Perhaps he should have been frightened, period. Perhaps the whole lot of them should have been clockmakers, like Albert said.
Or perhaps not. Perhaps we should praise the brilliant inventors of nuclear weapons, since those weapons have apparently halted the practice of "world war". Peace is a good thing, right?
Regardless, not pursuing the a-bomb wasn't an option...someone would have. Most would agree that the US has been a model citizen as a nuclear superpower. At least we have tremendous safeguards surrounding the use of such devices.
Of course, that part goes unmentioned in the NYT article, because that might call into question just who really *did* use those horrible weapons, and it might have to be stated that it wasn't everyone's favorite boogeyman of the 20th century. We can't have people thinking about the realities of the past; no, interesting what-ifs make for much better propaganda.
Sounds to me like you've absorbed quite a bit of propaganda yourself... ;-)
Personally, I'm worried that nuclear stockpiles will be cut to the point where world war becomes 'thinkable' again.
299,792,458 m/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Additionally, at the time they had most of the resources of continental Europe at their disposal if they wished.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
The atom bomb developed during WWII and deployed against the Japanese was not, compared to conventional air weaponry, and effective weapon. The US had to preserve certain Japanese cities from regular bombing attacks so that there would be something left to bomb when the A bombs were ready.
On the other side of the war (lets use the two-sided model here) there was the Rocket. It, much like its spiritual predecessor the Paris Gun, was also an inneffective use of resources. More people were killed constructing the Rockets than were killed by them in combat. Development of the Rocket took away from Germany's air power and perhaps helped their loss in that arena, or at least hastened it.
Both sides had overestimated the other sides progress in the areas in which they themselves were most advanced.
After the war, the two technologies came together as the ICBM, a dangerous weapon which dramatically changed the nature of the global arena. The cold war was born and much human labor was lost in the making of tools which we hope will never be used.
--
Vivez sans temps mort
"Isn't it interesting that Bohr was frightened that the Nazis would have such a weapon only to see it used to butcher Japanese civilians five years later by "the good guys"?"
What's more horrible, the US building and using an atomic bomb, or school children being trained to defend Tojo's Japan with bamboo spears? Doesn't the fact that it required not one but TWO nuclear attacks before the Japanese decided to surrender give you pause about possible justifications?
I've said it before and I'll say it again:
1.) The US submarine force had what was essentially a total blockade of resource-poor Japan since May. They face destruction by slow starvation. No surrender.
2.) The first bomb in early August (after three months of the previously-mentioned blockade). Three days go by with no surrender.
3.) The second bomb. Still no surrender.
4.) The Soviet Union delcares war on Japan and starts a big land-grab in Asia. They now face a potential invation from two fronts (one of which all too willing to feed an army into the meat-grinder that the Japanese are trying to turn their islands into)
So what's the next step? For the Japanese army, the next step was a coup, an effort to depose Hirohito's government and prevent him from airing a surrender announcement. After all, how many more bombs could the US drop? Can't be more than one or two...
There is a misconception about Japan that still persists to this day (as can be seen in your opinion) that they have Western ideals and a Western way of thinking. This is not true today and it sure as hell wasn't true in the 1940's. Just because defeat is inevitible isn't necesarily reason for them to surrender.