Slashdot Mirror
War Hero Thwarted Nazi Heavy Water Production
Freshly Exhumed writes "Its doubtful you know the name of Einar Skinnarland, but his sabotage over several years repeatedly thwarted Nazi plans to exploit Norway's heavy water production capabilities for their atomic bomb research plans. Skinnerland recently passed away in Canada and his daring exploits are recounted here. Details of some of the raids on the production facilities can be found on pafko and Stephen's Study Room. So many 'what if?'s and suspicions have swirled around the Nazi atomic bomb program that this man's efforts seem crystal clear for a change."
"Hemos mentioned Nazis in the subject line. Therefore, by the Godwin's Law rule, the discussion is over almost before it's started."
Think again. The Godwin's Law FAQ, section II.2, discusses this.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb shows clearly and ironically that Hitler drove many Jewish physicists out of Germany in the '30s including Einstein. If he would have let them keep there posts he almost certainly would have had the bomb before the US.
Free cell phone tracking
What matters is that eventually, the cursed thing was used. Go ahead and say it was to save x number of troops or y politcal plans, or anything else, but the bottom ine is that the first to discover the thing was going to use it, and this world has been quite the scary & dangerous place ever since.
SecondPageMedia - Wha
Evidently in france the thought police come after you for even thinking about nazis. What a shame really, they don't realize certain things should never be forgotten or it will happen again.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
The japanese decided it was a bad idea to persue the atomic bomb (heavily) because of the shortage of deuterium. The germans and the french had the nice little plant, Norsk Hydro in Norway, to make enough of the stuff to have a burgeoning atomic program, fortunately there was enough sabotage that Hitler didn't get the bomb. Especially since he already had an excellent delivery system.
Maybe it matters a slight amount that the thing was used by a democratic nation to end a dreadful war launched against them rather than by the Nazis to achieve world domination in a war of their own making?
Ah, yes.. WW2.. nobody had the bomb, nobody had real technological advantages and the enemy was in fact a civilized western high tech country with lots of resources. Those were the times!
It's a pity todays so called "wars" are more like playing starcraft with unlimited resources against an AI set on "easy". I don't think I'll watch the Iraq thing on TV when it starts. A few old star trek episodes will provide better entertainment.
Somebody think of a Microsoft angle to this story!
> but the bottom ine is that the first to discover the thing was going to use it, and this world has been quite the scary & dangerous place ever since.
I agree, and it's unfortunate that that genie can't be put back in the bottle.
However, the curmudgeon in me can't help pointing out that the world was already a scary & dangerous place. Only the tiniest fraction of the ~50,000,000 people who died during WWII died as a result of atomic bombs.
And we've darn well kept our hand in at the killing since then, too.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The japanese had pilots willing to pilot their planes into anything deemed a target. I don't think that the era 1945 to present holds a monopoly on the world being a scary and dangerous place.
ostiguy
Mr. Skinnarland was mentioned several times in Leo Marks book "Between Silk and Cyanide". One of the many heroes just recently getting their due.
He trained in England with the SOE, crossing paths with Mr Marks who trained operatives in the use of codes.
Marks died in the last year or two also.
http://www.pafko.com/trips/norway/n10/ - about the sabotage
http://www.fas.org/nuke/intro/nuke/heavy.htm - about heavy water and it's use
http://www.lawzone.com/half-nor/haukelid.htm - about Knut Haukelid; another of the heroes from Telemark
http://www.390th.org/warstories/Rjukan.htm - about how the USAF tried and failed to knock out the heavy water plant
I know, I gotta learn proper html
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
French. Or we'd all be speaking German now.
He was Norwegian. As were the rest of the gang of Norwegian resistance fighters who sabotaged the heavy water plant at Rjukan.
These days more than 90% of Norwegians are against an attack on Iraq without UN security council backing. (Just as pretty much all the rest of the world except the USA.)
War is not something one should enter into lightly. All other alternatives should be tried before one resorts to war.
Aside from an interesting quote from Werner Heisenberg, it gives a lot of information about the efforts at sabotaging the heavy water processing plant. If you can find a copy, it's well worth the price.
Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!
He didn't let the phyiscists who remained use what he termed "Jewish Physics." Which, as it happens, was the *correct* physics.
It turns out, according to documents that only came to light about 10 years ago, the Japanese were probably actually much closer to building a bomb than Germany because, even though they started late and worked slowly, they were heading down the proper path to pull it off.
KFG
Those explosions surely killed some people. It would have been better for them to hold a peace march in front of the plant.
Japan should have immediately surrended after the 1st bomb. They are solely responsible for the 2nd dromb being dropped. They were too busy trying to rally the citizenry to defend the homeland. Rather than protecting their people, they put them in jeopardy.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
A few months ago I saw an old movie based on this exact story. It wasn't a documentry, and it was actually very good. Full of action and suspense, but without all that Hollywood junk.
I can't remember what it was called, but it was on Canada's "History Television" cable channel.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
So you are acting a-la US acts when Russian hacker gets tried in US soil for un-crime commited in Russia?
You must be really naive if you think Diplomatic talks degenerate because of bad manners at the tea table.
The cards are always down, it's all about how much one is willing to bend over and grab their ankles.
And the US lately, has become the master pimp of the world... expecting anyone and everyone in their sight to bend over and grab em.
Well fuck you! It's about time you realized it doesn't work that way... You have a current world crisis going on just because of said behaviour. Just sit and watch how the US will go in like the First of the Ninth Air Cav even after the UN says "no". The world isn't your playground...
Like I said before, it's one thing to think you're right in an argument, and something else completely to try and justify glaring events of 50 years past.
"As soon as the germans capitulated, Russia was on Japan's ass, and they were scared of it."
Bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit. If you knew your history, you'd know that, after being essentially blockaded and slowly starved by the US submarine force for the better part of a year, after being nuked twice, after the Soviets declared war on Japan and the sudden influx of bloodthirsty eastern-front veterans, Hideki Tojo's army was so "scared" that they staged a desparate coup to prevent the emperor from surrendering!
If the coup had been successful, it would have taken more than just two nuclear devices to convince them to surrender. Probably far more.
" What I can *guarantee* you without any ambiguity is that the second bomb was definitely *not* necessary."
I disagree, for the reasons stated above.
If you can find it, there's a flick out there named Hiroshima that examines the final months of the war in the Pacific from both the US and Japanese sides. It feels a lot like Tora! Tora! Tora! You'll see just how "scared" and "willing to surrender" the Japanese military was. It airs on Showtime from time to time.
"And it achieved exactly what it had started out to do: begin the cold war."
The Cold War was "starting" after WWII no matter what happened to Japan. It's roots come from well before 1945 (even before 1938). The only thing that the use of the atomic bombs on Japan did was make sure that the Soviets weren't able to carve up Japan like they did to Germany and (eventually) Korea.
"The US dropping that bomb completely undermined Russia's crucial role in the war... etc. etc"
What role? The Soviet Union had a non-aggression pact with Japan until August 1945. They didn't declare war on Japan until two days after the Hiroshima bombing, the day before Nagasaki. Japan had nothing to do with the Great Patriotic War.
"Read up on some history..."
Hypocrite.
A Man Called Intrepid by William Stevenson recounts the war from the aspect of the clandestine serivces in the US and UK. It shows how Churchill was consulting the Crown before he was technically back in power, but received permission to start working on means to defend England. It talks about Roosevelt's involvement in the defense of Britain from an early stage, before the public knew about it or would support such actions.
The book talks about the repeated raids on the heavy water factories, the code-breaking process, the creation of the OSS, the establishment of a backup British Government in NYC in case London fell, etc. There is also the appearance of such notables as Roald Dahl, Ian Fleming and Aldous Huxley, working in British Intelligence.
Some of the stories of radio operators dropped into Europe, captured, tortured and killed, could and should be made into movies or books in their own right.
Intrepid, by the way, was the code name of the man chosen by Churchill to be a liason with Roosevelt in the early stages (before lend-lease, before Pearl Harbor, etc)
And close to 98% of the US population were against getting involved with Hitler too... Or are we forgetting the whole America First movement?
Je ne parle pas francais.
Heavy water is D2O, D being deuterium, or an isotope of hydrogen that has 1 extra neutron. Heavy water is used as a moderator in the breeder reactors that convert/purify barely-fissionable U-235 into U-238. The only other material that can act as an appropriate moderator is super-pure graphite, but the Nazi's found heavy water easier to produce, so they used that.
The only other alternative is to not use a breeder reactor, but instead to try and extract the U-238 directly from the uranium ore (in which it is present in VERY low concentrations). However, this approach requires enourmes complexes, noxious chemicals, and complicated pressure systems. This is a much more expensive method, but technically simpler if you haven't yet discovered how to build an effective breeder reactor. This was also the method used by the americans to build their first bombs.
Not strictly true. The Nazis had a significant nuclear-weapons research program, using the intellectual powers of such notable physicists as Werner Heisenberg (of "Uncertainty Principle" fame). However, they were convinced that an exploding nuclear bomb was impractical, because Dr. Heisenberg had grossly mis-estimated the critical mass of uranium. Because of this, the most likely form of Nazi nuclear weapon was a subcritcal reactor-bomb which would "detonate" through a mechanism more like the Chornobyl meltdown than a runaway complete fission reaction.
That said, the commando raids on the various plants supporting this reasearch definitely helped guarantee that Nazi Germany never attained nuclear weapons. We can be fairly grateful for that, I think.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
> 90% of French and British citizens were against standing up to Hitler when he waltzed into the Sudetenland. Look where that got us. No one wants war, but the realists in the world realize that inaction is actually worse in some cases.
The problem is that no one has a crystal ball that lets us examine the future the way we can examine the past. I for one am not eager to have tens or hundreds of thousands of people killed on the basis dubious claims that we can detect when history is repeating itself. Far better to reason things out on the basis of what we see now than to base our decision on a weak analogy with the past.
And remember, there have been times when we intervened and things still didn't work out exactly swell, and times when we sat back and weren't afflicted with another world war as a result. Appeals to history make great rhetoric, but so far as I can tell they are actually worthless.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
There is a very good book out there written by the man that developed the codes that Skinnarland used. While the focus is on wartime codes and the internal struggles in the British War Department, it still contains good information about Skinnarland, and is a very good read It is called Between Silk and Cyanide by Leo Marks.
Man, the historical accuracy of your posts just keeps going downhill...
"Not a single millitary outpost with it's contingency."
Off the top of my head, I can't remember the signifigance of Hiroshima, but Nagasaki was on the list of potential targets because of its port facilities.
" And don't forget, Pearl harbour was a millitary outpost,"
On US territory.
"if Uncle Sam wants to put his soldiers around the globe, he will have to face the risks of doing so..."
Uncle Sam wouldn't have had to worry if Uncle Sam would have continued exports to Japan that were fueling Japan's nine-year-old (at the time) war of aggression and expansion on the Asian mainland.
"Pearl Harbour, if anything was a major strategic win for Japan, nothing more, nothing less."
They were a major strategic loss, a minor tactical victory at best. There were no carriers at anchor at Pearl, which were Yamamoto's primary target. He played his only trump card and gained next to nothing because of it.
"That last statement is, of course, if we all play nice, and really believe the US was *completely unaware* of the impending attack (which I believe is bullshit)"
You are right only to a degree, only in the tactical sense.
Even the US public was well aware of Japanese intentions towards the US. Those on Oahu and the Philippines that day were taken by surprise by the attacks themselves, not the ones attacking them. Operation Barbarossa was far more of a surprise than 12/7/41.
"Do you *really* think the US was unaware of the actions of Bin Laden?"
The US wasn't in the middle of diplomatic negotiations with either bin Laden or Mullah Omar's government in September 2001. Afghanistan was only butchering its own civillians, and had yet to even consider invading one of its neighbors. Tojo's Japan had already slaughtered many, many more civillians for a longer period of time by 1941 than bin Laden could possibly hope to achieve, even after 2001.
Your metaphor is strenuous at best.
Far fewer casualties for whom? Japan?
I'm sorry. When you're at war, your primary concern is to mitigate the losses of your own people.
If the U.S. had to invade Japan to force it to capitulate, that would have been the wrong decision because tens of thousands of Americans would have died.
No. Japan had ample time and warning to surrender. It chose not to only until it realized that it by not doing so, Japan would cease to exist.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
Bombing a dam is damn hard. seen from the air they are very small targets. And they are concrete and over built. even if you hit the top you have not done much damage. to destroy the dam you have to hit is near the bottom where the water pressure is high. hence the need for a raid on the ground: to hard to hit.
Enter the skip bomb. the Skip bomb is a spinning cyllindric bomb dropped in the water above the dam. it skips, skips, skips and slams in to wall of the dam. but it does not explode. instead the back spin makes it claw its way down the side the dam where it detonates near the bottom.
there's lots on the web on this, including . http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/case_nazidams/
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Thanks for proving my point that what 90% of Norwegians believe is in any way relevant to the reality of the Iraq situation. 90% of people are always opposed to war, even if their own nation is indirectly threatened.
There are times when you have to look beyond the poll numbers and do what is right. Unfortunately, in Old Europe, there are no Churchills. There sure are a lot of Chamberlains though.
That's quite sad.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
Robert Jungk and richard Rhodes both say that the Nazi's were not working on an atomic bomb. Read "Brighter than a 1000 suns" by Jungk and "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Rhodes.
This man was a terrorist. And, one could argue, a "cowardly terrorist" - he didn't go on the boat and go down with it. He'd done other things more classically heroic, but the bombing of the ferry Hydro was not an act of heroism. At best, it was militarily necessary.
You got it bassackwards. Its is the U235 that fissions and it is about 1/140th of natural uranium.
The U238 can be added around a U235 core in order to increase the yeild.
The ferry incident was merely an extension of this first effort. The ferry was carrying parts from the reactor and the remaining supply of heavy water back to germany to be used in further atomic research. He blew it up to stop that, and he was greatly saddened by the fact that there were several norweigans on board at the time.
As well, Norway wasn't neutral, it was occupied by germany and as such was part of the Nazi war effort.
The UK one The Heroes of Telemark, and a much less known one, because it was norwegian. I can't even manage to find the name of the norwegian one, though I've seen it. The latter is a real documentary, and while it may not have the same suspense, it is much more true to the real story. If that's of interest, of course...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"Was it the
abundance of energy in Norway?"
Yes, you've hit the nail on the head there. Norway has tons of hydroelectric energy potential, and making heavy water requires lots of energy: first you have to separate H20 into H2 + O2 by electrolysis, and then you have to cool the H2 to a liquid and distill out the D2. Then you recombine to form the heavy water. In all this makes the process so energy-intensive that you basically need an entire power plant to provide for a heavy water plant.
After the german's realized the insecurity of the facility in Norway, they tried to move the facility parts back to germany, but were again failed when this same guy sank the ferry that was transporting the components.
The Germans weren't even close to making the bomb so the raid on the Norsk Hydroelectric plant and other destruction of heavy water didn't really make a difference.
First, heavy water is not the only moderator available to someone who wants to make a chain reaction (the first US pile used very pure carbon) and heavy water isn't used in an atomic weapon (although it is used in a thermonuclear weapon but you have to crawl before you can run.)
Second, the Germans didn't even have the explosive material to make a bomb. In an atomic bomb you can use either plutonium or enriched uranium. The Manhattan Project got it's plutonium from the residue of a self-sustaining chain reaction and the Germans hadn't even completed a self-sustaining chain reaction by the war's end, hell they weren't even close. Heisenberg kept insisting on creating these elaborate designs of natural uranium for the pile such as concentric spheres or huge disks which took a lot of time and labor to produce when the best configuration for a chain reaction is small cyclinders which was the only configuration the Manhattan Project ever used. Using enriched uranium was just out of the question for the overworked German war machine. America had the money and resources to build gaseous diffusion plants and centrifuges, but what with fighting two fronts Germany had better things to do with its money and Heisenberg was not really pushing for more resources since he couldn't convince himself let alone Hitler that they would be able to produce a bomb.
And then had they somehow had a chain reaction they would have to extract the plutonium (not easy), then they still have to construct the bomb (not easy), and figure out a way of delivering it (not easy.) For more information I highly recommend the Richard Rhodes book, Making of the Atomic Bomb.
I have seen the Nazi heavy water artifacts. (and other artifacts) For many years in the 1980's the University of Michigan had ampules of heavy water (double ended sealed glass vials) on display in the old chemistry building in central quad area on main floor toward the east. Lots of universities have interesting artifacts in display cases, including the worlds smallest MOVINGmotor at caltech and other exibits.
The nazi heavy water display was fascinating because the vial had pretty high quality white stickers with red swastika prominently on them. The display would not have been complete without the sticker obviously.
The german heavy water exhibit looked cool.
At that time the Univ of Michigan harbored Dr Mengeles lab book results (and luftwaffe freezing of human spine in artic temp brine, and decompression tests on humans) and was in the flack.
I noticed hundreds of rare Nazi books being stolen or defaced one by one from the MASSIVE collection (yes massive) grad student library at the Univ of Michigan . The book that I thought was the most fascinating was a german book of all uniforms for a particular year... I was shocked by the futuristic and overly high-tech look of the White winter SS officers uniform (formal version?). It looked like it hopped out of a start trek movie. It was a small book, but it too was stolen or removed many years later when I tried to take a glance at it and perhaps color photocopy it to prove to people how futuristic and out of place that uniform looked. All the books were in german , row upon row, and I did not know a word of german.
The librayy entrance of the library had a display on vigilante vandalism... jews and arabs were detroying each others books each week and leaving destoyed volumes (sometimes with graffitti) in the building itslef, but sometimes stealing them. I asked them why the religious zealots were desroying each others "indfidel books" and they told me THAT IS NOTHING COMPARED TO THE DESTRUCTION OF ATHIEST BOOKS BY CHRISTIANS. I replied "huh?"and they said, that christians steal, or check out and "lose" all the most provocative athiest books and that they REFUSE TO RESTOCK and REORDER THEM. They had so few it was an easy targert goal to work on I assume, as opposed to the muslim and jewiosh works.
I then asked a country librarian about censorship destruction of books by religious nuts, especially books in athiesm and they concurred that it is common.
Lots of closed minded people despise Germans and their Nazi era-engineering, as much as despise books on athiesm. People should learn from the past. Not celebrate acts ofsabotage for sabotage's sack. Trusted patrons in a Library, and trusted workers at a hydroelectric plant that extracts heavy water, should not be celebrated for treachery and sabotage. It is a form of dishonesty. And truly just people hate dishonesty
Reposted because the first one got modded -1 by an idiot.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were BOTH of major military importance to the Japanese which made them candidates for bombing.
Hiroshima contained the 2nd Army Headquarters, which commanded the defense of all of southern Japan. The city was a communications center, a storage point, and an assembly area for troops. To quote a Japanese report, "Probably more than a thousand times since the beginning of the war did the Hiroshima citizens see off with cries of 'Banzai' the troops leaving from the harbor."
Nagasaki had been one of the largest sea ports in southern Japan and was of great war-time importance because of its many and varied industries, including the production of ordnance, ships, military equipment, and other war materials. The narrow long strip attacked was of particular importance because of its industries.
Also you might want to realize that without using the atomic bombs the invasion of Japan was to take place on Dec 1, 1945. It was to start with the invasion of the Island of Kyushu (Operation Olympic). The invasion was projected to cost the lives of some 245,000 Americans, and 1,000,000 Japanese, far more than died in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.
The Japanese had no plans on surrender and the reason no major battles were taking place is because the Japanese were consolidating their forces for 'Ketsu-Go'; the plan to defend their homeland.
As part of Ketsu-Go, the Japanese were building 20 suicide take-off strips in southern Kyushu with underground hangars. They also had 35 camouflaged airfields and nine seaplane bases. On the night before the expected invasion, 50 Japanese seaplane bombers, 100 former carrier aircraft and 50 land based army planes were to be launched in a suicide attack on the fleet.
The Japanese had 58 more airfields on Korea, western Honshu and Shikoku, which also were to be used for massive suicide attacks. Allied intelligence had established that the Japanese had no more than 2500 aircraft of which they guessed 300 would be deployed in suicide attacks.
In August 1945, unknown to Allied intelligence, the Japanese still had 5651 army and 7074 navy aircraft, for a total of 12,725 planes of all types. Every village had some type of aircraft manufacturing facility. Hidden in mines, railway tunnels, viaducts and in basements of department stores, work was being done to construct new planes.
Additionally, the Japanese were building newer and more effective models of the Okka, a rocket propelled bomb much like the German V-1, but flown by a suicide pilot. When the invasion became imminent, Ketsu-Go called for a four-fold aerial plan of attack to destroy up to 800 Allied ships.
While Allied ships were approaching Japan, but still in the open seas, an elite force of 2000 army and navy fighters would take off to fight to the death to control the skies over Kyushu. A second force of 330 non-combat pilots were to attack the main body of the task force to keep it from using fire support and air cover to protect the troop-carrying transports. While these two forces were engaged, a third force of suicide planes was to hit the American transports.
As the invasion convoys approached their anchorages, another 2000 suicide planes were to be launched in waves of 200 to 300, to be used in hour by hour attacks.
American troops would be arriving in about 180 lightly armed transports and cargo vessels. The Japanese defenders would be the hardcore of the home army. These troops were well fed and well equipped. They were familiar with the terrain, had stockpiles of arms and ammunition, and had developed an effective system of transportation and supply almost invisible from the air. Many of these Japanese troops were the elite of the army, and they were swollen with a fanatical fighting spirit. Japan's network of beach defenses consisted of off-shore mines, thousands of suicide scuba divers attacking landing craft, and mines planted on the beaches.
You say in your post "Know your history, and you can see many very striking paralels..." I think before you look for any parallels you should first learn your history and find out exactly WHY things happened the way they did. If after knowing of what awaited in Operation Olympic and then Operation Coronet you still come to the same conclusion.... I say we're damn lucky you're not in any decision making capacity.
I try to make everyone's day a little more surreal.
Reading about the clandestine operations run by the Allies is always really fun. Operation XX (double-cross, get it) in particular was amazing. One man, code-named Garbo, got Hitler to believe that the entire Normandy invasion was an extensive feignt for an invasion at Calais. Hitler held back reinforcements for days.
Another squad put an abrasive in axle grease to effectively sabotage Nazi transportation.
And a radio operator was captured and forced to send Nazi messages. There was a fail-safe system in which all uncoerced messages contained a deliberate error, so that a perfect message would mean the sender was compromised. However, the people at base forgot about this protocol and kept on sending people to their deaths. Then the radio operator started to send "compromised" in parts at the end and beginning of messages but to no avail. When two POW escaped to friendly territory and warned them of the radio operator's fate, he was forced to send a message that they were in fact German spies. They were executed.
Really good reading.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
You have misunderstood the separation process they used. It turns out that electrolysis shows a very strong isotope effect: H comes off up to seven times faster than D at the negative electrode. They exploited this fact in a cascade of electrolytic cells.
Nowadays a different process is used, based on the shift with temperature of the equilibrium of the reaction H2O + HDS transforming to/from HDO + H2S. But this wasn't invented until after the war.
If the 'hydrogen economy' based on electrolytic production of hydrogen ever takes off, then anyone will be able to make heavy water at low marginal cost, which means nuclear proliferation will become much easier -- anyone will be able to build compact reactors using natural (unenriched) uranium as fuel.
Here, basically the German's had abandoned the idea of a "nuclear bomb" because they belived that the amount of uranium required for a critical mass would require something on the order of a giant barge to deliver, making it impractical as a weapon. Here is information on Hiesenberg's reaction to hearing of the Allied nuke.
And honestly Bosnia shouldn't have been our problem. Neither should have Iraq or Somalia. That is what the UN is for. Unfortunately the UN has proven itself to be completely impotent. I am still sickened by the Srebrenica massacre where the UN set up a safe haven, put Dutch troops there, and just watched idly by while 7,000 Bosnian men were killed because they were the "wrong religion".
Except that UN does not have any armed forces of it's own. Nor will or should it have any in the forseeable future. The world isn't ready for a global government yet, unfortunatelly. Best we can realisticly have right now is UN mandating use of force by it's member states.
I also object the statement that "the UN has proven itself to be completely impotent." I too am sickened by Srebrenica. But to say that the UN or the Dutch "watched idly by" the massacre is simply slanderous. The lightly armed UN/Dutch troops guarding Srebrenica were outnumbered, outgunned and cut off from suport. Would the Serbs have attacked had the UN troops refused allow the Serbs in? I don't know, but I can't blame the commanders on the field too much for not gambling with the lives of their soldiers.
Would US commanders in that situation have done anything different? Probably not. Although it must be said that it is unlikely that an US commander would find himself in that situation, as the US does not send out lightly armed ground troops into danger. Military considerations have not always been sufficently present in UN planning, hopefully a better balance has now been found.
East Timor and Angola come to mind as succesful recent UN missions. Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia are now at peace. There were serious errors and failures in the Balkan missions but they were successes in that the wars are kept local and the war-mongers were checked.
For all his tough words Tony Blair may find it impossible to lead the UK into war without UN Security Council resolution mandating it. There is no threat of force against the UK by any objecting nation, and there needs to be none. The internal war opposition will gain strenght in the absense of the UN mandate and, I belive and hope, be strong enough to prevent the UK involvement. That would an impressive feat by the UN.
Would the US go to war alone, without the UK? Militarily they could do it. There is little that the rest of world can do if the US attacks Iraq, even if it wanted to. That doesn't mean that the UN is impotent, it would mean that the US strong or foolish enough to ignore the rest of the world.
--Flam
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers - Pablo Picasso
The idea that the Japanese exploded a test atomic bomb is completely, utterly ludicrous. Their program was pathetic; they had very little resources devoted to it, and made little progress. Compare this to the US Manhattan project, which reached a size comparable to the US pre-war auto industry. Japan simply didn't have the industrial might to succeed.