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Drawing uncovered of 'Nazi Nuke'
ninjee writes "Historians working in Germany and the US claim to have found a 60-year-old diagram showing a Nazi nuclear bomb.
It is the only known drawing of a "nuke" made by Nazi experts and appears in a report held by a private archive.
The researchers who brought it to light say the drawing is a rough schematic and does not imply the Nazis built, or were close to building, an atomic bomb.
But a detail in the report hints some Nazi scientists may have been closer to that goal than was previously believed.
The report containing the diagram is undated, but the researchers claim the evidence points to it being produced immediately after the end of the war in Europe. It deals with the work of German nuclear scientists during the war and lacks a title page, so there is no evidence of who composed it.
One historian behind the discovery, Rainer Karlsch, caused a storm of controversy earlier this year when he claimed to have uncovered evidence the Nazis successfully tested a primitive nuclear device in the last days of WWII. A number of historians rejected the claim.
The drawing is published in an article written for Physics World magazine by Karlsch and Mark Walker, professor of history at Union College in Schenectady, US."
Second, if you look at the diagram you'll see that it is initiated a gun-type trigger, something that is impossible for Pu. This makes the diagram look like the work of someone that doesn't know what they are doing. Maybe this was deliberate (though rather obvious) misinformation by a scientist who didn't want Hitler to get the bomb.
Third, it is undated, and unnamed, from an unknown source. Not worth even reading.
In any event, Germany had no means of effectively delivering such a weapon. They lacked the heavy aircraft which the USA used. The V2 rocket only had a fraction of the payload capacity needed. The best they could have done is load it on a cargo vessel and attempt to sail into someone's harbour. Or leave it behind in a city like Paris after retreating. Neither of which would have been terribly impressive, since they would be ground-bursts and not much different from a few tons of dynamite.
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It's no secret that Heisenberg worked on a nuclear weapon during the WWII. However, some claim that he deliberately didn't make any real progress. There's plenty of more information here.
Underholdning.info
Like land mines in Vietnam and Cambodia?
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Since the link in your post goes the website of a fictional organisation that Doctor Who belongs to, perhaps the moderation of your post as 'informative' was a little misplaced?
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
He claims to have stopped the scientists from developing the bomb any further - not because he was opposed to the concept if such a weapon (he certainly wasn't). The reason was that it was clear it would need much more time than was available in order to complete the work.
What was considered feasible was the idea of an "energy producing Uranium motor" for use in vehicles, and research was switched in that direction around 1944.
Antony Beevor's excellent book on the fall of Berlin also makes it clear that the Germans' nuclear research facilities were well known to the Russian's and were a major influence on Stalin's tactical decisions regarding Berlin. He was determined to obtain the fruits of this research.
The book also makes clear that Heisenburg did not try to sabotage the programme but was eager to succeed. This view is also backed up by the famous meeting between Heisenburg and Nils Bohr in Copenhagen in 1941 and Hesinburg's views at that time.
Of course even though one new where Heisenburg was in 1941 you could never tell what direction he was taking at that time.
Read 'The Man in the High Castle' by Philip K Dick, it explores an alternate reality in which the combined Germano-Japanese forces won the war.
Excellent book
I'm currently reading Karlsch's latest book "Hitlers Bombe" which unfortunately has not been tranlated in English yet.Anyway in this book he's done very good work demonstrating that the Germans were VERY actively conducting nuclear research during the war.They even had a comittee working on the concept of nuclear weapons before the U.S had the faintest idea of what they were about (early 1939).What the germans did wrong was that instead of building a giant research/production complex (like the US did with the Manhattan project) they let various institutes/authorities start individual projects between which there was erratic and irregular cooperation.Research was conducted by the Karl Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry in Berlin, the HWA (Heereswaffenamt...Army Weapons Authority?..or something like that :D),the German Post Ministry (!) ,the Navy,companies like Siemens and Degussa and several other individuals and insitutions.This obviously led to research slowing dowm and ressources being wasted.Now..as to the germans lacking in raw materials ,this is not entirely right since they had the oldest european Uranium mines in Joachimstal ,belgian mines in africa (after they conquered Belgium) and of course the norwegian heavy water production facility of the "Norsk Hydro" company(as norway was under their control as well).Karlsch also demonstrates they did built a reactor which nevertheless was rather imperfect and could not enrich uranium to the extent they required.In the end he claims that research which was recently conducted in the region of Thueringen proves the detonation of a *radioactive* bomb.Combining various elements (information from russian archives,eyewitness reports etc) he estimates that this was most likely a "tactical" fission/fusion nuclear weapon.
Du kan glomma dina ensama stunder, du kan lita paa teknikens under - Wilmer X
Nobody knew about those properties of radioactive materials in WWII.
There is a well recorded event during the nuclear research in Germany during WWII where an accident happened and many researchers died of radiation poisoning. And while I don't know for sure, I assume that the western researchers also knew of the dangers of radiation, since even Marie Curie had suffered from radiation poisoning. Most probably no one expected there to be so much from a bomb, however.
Also you have to remember this was a very, very dirty war. It was pretty much no holds barred. Gas attacks of various kinds, of example, were used.
Poison gas was NOT used by any side in WWII. It was in WWI where poison gasses were used by both sides.
>>If Hitler was a complete madman, you would think he would have used chemical weapons on the invading Russians. The 2 sides had basically brutalized each other, themselves and anyone who got in their way for 4 years... the only answer must be they lacked the means of delivery?
From my reading, it seems like Hitler was against chemical weapons used on the battlefield. He was a soldier durring WWI and he spent quite a while recovering from a gas attack.
It is quite a contradiction that a person like him would not gas enemy troops( even as times got desperate) but was willing to do everything else that came to mind.
It's not the size of your stack that matters, it's how you push and pop
They had a very informative special on Discovery about Germany and the nuclear research during WW2. The story about the uranium on a sub and the other story about the entire shipment of heavy water being sunk in a lake set them so far back they couldn't catch up again. Things like this in history are probably why it was unanimous to decide to do something about Iraq when they thought they were building WMDs. If Germany had waited a few short years they would have been quite a bit more lethal.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
another link here
Germany used gas to kill thousands of Jews.
It didn't happen nearly as often but it did happen.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
The bombs were dropped largely to intimiadte the USSR, not to force Japan to surrender:
The U.S. knew, on the basis of intercepted communications, that Japan was ready to sue for peace. The Japanese were done for and knew it. With German defeated, Russia was about to focus on them - and after the war, one U.S. study concluded that Soviet entry into the Pacific theater had more on an influence on Japan's surrender than the atomic bomb did.
But we had a shiny new death-toy to show off. And besides, it not like it was white people we were incinerating, it was those sub-human Japs.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
If AC is referring to the same bomb that I'm familiar with, it was a bomb made for dam busting. What they did was spin the barrel shaped bomb towards the dam very quickly then drop it in the water at low altitude a couple hundred yards from the dam. The spin on the bomb would cause it to "bounce" across the water until it hit the dam which would cause it to sink to the base, which would then trigger the bomb to explode.
I was quoted out of context in my autobiography...