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Chemical Evidence Shows the Nazis Weren't At All Close To Having the Bomb
TheAlexKnapp writes: The Nazis winning World War II by getting the bomb first is a staple of alt-history and it's the reason why James T. Kirk lost the love of his life, Edith Keeler. Einstein also noted possible German efforts to build one in his letter to FDR urging the U.S. develop an atomic weapon. But it turns out there really wasn't a race to build a bomb at all. Materials from Germany's atomic weapons program have been studied by an international team of researchers, who determined that Germany never achieved a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction — something that Fermi and his colleagues had accomplished in 1942 — which was a key step to actually building an atomic weapon. This chemical evidence supports other historical accounts that the German atomic program never achieved this result.
of our Nazi multiverse
The allies might have determined Germany was ready to "receive" an atomic bomb via air mail though.
That news is something like 65 years late - a new /. record!!
Physical evidence has shown that nearly everyone bombed or threatened -- Iran, Iraq, etc. -- weren't all that close. On the other hand, all 'friends', from Israel to Pakistan, got a free ride and material support.
Jáchimov (today's Czech Republic) was determined to be the source of the Uranium ore German scientists were experimenting with, and it's nice that they added a "fun fact" for the town, but the most important fun fact, they omitted. Silver coins minted since 1519 in Jáchimov (called St. Joachimsthal at the time) were so common that the name Joachimsthaler for the coins got shortened to Thaler which eventually lead to the U.S. Dollar.
So no Nazi atom bomb is a big dower for them.
I talked to a producer who knew some History Channel people, and she said they called it the Hitler Channel. No mater what series, if you could tie something to Hitler or the Nazis then it was a big plus. She said that when they had a series on the Spartans they compared them to Germany during WWII, and the management was thrilled.
Why is Snark Required?
The History Channel has a lock on "OMG!!! the Nazis almost won the war, what if their super secret had been built, we would all be speaking GERMAN and eating sauerkraut, OMG!!!". Of course was either only a prototype or was never built at all, but who cares, RATINGS!!!
So no Nazi atom bomb is a big dower for them.
I talked to a producer who knew some History Channel people, and she said they called it the Hitler Channel. No mater what series, if you could tie something to Hitler or the Nazis then it was a big plus. She said that when they had a series on the Spartans they compared them to Germany during WWII, and the management was thrilled.
The Nazis could easily have won the war, if Hitler wasn't insane and had settled for controlling mainland Europe west of Stalin. Only an idiot fights on two fronts. Only the heir to the throne of the Kingdom of Idiots invades Russia during the winter. If Hitler had not betrayed Stalin, he could have held mainland Europe indefinitely. If he had not declared war after Pearl Harbor, but had let Japan fight the United States alone, the war would have dragged for an extra decade. But an extended war against the biggest industrial powers in the world is impossible without technological advantage that cannot be countered.
I call BS! If they weren't close to a nuclear reaction, how did they get to the moon?
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Well we already knew that the Nazis were very far from a nuclear weapon. They didn't even have the theories right by the end of the war. So this is just confirming something that wasn't under much question.
Heisenberg himself didn't realise that with compression the mean free path becomes much shorter and hence you can get a supercritical assembly with much less fissile material than you would otherwise need. When told of the Hiroshima explosion he calculated that the Americans had just managed to refine 500kg of U235 in order to make a bomb. An overestimate by about a factor of ten.
The German physicists also discarded plutonium early on as an alternative, and whey they discovered their error it was far too late in the programme to do anything about it.
Also Heisenberg himself seems to not have been too keen on the idea, always downplaying the possibility, and trying to convince Bohr that on-one should work on developing the bomb.
Stefan Axelsson
At least the USA are learning from history: It worked once, it worked again.
I read a biography of Hitler some time ago. According to the biography, Hitler wasn't interested about atomic bomb, because the scientists said that it would take many years to complete the bomb. Hitler was concerned about his health even in 1930s, and he didn't think he would be alive anymore when the bomb would be ready. Because of this, he didn't think it would be useful to use resources for atomic bomb research.
Not the first time the US thought an enemy had WMDs but didn't, huh?
I thought this is clear since 1945. Germany never came close to obtaining a critical mass of fissible material.
We just thought they were close to having the bomb because someone found a prototype of a digital clock in the wreckage of the Reichstag.
So exactly what everyone has been saying without variation since the Alsos teams arrived in Paris in 1944 turns out to be correct?
Slow news day.
p.s. Had a nice chat with one of the Alsos guys once. Described showing up in one of the labs and everyone there being shocked to see just who was walking through the door. All their former colleges were in fatigues, which they kinda thought was weird. But then when they explained why they were there, and what they were trying to stop, all of the Germans immediately went "What?!? No, we were never doing that!" but then understood why they were in uniform and armed.
Mint Nazi Propaganda on Slashdot, modded +2?
Well, that's a first.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Yes, but it wasn't so much America going 'they have them, we have to stop them' so much as it was 'we have them, and we really wanna use them'.
Both "english" and "german" in your sig should be capitalized.
Allied bombings and sabotage by resistance fighters contributed as well. It's possible the German physicists could have made more progress if they had secure places to do their work like Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, and Hanford. And of course the Nazis sabotaged themselves by chasing off the best scientists in Europe.
Heisenberg himself ... calculated that the Americans had just managed to refine 500kg of U235 in order to make a bomb. An overestimate by about a factor of ten.
As it turned out, the Americans also overestimated the amount of material needed by another factor of ten. They had enough material for over twenty. but they used it all on three bombs.
Because the War to Japan was not won by the Bomb. Japanese already lost people by thousands every day. What mattered was the arrival of the soviets on the Japan north coast, threatening them of ending up under Stalin's hand. They preferred the gentler US domination and capitulated for that.
Also see the Nuclear Graphite History section for some details.
"The only way to stop this is by attacking the infrastructure of Iran's nuclear program."
Yes, let's attack a sovereign nation without any provocation because we don't like what they are doing and they could possibly build a bomb and theoretically might attack us someday.
It is people like you - those who would rather circumvent peaceful negotiations in favor of murderous pre-emptive strikes - who are the biggest danger to our planet. Fortunately you are the minority.
But please keep your fear mongering to yourself. The world doesn't need any more wars or violence.
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
I built an atomic bomb for my grade six Science Fair exhibit.
I like how hindsight is used to attempt to control virtually everything on this site.
You fight wars with what you believe at the time based on the evidence you have available, it's all you can ever do. All these people talking about how Hitler was a pompous ass and that's how he lost the war, well guess what - if we would have believed that Germany was too backwards to have been developing the kind of technology we were working on, and quit working on it ourselves because reasons, then that would have made the US and their allies the pompous asses.
And running around talking about how people were "wrong" and "liars" because the evidence that they had wasn't as reliable as they thought at the time, and trying to punish them for their actions because of it - well, that's damning them if they do, and damning them if they don't. If you see smoke in your building you run out and call the FD. You don't sit there and think "oh must be the commies fucking with us again". If it turns out later to happen to be some kid playing with a smoke device they stole from some groupies the night before, that doesn't make you stupid.
On invading hostile countries with weapons of mass destruction, but only criticized for 50% of it.
Mod me down, I shall become more off-topic than you could possibly imagine.
I never understood why she had to die. They should have just taken her with them. The effect would likely be the same. If it mattered so much they probably could have used their advanced medical knowlege to fake her death. The only change to history would be the disappearance of her body. How bad could that be?
speed up the experimental work, which is at present being carried on within the limits of the budgets of University laboratories, by providing funds, if such funds be required
because Germany:
has actually stopped the sale of uranium from the Czechoslovakian mines, which she has taken over. That she should have taken such early action might perhaps be understood on the ground that the son of the German Under-Secretary of State, Von Weishlicker [sic], is attached to the Kaiser Wilheim Institute in Berlin where some of the American work on uranium is now being repeated.
Well known war profiteer Einstein wrote that to further the interests of his weapons manufacturing company and his international banking cartel buddies. Also, big oil.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Interestingly, it seems there are a lot of misconceptions about that what was going on over there. One might draw parallels to what's going on over there today in Syria, but it seems that we're not in the business of fucking assholes so much anymore. No one has the energy to fuck those assholes anymore.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The English word "slavery" has a completely different root, it came originally from the Greek "sklabos". Slav as in ethnicity comes from the slavic word "slovo", meaning "word" - as in people speaking an understandable language. In fact, even today, after more than a millennium of separation all Slavic languages are still partially mutually intelligible.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Szilard actually wrote the letter (Einstein only signed it). Regardless, it only stated that Germany had ceased selling uranium from Czechoslovakian mines. It does not mention that Germany is actually working on an uranium bomb. The letter urges further research on chain reactions. The letter does not urge that the US develop an uranium bomb.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The quote according to Eddie Layton was, "To remind myself not to be a horse's ass." It's unfortunate that Nimitz isn't as well known as some of the other WW2 principals, as he did a very good job as CinCPAC.
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Yes there was a race, I saw it on Hogan's Heros! For me, that's definitive.
It seemed to me that I already read an analysis of the purity of the graphite used in a buffer wasn't high enough and thus was more of a blocker than a buffer. The result was that the failed experiment then diverted the Nazis from an efficient path down a far harder path. That the Manhattan project was effectively based on the same experiment but done at ever higher purities of graphite until it worked and confirmed what they thought about neutrons.
You make a good point that it wasn't Germany's strategic aim to inherit a nuclear wasteland of Europe. But perhaps they might not have minded turning the US into nuclear wasteland to stop them.
The spelling is JÃchymov.
As far as actually using them offensively, their only real target might be Israel, in which case you would have a mini-MAD scenario.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
We'll give some land to the chinks and the niggers, but we DON'T want the Irish.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
How can we blame this on George Bush?
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From all the text in the original item and Forbes blog, there definitely was a race. Several races, in fact. Aryans, Jews, Italians, Mixed-ethnicity Americans, etc, as well as the race for the bomb. Thank God, the Germans did not win, or come close enough to create lots of radioactive material with which to blitz England with dirty bombs and V2's. They might have been set to explode at 150 .. 1000 meters to pollute and require effort to clean up.