German nuclear energy project

The German nuclear energy project was an endeavor by scientists during World War II in Nazi Germany to develop nuclear energy and an atomic bomb for practical use. Unlike the competing Allied effort to develop a nuclear weapon the German effort resulted in two rival teams, one working for the military, the second, a civilian effort co-ordinated by the German Post Office.

Overview

The nuclear research effort most widely discussed was that of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute team led by the physicist Werner Heisenberg. The second was a military team was under scientific leadership of Prof. Kurt Diebner. This millitary team was also associated with Dr. Paul Harteck who helped to develop the gaseous uranium centrifuge invented by Dr. Erich Bagge in 1942. Their team was part of the German Army (Heereswaffenamt Forschungsstelle E), the Kriegsmarine (navy) had a subsidiary team looking at nuclear propulsion for U-boats under Dr. Otto Haxel. Konteradmiral Karl Witzell and Konteradmiral Wilhelm Rein were millitary leaders of the naval nuclear project.

The intentions of Heisenbergs team are a matter of historical controversy, centering on whether or not the scientists involved were attempting to build an atomic bomb for Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. The project was not a military success by any measure.

Effectiveness and implications

It is generally accepted that the Nuclear Age began with the 1938 publication by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman of results that proved Enrico Fermi had observed the bursting of a uranium nucleus, in other words: nuclear fission. Immediately afterwards, Lise Meitner and Otto Robert Frisch described the theoretical mechanisms of fission and revealed that large amounts of binding energy was released in the process. Thus by the beginning of World War II the scientific community was well aware of the early German lead in this area of theoretical physics.

The threat of a Nazi atomic bomb was one of the primary driving forces behind the creation of the British TUBE ALLOYS project which would eventually lead to the Allied nuclear weapons effort under Robert Oppenheimer: the Manhattan Project. (Several Germans eventually would make significant contributions to the Allied nuclear effort.) The German government never did finance a full crash program to develop weapons, as they estimated it could not be completed in time for use in the war, thus the German program was much more limited in capacity and ability when compared to the eventual size and priority of the Manhattan Project. In 1945, a U.S. investigation called Project ALSOS determined that German scientists had only almost reached the point that Allied scientists had reached in 1942, the creation of a sustained nuclear chain reaction, a crucial step for creating a nuclear reactor (which in turn could be used for either peaceful purposes, or for creating plutonium, needed for nuclear weapons). There has been a historical debate, however, as to whether the German scientists purposefully sabotaged the project by under-representing their chances at success, or whether their estimates were based in either error or inadequacy.

Post war

After the war, a number of German scientists including Heisenberg, Otto Hahn (who had co-discovered nuclear fission), and Max von Laue (an ardent anti-Nazi), were taken captive by Allied forces and put under secret watch at Farm Hall, England, as part of Operation Epsilon. Their conversations were recorded as Allied analysts attempted to discover the extent of German knowledge about nuclear weapons. The results were inconclusive, but they allowed them to hear the results of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, which sent Hahn into a near-suicidal despair. By the next morning, Heisenberg claimed to have worked out exactly how the American atomic bomb must have worked, judging from reports of the damage and explosive size, and gave a lecture to the rest of the captive scientists on the effort.

While it is clear that Heisenberg had a firm understanding of the priciples involved, he most likely greatly overestimated the amount of fissionable material required by several orders of magnitude.

Analysis and legacy

There have been numerous other cited factors for the failure of the German program. One is that the repressive policies under Hitler encouraged many top scientists to flee Europe, including many who worked on the Allied project (Heisenberg himself was a target of party propaganda for some time during the Deutsche Physik movement). Another, put forth by ALSOS scientific head Samuel Goudsmit, was that the stifling, utilitarian political atmosphere adversely affected the quality of the science done. Another is that the German homeland was nowhere as secure from air attack as was the USA, whose own bomb project resulted in the construction of many massive centralized factories and production facilities which would have been prime targets for Allied bombing raids.

In a 2005 book, Berlin historian Rainer Karlsch published a book, Hitlers Bombe (in German), which was reported in the press as claiming to provide evidence that Nazi Germany had tested crude nuclear weapons on Rügen island and near Ohrdruf, Thuringia, killing many war prisoners under the supervision of the SS. Some press reports, however, have reported the book as only having claimed to provide evidence that the Nazis have been successful with a radiological weapon (a "dirty bomb"), not a "true" nuclear weapon powered by nuclear fission. Karlsch's primary evidence, according to his publisher's reports, are "vouchers" for the "tests" and a patent for a plutonium weapon from 1941. Karlsch cites a witness to the Ohrdruf blast and another to the scorched bodies of victims afterwards. He also claims to have radioactive samples of soil from the sites. At Nuremburg trials in 1946 Nazi munitions minister Albert Speer was questioned by prosecutors about the Ordruf blast, in an attempt to hold Speer accountable for it's victims.

Mainstream American historians have expressed skepticism towards any claims that Nazi Germany was in any way close to success at producing a true nuclear weapon, citing the copious amounts of evidence which seem to indicate the contrary. Others counter that Prof. Kurt Diebner had a project which was far more advanced than that of Dr. Werner Heisenberg.

An important footnote to the German nuclear effort is that as part of the the Paris Treaties of 1955 and Adenauer's "non-nuclear pledge", Germany has perpetually forsworn nuclear (as well as chemical and biological) weapons. It was this pledge that ultimately cleared the way for West Germany's entry into NATO.

See also

• Nuclear weapon
• History of nuclear weapons
• List of countries with nuclear weapons
• List of nuclear weapons
• Nuclear testing
• Japanese atomic program
• Copenhagen (play)

External links

• GlobalSecurity.org – German Special Weapons

Further reading

• Jeremy Bernstein and David Cassidy, Hitler's Uranium Club: The Secret Recordings at Farm Hall (2001).
• Charles Frank, ed. Operation Epsilon: the Farm Hall transcripts (1993).
• Samuel Goudsmit, ALSOS: The failure of German science (1947).
• Rainer Karlsch, Hitlers Bombe (Munich: DVA, 2005).
• Thomas Powers, Heisenberg's War: The Secret History of the German Bomb (Knopf, 1993).
• Paul Lawrence Rose, Heisenberg and the Nazi Atomic Bomb Project: A Study in German Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).
• Mark Walker, German National Socialism and the Quest for Nuclear Power, 1939–1949 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
• Mark Walker, Nazi science: Myth, truth, and the German atomic bomb (New York: Plenum Press, 1995).