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Otto Bihrer
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Studied at Technical University of Darmstadt17h
Why would nuclear weapons still be possible without Oppenheimer and his
atomic scientists team?
Germany was about 70% there in 1938, way ahead of the USA, but didn’t
make it for two major reasons:

Uranium mining depended on one mine in Africa, which gave scientists the
best chance for the time to get the necessary material. Technology
wasn’t far enough to produce economical and fast uranium from elsewhere.
The Manhattan Project and subsequent nuclear weapons produced by the
United States in the 1940s and 50s used Uranium ore from there, the
Shinkolobwe mine. Before World War II, uranium extracted at Shinkolobwe
was taken to Belgium to be processed. 1200 tons of it was captured by
Germany in 1940 and processed for enrichment. Most of that was captured
by the Soviets by 1945 to use for their Nuclear Program, including the
German scientists, who built the Soviet Nuclear Program with it. 3000
tons went to the USA for the Manhattan Project. By 1943, Germany was carpet-bombed to ashes and industrial capacities were used to build
planes and tanks. Further access after 1941 to gain more Uranium Ore was
made impossible for Germany by the Allies.
German scientists left Germany under the Nazis and went to the USA to
support the Manhattan Project, the remaining Scientists had no
enthusiasm to give Hitler the bomb, Hitler himself was not a
scientifically educated man and was under the strong influence of
Goering, who didn’t understand the potential of the Nuke. In general,
little effort was made after 1938 to produce a Nuke.

Shinkolobwe mine above
The mine was the inspiration for the movie Wakanda
The Soviet Nuclear Program was enabled after the war by imprisoned
German Scientists and the Uranium from Germany, after the Alsos Mission
by USA/Brits gave it to the Soviets from Germany. The USA/UK gave Stalin
the Nuke.
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Audie Chason
· 16h
The main blow to the German effort to produce a bomb was the sabotage of
the Vemork heavy water hydroelectric plant. No heavy water, no chain
reaction.

The historical consensus about the German nuclear program is that it was
a long way from producing a bomb, even if the Norwegian heavy water had
been produced and shipped at the maximum rate.

Norwegian heavy water sabotage - Wikipedia
Sabotage operations with the aim of halting the creation process of Nazi nuclear weapons Norwegian Heavy Water Sabotage Part of World War II
Vemork hydroelectric power plant, circa 1947 Date 1940 – 1944 Location
Result Allied victory The Norwegian heavy water sabotage ( Bokmål : Tungtvannsaksjonen ; Nynorsk : Tungtvassaksjonen ) was a series of
Allied-led efforts to halt German heavy water production via
hydroelectric plants in Nazi Germany-occupied Norway during World War II
, involving both Norwegian commandos and Allied bombing raids. During
the war, the Allies sought to inhibit the German development of nuclear
weapons with the removal of heavy water and the destruction of
heavy-water production plants. The Norwegian heavy water sabotage was
aimed at the 60 MW Vemork power station at the Rjukan waterfall in
Telemark . The hydroelectric power plant at Vemork was built in 1934. It
was the world's first site to mass-produce heavy water (as a byproduct
of nitrogen fixing ), with a capacity of 12 tonnes per year. Before the
German invasion of Norway on 9 April 1940, the French Deuxième Bureau
removed 185 kilograms (408 lb) of heavy water from the Vemork plant in then-neutral Norway. The plant's managing director agreed to lend France
the heavy water for the duration of the war. The French transported it
secretly to Oslo , then to Perth, Scotland , and then to France. The
plant was still capable of producing heavy water, however, [1] and the
Allies were concerned that the Germans would use the facility to produce
more heavy water. Between 1940 and 1944, a series of sabotage actions by
the Norwegian resistance movement and Allied bombing ensured the
destruction of the plant and the loss of its heavy water. These
operations — code-named Grouse, Freshman , and Gunnerside — knocked the plant out of production in early 1943. In Operation Grouse , the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) successfully placed an advance team
of four Norwegians on the Hardanger Plateau above the plant in October
1942. The unsuccessful Operation Freshman was mounted the following
month by British paratroopers, who were to rendezvous with the Operation
Grouse Norwegians and proceed to Vemork. This attempt failed when the
military gliders (and one of their tugs , a Handley Page Halifax )
crashed short of their destination. Except for the crew of one Halifax
bomber, all the participants were killed in the crashes or captured, interrogated and executed by the Gestapo . In February 1943, a team of SOE-trained Norwegian commandos destroyed the production facility in
Operation Gunnerside; this was followed by Allied bombing raids. The
Germans ceased operations, and attempted to move the remaining heavy
water to Germany. Norwegian resistance forces then sank the ferry
carrying the heavy water, the SF Hydro , on Lake Tinn . Background [
edit ] Experimental apparatus with which chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann discovered the nuclear fission of uranium in 1938 Enrico Fermi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_heavy_water_sabotage
Nazis and the Bomb
How close was Hitler to developing a nuclear weapon? https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/nazis-and-the-bomb/
German nuclear program during World War II - Wikipedia
World War II weapons project This article is about German nuclear
research during World War II. For nuclear power decommissioning in
modern Germany, see nuclear power phase-out . Military unit Nazi Germany undertook several research programs relating to nuclear technology ,
including nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors , before and during World
War II . These were variously called Uranverein ( Uranium Club ) or
Uranprojekt ( Uranium Project ). The first effort started in April 1939,
just months after the discovery of nuclear fission in Berlin in December
1938, but ended only a few months later, shortly ahead of the September
1939 German invasion of Poland , for which many notable German
physicists were drafted into the Wehrmacht . A second effort under the administrative purview of the Wehrmacht 's Heereswaffenamt began on
September 1, 1939, the day of the invasion of Poland. The program
eventually expanded into three main efforts: Uranmaschine ( nuclear
reactor ) development, uranium and heavy water production, and uranium
isotope separation . Eventually, the German military determined that
nuclear fission would not contribute significantly to the war, and in
January 1942 the Heereswaffenamt turned the program over to the Reich
Research Council ( Reichsforschungsrat ) while continuing to fund the
activity. The program was split up among nine major institutes where the directors dominated research and set their own objectives. Subsequently,
the number of scientists working on applied nuclear fission began to
diminish as many researchers applied their talents to more pressing
wartime demands. The most influential people in the Uranverein included
Kurt Diebner , Abraham Esau , Walther Gerlach , and Erich Schumann .
Schumann was one of the most powerful and influential physicists in
Germany. Diebner, throughout the life of the nuclear weapon project, had
more control over nuclear-fission research than did Walther Bothe ,
Klaus Clusius , Otto Hahn , Paul Harteck , or Werner Heisenberg . Esau
was appointed as Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring 's plenipotentiary for nuclear-physics research in December 1942, and was succeeded by Walther
Gerlach after he resigned in December 1943. Politicization of German
academia under the Nazi régime of 1933–1945 had driven many physicists, engineers, and mathematicians out of Germany as early as 1933. Those of
Jewish heritage who did not leave were quickly purged, further thinning
the ranks of researchers. The politicization of the universities, along
with German armed forces demands for more manpower (many scientists and technical personnel were conscripted, despite possessing technical and engineering skills), substantially reduced the number of able German physicists. [1] Developments took place in several phases, but in the
words of historian Mark Walker, it ultimately became "frozen at the
laboratory level" with the "modest goal" to "build a nuclear reactor
which could sustain a nuclear fission chain reaction for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_nuclear_program_during_World_War_II Profile photo for Otto Bihrer
Otto Bihrer
· 16h
Pretty much all of it version of the USA/UK/USSR Propaganda. If Hitler
would have supported the bomb, Germany would have had the bomb. But he didn’t, that’s all there is. Facts is, that German Scientists had to
build the bomb for the Soviets with Uranium from Germany given by the
USA to Stalin. The…
(more)
Robert Šimsa
Why did they not beat the Americans in the race for atomic bombs? The
short answer is that whereas the Americans tried to create atomic bombs,
and succeeded, the Germans did not succeed, but also did not really try.
This can best be explained by focusing on the winter of 1941-1942. From
the start of the war until the late fall of 1941, the German "lightning
war" had marched from one victory to another, subjugating most of
Europe. During this period, the Germans needed no wonder weapons. After
the Soviet counterattack, Pearl Harbor, and the German declaration of
war against the United States, the war had become one of attrition. For
the first time, German Army Ordnance asked its scientists when it could
expect nuclear weapons. The German scientists were cautious: while it
was clear that they could build atomic bombs in principle, they would
require a great deal of resources to do so and could not realize such
weapons any time soon. Army Ordnance came to the reasonable conclusion
that the uranium work was important enough to continue at the laboratory
scale, but that a massive shift to the industrial scale, something
required in any serious attempt to build an atomic bomb, would not be
done. This contrasts with the commitment the German leadership made
throughout the war to the effort to build a rocket. They sunk enormous resources into this project, indeed, on the scale of what the Americans invested in the Manhattan Project. Thus Heisenberg and his colleagues
did not slow down or divert their research; they did not resist Hitler
by denying him nuclear weapons. With the exception of the scientists
working on Diebner's nuclear device, however, they also clearly did not
push as hard as they could have to make atomic bombs. They were neither
heroes nor villains, just scientists working on weapons of mass
destruction for Hitler's Germany. Nazis and the Bomb

Robert Naumann
· 4m
Heavy water played no role in nuclear weapons development.

Tony Turner
· 15h
I have never read anything to suggest that Germany or Japan made serious progress on the enrichment of uranium.

Without enriched uranium the bomb would not have worked. The USA
constructed the centrifuges that could handle UF6. If the allies had any suggestion that the Germans were working with Fluorine it would have a
big red warning light and they would have bombed the hell out of the
plant involved. Even more than the famous ball-bearing plant at
Schweinfurt that was attacked again and again.

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Steve Heckman
· 6h
People constantly forget about the logistics need for such an effort.
Note It was not just designing the bomb, it was building all of the
support needed, including what was required for large scale enrichment.


This photo was from the Wikipedia write up, it claimed that in 1945 some
82,000 were employed by Clinton Engineer Works in Oak Ridge.

The Manhattan Project employed nearly 130,000 people at its peak and
cost nearly US$2 billion (equivalent to about $27 billion in 2023), over
80 percent of which was for building and operating the plants that
produced the fissile material. Research and production took place at
more than 30 sites across the US, the UK, and Canada.
Japan & Germany were never going to develop a weapon without their own Manhattan-scale project, and I dont think they could have afforded one.

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Eduardo Galiano Riveros
· 3h
Nope, that was not the method used; uranium was enriched via gaseous
diffusion at the K-25 facility, and via electromagnetic separation using calutrons at the Y-12 facility, both at Oak Ridge.

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