German nuclear program during World War II
German nuclear program | |
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Reich Research Council |
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
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
Discovery of nuclear fission
In December 1938, German chemist
First Uranverein
On 22 April 1939, after hearing a colloquium paper by
Other 1939 initiatives
The industrial firm Auergesellschaft had a substantial amount of "waste" uranium from which it had extracted radium. After reading a June 1939 paper by Siegfried Flügge, on the technical use of nuclear energy from uranium,[13][14] Nikolaus Riehl, the head of the scientific headquarters at Auergesellschaft, recognized a business opportunity for the company, and in July he went to the HWA (Heereswaffenamt, Army Ordnance Office) to discuss the production of uranium. The HWA was interested and Riehl committed corporate resources to the task. The HWA eventually provided an order for the production of uranium oxide, which took place in the Auergesellschaft plant in Oranienburg, north of Berlin.[15][16]
Second Uranverein
The second Uranverein began after the HWA squeezed out the Reichsforschungsrat (RFR, Reich Research Council) of the REM and started the formal German nuclear weapons project under military auspices. This second Uranverein was formed on 1 September 1939, the day World War II began, and had its first meeting[citation needed][17] on 16 September 1939. The meeting was organized by Kurt Diebner, advisor to the HWA, and held in Berlin. The invitees included Walther Bothe, Siegfried Flügge, Hans Geiger, Otto Hahn, Paul Harteck, Gerhard Hoffmann, Josef Mattauch, and Georg Stetter. A second meeting was held soon thereafter and included Klaus Clusius, Robert Döpel, Werner Heisenberg, and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker. Also at this time, the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut für Physik (KWIP, Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics, after World War II the Max Planck Institute for Physics), in Berlin-Dahlem, was placed under HWA authority, with Diebner as the administrative director, and the military control of the nuclear research commenced.[11][12][18]
Heisenberg said in 1939 that the physicists at the (second) meeting said that "in principle atomic bombs could be made.... it would take years.... not before five." He said, "I didn't report it to the Führer until two weeks later and very casually because I did not want the Führer to get so interested that he would order great efforts immediately to make the atomic bomb. Speer felt it was better that the whole thing should be dropped and the Führer also reacted that way." He said they presented the matter in this way for their personal safety as the probability (of success) was nearly zero, but if many thousands (of) people developed nothing, that could have "extremely disagreeable consequences for us."[19] So we turned the slogan around to make use of warfare for physics not "make use of physics for warfare."[20] Erhard Milch asked how long America would take and was told 1944 though the group between ourselves thought it would take longer, three or four years.[21]
When it was apparent that the nuclear weapon project would not make a decisive contribution to ending the war in the near term, control of the KWIP was returned in January 1942 to its umbrella organization, the
- Walther Bothe – Director of the Institut für Physik (Institute for Physics) at the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut für medizinische Forschung (KWImF, Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Medical Research, after 1948 the Max-Planck-Institut für medizinische Forschung), in Heidelberg.
- Measurement of nuclear constants. 6 physicists
- Klaus Clusius – Director of the Institute for Physical Chemistry at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
- Isotope separation and heavy water production. ca. 4 physical chemists and physicists
- Kurt Diebner – Director of the HWA Versuchsstelle (testing station) in Gottow and of the RFR experimental station in Stadtilm, Thuringia; he was also an advisor to the HWA on nuclear physics.
- Measurement of nuclear constants. ca. 6 physicists
- Otto Hahn – Director of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Chemie (KWIC, Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry, after World War II the Max Planck Institut für Chemie – Otto Hahn Institut), in Berlin-Dahlem.
- Transuranic elements, fission products, isotope separation, and measurement of nuclear constants. ca. 6 chemists and physicists
- Paul Harteck – Director of the Physical Chemistry Department of the University of Hamburg.
- Heavy water production and isotope production. 5 physical chemists, physicists, and chemists
- University of Leipzig until summer 1942; thereafter acting director of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Physik (Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics), in Berlin-Dahlem.
- Uranmaschine, isotope separation, and measurement of nuclear constants. ca. 7 physicists and physical chemists
- Hans Kopfermann – Director of the Second Experimental Physics Institute at the Georg-August University of Göttingen.
- Isotope separation. 2 physicists
- Nikolaus Riehl – Scientific Director of the Auergesellschaft.
- Uranium production. ca. 3 physicists and physical chemists
- Georg Stetter – Director of the II. Physikalisches Institut (Second Physics Institute) at the University of Vienna.
- Transuranic elements and measurement of nuclear constants. ca. 6 physicists and physical chemists
The point in 1942 when the army relinquished control of the project was its zenith in terms of the number of personnel devoted to the effort, and this was no more than about seventy scientists, with about forty devoting more than half their time to nuclear fission research. After this the number diminished dramatically, and many of those not working with the main institutes stopped working on nuclear fission and devoted their efforts to more pressing war related work.[27]
On 4 June 1942, a conference regarding the project, initiated by
Speer states that the project to develop the atom bomb was scuttled in the autumn of 1942. Though the scientific solution was there, it would have taken all of Germany's production resources to produce a bomb, and then no sooner than 1947.
Over time, the HWA and then the RFR controlled the German nuclear weapon project. The most influential people were Kurt Diebner, Abraham Esau, Walther Gerlach, and Erich Schumann. Schumann was one of the most powerful and influential physicists in Germany. He was director of the Physics Department II at the Frederick William University (later, University of Berlin), which was commissioned and funded by the Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH, Army High Command) to conduct physics research projects. He was also head of the research department of the HWA, assistant secretary of the Science Department of the OKW, and Bevollmächtigter (plenipotentiary) for high explosives. 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.[36][37]
Isotope separation
Paul Peter Ewald, a member of the Uranverein, had proposed an electromagnetic isotope separator, which was thought applicable to 235U production and enrichment. This was picked up by Manfred von Ardenne, who ran a private research establishment.
In 1928, von Ardenne had come into his inheritance with full control as to how it could be spent, and he established his private research laboratory the Forschungslaboratorium für Elektronenphysik,
Aside from the Uranverein and von Ardenne's team in Berlin-Lichterfelde, there was also a small research team in the Henschel Flugzeugwerke: the study group under the direction of Prof. Dr. Ing. Herbert Wagner (1900–1982) searched for alternative sources of energy for airplanes and became interested in nuclear energy in 1940. In August 1941, they finished a detailed internal survey of the history and potential of technical nuclear physics and its applications (Übersicht und Darstellung der historischen Entwicklung der modernen technischen Kernphysik und deren Anwendungsmöglichkeit sowie Zusammenfassung eigener Arbeitsziele und Pläne, signed by Herbert Wagner and Hugo Watzlawek (1912–1995) in Berlin. Their application to the Aviation Ministry (RLM) to found and fund an Institute for Nuclear Technology and Nuclear Chemistry (Reichsinstituts für Kerntechnik und Kernchemie) failed, but Watzlawek continued to explore potential applications of nuclear energy and wrote a detailed textbook on technical nuclear physics. It includes one of the most detailed presentations of contemporary German knowledge about the various processes of isotope separation, and recommends their combined usage to get to sufficient amounts of enriched uranium. Walther Gerlach refused to print this textbook, but it is preserved as a typed manuscript and it appeared after the War in 1948 virtually unchanged (with just a few additions on the US atomic bomb released in 1945).[42] In October 1944, Hugo Watzlawek wrote an article on the potential usage of nuclear energy and its many potential applications. In his view, to follow up this route of research and development was the "new pathway" to becoming the "Master of the World".[43] It is thus a mistake to focus only on the efforts of the Uranverein—other research groups in Germany were also active in research to exploit nuclear energy, especially for military purposes.
Moderator production
The production of heavy water was already under way in Norway when the Germans invaded on 9 April 1940. The Norwegian production facilities for heavy water were quickly secured (though some heavy water had already been removed) and improved by the Germans. The Allies and Norwegians had sabotaged Norwegian heavy water production and destroyed stocks of heavy water by 1943.
Graphite (carbon) as an alternative was not considered, because the neutron absorption coefficient value for carbon calculated by Walther Bothe was too high, probably due to the boron in the graphite pieces having high neutron absorption.[44]
Exploitation and denial strategies
Near the end of World War II, the principal Allied war powers each made plans for exploitation of German science. In light of the implications of nuclear weapons, German nuclear fission and related technologies were singled out for special attention. In addition to exploitation, denial of these technologies, their personnel, and related materials to rival allies was a driving force of their efforts. This typically meant getting to these resources first, which to some extent put the Soviets at a disadvantage in some geographic locations easily reached by the Western Allies, even if the area was destined to be in the Soviet zone of occupation by the Potsdam Conference. At times, all parties were heavy-handed in their pursuit and denial to others.[45][46][47][48][49]
The best known US denial and exploitation effort was
American and British
Berlin had been a location of many German scientific research facilities. To limit casualties and loss of equipment, many of these facilities were dispersed to other locations in the later years of the war.
Operation BIG
Unfortunately for the Soviets, the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Physik (KWIP, Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics) had mostly been moved in 1943 and 1944 to Hechingen and its neighboring town of Haigerloch, on the edge of the Black Forest, which eventually became the French occupation zone. This move allowed the Americans to take into custody a large number of German scientists associated with nuclear research. The only section of the institute which remained in Berlin was the low-temperature physics section, headed by Ludwig Bewilogua , who was in charge of the experimental uranium pile.[51][52]
American Alsos teams carrying out Operation BIG raced through Baden-Wurttemberg near the war's end in 1945, uncovering, collecting, and selectively destroying Uranverein elements, including capturing a prototype reactor at Haigerloch and records, heavy water, and uranium ingots at
Operation Epsilon, and Farm Hall
A major goal of the
The ten scientists were secretly relocated and kept confined and incommunicado with the broader world in
Prior to the announcement of Hiroshima, the German scientists, though worried about the future, expressed confidence in their value to the Allies on the basis of their advanced knowledge of nuclear matters. The British then told the scientists that the BBC had announced the use of the atomic bomb after the attack on Hiroshima. Reactions from the Germans varied; Hahn expressed guilt for his role in the discovery of nuclear fission, while many others, including Heisenberg, expressed incredulity at the report ("I don’t believe a word of the whole thing"). Later that evening, the scientists were allowed to listen to a longer BBC announcement, which invited further debate. Throughout all of this, Heisenberg made arguments that it would take very large amounts of enriched uranium ("about a ton") to make such a weapon. In justifying his reasoning, he gave a brief explanation of how one would calculate the critical mass for an atomic bomb which contained serious errors.[58]
The transcripts were declassified in 1992, and this particular section of discussion was subjected to expert scrutiny. Two scientists on the Manhattan Project, Edward Teller and Hans Bethe, concluded after reading the transcripts that Heisenberg had never done the calculation before. Heisenberg himself, in the transcript, said that, "quite honestly I have never worked it [the critical mass calculation for an atomic bomb] out as I never believed one could get pure [uranium-]235." A week after the bombing, Heisenberg had given a more formal lecture to his colleagues on the physics of the atomic bomb, which corrected many of his early mistakes and indicated a much smaller critical mass. Historians have cited Heisenberg's error as evidence of the degree to which his role in the project had been confined almost entirely to reactors, as the original equation is much more similar to how a reactor would work than to an atomic bomb.[59][60][61]
At Farm Hall, the German scientists discussed why Germany did not create an atomic bomb, and the United States and United Kingdom did. The transcripts reveal them developing what has been called the Lesart ("version"). The basic version the Lesart argued that the German scientists chose not to build a bomb for Hitler, either by dragging their feet, being insufficiently enthusiastic, or, in some versions, active sabotage. The Lesart both offers up an explanation for their "failure" and also elevates their moral authority above the Allied scientists, despite the fact that they worked for the Nazis. In the postwar, several scientists, notably von Weizsäcker and Heisenberg, gave this version of the story to journalists and historians, notably Robert Jungk, who reprinted and amplified it uncritically in the 1950s. At that time, accuracy of the Lesart was challenged forcefully by von Laue (who coined the term Lesart). Most professional historians of science who have worked on this subject do not believe that the Lesart is true.[62] As the historian and physicist Jeremy Bernstein put it in an annotated edition of the Farm Hall transcripts:
What the Farm Hall reports make transparently clear is that, while they knew a few general principles — the use of fast fission from separated 235U and the possibility of plutonium — they had not seriously investigated any of the details. All of the really hard problems were left untackled and unsolved. ... They had decided that making a bomb in wartime Germany was unfeasible on technical and economic grounds. It was simply too big and too costly. Morality had nothing to do with it.[63]
The Lesart has been perpetuated in many popular accounts of the German atomic program, notably in Michael Frayn's 1998 play Copenhagen, which itself was based heavily on the Lesart-endorsing work of popular history, Heisenberg's War (1993), by the journalist Thomas Powers.
Oranienburg plant
With the interest of the Heereswaffenamt (HWA, Army Ordnance Office), Nikolaus Riehl, and his colleague Günter Wirths, set up an industrial-scale production of high-purity uranium oxide at the Auergesellschaft plant in Oranienburg. Adding to the capabilities in the final stages of metallic uranium production were the strengths of the Degussa corporation's capabilities in metals production.[64][65]
The Oranienburg plant provided the uranium sheets and cubes for the Uranmaschine experiments conducted at the KWIP and the Versuchsstelle (testing station) of the Heereswaffenamt (Army Ordnance Office) in Gottow. The G-1 experiment[66] performed at the HWA testing station, under the direction of Kurt Diebner, had lattices of 6,800 uranium oxide cubes (about 25 tons), in the nuclear moderator paraffin.[16][67]
Work of the American Operation Alsos teams, in November 1944, uncovered leads which took them to a company in Paris that handled rare earths and had been taken over by the Auergesellschaft. This, combined with information gathered in the same month through an Alsos team in
French
From 1941 to 1947,
Soviet
At the close of World War II, the Soviet Union had special search teams operating in Austria and Germany, especially in Berlin, to identify and obtain equipment, material, intellectual property, and personnel useful to the
German physicists who worked on the Uranverein and were sent to the Soviet Union to work on the Soviet atomic bomb project included: Werner Czulius , Robert Döpel, Walter Herrmann, Heinz Pose, Ernst Rexer, Nikolaus Riehl, and Karl Zimmer. Günter Wirths, while not a member of the Uranverein, worked for Riehl at the Auergesellschaft on reactor-grade uranium production and was also sent to the Soviet Union.
Zimmer's path to work on the Soviet atomic bomb project was through a prisoner of war camp in
Comparison to the Manhattan Project
The United States, British, and Canadian governments worked together to create the Manhattan Project that developed the uranium and plutonium atomic bombs. Its success has been attributed[by whom?] to meeting all four of the following conditions:[85]
- A strong initial drive, by a small group of scientists, to launch the project.
- Unconditional government support from a certain point in time.
- Essentially unlimited manpower and industrial resources.
- A concentration of brilliant scientists devoted to the project.
Even with all four of these conditions in place the Manhattan Project succeeded only after the war in Europe had been brought to a conclusion.
For the Manhattan Project, the second condition was met on 9 October 1941 or shortly thereafter. Germany for a long time was thought to have fallen short of what was required to make an atomic bomb.[86][87][88][89] Mutual distrust existed between the German government and some scientists.[90][91] By the end of 1941, it was already apparent among German science and military elites that the German nuclear weapon project would not make a decisive contribution to ending the German war effort in the near term, and control of the project was relinquished by the Heereswaffenamt (HWA, Army Ordnance Office) to the Reichsforschungsrat (RFR, Reich Research Council) in July 1942.
As to condition four, the high priority allocated to the Manhattan Project allowed for the recruitment and concentration of capable scientists on the project. In Germany, on the other hand, a great many young scientists and technicians who would have been of great use to such a project were conscripted into the German armed forces, while others had fled the country before the war due to antisemitism and political persecution.[92][93][94]
Whereas Enrico Fermi, a scientific Manhattan Project leader, had a "unique double aptitude for theoretical and experimental work" in the 20th century,[28] the successes at Leipzig until 1942 resulted from the cooperation between the theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg and the experimentalist Robert Döpel. Most important was their experimental proof of an effective neutron increase in April 1942.[95] At the end of July of the same year, the group around Fermi also succeeded in the neutron increase within a reactor-like arrangement.
In June 1942, some six months before the American Chicago Pile-1 achieved man-made criticality for the first time anywhere, Döpel's L-IV "Uran-Maschine" was destroyed by a chemical explosion introduced by oxygen,[96] which finished the work on this topic at Leipzig. Thereafter, despite increased expenditures, the Berlin groups and their extern[clarification needed] branches did not succeed in getting a reactor critical until the end of World War II. However, this was realized by the Fermi group in December 1942, so that the German advantage was definitively lost, even with respect to research on energy production.
German historian Klaus Hentschel summarizes the organizational differences as:
- Compared with the British and American war research efforts united in the Manhattan Project, to this day the prime example of "big science," the Uranverein was only a loosely knit, decentralized network of researchers with quite different research agendas. Rather than teamwork as on the American end, on the German side we find cut-throat competition, personal rivalries, and fighting over the limited resources.[97]
The Manhattan Project's Alsos investigation ultimately concluded in a classified report, on the basis of documents and materials confiscated from research sites in Germany, Austria, and France, as well as interrogation of over 40 personnel connected with the program, that:
- The general plan of conducting the subject research [developing an atomic weapon] in some respects followed a pattern employed in the United States. Research assignments were farmed out to many small groups, generally of some university or technical school, or to industrial firms specializing in one or more of the related activities. However, the enemy effort was definitely lacking in overall direction, unity of purpose and coordination between participating agencies. Early in the German endeavor the uranium problem had been separately approached by a number of more or less competing groups. There was one group under Army Ordnance, another under the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute for Physics, and still another under the Postal Department. A certain amount of bickering over the supply of material and a non-cooperative attitude in the exchange of information existed between those groups. The research efforts of the Postal Department amounted to little and did not continue for very long. The first two of the above groups were unified in 1942 under the Reich's Research Council. On the whole, beneficial results, from the German standpoint, were obtained through that unification. But conflicting jurisdiction between the German Government and Service branches still existed. Up until the later stages of the war difficulties were apparent in regard to the deferment of scientific personnel from military service. Many German scientists worked along their own lines and were not required to work at particular projects. Development of atomic weapon was not believed to be possible [during the war].
- As a consequence of the foregoing, atomic energy development in Germany did not pass beyond the laboratory stage; utilization for power production rather than for an explosive was the principal consideration; and, though German science was interested in this new field, other scientific objectives received greater official attention.[98]
In terms of financial and human resources, the comparisons between the Manhattan Project and the Uranverein are stark. The Manhattan Project consumed some US$2 billion (1945, ~US$27 billion in 2023 dollars) in government funds, and employed at its peak some 120,000 people, mostly in the sectors of construction and operations. In total the Manhattan Project involved the labor of some 500,000 people, nearly 1% of the entire US civilian labor force.[99] By comparison, the Uranverein was budgeted a mere 8 million reichsmarks, equivalent to about US$2 million (1945,~US$27 million in 2023 dollars) – a thousandth of the American expenditure.[100]
See also
- Germany and weapons of mass destruction
- Japanese nuclear weapons program
- Alsos Mission
- Operation Paperclip
Footnotes
- ^ Due to the surrender of Germany. The program effort ceased due to the Fall of Berlin.
References
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- ^ Ruth Lewin Sime Lise Meitner's Escape from Germany, American Journal of Physics Volume 58, Number 3, 263–267 (1990).
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- ^ O. R. Frisch Physical Evidence for the Division of Heavy Nuclei under Neutron Bombardment, Nature, Volume 143, Number 3616, 276–276 (18 February 1939) Archived 23 January 2009 at the Wayback Machine. The paper is dated 17 January 1939. [The experiment for this letter to the editor was conducted on 13 January 1939; see Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb 263 and 268 (Simon and Schuster, 1986).]
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- ^ Kant 2002, Reference 8 on p. 3.
- ^ Hentschel & Hentschel 1996, p. 363-4 and Appendix F; see the entries for Esau, Harteck and Joos. See also the entry for the KWIP in Appendix A and the entry for the HWA in Appendix B.
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- ^ Also see: Siegfried Flügge Die Ausnutzung der Atomenergie. Vom Laboratoriumsversuch zur Uranmaschine – Forschungsergebnisse in Dahlem, Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung No. 387, Supplement (15 August 1939). English translation: Document No. 74 Siegfried Flügge: Exploiting Atomic Energy. From the Laboratory Experiment to the Uranium Machine – Research Results in Dahlem [15 August 1939] in Hentschel & Hentschel 1996, pp. 197–206. [This article is Flügge's popularized version of the June 1939 article in Die Naturwissenschaften.]
- ^ Hentschel & Hentschel 1996, p. 369, Appendix F, see the entry for Riehl, and Appendix D, see the entry for Auergesellschaft.
- ^ a b Riehl & Seitz 1996, p. 13.
- New York Review of Books 13 August 1992 has Erich Bagge recalling a meeting of this group on 8 September which decided that if such a bomb were possible it must be created. Cited also Richard Flanagan, Question 7, Penguin Books 2023 p.21
- ^ Hentschel & Hentschel 1996, pp. 363–4 and Appendix F; see the entries for Diebner and Döpel. See also the entry for the KWIP in Appendix A and the entry for the HWA in Appendix B.
- ^ Ermenc 1989, p. 34.
- ^ Ermenc 1989, p. 23.
- ^ Ermenc 1989, p. 27.
- ^ Hentschel & Hentschel 1996, See the entry for the KWIP in Appendix A and the entries for the HWA and the RFR in Appendix B. Also see p. 372 and footnote 50 on p. 372.
- ^ Walker 1993, pp. 49–53.
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- ^ Kant 2002, p. 19.
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- ^ a b Hanle & Rechenberg 1982.
- ^ Document 98: The Führer's Decree on the Reich Research Council, 9 June 1942, in Hentschel & Hentschel 1996, p. 303.
- Samuel Goudsmit's account and interpretation of the role of the RFR in Document 111: War Physics in Germany, January 1946, in Hentschel & Hentschel 1996, pp. 345–52.
- ^ Document 99: Record of Conference Regarding the Reich Research Council, 6 July 1942, in Hentschel & Hentschel 1996, pp. 304–8.
- ^ Macrakis 1993, pp. 91–4.
- ^ Hentschel & Hentschel 1996, Appendix F; see the entries for Esau and Gerlach.
- ^ Walker 1993, p. 86.
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- ^ Hentschel & Hentschel 1996, Appendix F; see the entry for Schumann. Also see footnote 1 on p. 207.
- ^ "Zur Ehrung von Manfred von Ardenne". sachsen.de. 20 January 2006. Archived from the original on 25 March 2008.
- ^ "Manfred Baron von Ardenne 1907–1997". Lemo – Lebendiges Museum Online.
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- ^ See Watzlawek, Hugo (1948). Lehrbuch der technischen Kernphysik. Deuticke.; the original typescript is available in the online-Archive of the Deutsches Museum München at https://digital.deutsches-museum.de/item/FA-002-752/
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- ^ Naimark 1995, pp. 208–09.
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- ^
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- ^ "Dark Cube: Heisenberg's Race for the Bomb". Nuclear Museum. Retrieved 22 August 2023.
- ^ Walker 1993, pp. 268–74 and Reference n. 40 on p. 262.
- ^ Bernstein 2001, pp. 50, 363–65.
- ^ Bernstein 2001, pp. 115–129.
- ^ Bernstein 2001, pp. 129–131, 171, 191–207.
- ^ Popp, Manfred (4 January 2017). "Darum hatte Hitler keine Atombombe". Die Zeit.
- ^ Teller, Edward, Heisenberg, Bohr and the atomic bomb, retrieved 2 August 2023
- ^ Bernstein 2001, pp. 332–335.
- ^ Bernstein 2001, pp. 334.
- ^ Hentschel & Hentschel 1996, p. 369 Appendix F (see the entry for Nikolaus Riehl), and Appendix D (see the entry for Auergesellschaft).
- ^ Riehl & Seitz 1996, pp. 13, 69.
- ^ F. Berkei, W. Borrmann, W. Czulius, Kurt Diebner, Georg Hartwig, K. H. Höcker, W. Herrmann, H. Pose, and Ernst Rexer Bericht über einen Würfelversuch mit Uranoxyd und Paraffin G-125 (dated before 26 November 1942).
- ^ Hentschel & Hentschel 1996, pp. 369 and 373, Appendix F (see the entry for Nikolaus Riehl and Kurt Diebner), and Appendix D (see the entry for Auergesellschaft).
- ^ Bernstein 2001, pp. 50–51.
- ^ Naimark 1995, pp. 205–07.
- ^ Riehl & Seitz 1996, pp. 77–79.
- ^ Walker 1993, p. 156.
- ^ Leslie M. Groves Now it Can be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project (De Capo, 1962) pp. 220–22, 230–31.
- ^ Hentschel & Hentschel 1996, Appendix F; see the entry for Bopp.
- ^ Walker 1993, pp. 186–87.
- ^ Bernstein 2001, p. 212 and footnote 5 on p. 212.
- ^ For information on the American and Russian exploitation of Germany after World War II, see: Naimark 1995, Gimbel 1990 and Gimbel 1986, pp. 433–51.
- ^ Oleynikov 2000, pp. 3–8.
- ^ Riehl & Seitz 1996, pp. 71–83.
- ^ Naimark 1995, pp. 203–50.
- ^ Riehl & Seitz 1996, pp. 121–32.
- ^ Oleynikov 2000, pp. 11, 15–17.
- ^ Heinemann-Grüder, Andreas Keinerlei Untergang: German Armaments Engineers during the Second World War and in the Service of the Victorious Powers in Renneberg & Walker 2002, p. 44.
- ^ Hentschel & Hentschel 1996, Appendix F; see the entry for Thiessen.
- ^ Oleynikov 2000, pp. 5, 11–13.
- ^ Landsman 2002, pp. 318–19.
- ^ Landsman 2002, pp. 303, 319.
- ^ Bernstein 2001, pp. 122–23.
- ^ M. Bundy Danger and survival: Choices about the bomb in the first fifty years (Random House, 1988), as cited in Landsman 2002, pp. 318 n83.
- ^ "Radioactive find points to 'success' of Nazi atomic bomb program". NewsComAu. Retrieved 5 November 2017.
- ^ Wilhelm Hanle, Memoiren. I. Physikalisches Institut, Justus-Liebig-Universität, 1989.
- ^ Arnold, Heinrich (2011). Robert Döpel and his Model of Global Warming. ilmedia. p. 27.
- ^ Mangravite, Andrew (2015). "Magical Thinking". Distillations. 1 (4): 44–45. Retrieved 22 March 2018.
- ISBN 978-0226204574.
- ISBN 978-039565243-5. p. 138
- ^ Robert and Klara Döpel, Werner Heisenberg, Der experimentelle Nachweis der effektiven Neutronenvermehrung in einem Kugel-Schichten-System aus D2O und Uran-Metall. Facsimile: Forschungszentren/Leipzig/Neutronenvermehrung (1942). Published 1946 in: Heisenberg, W., Collected Works Vol. A II (Eds. W. Blum, H.-P Dürr and H. Rechenberg, Berlin etc. (1989), pp. 536–44.
- ISBN 3-940541-33-8.
- ^ Hentschel & Hentschel 1996, p. lxviii.
- ^ "Manhattan District History, Book 1, Volume 14, Foreign Intelligence Supplement No. 1" (PDF). 8 November 1948. p. S4.48.
- ^ Wellerstein, Alex (1 November 2013). "How many people worked on the Manhattan Project?". Restricted Data Blog. Archived from the original on 21 July 2019. Retrieved 16 November 2019.
- ^ Hentschel & Hentschel 1996, p. lxix.
Sources
- ISBN 978-0226204574.
- ISBN 0-387-95089-3.
- Bernstein, Jeremy (2002). "Heisenberg and the critical mass". Am. J. Phys. 70 (9): 911–16. .
- Bernstein, Jeremy (2004). "Heisenberg in Poland". Am. J. Phys. 72 (3): 300–04. . See also Letters to the Editor by Klaus Gottstein and a reply by Jeremy Bernstein in Am. J. Phys. 72 (9): 1143–45 (2004).
- Beyerchen, Alan D. (1977). Scientists Under Hitler: Politics and the Physics Community in the Third Reich. Yale. ISBN 0-30001830-4.
- Cassidy, David C. (1992). Uncertainty: The Life and Science of Werner Heisenberg. Freeman.
- Crawford, Elisabeth; Sime, Ruth Lewin; Walker, Mark (1997). "A Nobel Tale of Postwar Injustice". Physics Today. 50 (9): 26–32. doi:10.1063/1.881933.
- Ermenc, Joseph J, ed. (1989). Atomic Bomb Scientists: Memoirs, 1939–1945. Westport, CT & London: Meckler. ISBN 0-88736-267-2. (1967 interviews with Heisenberg, Harteck and others).
- Gimbel, John (1986). "U.S. Policy and German Scientists: The Early Cold War". Political Science Quarterly. 101 (3): 433–451. JSTOR 2151624.
- Gimbel, John (1990). Science, Technology, and Reparations: Exploitation and Plunder in Postwar Germany. Stanford Press.
- Goudsmit, Samuel (1986). Alsos. Introduction by Reginald V. Jones. Toamsh.
- Hahn, Otto My Life (Herder and Herder, New York 1970)
- .
- Heisenberg, Werner Research in Germany on the Technical Applications of Atomic Energy, Nature Volume 160, Number 4059, 211–15 (16 August 1947). See also the annotated English translation: Document 115. Werner Heisenberg: Research in Germany on the Technical Application of Atomic Energy [16 August 1947] in Hentschel & Hentschel 1996, pp. 361–79.
- Hentschel, Klaus; Hentschel, Ann M., eds. (1996). Physics and National Socialism: An Anthology of Primary Sources. Translated by Hentschel, Ann M. Birkhäuser. ISBN 0-8176-5312-0. [This book is a collection of 121 primary German documents relating to physics under National Socialism. The documents have been translated and annotated, and there is a lengthy introduction to put them into perspective.]
- Hentschel, Klaus (2020). "Der neue Weg: Mit inneratomarer Energie zum Herrn der Welt werden – Zu einem bislang unbekannten Typoskript vom Oktober 1944 (Inneratomic Energy as the New Path Towards Becoming Master of the World – On a Hitherto Unknown Typescript from October 1944". NTM Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Wissenschaften, Technik und Medizin. 28 (2): 121–47. PMID 32415322.
- Hoffmann, Klaus Otto Hahn – Achievement and Responsibility (Springer, New York. 2001) ISBN 0-387-95057-5
- Hoffmann, Dieter (2005). "Between Autonomy and Accommodation: The German Physical Society during the Third Reich". Physics in Perspective. 7 (3): 293–329. S2CID 122355802.
- Kant, Horst (2002). Werner Heisenberg and the German Uranium Project / Otto Hahn and the Declarations of Mainau and Göttingen (PDF). Preprint 203. Max Planck Institute for the History of Science.
- Landsman, Nicolaas P. (2002). "Getting even with Heisenberg" (PDF). Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics. 33 (2): 297–325. .
- Macrakis, Kristie (1993). Surviving the Swastika: Scientific Research in Nazi Germany. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19507010-0.
- ISBN 978-038795086-0.
- Naimark, Norman M. (1995). The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949. Belknap.
- ISBN 0-84123310-1.
- Oleynikov, Pavel V. (2000). "German Scientists in the Soviet Atomic Project" (PDF). The Nonproliferation Review. 7 (2): 1–30. (Chelyabinsk-70).
- Powers, Thomas (1993). Heisenberg's War: The Secret History of the German Bomb. Knopf.
- Renneberg, Monika; Walker, Mark (2002) [1993]. Science, Technology and National Socialism (first paperback ed.). Cambridge Press.
- ISBN 978-0520208605.
- Sime, Ruth Lewin (2005). "From Exceptional Prominence to Prominent Exception: Lise Meitner at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry (Ergebnisse 24)" (PDF). Research Program "History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in the National Socialist Era". Max Planck Institute for the History of Science.
- S2CID 119479637.
- Walker, Mark (1993). German National Socialism and the Quest for Nuclear Power 1939–1949. Cambridge Press. ISBN 0-52143804-7.
- Walker, Mark (1995). Nazi Science: Myth, Truth, and the German Atomic Bomb. Perseus. ISBN 0-30644941-2.
- Walker, Mark (2005). "Eine Waffenschmiede? Kernwaffen- und Reaktorforschung am Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Physik (Ergebnisse 26)" (PDF). Research Program "History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in the National Socialist Era". Max Planck Institute for the History of Science.
Further reading
- Albrecht, Ulrich, Andreas Heinemann-Grüder, and Arend Wellmann Die Spezialisten: Deutsche Naturwissenschaftler und Techniker in der Sowjetunion nach 1945 (Dietz, 1992, 2001) ISBN 3-320-01788-8
- Bernstein, Jeremy; Cassidy, David (1995). "Bomb Apologetics: Farm Hall, August 1945". Physics Today. 48 (8 Part 1): 32–6. doi:10.1063/1.881469.
- Beyerchen, Alan What We Know About Nazism and Science, Social Research Volume 59, Number 3, 615–641 (1992)
- Bethe, Hans A. (July 2000). "The German Uranium Project". Physics Today. 53 (7): 34–6. .
- Cassidy, David C. (1992). "Heisenberg, German Science, and the Third Reich". Social Research. 59 (3): 643–61.
- Cassidy, David C. A Historical Perspective on Copenhagen, Physics Today Volume 53, Issue 7, 28 (2000). See also Heisenberg's Message to Bohr: Who Knows, Physics Today Volume 54, Issue 4, 14ff (2001), individual letters by Klaus Gottstein, Harry J. Lipkin, Donald C. Sachs, and David C. Cassidy.
- Eckert, Michael Werner Heisenberg: controversial scientist physicsweb.org (2001)
- Ermenc, Joseph J., ed. (1989). Atomic Bomb Scientists: Memoirs, 1939–1945. (1967 interviews with Werner Heisenberg and Paul Harteck). Westport CT: Meckler. ISBN 0-88736-267-2.
- Heisenberg, Werner Die theoretischen Grundlagen für die Energiegewinnung aus der Uranspaltung, Zeitschrift für die gesamte Naturwissenschaft, Volume 9, 201–212 (1943). See also the annotated English translation: Document 95. Werner Heisenberg. The Theoretical Basis for the Generation of Energy from Uranium Fission [26 February 1942] in Hentschel & Hentschel 1996, pp. 294–301.
- Heisenberg, Werner, introduction by David Cassidy, translation by William Sweet A Lecture on Bomb Physics: February 1942, Physics Today Volume 48, Issue 8, Part I, 27–30 (1995)
- Hentschel, Klaus The Mental Aftermath: The Mentality of German Physicists 1945–1949 (Oxford, 2007)
- Hoffmann, Dieter Zwischen Autonomie und Anpassung: Die deutsche physikalische Gesellschaft im dritten Reich, Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschafts Geschichte Preprint 192 (2001)
- Hoffmann, Dieter and Mark Walker The German Physical Society Under National Socialism, Physics Today 57(12) 52–58 (2004)
- Hoffmann, Dieter and Mark Walker Zwischen Autonomie und Anpassung, Physik Journal Volume 5, Number 3, 53–58 (2006)
- Hoffmann, Dieter and Mark Walker Peter Debye: "A Typical Scientist in an Untypical Time" Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft (2006)
- Hoffmann, Dieter and Mark Walker (editors) Physiker zwischen Autonomie und Anpassung (Wiley-VCH, 2007)
- Karlsch Rainer Hitlers Bombe. Die geheime Geschichte der deutschen Kernwaffenversuche. (Dva, 2005)
- Karlsch, Rainer and Heiko Petermann Für und wider "Hitlers Bombe" (Waxmann, 2007)
- Krieger, Wolfgang The Germans and the Nuclear Question German Historical Institute Washington, D.C., Occasional Paper No. 14 (1995)
- Pash, Boris T. The Alsos Mission (Award, 1969)
- Rhodes, Richard The Making of the Atomic Bomb (Simon and Schuster, 1986)
- Rife, Patricia, Lise Meitner: Ein Leben fuer die Wissenschaft (Düsseldorf: Claassen, 1990).
- Rife, Patricia, Lise Meitner and the Dawn of the Nuclear Age (e-Book, Plunkett Lake Press, 2015) [1]
- Rose, Paul Lawrence, Heisenberg and the Nazi Atomic Bomb Project: A Study in German Culture (California, 1998). For a critical review of this book, please see Landsman 2002, pp. 297–325.
- Schaaf, Michael Heisenberg, Hitler und die Bombe. Gespraeche mit Zeitzeugen. (GNT-Verlag, 2018)
- Schumann, Erich Wehrmacht und Forschung in Richard Donnevert (editor) Wehrmacht und Partei second expanded edition, (Barth, 1939) 133–151. See also the annotated English translation: Document 75. Erich Schumann: Armed Forces and Research [1939] in Hentschel & Hentschel 1996, pp. 207–20.
- Walker, Mark National Socialism and German Physics, Journal of Contemporary Physics Volume 24, 63–89 (1989)
- Walker, Mark Heisenberg, Goudsmit and the German Atomic Bomb, Physics Today Volume 43, Issue 1, 52–60 (1990)
- Walker, Mark German Work on Nuclear Weapons, Historia Scientiarum; International Journal for the History of Science Society of Japan, Volume 14, Number 3, 164–181 (2005)
- Mark Walker Otto Hahn: Responsibility and Repression, Physics in Perspective Volume 8, Number 2, 116–163 (2006). Mark Walker is Professor of History at Union College in Schenectady, New York.
External links
- (February 2002) Aaserud, Finn Release of documents relating to 1941 Bohr-Heisenberg meeting
- Niels Bohr Archive Release of documents relating to 1941 Bohr-Heisenberg meeting (6 February 2002)
- (June 2008) Annotated bibliography on the German atomic bomb project from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues
- Rife, Patricia, Lise Meitner and the Dawn of the Nuclear Age (Birkhauser/Springer Verlag, 1999)
- Walker, Mark Nazis & the Bomb from Nova episode, Hitler's Sunken Secret(originally aired 8 November 2005).