[BRUTAL64]

Heisenberg warned the German government in the fall of 1941 that the Americans were pursuing a nuclear explosive (plutonium) that could be made in a chain-reacting pile. The warning resulted in receiving the highest priority for his work from Albert Speer, Hitler's minister of munitions.

Weizsäcker had stated how fortunate it would be for the position of science in Germany after the victory to help so significantly towards this end with atomic weapons. But there was no possibility of carrying out such a large undertaking in Germany before the end of the war.

The German scientists had produced nuclear fission in the laboratory. They had also been looking at nuclear fusion and U-235 separations and were approaching criticality in a nuclear pile in a cave at Haigerloch. Their nuclear program was inhibited somewhat by a lack of enthusiasm on the part of Adolph Hitler, who believed the time frame was too long, and even more so by a serious miscalculation in its early stages.

After the War, Heisenberg recounted "It was a new situation for us scientists in Germany. Now for the first time we could get money from our government to do something interesting and we intended to use this situation. The official slogan of the government was: We must make use of physics for warfare.... We felt already in the beginning that if it were possible at all to actually make explosives it would take such a long time and require such an enormous effort that there was a very good chance the War would be over before that could be accomplished.... We definitely did not want to get into this bomb business. I wouldn't like to idealize this; we did this also for our personal safety. We thought that the probability that this would lead to atomic bombs during the War was nearly zero. If we had done otherwise, and if many thousand people had been put to work on it and then if nothing had been developed, this could have had extremely disagreeable consequences for us."

On 26 February 1942, Heisenberg spoke at a Berlin conference organized to garner support for the fission project. Heisenberg reported that a reactor could be used to power submarines, and to generate "...a new substance (element 94) ...which in all probability is an explosive with the same unimaginable effectiveness as pure uranium-235."

Until 1942 Heisenberg headed a small reactor research group in Leipzig and advised a second, larger group in Berlin. Heisenberg built an early experimental pile in Leipzig, alternating layers of uranium and paraffin, to test the properties of a chain reaction. The Leipzig pile burned in a fire caused by a pyrophoric reaction of its powdered uranium with air.

Allied bombing of Berlin forced Heisenberg to move his materials to Haigerloch in Wurttemberg, Germany. In 1944 it was rented by the Kaiser-Wilhelm-lnstitut für Physik (Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics) in Berlin. The Atomkeller is a long, rectangular room, the walls are the rough, undisguised rock face. The whole tunnel reminds its original origin: an (uncompleted) railroad tunnel. The reactor prototype was once located at the end of this tunnel. The famous "B8"-experiment was carried out at the end of March and the beginning of April 1945. The reactor didn't become critical. Further calculations showed that a functioning nuclear reactor would have had to be about 1.5 times the size of this reactor. However, expanding the reactor was no longer possible in April 1945 due to the lack of both heavy water and additional quantities of uranium blocks.

The US Army Air Corps bombed the German nuclear production works near Berlin. Thus ended the German nuclear threat. Although General Groves was aware of this fact, he did not pass the information on to the scientists in the Manhattan Project.

In 1944, as Germany was falling, the Alsos Mission under Lieutenant Colonel Boris Pash and Samuel Goudsmit, its civilian scientist, gathered information on all aspects of Germany's advanced technology, particularly the development of atomic energy. The American intelligence force quickly nabbed all the German nuclear documentation and scientists they could find to keep them out of the hands of the Soviets. (Alsos was a thinly disguised code name; in Greek it means "grove.") The mission found that the Germans working on an atomic bomb under Werner Heisenberg were far behind the United States.

Hahn, who was involved with the desultory German effort to harness atomic power, was awarded the 1944 Nobel Prize (delayed in presentation until 1946) by an uninformed prize committee. Possibly anxious to defend the status of German science in the postwar years, he never bothered to correct the record.

A persistent historical debate still rages about the motivations of Hahn, Werner Heisenberg, and the other members of the German "Uranium Club." The 1993 book by the journalist Thomas Powers, "Heisenberg's War," argued that Heisenberg destroyed the German project from within. But Heisenberg, who was not a Nazi, compromised his principles by acquiescing in Nazi rule because he believed that it would return Germany to "its rightful place" as an economic and military leader in the world. Did he delay the German bomb project in order to prevent the Nazis from acquiring the bomb--as he claimed--or were they were not able to develop a bomb because they were unabile?

After the war Heisenberg maintained that he understood the principles of an atomic bomb, but that he had deliberately misled the German program into concentrating on reactors. In fact, under Heisenberg, everything was being done in Germany to develop atomic weapons.

After the war, Heisenberg and nine of his colleagues were interned at Farm Hall, a British country house. Hidden microphones recorded their reaction to the bombing of Hiroshima. Heisenberg did not understand bomb physics, and had vastly overestimated how much U-235 was needed. At Farm Hall Heisenberg had calculated that the amount of fissionable material necessary for a bomb was somewhere in the range of several metric tons

[Vettezuki]

Originally Posted by BRUTAL64

. . . In fact, under Heisenberg, everything was being done in Germany to develop atomic weapons.

After the war, Heisenberg and nine of his colleagues were interned at Farm Hall, a British country house. Hidden microphones recorded their reaction to the bombing of Hiroshima. Heisenberg did not understand bomb physics, and had vastly overestimated how much U-235 was needed. At Farm Hall Heisenberg had calculated that the amount of fissionable material necessary for a bomb was somewhere in the range of several metric tons

This was basically what I was getting at.

[BRUTAL64]

Originally Posted by Vettezuki

This was basically what I was getting at.

Yep, that is what I had read a long time ago. I just thought it would be interesting to read the "offical" statements.

"Their nuclear program was inhibited somewhat by a lack of enthusiasm on the part of Adolph Hitler, who believed the time frame was too long, and even more so by a serious miscalculation in its early stages".

[BRUTAL64]

I just watched the Battle of Bulge. They just glossed over it like it was hardley anything. Yea, 500,000 German troops aginst 85,000 green Alied Troops. Yea, hardley anything to speak about.

[Vettezuki]

Originally Posted by BRUTAL64

I just watched the Battle of Bulge. They just glossed over it like it was hardley anything. Yea, 500,000 German troops aginst 85,000 green Alied Troops. Yea, hardley anything to speak about.

Yea a lot people do know how desperate things got there for a little while. It was pretty grim for the allies until the cloud cover broke and we were able to go after them from above. Then it was lights out.

[BRUTAL64]

Originally Posted by Vettezuki

Yea a lot people do know how desperate things got there for a little while. It was pretty grim for the allies until the cloud cover broke and we were able to go after them from above. Then it was lights out.

Just about everyone of Germany's Reserves were wiped out. Cut the war by 6 months. I've read differing numbers but about 7,000+ Alied troops were captured in the first few days.

What's the MOST famous word one of our Generals may have or may not have written when asked to surrender?

[Vettezuki]

Originally Posted by BRUTAL64

Just about everyone of Germany's Reserves were wiped out. Cut the war by 6 months. I've read differing numbers but about 7,000+ Alied troops were captured in the first few days.

What's the MOST famous word one of our Generals may have or may not have written when asked to surrender?

What is "nuts" Alex?

[BRUTAL64]

Originally Posted by Vettezuki

What is "nuts" Alex?

Ok, that is correct. But, there are some doubters out there that say that was NOT what was written. DO you know what some people say what was really written?

[Vettezuki]

Originally Posted by BRUTAL64

Ok, that is correct. But, there are some doubters out there that say that was NOT what was written. DO you know what some people say what was really written?

See from 48 seconds.

YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.

[BRUTAL64]

Originally Posted by Vettezuki

See from 48 seconds.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1PxnS48Jbk

Perfect.