How would the world be different if Hitler had successfully built an atom bomb? Would the outcome of the war be different? We all know or should know that Hitler didn’t build an A-Bomb cause he considerd that “Jewish” science…boy I bet he was sorry about that.
I mean to say the Nazis instead of Hitler. But Hitler did consider it “Jewish” science… I bet he regretted that.
He didn’t think it was “Jewish” science at all. He actually prosecuted the technology. . .
His problem was #1) A lack of raw materials to work with (ie how does an embattled country that size come up with all the Uranium and Plutonium they need?), and #2) Most of his talented scientists ran out of Germany once they got wind of what was going on. Einstein, and a whole slew of smart 'uns would’ve been forced to help Hitler just a smidge, methinks. But, eventually the project idled and died because they couldn’t make the headway that the Manhattan Project was . . .
So, I don’t really thinks it’s a “why didn’t he” but a “how didn’t he”. Hitler was full of mistakes anyway: Using a Messerschmit jet as a fighter without thinking of using it as a bomber. :rolleyes:
Tripler
God forbid he did rig up a bomb. . . :eek:
At the end of the war, Hitler had a rocket on the drawing board called the V-3, a two stage rocket theoretically capable of reaching the US eastern seaboard…it would have
dove-tailed quite nicely with the Nazi Bomb efforts.
Well, there were (and still are) large uranium deposits in Czechoslovakia, and getting a supply of uranium wasn’t a problem for the Germans. They had a few problems, though. Heisenberg had made a mistake early in the process regarding the amount of nuclear material required for critical mass that wasn’t caught, and that threw off the research. They also had a really hard time working out a method to refine the radioactive isotopes. Those were their two main problems, I believe.
Ok let’s say somehow the Nazis did get an A-Bomb how if at all would that have changed the outcome of the war?
It depends on how many bombs they had, how they planned to transport them (e.g. by rocket, aircraft or special forces troops) and when they had them.
By mid-1944 I imagine they’d have used them to slow the advance of the Russians, to buy time to produce more weapons and refit shattered formations. Hitting cities like Washington, London or Moscow would have had an enormous effect, but I doubt it would have stopped the formations in the field from their operations.
Basically, tactical use on Allied formations. The result? I don’t think you can say with any degree of certainty. I doubt it would have stopped the Allies, but it would certainly have redoubled their bombing and commando efforts to knock out the nuclear facilities.
You have it backwards. Insisting that the ME 262 be a bomber was his mistake. Allied bombing destroyed the ME engine factories and transportation infrastructure that got the engines and airframes in the same place. Two ME 262’s junped a flight of B-17s and shot most of them down until they ran out of fuel.
The history channel keeps running a documentary on this. Thought was put into killing Heisenberg, but the button man decided against based on standing orders to kill him if he seemed to be working on it, which apparently he didn’t seem to be doing.
Heisenberg described to his team how to build the bomb within a few days of learning that the U.S. had done it, and British intelligence recorded the conversation (they were prisoners in England at the time). Heisenberg said after the war that he dragged his feet and emphasized expense and risks of not succeeding. They had got as far as refining some uranium by 1945, but were nowhere near to using it as an a-bomb. At the end of the war they sent this by submarine to the Japanese to use as a “radiation bomb”. It wouldn’t explode on its own, but would contaminate whatever area it was spread over. The allies captured the sub en route.
If the Nazi’s had the bomb, we would have known how difficult it was to either enrich the uranium or manufacture the plutonium (Nazis were going the uranium rou
With all the work the US did on it, it took a long time still to get the first two bombs. The bombs would have had a devastating effect on whatever they hit, and affected morale somewhat, but ultimately would not have made a difference by late 1944. If they had had the bomb in 1940, well…that’s a different matter.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by carnivorousplant *
**
I knew that. I was checking you. 
Thanks for the correction!
Tripler
That’s what you get for posting when you just woke up.
So, do I like win a Straight Dope Merit Badge with History Geek CLuster, or what? 
Whoa, I had never heard of this before. Do you have a cite by any chance? This “radioactive dust” sounds eerily like something from a Heinlein story written about 5 years before the first atom bomb.
Heisenberg was fleeing the Allies with uranium and paraffin (the moderator) cubes on string in the back of a truck.
They had a shortage of radium dials for night fighter instruments. I think the book was “The German Atomic Bomb”.
Well, I’ve got a couple of cites. However, I’m far from convinced they’re reliable ones.
This is undoubtedly a reference to the U-234 story. The most mainstream acceptance of it I’ve seen is in Codename Downfall (Headline, 1995 is the UK edition) by Thomas B. Allen and Norman Polmar. Overall, this is an okay, pretty journalistic, history of the plans for Operation Olympic, the projected invasion of Japan. However, on p328 we find
“[E]vidence that Japan was still seriously contemplating atomic-bomb research until the end of the war had literally surfaced in May 1945 when the German submarine U-234 surrendered to American warships off the US Atlantic coast. The American prize crew that boarded the U-boat discovered that the U-234 had been carrying two Japanese officers and 1,232 pounds of uranium, labelled for delivery to the Japanese Army. The submarine was en route to Japan when Germany surrendered and all U-boats were ordered to surface and head for the nearest Allied port. The prize crew took the U-234 and brought her into the Navy Yard at Portsmouth, New Hampshire.”
The two Japanese officers had committed suicide and been buried at sea. Unfortunately, Allen and Polmar’s reference for this account is a Magic summary, which they note confirms the presence of the officers, but “No mention was made of uranium.” What their source for the latter is, they don’t say.
There are also the likes of this. The major source here seems to be Wolfgang Hirschfeld, the radio operator on board. His story has been worked up by a British amateur historian Geoffrey Brooks, who, amongst other things, has claimed that the Germans built the world’s first nuclear reactor. I’ve only glanced at his Hitler’s Nuclear Weapons (Leo Cooper, 1992), though what I’ve seen doesn’t inspire my confidence.
I can’t say that there wasn’t enriched uranium on the U-234, but I’m not convinced by anything I’ve seen thus far.
I guess there is no more coincidnece in U234 carrying nuclear material than the Russinas shooting down flight 007 as a spy plane.
The History Channel had a show called * The Swastika and the Samuri* I believe that’s where he got it from.
Part of the issue was also economic. The manhattan project cost something in the range of $2 billion in the 1940s. That comes out to about $22 Trillion today. This is an obscene amount of money to spend on theoretical research, especially when it could be spent directly on munitions. The Germans spent only a fraction of this on their atomic program.
Later nations to aquire the technology were able to do so much less expensively. But they had the advantage of knowing what to do. The US of course did not publicize how the accomplished the feat, but later nuclear powers were able to use espionage to fill in a lot of the gaps. And were thus able to avoid non-productive lines of investigation.
Germany did not have the luxury of stealing from another program and would certainly need to spend a rough equivalent to the US program. Any attempt by the Germans to spend $2 billion on a research program would have resulted in an equivalent shortfall for something else. Any such shortfall would result in a faster demise of Germany. Taking the resources necessary to build tens of thousands of planes or tanks would have a disasterous effect on the German war effort. As it was they were several years away from successful construction of a bomb in '45. Even if they managed to cut 2-3 years off of development, final development would have likely occured after the fall of Germany.