# The German A-Bomb Project: How Far Did They Get?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-german-a-bomb-project-how-far-did-they-get/251217
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [June 19, 2004, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-german-a-bomb-project-how-far-did-they-get/251217 "2004-06-19T18:57:11Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2012, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-german-a-bomb-project-how-far-did-they-get/251217/21 "2012-09-17T03:29:11Z")
One of my texts in graduate school was written by Heisenberg.
You are mistaken.
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### Author:  [@tazjet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tazjet)
#### Post date: [September 20, 2012, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-german-a-bomb-project-how-far-did-they-get/251217/22 "2012-09-20T02:45:58Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#):
>
> One of my texts in graduate school was written by Heisenberg.
> You are mistaken.
Would you happen to be Prof. Freidwart Winterberg from Fresno University then?
In either case perhaps you should consider what Heisenberg himself said at Farm Hall where a prominent group of German nuclear scientists were interned during August 1945 and then secretly recorded.
During July 1944 Heisenberg was visited in Berlin by Major Bernd von Brauchitisch, Goering’s adjutant, with a report that the German legation in Lisbon had learned of an American threat to drop an Atomic Bomb on Dresden during the next six weeks if Germany did not sue for peace in some way before then
Source: Operation “Epsilon” National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD, RG 77, Entry 22, Box 164 (Farm Hall Transcripts).
Dr Paul Harteck, a leading scientist involved with ultracentrifuge work and production of Deuterium asserted after the war that at the climax of the first rocket attacks upon London, Churchill let it be known that he was considering mass retaliation with bacteriological bombs.
\*Letter from Harteck to J. Borkin, 1974; cited by Irving, David, The German Atomic Bomb, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1967, p. 241.
also cited by " Germany and the Second World War," p.798, Bernhard R. Kroener, Rolf-Dieter Müller, Hans Umbreit ; translated by Derry Cook-Radmore … [et al.] ; translation editor, Derry Cook-Radmore, Volume 5, Part 1
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### Author:  [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)
#### Post date: [September 20, 2012, 8:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-german-a-bomb-project-how-far-did-they-get/251217/23 "2012-09-20T08:26:16Z")
> [@tazjet](#):
>
> Dr Paul Harteck, a leading scientist involved with ultracentrifuge work and production of Deuterium asserted after the war that at the climax of the first rocket attacks upon London, Churchill let it be known that he was considering mass retaliation with bacteriological bombs.
>
> \*Letter from Harteck to J. Borkin, 1974; cited by Irving, David, The German Atomic Bomb, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1967, p. 241.
Ah, David Irving, a man of unimpeachable devotion to the truth. Oh wait, I mean David Irving, author of [Hitler’s War](http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Irving#Hitler.27s_War) in 1977:
> [@](#):
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> Irving’s intention in Hitler’s War to clean away the “years of grime and discoloration from the facade of a silent and forbidding monument” to reveal the real Hitler, whose reputation Irving claimed had been slandered by historians.
David Irving who wrote [On the Trail of the Fox](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Irving#Irving.27s_work_of_the_late_1970s_and_early_1980s) in 1978:
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> Irving published The Trail of the Fox, a biography of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. In it, Irving attacked the members of the 20 July Plot to assassinate Hitler, branding them “traitors”, “cowards”, and “manipulators”, and uncritically presented Hitler and his government’s subsequent revenge against the plotters, of which Rommel was also a victim. In particular, Irving accused Rommel’s friend and Chief of Staff General Hans Speidel of framing Rommel in the attempted coup. The British historian David Pryce-Jones in a book review of The Trail of the Fox in the 12 November 1977 edition of The New York Times Book Review accused Irving of taking everything Hitler had to say at face value.
David Irving who played a major role in the [Hitler’s Diary hoax](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Irving#Hitler_Diaries):
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> In 1983, Irving played a major role in the Hitler Diaries hoax. Irving had long been an avid collector of Nazi memorabilia, and in October 1982 purchased 800 pages of documents relating to Hitler, only to discover that many of the documents were forgeries.[46] Irving was an early proponent of the argument that the diaries were a forgery, and went so far as to crash the press conference held by Hugh Trevor-Roper at the Hamburg offices of Der Stern magazine on 25 April 1983 to denounce the diaries as a forgery and Trevor-Roper for endorsing the diaries as genuine (Trevor-Roper had called the press conference to announce his withdrawal of his endorsement).
> …
> A week later on 2 May, Irving reversed himself and asserted that the diaries were genuine; at the same press conference, Irving took the opportunity to promote his translation of the memoirs of Hitler’s physician Dr. Theodor Morell.[49] Robert Harris, in his book Selling Hitler, suggested that an additional reason for Irving’s change of mind over the authenticity of the alleged Hitler diaries was that the fake diaries contain no reference to the Holocaust, thereby buttressing Irving’s claim in Hitler’s War that Hitler had no knowledge of it.[51] Subsequently Irving made another U-turn when the diaries were revealed as a forgery. At a press conference held to withdraw his endorsement of the diaries, Irving proudly claimed that he was the first to call them a forgery, to which a reporter replied that he was also the last to call them genuine.
David Irving who in 1988 started openly espousing [Holocaust denial](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Irving#Movement_towards_Holocaust_denial):
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> Over the years, Irving’s stance on the Holocaust changed significantly. From 1988, he started to espouse Holocaust denial openly; he had previously not denied the Holocaust outright and for this reason, many Holocaust deniers were ambivalent about him.
David Irving who started doing the [neo-Nazi circuit](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Irving#The_Holocaust_denial_lecture_circuit):
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> In the early 1990s, Irving was a frequent visitor to Germany, where he spoke at neo-Nazi rallies.[63] The chief themes of Irving’s German speeches were that the Allies and Axis states were equally culpable for war crimes, that the decision of Neville Chamberlain to declare war on Germany in 1939, and that of Winston Churchill to continue the war in 1940, had been great mistakes that set Britain on a path of decline, and the Holocaust was just a “propaganda exercise”.
David Irving who was declare [persona non grata](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Irving#Persona_non_grata) in Austria for Holocaust denial:
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> After Irving denied the Holocaust in two 1989 speeches given in Austria, the Austrian government issued an arrest warrant against him and barred him from entering the country.[94] In early 1992 a German court found him guilty of Holocaust denial under the Auschwitzlüge section of the law against Volksverhetzung (a failed appeal by Irving would see the fine rise from 10,000 DM to 30,000 DM), and he was subsequently barred from entering Germany.[13] Other governments followed suit, including Austria, Italy and Canada,[95] where he was arrested in November 1992 and deported back to the United Kingdom.[13] In an administrative hearing surrounding those events, he was found by the hearing office to have engaged in a “total fabrication” in telling a story of an exit from and return to Canada which would, for technical reasons, have made the original deportation order invalid. He was also barred from entering Australia in 1992, a ban he made five unsuccessful attempts to overturn.
David Irving who filed a [libel suit](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Irving#Libel_suit)for being called a Holocaust denier against Deborah Lipstadt and her British publisher Penguin Books for publishing a British edition of Lipstadt’s book, Denying the Holocaust only to have it completely backfire on him with the judge finding that he was in fact a Holocaust denier, and to add insult to injury:
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> Evans’ report was the most comprehensive, in-depth examination of Irving’s work:
>
> Not one of [Irving’s] books, speeches or articles, not one paragraph, not one sentence in any of them, can be taken on trust as an accurate representation of its historical subject. All of them are completely worthless as history, because Irving cannot be trusted anywhere, in any of them, to give a reliable account of what he is talking or writing about. … if we mean by historian someone who is concerned to discover the truth about the past, and to give as accurate a representation of it as possible, then Irving is not a historian.[102]
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> The BBC quoted Professor Evans further:-
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> Irving, (…) had deliberately distorted and wilfully mistranslated documents, consciously used discredited testimony and falsified historical statistics. (…) Irving has fallen so far short of the standards of scholarship customary amongst historians that he does not deserve to be called a historian at all."
Yes, quite an unimpeachable source you have there.
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### Author:  [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)
#### Post date: [September 20, 2012, 12:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-german-a-bomb-project-how-far-did-they-get/251217/24 "2012-09-20T12:24:29Z")
So much of this is outright claptrap.
> [@tazjet](#):
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> Germany successfully test blasted the first nuclear weapon at least as early as 12 October 1944 on the Bug isthmus of Rugen. There are also declassified MAGIC decrypts of Japanese diplomatic signals from Europe talking about a German “Uranium atom smashing” bomb being used as early as June 1943.
Do we have any indication of a crater? Radiation? What was the Allied reaction?
> [@tazjet](#):
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> The war ended by a still secret negotiated peace deal between Washington and the SS, note… not with Hitler. Proof of this is the CSDIC evidence filed against Maj General Dornberger at Nuremberg trials which mention these secret peace negotiations in Lisbon during 1944.
OK, that’s flat-out crazy. Are you saying that, when the Allies publicly and privately rejected dealing with the Nazis on any terms other than unconditional surrender – because they didn’t need to, since Germany’s military was utterly, utterly crushed, essentially a nonentity – that the SS agreeing to be disbanded and, in many cases, hanged, when it no longer had any power or influence…was some kind of _deal?_ What would be the point of a deal that so exactly resembles no deal at all?
> [@tazjet](#):
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> And of further note the European Union and the single European currency (Euro), free trade and globally recognised patent rights were all things Hitler was seeking so in one sense the Nazis won because global capitalism and free trade was the Nazi objective in 1939
Aside from the conspiracy-mongering flags (comments about “one currency” somehow seem to crop up in conspiracy theories an awful lot, considering it’s such a dull subject) your claim is bafflingly wrong. Hitler did NOT go to war for “free trade” or patent rights. And as far as wanting a single European currency goes, his only interest in that was in extending political dominion over Europe, which by default would have made the Reichsmark a pan-European currency. But that would have been incidental.
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