# Was Heisenberg a Nazi collaborator, saboteur, or something in between? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 4, 2011, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-heisenberg-a-nazi-collaborator-saboteur-or-something-in-between/601853 "2011-11-04T14:45:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-heisenberg-a-nazi-collaborator-saboteur-or-something-in-between/601853/21 "2011-11-05T00:08:39Z")
> [@KarlGauss](#): > > we don’t even know which direction Heisenberg was coming from But you can know how fast he was going. ---
**Author:** ![Love\_Rhombus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/love_rhombus/32/10694_2.png) [@Love\_Rhombus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Love_Rhombus)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-heisenberg-a-nazi-collaborator-saboteur-or-something-in-between/601853/22 "2011-11-05T00:18:56Z")
But he had to know he was being observed, so that would have changed his goals. Ok ok, I’m no\*\* Bryan Ekers\*\*. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-heisenberg-a-nazi-collaborator-saboteur-or-something-in-between/601853/23 "2011-11-05T03:12:15Z")
> [@psychobunny](#): > > I recommend the play _Copenhagen_ if you haven’t seen it. It will make you even more confused about what happened at that meeting. Well, there are many different interpretations of that play. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-heisenberg-a-nazi-collaborator-saboteur-or-something-in-between/601853/24 "2011-11-05T03:24:46Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > That was Oppenhiemer. Von Neuman has absolutely no moral qualms about using atomic weapons. Neither would I, under the circumstances. My Uncle was killed in WWII. My Father would probably have survived having a duty repairing aircraft, shoveling brains out with his bare hands. The decision was probably not terribly difficult for Roosevelt. Kill a lot of Japanese or kill a lot of Americans and Japanese. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-heisenberg-a-nazi-collaborator-saboteur-or-something-in-between/601853/25 "2011-11-05T12:28:28Z")
> [@Tom\_Tildrum](#): > > Well, there are many different interpretations of that play. The play is total fiction. Supposedly, Heisenberg slipped Bohr a sketch of a reactor (with control rods sticking out). If Heisenberg actually knew how to construct a fission reactor, then why did he get it wrong with the test reactor that the Germans actually built? Actually, the whole German scientific community had been corrpted by naziism-they missed all the signs of what the allies were up to. In contrast, the Soviet nuclear physicists (headed by Prof. Kurchatov) picked p right away-they noticed that the USA and UK ceased publishing any papers in nuclear physics-and immediated deduced what was going on.:smack: ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-heisenberg-a-nazi-collaborator-saboteur-or-something-in-between/601853/26 "2011-11-05T14:45:24Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > Except he was doing it for a vicious mass murdering dictatorship. The full of extent of the Nazi’s crimes may not have been evident at the time, but there was enough information out there for anyone to seriously question working for the Nazi regime. While the United States was not a dictatorship, it certainly has a somewhat colored history regarding the lives and well-being of those standing in the way of US interests. There is, of course, the treatment of Native Americans; those not already dispatched by smallpox and other contagions brought by the Europeans were harrassed, forcibly emmigrated from place to place under harsh conditions, and not atypically outright massacred. The United States of course engaged in chattle slavery for forty years after nearly every other European and South American nation had outlawed the trade and ownership of human beings, and no protection existed for the rights or well-being of slaves who were often tortured, raped, or murdered arbitrarily. Perhaps less well-known by current generations, but the annexation of the Philippines resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands (perhaps as much as a million) of Filippinos, most of whom were non-combattants, and many specific incidents that were nothing but outright executions of tens or hundreds of people, the most famous of which is the Moro Massacre. During WWII, of course, American citizens of Japanese descent (or suspected Japanese ties) were interned in camps under harsh conditions with inadequate food and medical care. In the conduct of the war, the United States engaged in mass fire-bombing campaigns in both Germany and Japan that were not directed at war-making capabiliy or materiel but were expressly engaged in the purpose of terrorizing the civilian populations and “breaking their will to fight”. The number of deaths in a single night in the Japanese firebombing campaigns frequently exceeded the number of people killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and there were a number of American military and political leaders who believed that the Japanese should be completely eradicated. And of course, post-WWII the United States proceeded on a campaign of nuclear weapon development testing that displaced tens of thousands of people in the Pacific and threw large amounts of radioactive material into the atmosphere in both the South Pacific and the continental United States which certainly resulted in increased mortality and morbidity, the scope of which is still not fully understood. The dichtomy of American the Great Shining Beacon of Hope and Goodwill versus Evil Nazi Bastards is not terribly clear in the contextof actual history. Certainly, many of the scientistis and engineers that worked on the original atomic bomb project and the follow-on “Super” later had significant reservations and regrets about their work. > [@carnivorousplant](#): > > The decision was probably not terribly difficult for Roosevelt. Kill a lot of Japanese or kill a lot of Americans and Japanese. _cough_ Roosevelt was already dead by the time the decision was made to drop atomic bombs on the Home Islands. His Vice President and successor, Harry S. Truman, made that decision. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-heisenberg-a-nazi-collaborator-saboteur-or-something-in-between/601853/27 "2011-11-05T15:05:06Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > While the United States was not a dictatorship, it certainly has a somewhat colored history regarding the lives and well-being of those standing in the way of US interests. There is, of course, the treatment of Native Americans; those not already dispatched by smallpox and other contagions brought by the Europeans were harrassed, forcibly emmigrated from place to place under harsh conditions, and not atypically outright massacred. The United States of course engaged in chattle slavery for forty years after nearly every other European and South American nation had outlawed the trade and ownership of human beings, and no protection existed for the rights or well-being of slaves who were often tortured, raped, or murdered arbitrarily. Perhaps less well-known by current generations, but the annexation of the Philippines resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands (perhaps as much as a million) of Filippinos, most of whom were non-combattants, and many specific incidents that were nothing but outright executions of tens or hundreds of people, the most famous of which is the Moro Massacre. During WWII, of course, American citizens of Japanese descent (or suspected Japanese ties) were interned in camps under harsh conditions with inadequate food and medical care. In the conduct of the war, the United States engaged in mass fire-bombing campaigns in both Germany and Japan that were not directed at war-making capabiliy or materiel but were expressly engaged in the purpose of terrorizing the civilian populations and “breaking their will to fight”. The number of deaths in a single night in the Japanese firebombing campaigns frequently exceeded the number of people killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and there were a number of American military and political leaders who believed that the Japanese should be completely eradicated. And of course, post-WWII the United States proceeded on a campaign of nuclear weapon development testing that displaced tens of thousands of people in the Pacific and threw large amounts of radioactive material into the atmosphere in both the South Pacific and the continental United States which certainly resulted in increased mortality and morbidity, the scope of which is still not fully understood. > > The dichtomy of American the Great Shining Beacon of Hope and Goodwill versus Evil Nazi Bastards is not terribly clear in the contextof actual history. Certainly, many of the scientistis and engineers that worked on the original atomic bomb project and the follow-on “Super” later had significant reservations and regrets about their work. > > _cough_ Roosevelt was already dead by the time the decision was made to drop atomic bombs on the Home Islands. His Vice President and successor, Harry S. Truman, made that decision. > > Stranger Oh, the dichotomy is very, very clear. You just can’t see it. You’ve looked at a few relative molehills in the entire history of America and sorta looked away from the Nazi mountain from WWII alone. We weren’t saints, but we were overall on the side of goodness and niceness. You really should do something about those eyes of yours. You have a very bad case of selective vision. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-heisenberg-a-nazi-collaborator-saboteur-or-something-in-between/601853/28 "2011-11-05T15:46:47Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > _cough_ Roosevelt was already dead by the time the decision was made to drop atomic bombs on the Home Islands. His Vice President and successor, Harry S. Truman, made that decision. > > Stranger I believe Einstein changed his mind before Roosevelt died, not due to the bomb being dropped on Japan, but the knowledge that it would not be used on the Germans. ---
**Author:** ![PigArcher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bcef8e/32.png) [@PigArcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PigArcher)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-heisenberg-a-nazi-collaborator-saboteur-or-something-in-between/601853/29 "2011-11-05T16:03:57Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > I believe Einstein changed his mind before Roosevelt died, not due to the bomb being dropped on Japan, but the knowledge that it would not be used on the Germans. I don’t think Einstein, or most of the other scientists, wanted it used at all. But since they had evidence that the Germans were working on it, it was necessary for the US/Allies to build it also as a deterrent. Once Germany surrendered and it became apparent that they weren’t even close, some questioned the wisdom of continuing, but at that point the Manhattan Project was in full swing. ---
**Author:** ![coremelt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-heisenberg-a-nazi-collaborator-saboteur-or-something-in-between/601853/30 "2011-11-05T16:21:53Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > The play is total fiction. whoosh!!! read the comment again… ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-heisenberg-a-nazi-collaborator-saboteur-or-something-in-between/601853/31 "2011-11-05T17:43:43Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > Oh, the dichotomy is very, very clear. You just can’t see it. You’ve looked at a few relative molehills in the entire history of America and sorta looked away from the Nazi mountain from WWII alone. We weren’t saints, but we were overall on the side of goodness and niceness. You really should do something about those eyes of yours. You have a very bad case of selective vision. No, I’ve looked over the totality of American history rather than the one brief part of it in which the opposing side was dramatically, moustache-twirlingly villainous, and demonstrated that while the United States has not as doctrine conducted a deliberate campaign of genocide, it has often acted in a fashion that was highly detrimental to the lives and well being of other peoples whose interests were not coincident with those of American policy. I’ve cherry-picked a few notable examples, but even a casual student of American history can easily compound those cases from both early and modern history. The justification for the 2003 American invasion of Iraq (unsupported by nearly all of our NATO allies) based upon trumped up evidence of weapons of mass destruction was not manifestly different than the Gliewitz Incident that justified the German invasion of Poland in 1939. The forced eradication and resettlement of Native Americans on the basis of _manifest destiny_ (codified in the Indian Removal Act of 1830), while not as systematically planned or executed as the Final Solution of Himmler and Heydrich, had essentially the same effect on Native Americans, actually reducing their numbers in proportion even more successfully than the Nazi efforts to eliminate European Jewry through forced emigration, sterilization, and execution. More generally, once can note in history that when a technologically superior nation encroaches upon a less advanced indigenous people, or when a minority group stands at odds to the real or perceived interests of an industrial nation, the lesser group suffers regardless of the stated or real intent of the superior body. American history has followed this precept to a T, dominating and reducing the stature and determination of any indigenous people who stand in the way, and justified by the same rationale, be it manifest destiny, the Monroe Doctrine, or the War on Terror. The same, of course, could be saiad of any colonial or economic superpower, be it Britain, France, the Netherlands, or the former Soviet Union. As for your churlish schoolyard insults, I have no time for or interest in them other than to note that you immediately resort to them instead of making even the least attempt to address the points, which is not a very solid argument to hold upon. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Farmer\_Jane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Farmer\_Jane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farmer_Jane)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-heisenberg-a-nazi-collaborator-saboteur-or-something-in-between/601853/32 "2011-11-05T20:37:38Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > Oh, the dichotomy is very, very clear. You just can’t see it. You’ve looked at a few relative molehills in the entire history of America and sorta looked away from the Nazi mountain from WWII alone. We weren’t saints, but we were overall on the side of goodness and niceness. You really should do something about those eyes of yours. You have a very bad case of selective vision. I’m not sure dropping an unncessary bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki puts us on the side of the saints. Granted, my opinions were largely swayed by [this book](http://www.amazon.com/Decision-Use-Atomic-Bomb/dp/067976285X), but come _on_. Even Oppenheimer seemed horrified. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-heisenberg-a-nazi-collaborator-saboteur-or-something-in-between/601853/33 "2011-11-05T21:45:21Z")
> [@CitizenPained](#): > > I’m not sure dropping an unncessary bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki puts us on the side of the saints. Granted, my opinions were largely swayed by [this book](http://www.amazon.com/Decision-Use-Atomic-Bomb/dp/067976285X), but come _on_. Even Oppenheimer seemed horrified. Name me one thing the US did in World War II that was anywhere CLOSE to the horror of the Rape of Nanking. Estimates of the number of Allied soldiers who would have been killed in a land assault on Japan vary from half a million to 1.5 million. A lot of innocent American lives were saved by bombing cities supporting the Japanese. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-heisenberg-a-nazi-collaborator-saboteur-or-something-in-between/601853/34 "2011-11-05T21:59:48Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > The dichtomy of American the Great Shining Beacon of Hope and Goodwill versus Evil Nazi Bastards is not terribly clear in the contextof actual history. Ummm yes it is. There is plenty in US history to be ashamed of, and plenty of reason not to develop an atomic bomb no matter who you are working for, but none of that changes the fact that developing an atomic bomb for the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s makes you more a “bastard” than developing one for the US. That much is clear, both with the benefit of a historical perspective, and at the time. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-heisenberg-a-nazi-collaborator-saboteur-or-something-in-between/601853/35 "2011-11-05T22:02:03Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Neither would I, under the circumstances. My Uncle was killed in WWII. My Father would probably have survived having a duty repairing aircraft, shoveling brains out with his bare hands. I was actually referring to his post war attitude towards nuclear weapons. During WW2 even Oppenhiemer never raised any objections. After WW2 while Oppenhiemer supported nuclear disarmament (and went on to voice objections to the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki) Von Neuman even supported a preemptive, unprovoked attack on the soviet union, to knock them out before they were able to make their own atomic weapons. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-heisenberg-a-nazi-collaborator-saboteur-or-something-in-between/601853/36 "2011-11-05T22:34:22Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > Roosevelt was already dead by the time the decision was made to drop atomic bombs on the Home Islands. His Vice President and successor, Harry S. Truman, made that decision. I always thought this was the case but I’ve recently read otherwise in _[Roosevelt’s Secret War: F. D. R. and World War II Espionage](https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol46no2/article07.html)_ by Joseph Persico. Persico says that in late 1944 the decision had been made that Japan would be the first target of the atom bomb, even though Germany was still fighting at this point. This surprised me because I’ve always thought Germany was the primary target but [Persico](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_E._Persico) appears to be a reputable and informed historian. ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2011, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-heisenberg-a-nazi-collaborator-saboteur-or-something-in-between/601853/37 "2011-11-06T00:53:36Z")
He is wrong. According to Paul Tibbets, > [@](#): > > PT: He gave me an explanation which probably lasted 45, 50 minutes, and they left. General Ent looked at me and said, “The other day, General Arnold [commander general of the army air corps] offered me three names.” Both of the others were full colonels; I was lieutenant-colonel. He said that when General Arnold asked which of them could do this atomic weapons deal, he replied without hesitation, “Paul Tibbets is the man to do it.” I said, “Well, thank you, sir.” Then he laid out what was going on and it was up to me now to put together an organisation and train them to drop atomic weapons on both Europe and the Pacific - Tokyo. > > ST: Interesting that they would have dropped it on Europe as well. We didn’t know that. > > PT: My edict was as clear as could be. Drop simultaneously in Europe and the Pacific because of the secrecy problem - you couldn’t drop it in one part of the world without dropping it in the other. And so he said, “I don’t know what to tell you, but I know you happen to have B-29s to start with. I’ve got a squadron in training in Nebraska - they have the best record so far of anybody we’ve got. I want you to go visit them, look at them, talk to them, do whatever you want. If they don’t suit you, we’ll get you some more.” He said: “There’s nobody could tell you what you have to do because nobody knows. If we can do anything to help you, ask me.” I said thank you very much. He said, “Paul, be careful how you treat this responsibility, because if you’re successful you’ll probably be called a hero. And if you’re unsuccessful, you might wind up in prison.” Source: Interview with Studs Turkel. Mr. Tibbets should know, and he’s the kind of man who wouldn’t give a rats ass about covering someone else’s behind. Japan was always going to be a target. That being said, it is possible that what he is saying is that by late 44, the decision was that nuking Germany wasn’t necessary, as it was all but won anyhow, and it eliminated a great difficulty in the scheduling. This is, however, Sept 1944. So sometime between Sept and Dec 1944 the project may have changed. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2011, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-heisenberg-a-nazi-collaborator-saboteur-or-something-in-between/601853/38 "2011-11-06T03:05:45Z")
Tibbets may have been involved in the process but he was a Lt Colonel of the Army Air Corps. Persico quotes a joint policy memo signed by Roosevelt and Churchill, who I think had more awareness of what the policy was than Tibbets did. Tibbets may have been told to prepare for a simultaneous mission over Germany or Japan - but that doesn’t mean such a mission would have been flown. (If nothing else, there was no reason in 1944 to assume two weapons would be available for simultaneous missions.) It could have just been the War Department keeping its options open. Tibbets was told to prepare for both areas and when the weapon was ready he would have been told to carry out the mission against Japan. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2011, 11:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-heisenberg-a-nazi-collaborator-saboteur-or-something-in-between/601853/39 "2011-11-06T11:02:22Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > Name me one thing the US did in World War II that was anywhere CLOSE to the horror of the Rape of Nanking. The firebombing of Japanese civilian populations, such as the incendiary bombing of Tokyo on 9 March 1945 which killed over 100,000 civilians, was pretty horrific. No effort was made to target military or industrial targets, and in fact the stated goal of the firebombing operations was to terrorize the civilian popuation. Gen. Curtis LeMay actually ranked efficiency not in terms of military targets destroyed or war-making capability reduced, but number of people killed per tonnage of bombs dropped. After the war, LeMay himself admitted that had the Allied forces lost the war, he and other commanders and planners in the 20th Air Force would have been tried as war criminals. The treatment of Okinawa during and after the war by the United States is also worthy of criticism. Rape was reportedly very common, although the Department of the Navy refused to investigate claims of rapes by the Marines stationed there during the war and for several years afterward. During the Cold War buildup of American naval and air bases in Okinawa many civilians were pressed into service and agricultural land was annexed with little or no renumeration. I assume by your use of the term “The Rape of Nanking” your primary source material is Iris Chang’s book of the same name. While there is no question that the occupying Japanese engaged in a campaign of rapine, molestation, and murder of civilians (as well as unlawful execution of legitimate Chinese POWs) that was at least tacitly approved by the Japanese military command and later denied by the successive Japanese government, figures and many of the claims of the book are considered to be massively overstated by most authorities, and even the author’s own quoted sources do not back up the most extreme of her claims. > [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > Estimates of the number of Allied soldiers who would have been killed in a land assault on Japan vary from half a million to 1.5 million. A lot of innocent American lives were saved by bombing cities supporting the Japanese. This is a specious argument that continues to be repeated. In fact, by the time of the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese military effectively had no war-making capability left, and given the dearth of indigenous resources and almost complete destruction of industrial infrastructure would not have been able to re-arm or mount any effective attach. It would have been easy enough to simply wait out the Japanese through the winter (although the counterargument can be made that this would have resulted in more casualties due to famine, disease, and exposure than the deaths from the atomic bombs). The real reason for dropping the Fat Man and Little Boy had nothing to do with saving the lives of American troops and everything with preventing Japan from suing for peace with the Soviet Union, thus providing a strategic vantage in the Pacific. An additional hypothesis is that it was also an opportunity to demonstrate the effectiveness of nascent nuclear warfare capability in an applied context to the Soviets, as a precursor to the Cold War conflict. > [@griffin1977](#): > > Ummm yes it is. There is plenty in US history to be ashamed of, and plenty of reason not to develop an atomic bomb no matter who you are working for, but none of that changes the fact that developing an atomic bomb for the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s makes you more a “bastard” than developing one for the US. That much is clear, both with the benefit of a historical perspective, and at the time. Let’s take another tack. Andrei Sakharov was instrumental in developing the multi-stage thermonuclear fusion weapons (Sakharov’s “Third Idea”) for the Soviet Union, which allowed a near parity with contemporary American capability and exacerbated the Cold War development of absurdly destructive nuclear weapons and ballistic delivery systems. The Soviet Union was, if anything, even more horrific of a dictatorship than Nazi Germany; it lasted longer, resulted in the deaths of more people, and was every bit as systematic (if not as efficient) as the German government in imprisoning and executing people for completely arbitrary reasons. Sakharov later performed ground-breaking work in many non-weapon areas of physics including gravitation, cosmology, and controlled nuclear fusion (developing the tokamak reactor), and publically campaigned for nuclear disarmerment, limiting or ending nuclear testing, and dissident rights at peril to his career, freedom, and health. Is Sakharov a “bastard” for providing the Soviet Union–a criminal regime of first order–the advanced nuclear capability to destroy cities, or is he one of the most brilliant and benevolent scientists of the 20th century? Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2011, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-heisenberg-a-nazi-collaborator-saboteur-or-something-in-between/601853/40 "2011-11-06T16:23:01Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > The firebombing of Japanese civilian populations, such as the incendiary bombing of Tokyo on 9 March 1945 which killed over 100,000 civilians, was pretty horrific. No effort was made to target military or industrial targets, and in fact the stated goal of the firebombing operations was to terrorize the civilian popuation. You could make that argument, but you can just as easily make the following two arguments against it: 1. The Japanese were the aggressors and the best way to protect against current or future aggressors is by making it seem like a really really bad idea. 2. The goal of fire bombing was, like Sherman’s run through the South, to make the Japanese people lose the will to keep fighting, not to kill people. While that’s accomplished by destroying the homeland, so that people end up starving and living without shelter, the hope is that it brings an end to the war more quickly and saves a larger number of absolute lives (particularly those of the aggressed) in the long run. It’s worth noting that, while the Japanese government runs largely independent of the Japanese people in modern day, the one thing that will get the Japanese people to stand up and vote, kick out their politicians, or do whatever else it takes, is to prevent the nation from being able to act in any belligerent fashion. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-heisenberg-a-nazi-collaborator-saboteur-or-something-in-between/601853.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-heisenberg-a-nazi-collaborator-saboteur-or-something-in-between/601853.md?page=3)