# Where would the Nazis test an atomic bomb?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-the-nazis-test-an-atomic-bomb/559792
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [November 7, 2010, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-the-nazis-test-an-atomic-bomb/559792 "2010-11-07T13:58:48Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@Markxxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Markxxx)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2010, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-the-nazis-test-an-atomic-bomb/559792/21 "2010-11-07T22:56:23Z")
There were [fire balloon bombs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_balloon) that made it from Japan to the west coast of the USA. These caused little damage but killed six people.
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### Author:  [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)
#### Post date: [November 8, 2010, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-the-nazis-test-an-atomic-bomb/559792/22 "2010-11-08T00:23:10Z")
> [@RickJay](#):
>
> The logical thing would have been to nuke London and Moscow and announce they had twenty more, and hope the Allies would’t have wise to the truth - though, to be honest, given the imbalance in intelligence gathering, it’s unlikely they would have fooled anyone.
Sure, but in the fall of 1944, say, how do you get the bomb to either London or Moscow? You’re not even close to Moscow. As for London, the bomb (if it’s anything like the Hiroshima weapon) weighs 4600 kg. Your V-2s can only carry about 1000kg. So your only chance is to stick it in an HE-177, something you don’t have very many of anymore, and try to fly it there, over enemy lines and Allied air superiority, and past Chain Home, and pray you’re going to be able to get to the target. Remember, you only have one bomb. If your bomber gets shot down, that’s it. No explosion, no destruction. And by the fall of 1944, the RAF and USAAF were really good at shooting down bombers.
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [November 8, 2010, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-the-nazis-test-an-atomic-bomb/559792/23 "2010-11-08T00:27:30Z")
> [@](#):
>
> In addition, there is the problem of delivery. Obviously, a submarine launched a-bomb is well outside of the capabilities of any power in 1945. The only possible ways to actually use it by this route would be to detonate it inside the submarine - effectively making it a suicide weapon to the sub’s crew - or somehow smuggling it into NYC, which would not likely be successful.
But would the German high command tell the submarine crew that it was a suicide weapon? I have no doubt that the Nazis would be willing to lie to a crew and intentionally kill them in order to take out a major enemy city.
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### Author:  [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)
#### Post date: [November 8, 2010, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-the-nazis-test-an-atomic-bomb/559792/24 "2010-11-08T00:58:06Z")
> [@Camus](#):
>
> The diesel submarines at the time could not travel across the Atlantic entirely submerged, which means that any u-boat on such a mission would expose itself to potential discovery and depth charges on several different occasions. That’s a pretty big risk if you only have one or two such bombs, particularly in 1945 with a strengthened anti-submarine warfare grid of surface ship and air patrols running from the US/Canada to Greenland to Iceland.
>
> In addition, there is the problem of delivery. Obviously, a submarine launched a-bomb is well outside of the capabilities of any power in 1945. The only possible ways to actually use it by this route would be to detonate it inside the submarine - effectively making it a suicide weapon to the sub’s crew - or somehow smuggling it into NYC, which would not likely be successful.
Not to mention that the nuclear weapons of the time simply would not fit inside a submarine. The physical size was 10’8" by 5’ (3.25m by 1.5m).
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### Author:  [@whitetho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whitetho)
#### Post date: [November 8, 2010, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-the-nazis-test-an-atomic-bomb/559792/25 "2010-11-08T20:41:03Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#):
>
> Sure, but in the fall of 1944, say, how do you get the bomb to either London or Moscow? You’re not even close to Moscow. As for London, the bomb (if it’s anything like the Hiroshima weapon) weighs 4600 kg. Your V-2s can only carry about 1000kg. So your only chance is to stick it in an HE-177, something you don’t have very many of anymore, and try to fly it there, over enemy lines and Allied air superiority, and past Chain Home, and pray you’re going to be able to get to the target. Remember, you only have one bomb. If your bomber gets shot down, that’s it. No explosion, no destruction. And by the fall of 1944, the RAF and USAAF were really good at shooting down bombers.
Okay, nuke Paris. Claim it was done by the new, unstoppable, V3 rocket, and hundreds more are on the way. Hope the allies don’t call your bluff.
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### Author:  [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)
#### Post date: [November 8, 2010, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-the-nazis-test-an-atomic-bomb/559792/26 "2010-11-08T21:17:10Z")
[QUOTE=Markxxx]
[Thuringia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuringia) was the test site of a Nazi atomic weapon centering around [Ohrdruf](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohrdruf)
[/QUOTE]
In the course of a discussion of the Nazi nuclear programmes in [this old thread](http://209.104.5.198/sdmb/showthread.php?t=471473), the Ohrdruf story came up and I addressed it in [this post](http://209.104.5.198/sdmb/showpost.php?p=9899012&postcount=21). Nothing I’ve seen since has made it more creditable.
> [@](#):
>
> The island of [Rugen](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%BCgen) is the supposed site of another test of crude Nazi nukes. This is doubtful as well.
Doubtful is optimistic. IIRC offhand, there’s literally one supposed eyewitness account for a “test” on Rugen.
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### Author:  [@germanwarexpert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/germanwarexpert)
#### Post date: [February 1, 2011, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-the-nazis-test-an-atomic-bomb/559792/27 "2011-02-01T00:44:35Z")
I believe the Nazi Generals fighting on the Eastern front was waiting for new weapons to help them win. So I suspect Leningrad would have been target number one. In fact Hitler had said he wanted Leningrad scorched off the earth.
```
Afterwards Stalingrad and finally Moscow, with the use of the Ural bomber, something similar to the Amerika Bomber program. So imagine the Amerika Bomber being used on Soviet cites. If they didn't have enough supplies they would have just used it on Moscow. Hitler did not hate the French or the English like he hated the Russians or the peoples of the Soviet Union. In France the same lead General that attack Poland was ordered to be nicer to the French.
Orders from the high command was for troops to pay for merchandise and be for the most part good to the French people. Likewise in Operation Sea lion they were to take over England, once in power they were to purchase merchandise like cigarettes and coffee from the store keeps with Deutsche Marks. Hitler believed that the British was part of the Aryan race and praised the British Empire longevity.
```
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### Author:  [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)
#### Post date: [February 1, 2011, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-the-nazis-test-an-atomic-bomb/559792/28 "2011-02-01T02:05:42Z")
Right, but again, at the end of 1944 or beginning of 1945, the Germans weren’t near Leningrad. By the beginning of January, the Red Army had taken Eastern Poland and was ready to move into East Prussia.
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### Author:  [@Claverhouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Claverhouse)
#### Post date: [February 1, 2011, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-the-nazis-test-an-atomic-bomb/559792/29 "2011-02-01T02:43:10Z")
I can’t recall where I read it, but during the trial of Albert Speer the chief American prosecutor brought out that the nazis had tested a nuclear device at Auschwitz: buliding a large structure and placing many thousands of jewish people therein, who were instantly vaporized without any clues remaining.
Seems as likely as any war-trial allegation…
It’s pretty much the same as the accusations that members of the US government orchestrated 9/11: if willing to believe they had the will and the evil to do so, there’s no way they could get away without blow-back. Or the allegations that Saddam had WMD but chose not to use it under real invasion\*: had the nazis such devices they would have used them in war.
Which, presumably, would have been no more wicked or a matter for prosecution than the allies using such weapons.
- Anyone remember the persistent right-wing claim he smuggled them out to sympathetic neighbours rather than use them against enemies ?
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### Author:  [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)
#### Post date: [February 1, 2011, 8:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-the-nazis-test-an-atomic-bomb/559792/30 "2011-02-01T08:25:31Z")
> [@Claverhouse](#):
>
> I can’t recall where I read it, but during the trial of Albert Speer the chief American prosecutor brought out that the nazis had tested a nuclear device at Auschwitz: buliding a large structure and placing many thousands of jewish people therein, who were instantly vaporized without any clues remaining.
> Seems as likely as any war-trial allegation…
I don’t believe it. At all.
Why would this be brought out at the trial of Speer, who had hardly anything to do with Auschwitz or the other concentration camps?
> [@Claverhouse](#):
>
> - Anyone remember the persistent right-wing claim he smuggled them out to sympathetic neighbours rather than use them against enemies ?
What sympathetic neighbors?
Hadn’t he been at war with most of them in the last dozen years?
He fought a bloody war with Iran for several years, he invaded Kuwait, he’s been arguing with Turkey over the Kurds for years, Saudi Arabia & Jordan strongly disagree with his branch of Islam. So that leaves Syria as the only one I can see as a ‘sympathetic’ neighbor.
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### Author:  [@Alka\_Seltzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alka_Seltzer)
#### Post date: [February 1, 2011, 10:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-the-nazis-test-an-atomic-bomb/559792/31 "2011-02-01T10:33:30Z")
> [@AK84](#):
>
> Most likely N Africa if they got it sometimes before 1943.
Unlikely. Thanks to Ultra intelligence, the allies were sinking something like 40% of Rommel’s supply ships.
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### Author:  [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)
#### Post date: [February 1, 2011, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-the-nazis-test-an-atomic-bomb/559792/32 "2011-02-01T12:04:50Z")
France. Brittany, likely.
Where the UK could see it, real clear.
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### Author:  [@Claverhouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Claverhouse)
#### Post date: [February 1, 2011, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-the-nazis-test-an-atomic-bomb/559792/33 "2011-02-01T13:35:44Z")
> [@t-bonham@scc.net](#):
>
> I don’t believe it. At all.
I ddn’t say _I_ believed it.
> [@](#):
>
> Why would this be brought out at the trial of Speer, who had hardly anything to do with Auschwitz or the other concentration camps?
I imagine because he was in charge of the Reich’s economic life for the last year of the war. Even if the holocaust was mainly over in 1944 he bore enough responsibility for the economic value created by the camps, which were after all mainly slave camps for the production of wealth ( to the SS ) not to have had evidence to offer — if only to say ‘_It was nothing to do with me_’.
He kind of said that a lot.
Added to which they shoved in virtually anything during the trials, no matter how strange, claimed by people with vivid imagination, and required no proof of such claims, merely the individuals defence to the prosecution, which defensive claims did require proof. [eg: a prosecution’s statement that _such and such_ had happened was declared fact, and the defence could not challenge such fact, only their client’s connectiion to such fact.] It was a unique trial. In many ways.
> [@](#):
>
> What sympathetic neighbors?
> Hadn’t he been at war with most of them in the last dozen years?
> He fought a bloody war with Iran for several years, he invaded Kuwait, he’s been arguing with Turkey over the Kurds for years, Saudi Arabia & Jordan strongly disagree with his branch of Islam. So that leaves Syria as the only one I can see as a ‘sympathetic’ neighbor.
Indeed, Syria was the preferred candidate for these patriotic internet claims. Although pleasingly I can recall some suggesting he sent them to the Taliban; and perhaps even more desperately mad, that he gifted them to Iran.
Had the American occupiers run the trial that swung him perhaps the destination would have been investigated more: they could scarcely imply he never had had WMD.
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### Author:  [@tazjet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tazjet)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2012, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-the-nazis-test-an-atomic-bomb/559792/34 "2012-09-17T02:34:11Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#):
>
> If you can’t get a bomber with conventional bombs to New York City, how are you going to get a bomber with a nuclear bomb to New York City? If you’re Germany in 1944-5, and you get the bomb, your best bet isn’t to drop it on a civilian target at all…you can’t easily reach any sort of civilian targets anyway, and Allied and Soviet air superiority makes it tough to even get to those places.. Your best bet is to drop it on a military target…on some sort of big Allied or Soviet troop concentration, and then follow it up with a conventional attack in the hole you’ve just opened in their lines, and hope that Allied/Soviet command is too dead or confused to stop you.
[http://www.uboat.net/forums/read.php?3,33712,33784,quote=1](http://www.uboat.net/forums/read.php?3,33712,33784,quote=1)
Apparently according to this exchange of information on [Uboat.net](http://Uboat.net) in 2004 citing from an earlier conversation in 1997 on the twelve oclock high website, a six engined Junkers (Ju-390) came down in the sea off Maine USA about 17/18 September 1944. Likely that aircraft was part of the first attempted nuclear attack on USA.
Markxxx is quite correct above in his details about German A-bomb tests at Bug isthmus on the Island of Rugen along the Baltic coast near Penemunde. We have the surviving eyewitness accounts of a spotter pilot named Hans Zinsser in an affidavit attached to a US Naval Intelligence report kept classified for many years after WW2 and only released when the British declassified their files forcing the USA to follow.
The file entitled “Investigations, Research, Developments and Practical Use of the German Atomic Bomb,” issued by COMNAVEU London on 25 January 1946 by Captain R.F. Hickey, USN. The file location in US National Archives is NARA/RG 38, Box 9-13 Entry 98c. “Top Secret Naval Attache Reports 1944-1947.” Portions of the report; enclosures describing the German Atomic bomb’s mechanism have been removed by the US Governmen. Zinsser reported electromagnetic interference and afterwards observing a billowing mushroom cloud to 22,000 feet with blue flashes from plasma ion discharges in the cloud. Something very specific to mushroom clouds from nuclear weapons which can’t be replicated with conventional or fuel air explosives.
Zinsser also noted the blast radius of the Rugen bomb was just 1000 metres putting it in the category of a fairly small 0.5 kiloton tactical nuclear weapon. Maj Gen Dornberger was secretly recorded in British captivity from 2-7 August 1945 discussing how Hitler intended nuclear warheads for the V-2 rocket and this recording was used in Nuremberg trials against Dornberger.
At Nuremberg armament minister Speer was also quizzed about an atomic bomb test in Ohrdruf further corroborating what Markxxx mentions above.
Late in 1978 an ULTRA decrypt of a japanese diplomatic signal from the embassy in Stockholm to Tokyo also disclosed discussion about a Germna Uranium atom smashing bomb with a 5 kilogram warhead.
Thus if we take at face value that the germans had a 5 kg tactical nuclear weapon a single Ju-390 aircraft or perhaps the He-274 intended for the role could have delivered several nuclear weapons over New York in late 1944.
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### Author:  [@the\_diego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_diego)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2012, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-the-nazis-test-an-atomic-bomb/559792/35 "2012-09-17T04:04:54Z")
No one has mentioned those underground salt domes? Those things can withstand the shock of a nuclear blast.
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### Author:  [@Kenm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kenm)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2012, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-the-nazis-test-an-atomic-bomb/559792/36 "2012-09-17T05:17:07Z")
\*\*Where would the Nazis test an atomic bomb?
\*\*
> [@Simplicio](#):
>
> Eh, presumably even Nazi’s would want to test it somewhere where no one would notice. Don’t want to give the Allies a heads up on your super-weapon. I don’t think there are too many places in Poland that are so isolated that no one would notice a mushroom cloud.
>
> Northern Norway maybe?
Vesuvius. A mushroom cloud from the 79 eruption was described by Pliny, so another one wouldn’t make anyone in the early to mid '40s think nuke.
What’s the half-life of a zombie?
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### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2012, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-the-nazis-test-an-atomic-bomb/559792/37 "2012-09-17T14:40:16Z")
> [@tazjet](#):
>
> The file entitled “Investigations, Research, Developments and Practical Use of the German Atomic Bomb,” issued by COMNAVEU London on 25 January 1946 by Captain R.F. Hickey, USN. The file location in US National Archives is NARA/RG 38, Box 9-13 Entry 98c. “Top Secret Naval Attache Reports 1944-1947.” Portions of the report; enclosures describing the German Atomic bomb’s mechanism have been removed by the US Governmen. Zinsser reported electromagnetic interference and afterwards observing a billowing mushroom cloud to 22,000 feet with blue flashes from plasma ion discharges in the cloud. Something very specific to mushroom clouds from nuclear weapons which can’t be replicated with conventional or fuel air explosives.
Zinsser reported his sighting about 12-15 km from Ludwigslust, which is in northcentral Germany. Any competent investigate team could go there today and find elevated amounts of radiation. Has this been done?
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### Author:  [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2012, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-the-nazis-test-an-atomic-bomb/559792/38 "2012-09-17T14:53:02Z")
> [@tazjet](#):
>
> Zinsser reported electromagnetic interference and afterwards observing a billowing mushroom cloud to 22,000 feet with blue flashes from plasma ion discharges in the cloud. Something very specific to mushroom clouds from nuclear weapons which can’t be replicated with conventional or fuel air explosives.
An event that spectacular and widespread should have been witnessed by thousands of people, yet we have only _one_ “eyewitness” and no photographs? :dubious:
Doesn’t that strike you as a little strange?
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### Author:  [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2012, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-the-nazis-test-an-atomic-bomb/559792/39 "2012-09-17T15:27:16Z")
How about underground-in a deep salt mine?
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### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2012, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-would-the-nazis-test-an-atomic-bomb/559792/40 "2012-09-17T15:35:25Z")
> [@ralph124c](#):
>
> How about underground-in a deep salt mine?
What about it? Would that have produced a “billowing mushroom cloud to 22,000 feet with blue flashes from plasma ion discharges in the cloud”?
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