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Nazi Germany had no hope of making an atomic bomb, uranium cubes reveal

Nazi Germany had no hope of making an atomic bomb, uranium cubes reveal

xqcgrek2

Comments (82)

  • WalterBright
    It's generally forgotten that Japan was also developing a nuclear bomb. They were a long ways from making a viable one, though. It was abandoned after the surrender.
  • kjander79
    This is an awesome read, and likely correct in the narrative, but the cubes they have at hand to study have a bit of a provenance problem - how do we know they were the ones used for the German research?At any rate, getting a reactor running still was a long way from the industrial capacity the Americans used to get a working device. Industrial capacity Germany just didn't have late in the war. And after Afrika Korps' defeat, they weren't getting any easily accessible materials anymore.
  • Danox
    Germany’s racism/ethnic/religious hate killed their efforts for the bomb..
  • anon
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  • expedition32
    This was already known. The British put the German scientists into a big country house after the war and bugged all the rooms. After the US dropped the atomic bombs the German scientists spent weeks discussing with eachother how the Americans could have done it. They never got it right.
  • sandworm101
    The science is only half of the question. Another substantial issue was, even with equal knowledge to the US, did German and/or Japan have the industrial capacity to create a nuclear weapon?Fun fact also: For all the effort put into the Manhattan project, MORE time/resources were spent on its eventual delivery system (the B-29) than the bomb itself. So even if Germany/Japan had a nuclear bomb, could they have also developed a practical delivery method, something capable enough to trust with such a weapon?I had this discussion last week with someone who asked about whether Canada could build a bomb. Ya. Easy. Modern industrial capacities dwarf anything from the 1940s and Canada certainly has the brainpower and raw materials. But could Canada so easily develop a delivery platform, say an ICBM or stealth fighter? Likely not.
  • rurban
    What they didn't mention is that German had the worlds largest Uranium reserves those times, even larger than the famous Belgian-Kongo mines. They didn't knew it then. But the Nazis promised the miners to close the unhealthy mines, the avg. age of a miner was 45. They didn't, but later the Russians used this German and Czech uranium to produce their nuclear arsenal. What Germany missed was to enrich the uranium. Siemens could have done it, but Speer/Heisenberg probably missed that opportunity.
  • LightBug1
    [flagged]
  • JumpCrisscross
    [flagged]
  • ck2
    but imagine if they did, wow, history would absolutely be completely different and they'd still be in powerspeaking of which, pretty sure he's turning Iran to sand after the elections, he'll have nothing left to lose and US is only country to ever use nuclear weapons on a million innocent civilians, twice, so why stop now?we're out of other weapons except these which seems wildly illegal to use especially on civilians* https://apnews.com/article/iran-lamerd-us-prsm-lockheed-mart...Imagine if Putin was using those on Ukraine civilians but US uses them no problem?
  • rgrieselhuber