Did Heisenberg sabotage the German atomic effort?

[Sulla the Dictator]

What do you think? Some if not most of the German scientists working on the German atmoic project seem to suggest he did, after the war. Thats the story that Powers pushes in "Heisenberg's War". I myself have my doubts. I believe Speer shut the project down after the destruction of Norweigan heavy water production. After learning that the atomic bomb was actually possible, Heisenberg gives a lecture at Farm Hall (Where the project's scientists were kept in comfortable captivity) that the Allies had eavesdropped on. It all seems to revolve on interpretation here.

Heisenberg wasn't a Nazi, but he was a nationalist. Heisenberg also supported the war against the Soviets, where a German atomic bomb would have been vital. His fellow scientists on the project faulted him for placing an emphasis on theory over experimentation.

Was Heisenberg a secret Allied sympathizer or did German research simply lack the raw material necessary for Heisenberg's type of slow methodology? Was the direction of the atomic project a DELIBERATE choice on Heisenberg's part or a reasonable error to make?

[Ahknaton]

I'm uncertain :D

This is an interesting theory that I've never heard of before. Do you have any links to any more material about it (other than the book title)?

[Felix the Cat]

Didn't Hitler order his scientists to stop fooling around with cyclotrons and focus on rockets instead?

I doubt any deliberate sabotage on the part of German scientists

[Sulla the Dictator]

I'm uncertain :D

This is an interesting theory that I've never heard of before. Do you have any links to any more material about it (other than the book title)?

I'm reading it in a book called "Hitler's Scientists" by John Cornwell. Doing a quick google search, I find a review of another book discussing it:

http://www.bearcave.com/bookrev/uclub.htm

I find it hard to believe, considering Heisenberg's view of the Soviets and the inevitable damage their occupation would cause Germany, that he would have hampered an ACTUAL German 'wonder weapon' that could single handedly turn the tide.

[Sulla the Dictator]

Didn't Hitler order his scientists to stop fooling around with cyclotrons and focus on rockets instead?


Speer was never a big fan of the project, and he didn't disabuse Hitler of some of his rather fanciful theories, heard third hand from his photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann, about how an atomic bomb would turn the Earth 'into a glowing star'. Speer responded to that statement by saying:

Actually, Professor Heisenberg had not given any final answer to my question whether a successful nuclear fission could be kept under control with absolute certainty or might continue as a chain reaction.

Speer would later say after learning about the size of the American atomic program that Germany COULD have built an atomic bomb by 1945 if it had abandoned every other project it had. Speer primarily blamed the rocket program, though I don't know what kind of delivery system he would have possibly used against anyone other than the Soviets.


I doubt any deliberate sabotage on the part of German scientists

I find it unlikely myself, but it is possible. For example, in the bugged Farm Hall discussion, Weizsacker said: I believe the reason we didn't do it was because all the physicists didn't want to do it, on principle. If we had all wanted Germany to win the war we would have succeeded.

[Sulla the Dictator]

One of the biggest reasons for suspicion is that after learning some rather vague, rudimentary details about the explosion at Hiroshima, Heisenberg's impromptu lecture is incredibly detailed and fairly on the mark on the manner in which such a bomb could be constructed. That he posessed such an 'intuitive' understanding of the bomb strikes some historians as a bit implausible, and they suggest that he knew the correct path for the atomic project to take and deliberately chose the incorrect one.

However, is it plausible for someone to FAKE loyalty so thoroughly for over a decade?

[Kodos]

Some MI6 tapes that got released publically basically proved he did the best he could, he made a big miscalculation as to the critical mass required though.

[Dan Dare]

This is one the great conundrums of WW II but I think sabotage is too strong a word to describe Heisenberg's conduct.

He was an intense German patriot who had little regard for the Nazi regime, and his worst fear was that Hitler would be propelled by concern about Allied nuclear advances to pour resources into a German bomb. I believe that is why he took steps to take control of nuclear research after the start of WW II.

As for Heisenberg's detailed knowledge of the theoretical mechanics of nuclear fission that is hardly surprising given his background, and the calibre of his collaborators including Hahn early on, and later von Wieszacker.

I think what Heisenberg grasped but did not fully communicate to his minders was the sheer scale of the scientific and industrial infrastructure necessary to turn theory into reality. He seemed genuinely surprised when he learned about the scope of the Manhattan project while in British custody.

A fascinating take on the Heisenberg Dilemma is given in Michael Frayn's play "Copenhagen" which gives an account of Heisenberg's visit in 1943 to his old mentor Niels Bohr, and his supposed efforts to have Bohr warn the Allies not to construct the bomb for fear of goading Hitler. The BBC produced an excellent movie of Frayn's play, which is available on DVD.

[Basil Fawlty]

No, I do not believe for a moment that Heisenberg was a traitor.

[A. Radek]

One of the great 'what if's', eh? I read some fictional accounts pretending he did drag his feet, making for some interesting espionage fiction, complete with agents operating out of Switzerland. I tend to doubt it, myself; scientists have large egoes, even larger than crackpot artists and actors, and being the first to design a working bomb would have been a great coup.

[ironweed]

Sulla, do you consider Speer a generally reliable source? I've had my doubts since finishing
Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0394529154/qid=1140020545/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-6166121-1222440?s=books&v=glance&n=28315) about a year ago. Especially on a topic like this, though I don't think the book specifically adressed it. It is just that the author's thesis was that Speer went out of his way to make himself attractive to the Americans and British, claiming Speer claimed he did things he never did, that his writings were revised to make himself a much more palatable figure. If Sereny has the right of it, I could easily see Speer claiming he had been the one sabotaging an atomic bomb program when he hadn't.

[Kodos]

I think what Heisenberg grasped but did not fully communicate to his minders was the sheer scale of the scientific and industrial infrastructure necessary to turn theory into reality. He seemed genuinely surprised when he learned about the scope of the Manhattan project while in British custody.

Ah in British custody he was under survelliance and it was clear he greatly overcalculated the nessescary "critical mass" to create a chain reaction.

[cerberus]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4598955.stm

Drawing uncovered of 'Nazi nuke'


The diagram appears in an undated report about nuclear weapons work in Nazi Germany

Enlarge Image
Historians working in Germany and the US claim to have found a 60-year-old diagram showing a Nazi nuclear bomb.
It is the only known drawing of a "nuke" made by Nazi experts and appears in a report held by a private archive.

The researchers who brought it to light say the drawing is a rough schematic and does not imply the Nazis built, or were close to building, an atomic bomb.

But a detail in the report hints some Nazi scientists may have been closer to that goal than was previously believed.


The Nazis were far away from a 'classic' atomic bomb. But they hoped to combine a 'mini-nuke' with a rocket
Rainer Karlsch
The report containing the diagram is undated, but the researchers claim the evidence points to it being produced immediately after the end of the war in Europe. It deals with the work of German nuclear scientists during the war and lacks a title page, so there is no evidence of who composed it.

One historian behind the discovery, Rainer Karlsch, caused a storm of controversy earlier this year when he claimed to have uncovered evidence that the Nazis successfully tested a primitive nuclear device in the last days of WWII. A number of historians rejected the claim.

The drawing is published in an article written for Physics World magazine by Karlsch and Mark Walker, professor of history at Union College in Schenectady, US.

'Mini-nuke'

The newly uncovered document was discovered after the publication of Karlsch's book, Hitlers Bombe (Hitler's Bomb), in which he made the nuclear test claim.

"The Nazis were far away from a 'classic' atomic bomb. But they hoped to combine a 'mini-nuke' with a rocket," Dr Karlsch told the BBC News website.

"The military believed they needed around six months more to bring the new weapon into action. But the scientists knew better how difficult it was to get the enriched uranium required."

The head of Nazi Germany's nuclear energy programme was the physicist Werner Heisenberg. Though he was highly accomplished in other areas of physics, Heisenberg failed to understand a key aspect of nuclear fission chain reactions.

Heisenberg's uncertainty

Some researchers say this led him to overestimate the amount of uranium - the so-called fissile material - required to build a nuclear bomb.


Hitler was desperate for weapons that would turn the tide of the war
However, the German report contains an estimate of slightly more than 5kg for the critical mass of a plutonium bomb. This is comparatively close to the real figure and may suggest some Nazi scientists had a better grasp of nuclear fission than Heisenberg.

Professor Paul Lawrence Rose, of Pennsylvania State University, US, and author of a 1998 book about the German uranium programme, said he had no reason to believe the report was not genuine, but was dubious about the significance of the critical mass detail.

"Though it's wonderful to find the 5kg figure written on the document, one has to be sceptical about the rationale for it. Even if it's true and [some scientists] did understand it, Heisenberg's group wouldn't have accepted it," Rose told the BBC News website.

He further speculated it was possible the author arrived at this figure by reading the Smyth Report into the development of the US atomic bomb, which was published in July 1945. But Karlsch and Walker reject this claim.

Bombshell claim

In Hitlers Bombe, Dr Karlsch suggests a team of scientists directed by the physicist Kurt Diebner, which was in competition with Heisenberg's group, tested a primitive nuclear device in Thuringia, eastern Germany, in March 1945.

Rose says that this is unlikely. Transcripts of conversations taped by MI6 when the scientists were held captive in England after the war showed Diebner lacked the knowledge to have done this, he says.

"Karlsch revealed some very important details in his book, but I can't go along with the picture he constructs with those details - of a Nazi nuclear test," said Professor Dieter Hoffmann, of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, in Berlin.

But in their Physics World article, Karlsch and Walker point to evidence of innovations made by Diebner's team, including a nuclear reactor design superior to that produced by Heisenberg's group.

"[Diebner] got the research papers from all other groups and he could control the information flux. Only a few scientists around Diebner knew about his bomb project. Heisenberg was not aware of it," Dr Karlsch explained.

[Tazjet]

Karlsh spawned important debates on the issue but drew so many wrong conclusions that he has also done a disservice to the debate.

I am grateful to Karlsch for uncovering some interesting information especially about the Nuclear test blast at Rugen Island on 14 October 1944 witnessed by Japanese VIPs and Italian journalist Luigi Romersa, who is still alive and passionately asserts what he saw. Karlsh also uncovered another test blast at Ohrdruf Concentration Camp in March 1945.

Not only do we have Romersa's testimony of the nuclear blast at Rugen, but unwittingly the NSA released decrypted diplomatic messages referring to what the Japanese VIPs with Romersa witnessed too.

A Japanese diplomatic report from Japan's embassy in Stockholm, dated December 12, 1944, declassified by the US National Security Agency in 1978, is titled “Reports on the Atom-splitting Bomb.”

In it's text the meassage says:


This bomb is revolutionary in its results, and will completely upset all ordinary precepts of warfare hitherto established. I am sending you, in one group, all those reports on what is called the atom-splitting bomb.

It is a fact that in June of 1943, the German Army tried out an utterly new type of weapon against the Russians at a location 150 kilometers southeast of Kursk. Although it was the entire 19th Infantry Regiment of the Russians which was thus attacked, only a few bombs (each round up to 5 kilograms) sufficed to utterly wipe them out to the last man.

The following is according to a statement by Lieutenant Colonel... Kenji, adviser to the attaché in Hungary and formerly... in this country, who by chance saw the actual scene immediately after the above took place:

“All the men and the horses [within radius of] the explosion of the shells were charred black and even their ammunition had all been detonated. Moreover, it is a fact that the same type of war material was tried out in the Crimea too. At that time the Russians claimed that this was poison gas, and protested that if Germany were ever again to use it, Russia, too, would use poison gas.”

... Recently the British authorities warned their people of the possibility that they might undergo attack by German atom- splitting bombs. The American authorities have likewise warned that the American east coast might be the area chosen for a blind attack by some sort of flying bomb...

The Japanese report then goes into a remarkably accurate description of the splitting of the atom, ending with the statement,


“The German atom-splitting device is the Neuman disintegrator. Enormous energy is directed into the central part of the atom and this generates an atomic pressure of several tens of thousands of tons per square inch. This device can split the relatively unstable atoms of such elements as uranium. Moreover, it brings into being a store of explosive atomic energy.... That is, a bomb deriving its force from the release of atomic energy.”


[John von Neumann (December 28, 1903 – February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian mathematician]

These nukes which the Japanese referred to were not however developed by Heisenberg's team. There were four distinct teams and frankly Heisenberg was not the centre of the really worthwhile nuclear research in Nazi Germany as much as he wanted others to believe it was so.

Rather nuclear weaponry was developed by Prof Kurt Diebner, possibly in conjunction with another Austrian team led by Georg Stetter under SS control known as "Bergkrystal 9" including scientists from the Vienna technical physics intitute. One of these scientists incidentally is still alive in Austria.

Another of those scientists Professor Friedrich Lachner, assistant for twenty years to professor Mache at the Department for Technical Physics at the University of Vienna, wrote a letter from exile in Argentina recently to some German researchers, Mayer and Mehner, claiming that Germany produced 15 of these nukes.*

As for Werner Heisenberg, he was bombastic egotistical and arrogant. He monopolised limited heavy water supplies for his own uranium plate reactor experiments even after another team under Diebner at Gottow had shown more promise with a lattice of uranium cubes. Heisenberg could not bare to be proven wrong by a competing team and sabotaged them by denial of resources.

He did not do this however from ethical concerns. He did it from egotistic motives, but after the war falsely re-cast himself as a hero for thwarting nuclear fission experiments.

Ultimately Heisenberg may not have prevented the development of nukes at all, but merely frustrated colleagues. One suspects that a political solution called Operation Sunrise, the negotiated armastice with western Allies through Allen Dulles in Switzerland probably has more to do with why nukes were not used against Western Allies.


The head of Nazi Germany's nuclear energy programme was the physicist Werner Heisenberg. Though he was highly accomplished in other areas of physics, Heisenberg failed to understand a key aspect of nuclear fission chain reactions. Heisenberg's uncertainty

Some researchers say this led him to overestimate the amount of uranium - the so-called fissile material - required to build a nuclear bomb.


Wieszacker persuaded Heisenberg that fast fission was impossible on grounds that as fast fission began the physical blast forces would push fissile material apart so fast that it would frustrate and prevent detonation. There is some truth to this however the solution was quite simple to provide a tamper by surrounding the warhead with lead or Uranium 238.

Dr Fritz Houtemanns accurately predicted the critical mass required for warheads of Uranium 235 and Plutonium in 1941 and published this in a report no w declassified in NARA archives.

[Houtermanns, “Zer Frage der Auslosung” (Nov 1941) pp 31,33 (Oak Ridge G-94, pp.139) 1944 reprint of this report with omissions is (Oak Ridge G-267, pp.33)]

*Sources:

[1] Edgar Mayer and Thomas Mehner, Hitler und die, Bombe" (Rottenburg: Kopp Verlag, 2002)

[2] Werner Heisenberg and the German Uranium Project, by Horst Kant, published by Max Planke Institute for the History of Science 2002.

[3] NARA archives, "Beams Report" of Uranium enrichment teams etc, 9 April 1946, File box G-344

[4] NARA archives, Monsanto report to A.H Compton (Manhattan Project) dated 8 November 1945, File box G-371

[5] Japanese Diplomatic signal intercept 12 December 1944 (Magic decrypt) Trans 14 Dec 44 (3020-B), "Stockholm to Tokyo, No. 232.9 December 1944 (War Department), National Archives, RG 457, SRA 14628-32, declassified October 1, 1978.

[Longinus]

The entire war began to soon for the new generation of scientists to be recruited out of children born and raised in National Socialism so I guess everybody's 100% loyalty and faith should be questioned except of the NS inner circle.

[Tazjet]

Never heard of anything off the Italian coast but would be grateful if you could recall what you heard please?

Italy surrendered in an armastice in September 1943, except for the north still under Mussolini's control.

I spent years debating with a friend that Germany couldn't have had the bomb and he finally persuaded me that I was perhaps wrong.

Another of my friends Bill Streifer is about to publish a book on Japan's atomic bomb project which ought to shock a few conventional historians. He has interviewed Russians who were in Korea in 1945 and has uncovered previously unpublished US military reports. Watch this space.

[von Sternberg]

I had always assumed that if the Wehrmacht had possessed nukes the tide would have been turned against the Red Army.

[Tazjet]

As I understand it and as you can see from the quoted MAGIC decrypt, Germany was threated by Russia with chemical warfare. Hitler is known to have had a mortal fear of poison gas from his First World War experience.

Japan is often cited as having attempted through 1943 to try and broker a cease fire between Russia and Germany. In addition there were Soviet and German embassies in Neutral Bulgaria. Presumably likewise in Stockholm.

I do not have all the answers however one supposes that with Soviet threats to use nerve gases a stalemate was reached.

[Kodos]

The idea that the Reich had working nukes is nonsense, they certainly would have been used on the Eastern Front and to retaliate against Britain for the destruction of Germany's cities.

[Arcturus]

Wieszacker persuaded Heisenberg that fast fission was impossible on grounds that as fast fission began the physical blast forces would push fissile material apart so fast that it would frustrate and prevent detonation. There is some truth to this however the solution was quite simple to provide a tamper by surrounding the warhead with lead or Uranium 238.

Ordinarily, 'fast fission (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_fission)' refers to induced fission, that is, when U-238 is struck by an exogenous fast neutron and is split, as opposed to U-235 undergoing chain fission(we say that U-238 is 'fissionable' but not 'fissile'). Fission bombs usually employ a neutron reflector, typically beryllium, that decreases the necessary critical mass. 'Tamper' refers to a device whose task is to capture neutrons and convert them into heat. There is really no point in having a tamper in a fission device, because there are relatively few fast neutrons released(due to high neutron cross section, low neutronicity). Tampers are important in fusion bombs, because most of the energy released therein is in the form of kinetic neutrons, which must be contained to unleash their full potential.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon_design

Incidently, the action that Heisenberg failed to fully appreciate was a random-walk process (http://lpsc.in2p3.fr/gpr/PPNPport/node42.html), or 'drunk man's walk', which led him to underestimate the neutron mean-free path and the degree of exponential growth of endogenous neutrons.

[Arcturus]

German scientists made the Soviet nuclear program possible!

Working in captivity, a team of 60 captured German physicists led by Gernot Zippe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gernot_Zippe) developed the technology that enabled the Soviet uranium enrichment program, culminating in the Zippe centrifuge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zippe_centrifuge).

The same basic design is still used today, especially by countries with less developed nuclear programs, like Iran and Pakistan.

[Tazjet]

Quoted from Kodos

The idea that the Reich had working nukes is nonsense, they certainly would have been used on the Eastern Front and to retaliate against Britain for the destruction of Germany's cities.


I didn't make up these MAGIC decrypts. These are 65 year old archival records. If there is any difficulty it is because we've all been fed a diet of history which subsequently declassified records disgree with.

You can't burn people at the stake as heretics because they point out the discrepency. Take it up with the people who were there in WW2 and wrote this material.

[Tazjet]

German scientists made the Soviet nuclear program possible!

Working in captivity, a team of 60 captured German physicists led by Gernot Zippe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gernot_Zippe) developed the technology that enabled the Soviet uranium enrichment program, culminating in the Zippe centrifuge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zippe_centrifuge).

The same basic design is still used today, especially by countries with less developed nuclear programs, like Iran and Pakistan.

True point about German scientists. They also captured about six Japanese nuclear scientists in Hungnam Northern Korea in 1945.

However regards the Zippe centrifuge (using thermal convection within the centrifuge unlike a standard basic centrifuge) Zippe was only one of the engineers who worked on it and not the real inventor.

In fact even the German leader of the centrifuge which Zippe helped develop in the USSR was not the original genius behind the Zippe.

That was Dr Hans Martin and Dr Kuhn, who worked with Krupp at Hamburg. This information can all be found in NARA archives if people bother to read the files.

Re your earlier post, the Japanese diplomatic signals refer to 5kg warheads which could only be Plutonium as far as I know. I always thought the nazis had a reasonable chance of creating a Uranium A-bomb, but I have always discounted a Plutonium weapon because conventional history has it that there was no successful development a nuclear reactor in Germany.

On the other hand the SS had two secret underground nuclear plants about which almost nothing is known. One at Melk austria and another at Reisebirge in Silesia.