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  • 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.
    by rurban
  • Germany’s racism/ethnic/religious hate killed their efforts for the bomb..
    by Danox
  • 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.
    by WalterBright
  • 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.

    by kjander79
  • 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.
    by expedition32
  • 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.

    by sandworm101

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