Did Nazis invent the Atomic Bomb?

I have always believed that they had managed to build at least one atom bomb. However, fortunately i believe they had managed to put together sometime during 1945 when everything was pretty much over and , using the bomb would only have ment the obliteration of Germany from the face of the earth.

reply to post by lunarminer


You hit the nail on the head,


People dont want to know how close we came to not winning, if it werent for A hitler being insane, the axis would have quietly built up a vastly superior force and Id be speaking japanese right now.

WW2 was not supposed to happen for another 5-6 years, but hitler jumped the gun by attacking poland.

In the early '20's the british admirilty had a british admiral, Lord Kitchner? draw up preliminary plans for an invasion of North america.
The british government was afraid that the US would use her newfound intermnational leverage to force the UK togive up her empire, something we did indeed do.
It was through Karl houshafers japanese connections and connection within the british aristocracy that a young japanese naval officer, named Yamamoto met with Lord kitchner, at a naval conference in london in 23-24?

The pacific component of this british plan evovled into the plan for the attack on pearl harbor.
Their goal was never a long term shooting war, but only to neutralize our pacific fleet and force a political settlement

reply to post by Fatality

I have always believed that they had managed to build at least one atom bomb. However, fortunately I believe they had managed to put together sometime during 1945 when everything was pretty much over and, using the bomb would only have meant the obliteration of Germany from the face of the earth.

I can cut you NO slack here Mr/F. It was Hitler’s well documented declaration made near the end of his life - April 30 - that the German people had failed him and his vision and they deserved to die to a man. No, Mr/F, if A Hitler had an a-bomb he would have used it on his own people if he did not have the means to deliver it against an enemy!

reply to post by punkinworks09


Kitchener was a general. He died in 1916. (His four eponymous "descendants" didn't die in 1916). Also, Kaiser Wilhelm had plans drawn up to invade the United States prior to WWI.

However, you might have fun with "Plan Red", the US plans to invade Canada.

Or the near war over Hawaii that might have involved US, UK, German and Japanese forces.

reply to post by lunarminer

The uranium on the U-234 was in 9 inch long lead cylinders and were labeled U-235. This is how you transport enriched uranium. Yellow cake requires no such precautions. You can ship 700 pounds of yellow cake in 50 gallon drums in fact that is done all the time. So, what was on the U-234? I doubt very much that it was yellowcake and the first written reports called the stuff "uranium metal". That does not sound like yellowcake.

My problem is I do not believe the Germans had ANY enriched uranium. Any claim to the contrary is unfounded. Yes, I’ve been called obtuse. As I recall, U234 was surrendered to the US forces. About 10 days after the official end of the War in Europe. May 7.

Germany had NO industrial complex capable of refining and enriching U235. I'm trying to explain that if we did it at OAK RIDGE and HANFORD were where the German equivalent? I'm reminding that the Soviets had the FULL data and plans from our Manhattan Project and it took them until 1949 to make their FIRST a-bomb. Germans? No! Japanese? Never!

reply to post by punkinworks09


This is incorrect. The money and resources that Germany used to build up it's forces prior to and during the early stages of WW2 didn't come out of nowhere. Germany had been heavily borrowing from it's neighbors, and needed to conquer them rather quickly to avoid being crippled by debt.

Japan went to war with the US mostly because the US wouldn't sell them the resources they needed, because they were waging a more or less genocidal war in china. Japan would never have been in any position to conquer the US; the best it could hope to do would be to defeat the pacific fleet, take all the US's island territories on the pacific, and force the US to agree to a conditional surrender.

Japan never had the population or the logistics to pose anything but a naval threat.

I'm sure the Germans and the Japanese knew more or less how to build an atomic bomb, in the same way as your average physics undergrad today knows how to build an atomic bomb. I rather doubt they ever gathered enough resources to do it, nor that they ever solved all the practical problems involved. After all, they weren't dicking around with the Manhattan project: it took huge quantities of money and time, and some of the best minds alive because inventing the atomic bomb from just theory is *hard*.

reply to post by donwhite


I could be wrong , that's why i said " i believe" . I just remember reading in a few places a while back that they actually had one but it was not stable enough to be droped from a plane yet .

reply to post by mdiinican

Japan went to war with the US mostly because the US wouldn't sell them the resources they needed, because they were waging a more or less genocidal war in China. Japan would never have been in any position to conquer the US; the best it could hope to do would be to defeat the Pacific Fleet, take all the US islands territories on the pacific, and force the US to agree to a conditional surrender. Japan never had the population or the logistics to pose anything but a naval threat.

I'm sure the Germans and the Japanese knew more or less how to build an atomic bomb, in the same way as your average physics undergrad today knows how to build an atomic bomb. I rather doubt they ever gathered enough resources to do it, nor that they ever solved all the practical problems involved. After all, they weren't diking around with the Manhattan project: it took huge quantities of money and time, and some of the best minds alive because inventing the atomic bomb from just theory is *hard.*

Just in 2000, Japan’s population finally equaled our own in 1930. 130,000,000. And we now have 304,000,000. Look, when Japan began the war it had 6 first line carriers. It is my memory that the Japanese built but 2 more all during the war. We on the other hand, started the war with 4 and ended with over 80. Yes, about 60 were “jump” carriers - troop ship hulls fitted with a 300 ft flight deck with about 30 planes parked in the open. Offically called Escort Carriers.

Japan was on a roll! It took Formosa from China in1897. It took the south half of Sakelein Island from Russia in 1907. It took Korea from the Koreans in 1910. It took Manchuria from China in 1931. It successfully invaded China in 1937. It acquired French Indo-China (Vietnam) from the Vichy French in 1940. It had taken the Dutch possessions - Indonesia - and had either conquered or was about to conquer Singapore, Britain’s key outpost in the Far East after Hong Kong. It’s not hard to imagine why the Imperial Navy was PRIMA in the eyes of the Emperor.

At the risk of repeating myself in agreement with your observations above, neither Japan nor Germany had or could have had an Oak Ridge and Hanford or either, the former depending on the recently built TVA dams and the latter likewise dependent on the Grand Coulee Dam of the Columbia River Authority. 2 New Deal projects that came in handy!

[edit on 4/17/2009 by donwhite]

I agree with you the mercury was to be used for their new UFO crafts. They never got the bomber to deliver such a weapon if they did have it as some have claimed. But they did have the bio weapons and they were far in advance and more stock piled in this area to any thing we had. With out the air cover at that time to prevent retaliation they caned the idea.

i remember a statement from a doc on the reactor found in that estate were they dug up the uranium some distance distance away during the race to seize bomb tec from the russians the statement was" if we (german scientists) cant build the bomb than americans cant " if germany had the bomb hittler would have killed him self with it and taken his beloved berlin with it in his bunker and aver brown would finaly got banged

reply to post by donwhite


It has been proposed that there was an enrichment program at Auschwitz in a plant that was originally said to be a synthetic rubber plant. If this is true then you can see how the Nazis solved the problem of radiation exposure, they simply used people who were condemned to die and who would be replaced by the next train load of victims.

There is a deep cave complex in Germany that was inspected after the war and then sealed up. It's purpose is still classified and it is still sealed. This could be the site of the Germans large scale breeder reactor, which would be necessary if they chose the plutonium route.

Others have speculated that the "Bell" project was actually a reactor. That was all carted off by the US after the war and those scientists were brought to the US under project paperclip.

So, I think that there is enough evidence to suggest that the Nazis had more capability than has been officially reported.

reply to
post by Fatality

I could be wrong , that's why I said " I believe" . I just remember reading in a few places a while back that they actually had one but it was not stable enough to be dropped from a plane yet.

Anyone can be wrong, including me. I have vivid personal memories of the dropping of the 2 atom bombs on Japan, August 6 and August 9, 1945. I was eleven then. I was visiting relatives in rural Ohio County, Kentucky. My uncle and aunt had 4 sons. All were in the Armed Forces. The oldest was a Navy SeaBee - construction battalion. The Navy's equal to the Army’s combat engineers. Dangerous work!

The second was an instructor at Pensacola Naval Air Station where most USN pilots got their basic training. The 3rd was an Army enlisted man in France and the last and youngest had been drafted and had just finished his basic training at Ft. DIX, NJ. On August 15, he was sent home by train and ordered to wait there for further word. When it came in September, he was discharged. He had spent about 4 months in the Army. “Lucky” for him, because for full eligibility to GI Bill benefits 90 days active duty was required. He had just enough and was able to attend tech school on the GI Bill.

I related the above to show America was so serious about winning the war that in 1945 even the LAST son of a 4 son family had been drafted in preparation for the planned invasion of Japan. Perhaps in November. Our plans called for simultaneously hitting the beaches at Shikoku, the smallest of the four main islands of Japan, and on the east coast of Honshu, the largest of the main islands, about 100 miles north of Tokyo.

Each landing force would have numbered about 500,000 men. With total air superiority and our absolute domination of the sea, the Japanese would have been slaughtered as in a shooting gallery!

However, we atom bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Japan surrendered on August 15. The official documents were signed on September 2 in Tokyo Bay onboard the President’s choice, the USS Missouri. The USS Enterprise was the most decorated ship in the Navy and should have been the host of the surrender but Pres. Truman was from Missouri! R.H.I.P. Rank Has Its Privileges.

My issue with claims that either Germany or Japan had an a-bomb or that either was seriously pursuing one, is based on their lack of industrial capacity to refine and enrich the uranium. We know for a fact what it took to make an atom bomb and that is not speculation. We did not "steal" or capture our a-bombs from Germany or from German scientists. The engineering and construction of the actual bombs was done at Los Alamos, NM. The first test of a bomb was also done in NM in July, 1945, at Frenchman Flats, near Alamagordo.

The left-over uranium (U238) could then be bombarded by neutrons to provoke it to trans-mute first into neptunium then by natural decay into plutonium. Most nuclear bombs are made of plutonium as it is safer to work with than U235.


[edit on 4/18/2009 by donwhite]

reply to
post by lunarminer

It has been proposed that there was an enrichment program at Auschwitz in a plant that was originally said to be a synthetic rubber plant. There is a deep cave complex in Germany that was inspected after the war and then sealed up. It's purpose is still classified and it is still sealed.

Tom Lantos (1928-2008), was the only Holocaust survivor to serve in the US Congress. He served 28 years from San Francisco. Prior to his public service he had taught at San Francisco State University for 30 years. "It is only in the United States that a penniless survivor of the Holocaust and a fighter in the anti-Nazi underground could have received an education, raised a family and had the privilege of serving the last three decades of his life as a member of Congress," Lantos said. "I will never be able to express fully my profoundly felt gratitude to this great country." cbs11tv.com...

Congressman Lantos gave no credence to the rumors that abounded about Germany and the atom bomb. He was one of if not the most trustworthy of people in public life in my lifetime. You could “take it to the bank” if Tom Lantos said it.

Others have speculated that the "Bell" project was actually a reactor. That was all carted off by the US after the war and those scientists were brought to the US under project paperclip. I think that there is enough evidence to suggest that the Nazis had more capability than has been officially reported.

The Germans unlike the Japanese have been very forthcoming in trying to stamp out any vestiges of Nazism or its by-products. I tend to think if there was anything worth knowing, the Germans would have published it themselves.

addition to post by donwhite


I posted this earlier: Japan was on a roll! It took Formosa from China in1897. It took the south half of Sakelein Island from Russia in 1907. It took Korea from the Koreans in 1910. It took Manchuria from China in 1931. It successfully invaded China in 1937. It acquired French Indo-China (Vietnam) from the Vichy French in 1940. Japan had taken the Dutch possessions - now Indonesia - and had either conquered or was about to conquer Singapore, Britain’s stronghold in the Far East after Hong Kong.

Question: If Japan had conquered the Dutch East Indies (and its oil fields) - now Indonesia - then why was Japan MIFFED when the US embargoed further crude oil exports in June, 1941? First, Japan had about 2 years of crude oil on hand. But that was calculated at the PEACETIME rate of consumption. Wartime consumption would be at a much higher rate. Aside: It was estimated Japan had only 6 months of crude oil on hand at war rates of consumption when it launched the Pearl Harbor attack. December, 1941. But see the following which shows the US was the ‘Saudi Arabia’ of the world’s oil producers in that era!

Worldwide Crude Oil Production
1930s, 2 billion barrels per year (bby) the US/Canada share, 70%
1940s, 3.5 bby US/Canada share, 60%
1950s, 4 bby US/Canada share, 50%
tonto.eia.doe.gov...


[edit on 4/19/2009 by donwhite]

reply to post by mdiinican

The money and resources that Germany used to build up it's forces prior to and during the early stages of WW2 didn't come out of nowhere. Germany had been heavily borrowing from it's neighbors, and needed to conquer them rather quickly to avoid being crippled by debt.

I recommend this book that goes far in explaining how Germany financed its armies in World War 2. A 2005 book “Hitler’s Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War and the Nazi Welfare State” by Gotz Aly, translated by Jefferson Chase. pub. Henry Holt and Company, 2007, 448 pp.

A “provocative” account of great “intellectual significance,” illuminating the economic workings of the Third Reich and the reasons ordinary Germans supported the Nazi state. Historian Götz Aly addresses one of modern history’s greatest conundrums: How did Hitler win the allegiance of ordinary Germans? [Or, why did good people do bad things?]

The answer is as shocking as it is persuasive: by engaging in a campaign of theft on an almost unimaginable scale and by channeling the proceeds into generous social programs Hitler literally “bought” his people’s consent.

Drawing on secret files and financial records, author Gotz Aly shows that while Jews and citizens of occupied lands suffered crippling taxation, mass looting, enslavement, and destruction, most Germans enjoyed an improved standard of living. Buoyed by millions of packages soldiers sent from the front, Germans also benefited from the systematic plunder of Jewish possessions. Any qualms [of ordinary Germans] were swept away by waves of tax breaks and government handouts.

Hitler’s Beneficiaries, as Omer Bartov testifies, “irreversibly transforms our understanding of the Third Reich.” The New York Times Book Review.
search.barnesandnoble.com...

Today’s generation would FAIL the test of patriotism when it comes to putting your money where your mouth is. We would cringe at how much the GREATEST GENERATION paid in taxes - say sacrificed - to save our country and our way of life! For example, the TOP bracket tax rate in 1945 was NINETY-FOUR (94%) PERCENT. That is what you do when you really LOVE your country. You don’t borrow it from China. You don't saddle your grand-children with your debt. You paid your own way. That's the Greatest Generation's way of doing business. Ours is the PAINLESS generation!
www.ntu.org...



[edit on 4/19/2009 by donwhite]

reply to post by punkinworks09

People don’t want to know how close we came to not winning, if it weren’t for A Hitler being insane, the Axis would have quietly built up a vastly superior force and I’d be speaking Japanese right now. WW2 was not supposed to happen for another 5-6 years, but Hitler jumped the gun by attacking Poland.

I can’t accept that the US of A was ever even close to losing WW2. In 1941 we had 4 aircraft carriers. In 1945 we had 80. In that same interval we built the 4 Iowa class battleships - the WMDs of the world prior to WW2 - while Japan built NONE. We started the war with P38, P39 and P40 fighters. We ended with P47s and P51s. Japan started the war with Zeros and ended with Zeros. Germany started with Me109 and FW 190 and ended with those along with a few Me262 jet fighters. Neither Germany nor Japan had a 4 engine bomber of long range. We built 20,000 B17 and 15,000 B24 bombers. Not to mention our 2 engine B25s and B26s. And then the 1,000s of B29s that rained havoc on Japan.

We sent the Soviets 9,000 P39 and P63 planes as well as several 1,000s of C47s. The Germans had vastly superior tanks but they built fewer than 5,000 of them while we built over 50,000 of the M4 Sherman tanks. 50,000 mediocre tanks will beat 5,000 great tanks almost every time! The Germans used horses to pull some of their artillery into Poland but over the war years we built over 300,000 of the famed “six-by.” GMC 2.5 ton 6 X 6 trucks. I’m not even counting the 5 ton trucks built by Studebaker and other makers. Or the 500,000 Jeeps built by Willys and Ford (but developed by the Austin Bantam Co.).

German soldiers used the hand operated bolt action 1893 Mauser rifle from the start of the war to the end of the war. As did also the Japanese soldier. We started the war with the 1903 Springfield Armory copy of the Mauser action but we soon furnished every soldier and marine with the M1 gas operated semi-auto Garand rifle, which Gen. Patton said was the single best improvement in warfare in his lifetime.

The M1 rifle could fire 8 rounds as fast as you could squeeze the trigger. And reload it off a 8 round strip in 5 seconds! Call it a stroke of genius but the M1 used the same .30-06 cartridge as did our .30 cal Browning air cooled light machine gun and the famous BAR rifle also of .30 cal. Browning Automatic Rifle. The water cooled with barrel tank .30 cal heavy machine gun also used the same rounds.

We waged the war with .30-06 and .45 ACP ammo while the Germans and Japanese had a whole range of cartridges for their various weapons. Late in the war the M1 Carbine replaced the .45 ACP pistol and used a much smaller .30 cal. round. We shipped 10s of millions of rounds to the Soviets over the course of the war. This listing could go on for a week, but one more item - we shipped over 1 million pairs of GI combat boots to the USSR, the best footwear of the war. The infantryman’s best friend.

I haven’t even mentioned the Higgins landing craft that took 150,000 men to Normandy in one day! We had enough of those to land 1,000,000 men on the 2 islands of Japan we had selected to invade. At the same time.

We had just peaked our industrial productivity in 1945 as the war ended. All of that was done after December, 1941. Well, actually, we started planning for the war in 1940 when we initiated the Army draft. We could see “war clouds on the horizon” as it was described.

Not for us to win? No, victory was never in doubt. Only when, not if.

The British government was afraid that the US would use her newfound international leverage to force the UK to give up her empire, something we did indeed do.

Winston Churchill. (1874-1965). The central figure in the English speaking world for the first half of the 20th century. A youthful war correspondent in South Africa when the British defeated the Dutch in the late 1890s Boer Wars. Captured by the Boers, he managed to escape and became a hero in England. By the 1914 start of WW1, he was made First Lord of the Admiralty, a post equal to our Secretary of the Navy. In WW2, in 1940, he became the compromise choice for Prime Minister in the War Cabinet without standing for an election.

Churchill was an EMPIRE man. He did not want to see the Empire disintegrate on his watch. He lost the election in 1945 because he refused to accept national health service. He was re-elected to PM in 1951, but by that time, India, the jewel in the British crown, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Burma were gone. 1947. (Churchill was knighted in April, 1953 by Queen Elizabeth II). See below.

Canada, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia joined the British Commonwealth of Nations. Kenya and Rhodesia - now Zimbabwe - were the last two British colonies in Africa to gain independence in the 1960s. Egypt was a special case. GB had a special treaty giving them exclusive control over the Suez Canal and the right to keep armed forces in Egypt to protect the Canal.

Their goal was never a long term shooting war, but only to neutralize our pacific fleet and force a political settlement

Yes. That was Yamamoto’s promise to the Emperor. That he could give Japan 6 months to rampage across the western end of the Pacific. He was prescient! The Battle of Midway took place on June 4 to June 7. Exactly 6 months! We regard that battle as the turning point of the Pacific War. For Japan it was all downhill from there.

We would never had made a political settlement with Japan. There was too much blood on their hands. And their sense of honor would not allow them to make peace with us. Before the atom bomb. OTOH, Germany was the bigger threat to Western Civilization. But the two had united by treaty so we opted to put most of our effort into Europe then to deal with Japan at our leisure. It was a plan and it worked.

Trinity was the first test of the technology for a nuclear weapon. [As opposed to a nuclear device!] It was conducted by the United States on July 16, 1945, at the White Sands Proving Ground, headquartered near Alamogordo, New Mexico. Trinity was the first test of an implosion-design plutonium bomb. Using the same conceptual design the Fat Man device was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9. The Trinity detonation was equivalent to the explosion of around 20 kilotons of TNT and is usually considered the beginning of the Atomic Age. en.wikipedia.org...

Aside from receiving the great honor of a state funeral, Churchill also received numerous awards and honors, including being made the first Honorary Citizen of the United States. Churchill received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953 for his numerous published works, especially his six-volume set The Second World War. In a 2002 BBC poll of the "100 Greatest Britons" he was proclaimed "The Greatest of Them All" based on approximately a million votes from viewers. Churchill was also rated as one of the most influential leaders in all of history by Time magazine. Churchill College, Cambridge was founded in 1958 on his behalf. library.thinkquest.org...

[edit on 4/20/2009 by donwhite]

as a german, i would suggest to come back to the original discussion.

here is a link to the original english text of post #1:

www.mammoetsalvage.com...

its a very interesting question, why this submarine had 67 tons of mercury loaded. i can only refer to isotope separation techniques for lithium, an element used for nuclear fusion bombs. lots of tons of Hg were used @ ORNL for separating Li-6 from Li-7. but i hardly believe this is what the germans had in mind.
another interesting topic is the myth about "red mercury", but this is also a newer story.

reply to post by donwhite


The Japanese would have surrendered without the use of the atomic bomb, probably before any major US invasion of the mainland would take place. The soviet union was moving in through the north, and had already invaded Manchuria when the atomic bombs dropped. The Japanese leadership was terrified at the thought of soviet occupation, and surrendered to the US before japan itself came under soviet control.

Likely, if the soviet union wasn't invading from the north, they wouldn't have surrendered until far more cities were destroyed. It's not like we weren't more or less flattening cities on a regular basis with regular bombers, totaling several hundreds of thousands of deaths.

reply to post by donwhite


It's happened again, we agree on something...


The ultimate outcome was never really in doubt, though there were some shakey moments early in 1942, especially in the Atlantic -vs- the Uboat...but once the monster that was the potentiallity of US industry was ramped up, there was no doubt.

Yamamoto was indeed psychic, he predicted 6 months, and for six months the Japanese Imperial Navy ran wild. Coral Sea and Midway were, in combination, the turning point in the Pacific War. Had Coral Sea not happened, or happened differently, who knows...but that's a moot point. Japanese tactical mistakes made Midway almost an even fight, when it shouldn't have been remotely even. Luck, and the skill to take advantage of the luck, played a huge part.

reply to post by mdiinican

(1) The Japanese would have surrendered without the use of the atomic bomb, probably before any major US invasion of the mainland would take place. (2) The soviet union was moving in through the north, and had already invaded Manchuria when the atomic bombs dropped.

1) Unlikely. The evidence is to the contrary. Japanese civilians were being instructed how to make wooden stakes into sharp pointed weapons to defend the beaches from advancing Americans. A fair number of airplanes had been stored in various caves and etc. and were intended to fly in waves of kamikazes to attack American landing ships. The conquest of Okinawa which was a legal part of Tokyo, was the most costly single operation in the Pacific War. The Bu-shi-to Code or DUTY culture of Japan also mitigated against any surrender.

2) The only way across Siberia is the Trans-Siberian Railway and it is 9,289 km (5,760 mi) from Moscow to Vladivostok. In 1945 most of it was SINGLE TRACK and much of it was IMPASSABLE following any bad winter storm. en.wikipedia.org...

The invasion of Manchuria was not much. Already all but the major cities were under control of Mao Zedong and the Communist Eighth Route Army, I’m pretty sure a few Russian colonels could have done that job. Of more consequence, the USSR had promised 25 divisions at Yalta and agreed to begin moving them eastward 90 days after Germany collapsed. May 7. I have no idea how long it would take to move 25 divisions and the necessary accouterments of war across Siberia in 1945. Note: European divisions usually numbered 10,000 men whereas American divisions are customarily given as 18,000.

Likely, if the soviet union wasn't invading from the north, they wouldn't have surrendered until far more cities were destroyed. The Japanese leadership was terrified at the thought of soviet occupation and surrendered to the US before japan itself came under soviet control.

I don’t see it that way. The best info is that the Emperor Hirohito was misinformed that the August 6 bomb was our only bomb. After the August 9 bomb, Hirohito himself gave up any further fighting and Japan surrendered August 15. The signing took place on Harry Truman’s namesake, the USS Missouri on September 2 in Tokyo Bay. The USSR took back the south half of Sakhalin Island, lost in 1907. We allowed them to divide Korea (called Chosen on old maps) at the 38th parallel. There was only one paved road in Korea, that from Seoul to Kimpo airport. We did not see Korea in 1945 as the future No. 13 world economy in 2009. Otherwise the Russians got nothing out of the Japan War. But neither had they put anything into it. en.wikipedia.org...(nominal)


[edit on 4/28/2009 by donwhite]