15.04.2010, 04:10
OK, some words from a German with interest in this field...
Heisenberg was far from being a Nazi, although he once turned down an offer to be "abducted" by the US or the British early in the war. Many allied scientists couldn't understand why he was doing this and, therefore, feared he would help the Nazis, but it seems by all means that Heisenberg just loved Germany but didn't want to help the regime. It is almost certain that he agreed to build a nuclear weapon ONLY to be able to slow things down and get a feeling of what was possible - to have the option of intervention. He even tried to talk to Nils Bohr in Kopenhagen about the German project once, but since Bohr, like most of the scientists outside Germany, was too suspicious to listen, this attempt failed.
It was a widely accepted view that to build a nuclear weapon WITHOUT the help of Heisenberg would be near to impossible. He was regarded as THE leading theoretical scientist in the world. When the US troops captured him, they were amazed by the LACK of work on nuclear weapons. There was not a single evidence found that the German scientists had even thought about building a bomb. What they tried, however (and this is the reason for their need of heavy water), was to build a reactor to produce energy. You don't need heavy water for a nuclear bomb; in fact, it would PREVENT the bomb from exploding because it acts as a moderator.
The allied scientists who looked through Heisenberg's papers were amazed that the Germans didn't know the difference between a nuclear bomb and a reactor - between controlled and uncontrolled fission. For this reason and because of its obvious similarity to the Little Boy design, I believe that the paper shown above must be one of the drawings from the Manhattan project, as most of the scientists working on it came from Germany, Italy or France. Germany didn't own Plutonium during the war, they even had extreme difficulties obtaining the small amount of heavy water needed for their reactor experiments (the supply of which was further shortened by an English commando operation to sabotage the one facility in Sweden where they got it from). They did every experiment with non-enriched uranium (incapable of efficient uncontrolled fission, as needed for a bomb) which was abundant after the occupation of eastern Europe.
A lot of doubt remains about Heisenberg's exact role in the development of German nuclear technology, mostly due to animosities between him and other scientists owed to his staying in Germany, but it can be taken as sure that, as long as he remained head of this development, a German nuclear bomb would never have been built.
Literature:
"Heller als tausend Sonnen" ("Brighter than a thousand suns"), Robert Jungk - contains many first-hand reports and interesting side-facts
"Heisenbergs Krieg. Die Geheimgeschichte der deutschen Atombombe." ("Heisenberg's War. The secret story of the German nuclear bomb"), Thomas Powers - with lots of interviews and personal reports of scientists that knew Heisenberg and/or worked on the Manhattan project
Heisenberg was far from being a Nazi, although he once turned down an offer to be "abducted" by the US or the British early in the war. Many allied scientists couldn't understand why he was doing this and, therefore, feared he would help the Nazis, but it seems by all means that Heisenberg just loved Germany but didn't want to help the regime. It is almost certain that he agreed to build a nuclear weapon ONLY to be able to slow things down and get a feeling of what was possible - to have the option of intervention. He even tried to talk to Nils Bohr in Kopenhagen about the German project once, but since Bohr, like most of the scientists outside Germany, was too suspicious to listen, this attempt failed.
It was a widely accepted view that to build a nuclear weapon WITHOUT the help of Heisenberg would be near to impossible. He was regarded as THE leading theoretical scientist in the world. When the US troops captured him, they were amazed by the LACK of work on nuclear weapons. There was not a single evidence found that the German scientists had even thought about building a bomb. What they tried, however (and this is the reason for their need of heavy water), was to build a reactor to produce energy. You don't need heavy water for a nuclear bomb; in fact, it would PREVENT the bomb from exploding because it acts as a moderator.
The allied scientists who looked through Heisenberg's papers were amazed that the Germans didn't know the difference between a nuclear bomb and a reactor - between controlled and uncontrolled fission. For this reason and because of its obvious similarity to the Little Boy design, I believe that the paper shown above must be one of the drawings from the Manhattan project, as most of the scientists working on it came from Germany, Italy or France. Germany didn't own Plutonium during the war, they even had extreme difficulties obtaining the small amount of heavy water needed for their reactor experiments (the supply of which was further shortened by an English commando operation to sabotage the one facility in Sweden where they got it from). They did every experiment with non-enriched uranium (incapable of efficient uncontrolled fission, as needed for a bomb) which was abundant after the occupation of eastern Europe.
A lot of doubt remains about Heisenberg's exact role in the development of German nuclear technology, mostly due to animosities between him and other scientists owed to his staying in Germany, but it can be taken as sure that, as long as he remained head of this development, a German nuclear bomb would never have been built.
Literature:
"Heller als tausend Sonnen" ("Brighter than a thousand suns"), Robert Jungk - contains many first-hand reports and interesting side-facts
"Heisenbergs Krieg. Die Geheimgeschichte der deutschen Atombombe." ("Heisenberg's War. The secret story of the German nuclear bomb"), Thomas Powers - with lots of interviews and personal reports of scientists that knew Heisenberg and/or worked on the Manhattan project