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How close was the Third Reich to a nuke??
M1A762
Member Posts: 3,426 ✭
Looks like they might have been much closer than we know! Here it is 2015 - 70 years after WWII and there are still secrets being unveiled!
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/secret-nazi-nuclear-bunker-discovered-in-austria-9948647.html
I think if it were not for Hitler taking on two fronts and the Allies capturing an Enigma machine the Third Reich would have had nuclear weapons and used them.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/secret-nazi-nuclear-bunker-discovered-in-austria-9948647.html
I think if it were not for Hitler taking on two fronts and the Allies capturing an Enigma machine the Third Reich would have had nuclear weapons and used them.
Comments
there's the BIGGEST word in the English language: IF
Thank God for IF in that instance!
We had every nuclear scientist except one on the project. Spent millions of dollars. Had complete cities built for all the various stages. One of them, Oak Ridge used 1/8 of all the electricity generated in the whole country.
You must remember, this was totally new technology, not some improvement of an existing weapon.
Some "secret bunker" would be just big enuff to house the janitor staff we had at Los alamos.
its been said if the * hat leader had let them had there way we would have been in a world of hurt .
Also why the USA and Russia tried to get all the German scientist they could ,
such a terrible page in the worlds history but technology grew by leaps and bounds in that period.
may all those who lost there life's and give up there families to fight RIP and be forever remembered to the living who made it thru thank you for all I We have today .
It's one thing to have a theory, but the making of the item is a whole different ballpark.
Leonardo Da Vinci had plans for helicopters, submarines,airplanes, and tons of revolutionary ideas, not one ever was built in a practical way.
The U-234 executive officer supervised the opening of the containers in Washington, DC, and reports he was told that one of the Americans was Oppenheimer. It is generally believed the the uranium was taken over by the Manhattan project, but its ultimate use, if any, is lost in secrecy. It was most certainly sent to Oak Ridge, but there was probably not enough time for it to have been processed and used in the two WW2 weapons. It certainly would have been in followup weapons and probably was expended at Bikini Atoll or in Nevada.
It is useless for nuclear detonation until enriched to "weapons grade".
That was what Oak Ridge and places in Washington state were doing.
Then they found out that making radioactive ores into Plutonium was even better.
That 1200 lbs of uranium to the Nazis, was about the same as you having 1200 gals of crude oil.....your car won't run on it.[;)]
A dirty bomb could have been made, but the instant results are not the same.
Then, of course, the logistics of actually constructing such a device. Certainly Germany was close. How close we may never really know.
But perhaps the biggest obstacle was delivery. Even should Germany have produced a successful bomb, at that late point in the war there was virtually no way to deliver it. Germany never had anything approaching our B-29. Truthfully even the B-29 needed modification in order to accept these weapons.
So the real answer is that it probably wouldn't have mattered all that much. Hitler may have been crazy but those under him were not. I highly doubt that they would have exploded such a weapon within the borders of Germany even as the Russians took Berlin.
We tend to forget the German Heavy Water project. Uranium is by no means the only fissionable material available for the construction of a bomb.
Then, of course, the logistics of actually constructing such a device. Certainly Germany was close. How close we may never really know.
But perhaps the biggest obstacle was delivery. Even should Germany have produced a successful bomb, at that late point in the war there was virtually no way to deliver it. Germany never had anything approaching our B-29. Truthfully even the B-29 needed modification in order to accept these weapons.
So the real answer is that it probably wouldn't have mattered all that much. Hitler may have been crazy but those under him were not. I highly doubt that they would have exploded such a weapon within the borders of Germany even as the Russians took Berlin.
Disagree. Germany was nowhere close to a genuine atomic bomb, nor could have produced one even if the war had gone on another five years. Think of the simply staggering amount of money and resources that went into the Manhattan Project. Germany had nowhere near that capacity as it was desperately fighting for its life.
Good video on the war and about 40 minutes in they start talking about how close Germany was and how they tried to send the info to Japan.
Right before the end of the war Germans loaded a sub and it was headed to Japan with lots of German technology on Nuks but the war ended and the sub surrendered to one of our battleships. Rumors were stating Germany was a couple of years away from having the bomb and Japan was close also.
Right. Rumors. That's all they are. The construction of the atomic bomb, an actual usable weapon capable of being deployed, required from the Allies a massive amount of money, time, and brain power, all of it being done is an area that was not constantly being bombed all to hell. Do you honestly think that Japan could build a facility big enough, could devote the resources to such an effort, without the US blowing it to pieces with B29s? Germany had some scientists working on it. Germany had some scientists working on a lot of things. But neither Germany nor Japan had America's incredible combination of a non-war-torn setting, a massive amount of brainpower, a huge amount of money, and a huge industrial capacity.
And nobody but us had Oppenheimer. Case freaking closed.
The question remains... How close? Close by days? By months? By years?
Obviously the Axis was closer at the end than at the beginning. The rest we can speculate and opine upon.
I would conclude that the Japanese were the only ones with a real potential to deliver an atomic device. Since both they and the Germans lacked the ability to deliver by air, logic would say a nuclear device would have had to have been delivered by sea. This would have been a suicide mission of course and Japanese society more readily embraced the concept than the Germans.
The moment the Allies took control of the air, even a successful atomic program by the Axis was effectively blunted. Then, as stated in another post, the ability of the Allies to produce weapons and fund technology just put more nails in the Axis coffin.
Looks like they might have been much closer than we know! Here it is 2015 - 70 years after WWII and there are still secrets being unveiled!
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/secret-nazi-nuclear-bunker-discovered-in-austria-9948647.html
I think if it were not for Hitler taking on two fronts and the Allies capturing an Enigma machine the Third Reich would have had nuclear weapons and used them.
I doubt what they are excavating will be related to Hitler's "nuclear weapons" program -- the elevated radiation levels noted in the article could be explained by other factors.
If you understand some of the history of physics, I think it is difficult to argue that the Nazis were focused on nuclear research for weapon purposes. They actually shunned some of the ideas in the field characterizing it as "Jewish" physics because of the ancestry of some of the main scientists in the field of nuclear study.
The Nazis had their own "Aryan physics" -- I've never seen any full translation of its ideas, but from what I have seen, I don't think they were seriously working on the fission bombs we were focused on.
It could be fascinating to see what that underground complex might contain as I understand their focus in "Aryan" physics involved some pretty fantastic (science-fiction-sounding) sort of stuff. I doubt anything "stunning" that might be discovered in that complex will be made public, though, as secrecy about certain things during WWII is still being maintained.
Another reason germany never would be able to build a bomb under war time activity.
It took a few commandos/partisans with a small
bomb to sink the barge carrying the last years worth of heavy water.
With a couple of more years Werner von Braun would have provided the delivery vehicle.
If a weapon cannot be delivered, then development even to completion and operation is irrelevant. Neither the Germans nor Japanese were equipped with a delivery system remotely approaching the strategic B-29. Even the German Condor was nowhere near up to such a task and there were no viable options available to the Axis in 1945.
Delivery via a high altitude bomber is really the only reasonable solution to a number of technical problems. Unless an air burst the effects of a nuke, while devastating, would be considerably reduced. And, of course, getting such a weapon to a suitable target would be next to impossible.
Both we and the Germans had people who would have sacrificed their lives in pursuit of the cause but neither of our cultures endorse suicide. Thus there was always a concern about delivery crew survivability. Japan had many less compunctions in this regard yet still lacked an efficient means of delivery.
This is not to say that had the war extended for another year it might have been a somewhat different story. That said, even as early as mid 1944 the supply of strategic material to the Axis powers was virtually cut off. No matter what was on the drawing boards it's difficult to conceive that much of anything so significant as a strategic weapon or delivery system would have been in the cards.
In truth Germany needed to have developed the atomic bomb and the ability to deploy it by no later than somewhere before 1942 and before the US entered the conflict. None may have actually known it at the time but Dec 7, 1941 actually defined the defeat of the Axis powers. Everything past this date merely confirmed the inevitable.
I almost forgot... Admiral Yamamoto knew it and predicted as much.
The Third Reich might not have had the ways or means to complete the mission of using nuclear weapons, but no doubt they were determined to do so.
As I said in my post had the Third Reich not been fighting on two fronts and Enigma code not been broken history could have been much worse.
Delivery my man, delivery!
If a weapon cannot be delivered, then development even to completion and operation is irrelevant. Neither the Germans nor Japanese were equipped with a delivery system remotely approaching the strategic B-29. Even the German Condor was nowhere near up to such a task and there were no viable options available to the Axis in 1945.
Delivery via a high altitude bomber is really the only reasonable solution to a number of technical problems. Unless an air burst the effects of a nuke, while devastating, would be considerably reduced. And, of course, getting such a weapon to a suitable target would be next to impossible.
Both we and the Germans had people who would have sacrificed their lives in pursuit of the cause but neither of our cultures endorse suicide. Thus there was always a concern about delivery crew survivability. Japan had many less compunctions in this regard yet still lacked an efficient means of delivery.
This is not to say that had the war extended for another year it might have been a somewhat different story. That said, even as early as mid 1944 the supply of strategic material to the Axis powers was virtually cut off. No matter what was on the drawing boards it's difficult to conceive that much of anything so significant as a strategic weapon or delivery system would have been in the cards.
In truth Germany needed to have developed the atomic bomb and the ability to deploy it by no later than somewhere before 1942 and before the US entered the conflict. None may have actually known it at the time but Dec 7, 1941 actually defined the defeat of the Axis powers. Everything past this date merely confirmed the inevitable.
I almost forgot... Admiral Yamamoto knew it and predicted as much.
I guess you've never heard of the Nazi's rocket research and weapons?
They attached bombs to balloons. To some extent it worked, in that they did bomb the U.S. mainland, however most of the bombs fell in uninhabited areas of the mountains, causing no damage.
Still, a couple of nukes detonating in a similar fashion would not have gone unnoticed, had they the capability to build them.
Y'all forget that the Japanese had the method to aerial bomb the United States, and used it. The results are causing causalities to this day, as hikers stumble on bombs that failed to detonate.
They attached bombs to balloons. To some extent it worked, in that they did bomb the U.S. mainland, however most of the bombs fell in uninhabited areas of the mountains, causing no damage.
Still, a couple of nukes detonating in a similar fashion would not have gone unnoticed, had they the capability to build them.
What????
tie a nuclear bomb to a balloon??
Our B29 couldn't handle the weight.
And those V1 and V2 rockets was just over 2000lbs===nothing close to a 1945 era A-bomb.
and The range was what 200 miles.... great !! just what you need to be 199 miles away from a nuclear explosion.[:0]
payload and range for rocket launching a A-bomb would 10 years later.
Balloons? Our B-29's struggled under the weight of the bombs. I'm thinking probably not a viable delivery method considering the lack of guidance.
Nimitz' good luck prevented the Japanese from neutralizing what remained of the US Pacific Fleet, which would have added years to the conflict. The Japanese may have even been able to land troops in California.
Luckily, Germany chose to attack Russia rather than consolidate their hold upon Europe and complete the demise of Great Britain, which would have eliminated the staging area for US B-17's. More time gained for technological progress. They had already perfected jet aircraft which outclassed anything the Allies could put into the air.
Luckily, the Germans chose to squander a large amount of resources in construction of facilities and transportation for the purpose of euthanizing millions of noncombatants. Without that stupidity Einstein and others would have stayed in Germany.
The much-superior V2 was produced just a few months after the creation of the V1. A V3 was on the drawing boards.
The Fat Man weighed slightly over 10,000 pounds, the Little Boy slightly less. With time, German rockets would have been capable of greater payload and range capabilities.
In 1938 Germany's Ju-89 heavy bomber prototype reached 7000 ft with a 10000 kg payload. More than enough.
Goering diverted the Luftwaffe's aircraft production from bombers to fighters because of England's increased bombing campaign.
Several of my older co-workers remember seeing von Braun touring our plant.
Many of our early launch systems bore an amazing similarity to German designs. Our first Titan ICBMs show their lineage to German technology.
The ICBM was a logical progression, as the SAM made the high altitude strategic bomber obsolete, relegating it to a low level, under the radar weapon.
Given another decade, the A10 rocket would have had the ability to deliver a payload to the United States. The Germans simply ran out of time and resources.
There have been reports of tests in late 44 & early 45 by the Germans & one possible test by the Japanese in early August 45.
From what I read of the reports they may have been fizzles but even a fizzle produces a very powerful blast of at least one kiloton like the first North Korean test.