[ RadSafe ] Fwd: [New post] New Book: A Short History of NuclearFolly

Wed May 29 11:40:00 CDT 2013

One of the best summaries of this issue was in Physics Today in 2000.
(see http://www-personal.umich.edu/~sanders/214/other/news/Bethe.html).

"Heisenberg and about ten other German nuclear scientists were interned at
Farm Hall, a country estate in England. All of their conversations were
secretly taped."   The recordings were declassified in 1992.

Joe Shonka

On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 12:27 PM, Brennan, Mike (DOH) <
Mike.Brennan at doh.wa.gov> wrote:

> It is often said that history is written by the winners.  The stories told
> by the German atomic scientist may well be an example of trying to write
> histories to show they had been on the side of the winners all along.  I
> have little doubt that if things had proceeded differently, and Germany had
> won the War by using atomic weapons to destroy the Soviet army, that
> Heisenberg et al would have proudly accepted their metals.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu [mailto:
> radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu] On Behalf Of Jaro Franta
> Sent: Tuesday, May 28, 2013 8:44 PM
> To: 'The International Radiation Protection (Health Physics) Mailing List'
> Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] Fwd: [New post] New Book: A Short History of
> NuclearFolly
>
> There were several rival groups in various parts of wartime Germany, with
> different levels of commitment to Germany's "uranium project" (ex. Harteck,
> von Ardenne, Riehl, Döpel, others) Some of them resented the leadership of
> Heisenberg, a theoretical physicist.
> Harteck especially complained later that the guy who was put in charge of
> the uranium project - Heisenberg - never once ran an experiment.
> There was also competition for increasingly scarce resources for project
> labs.
>
> This obit from PhysicWEB sheds some light on the issue:
>
> Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker: 1912--2007
> 1 May 2007
>
> The physicist and philosopher Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, who was the
> last surviving member of the team that tried and failed to build a nuclear
> bomb for Germany during the Second World War, died on 28 April at the age
> of 94. After the war, von Weizsäcker controversially claimed that he and
> other German physicists had deliberately chosen not to build the bomb
> because they did not want to equip the Nazi regime with such a dangerous
> weapon. Von Weizsäcker also accompanied Werner Heisenberg to visit Niels
> Bohr in Nazi-occupied Denmark in September 1941 -- a famous meeting that
> was later to inspire Michael Frayn's stage play Copenhagen.
>
> Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker was born on 28 June 1912 in the northern
> German port city of Kiel. Between 1929 and 1933 he studied physics,
> astronomy and maths in Berlin, Göttingen and Leipzig, where he worked with
> some of the leading physicists of his day, including Heisenberg, Bohr and
> Erwin Schrödinger. As a young physicist, von Weizsäcker became interested
> in the binding energy of atomic nuclei and in 1937 determined what later
> became known as the "Bethe-Weizsäcker formula", which predicts the energy
> of the nucleus in terms of the number of constituent protons and neutrons.
>
> In 1939 von Weizsäcker became part of Germany's "uranium project" -- a
> loose network of scientists across the country who began carrying out
> research into nuclear reactors, isotope separation and nuclear explosives.
> Although these scientists never succeeded in building a practical nuclear
> weapon, historians have long wondered why this was the case. Some have
> argued that physicists like Heisenberg and von Weizsäcker simply lacked the
> technical knowledge to build a bomb. Others claim that these physicists did
> not bother determining key quantities like the critical mass of the bomb
> because they knew the German government did not have the resources to ever
> build such a device, which made it pointless to carry out such a
> calculation.
>
> After the war, von Weizsäcker claimed that the real reason why he and
> other German scientists had not built a bomb was that they had deliberately
> chosen not to, fearing its appalling consequences in the hands of the Nazi
> regime.
> Von Weizsäcker first put forward this version of events in interviews he
> gave with the historian Robert Jungk, whose 1957 book Brighter than a
> Thousand Suns suggested that von Weizsäcker and Heisenberg had acted
> honourably all along.
>
> The full story only emerged years later when transcripts of conversations
> between von Weizsäcker, Heisenberg and eight other German physicists, who
> had been secretly recorded while they were interned by the British military
> at Farm Hall, near Cambridge, were finally published in 1993. It turned out
> that von Weizsäcker had deliberately encouraged his fellow physicists to
> argue that they had never wanted to build a bomb, even though they knew
> this was not strictly true.
>
> After the war, von Weizsäcker returned to research, being appointed
> director of the department of theoretical physics at the Max Planck
> Institute in Göttingen before taking up a professorship at the University
> of Hamburg in 1957. That he year he was one of 18 prominent scientists to
> sign the "Göttingen declaration", which called for West Germany to not
> develop nuclear weapons.
>
> A committed Christian, von Weizsäcker also turned his attention to
> philosophy, developing a keen interest in ethics and responsibility. His
> books include The World View of Physics, The Unity of Nature and The
> Politics of Peril. Von Weizsäcker's younger brother, Richard von
> Weizsäcker, was German president between 1984 and 1994.
>
> Von Weizsäcker briefly returned to the spotlight in 2002 when he commented
> on the release of letters that Bohr had written -- but never sent --
> concerning the visit of Heisenberg and Von Weizsäcker to Copenhagen in
> September 1941. These letters suggest that Heisenberg and colleagues had
> indeed been working flat-out on a bomb between 1939 and 1941.
>
> About the author
> Matin Durrani is editor of Physics World <END QUOTE>
>
>
>  Jaro
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu
> [mailto:radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu] On Behalf Of Steven Dapra
> Sent: May-28-13 8:57 PM
> To: The International Radiation Protection (Health Physics) Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] Fwd: [New post] New Book: A Short History of
> NuclearFolly
>
> May 28
>
>          Amazon.com has 19 reviews of "Heisenberg's War."  It's by Thomas
> Powers, who also wrote "The Man Who Kept the Secrets," a biography of
> Richard Helms, director of the CIA.
>
>          One or more of the "Heisenberg" reviewers recommends "German
> National Socialism and the Quest for Nuclear Power 1939 - 1949" by Mark
> Walker (1993).  Walker's book has four reviews on Amazon.com.  One of
> Walker's reviewers notes that the National Socialists planned on winning
> the war by 1941 or 1942, hence there was no need to expend a great deal of
> effort to build an atomic bomb.  The Allies realized the war would be a
> long drawn out affair, hence the bomb could affect its outcome, so they
> went ahead and did the work to build one.
>
> Steven Dapra
>
>
>
> At 06:22 AM 5/28/2013, you wrote:
> >With regards to the  Nazi nuclear weapons program, the best book I've
> >read on the subject is "Heisenberg's War" - this went a long ways
> >towards convincing me that the Nazis (including Hitler) were avidly
> >pursuing nuclear weapons and that Heisenberg and other scientists
> >helped delay matters because of their concerns.
>
> [edit]
>
> >Andy
> >
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu
> >[mailto:radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu] On Behalf Of Roger Helbig
> >Sent: Saturday, May 25, 2013 4:44 AM
> >To: RADSAFE
> >Subject: [ RadSafe ] Fwd: [New post] New Book: A Short History of
> >NuclearFolly
> >
> >I really doubt that Nazi scientists knew how to and had the capability
> >to make an atomic weapon but "chose" not to.  I wonder what other
> >fiction that Herzog might have buried in this book.  Has anyone had the
> >opportunity to read it?
> >
> >Roger Helbig
>
> [edit]
>
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Joseph J. Shonka, Ph.D.
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