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

Wed May 29 11:41:34 CDT 2013

Hmmmmm,

      When US Forces discovered the German Bomb  lab, it was pretty much a 
heavy water reactor and a fair number of Uranium  bricks.  There was no 
level of effort like Los Alamos, Hanford, U of  Chicago Metallurgy Lab, Oak 
Ridge etc.  Hitler loved rockets, jets, jet  aircraft, flying wings, possibly 
even saucer or bell-shaped spaceships.   One story on these Ancient Alien 
shows has Werner von Braun reverse-engineering  a spaceship that had crashed in 
the Black Forest....

     Heisenberg didn't need puny Medals from some  warring nation.  His 
gift to the World was parts of Quantum Mechanics, the  Uncertainty Principle 
and other scientific innovations.

    If Hitler had had any sort of Atomic Bomb, he certainly  would have 
used it.  He probably would have had
von Braun put it on top of a rocket, and would have shot it towards  London.

    USA developed the first fission weapons, and dropped  them on Hiroshima 
and Nagasaki.  The war in Japan ended pretty quickly  after that.

    Have a good week...    Regards,     Joe Preisig

In a message dated 5/29/2013 12:28:45 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
Mike.Brennan at DOH.WA.GOV writes:

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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