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Hitler had the bomb, historian claims
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Serge L View Drop Down
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Posts: 485 		  Quote Serge L Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Hitler had the bomb, historian claims
    Posted: 09-Mar-2005 at 04:49

Nazi Germany built a nuclear reactor and atomic weapons before the end of World War II, contrary to popular belief, a Berlin historian says in a book to be released later this month.

In his book "Hitler's bomb", Rainer Karlsch says a reactor was functioning by the winter of 1944/45 and that nuclear weapons were being tested on a Baltic Sea island and Thuringia, central Germany, under the supervision of the

"The Third Reich was extremely close to winning the race to build the first working nuclear weapon," his publisher, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt (DVA), said in a statement.

However the arm was not well-developed enough to be dropped by air.

Karlsch, whose book will be released here on March 14, maintains that he found "the first German nuclear reactor in working order" near Berlin and discovered documents on a project for a plutonium-based bomb dating from 1941.

According to DVA, his work is based on careful examination of building plans, aerial photographs, soil analyses, diaries of researchers linked to the project and reports by US and Russian spies.

Despite sabotage by the Allies and funding difficulties, Nazi Germany did succeed in producing "dirty bombs" which killed "several hundred" prisoners during tests in Thuringia.

They were nowhere near as devastating as the atomic bombs dropped by US aircraft on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing an estimated total of more than 200,000 people by the end of 1945.

http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050306121417.8z9wa824.html

 

I recall a "dirty bomb" is a modern (not WWII era) term for a mix of conventional explosives and radioactive material, meant to explode like a conventional (yet usually high potential) bomb, and contaminating a more or less vast area with radioactivity.

Comments?

 

[edited to fix quotes' tag]



Edited by Serge L
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Landsknecht_Doppelsoldner View Drop Down
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Posts: 557 		  Quote Landsknecht_Doppelsoldner Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09-Mar-2005 at 08:30
Heavy water plants.
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Posts: 952 		  Quote Paul Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09-Mar-2005 at 09:30

The US built and tested dirty bombs a number of years ago and found they didn't work. The explosion would spread the dust at most only a few hundred yards at best and in a city considerably less all the time dispating. The number of deaths and casualties would be few and if close enough to die from the dust you'd probably die from the HE used to set it off anyway. So rather a pointless exercise.

However they make great weapons of terrorism, that is non existant threats for politicians and the media to lie about and keep the public in terror.
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Posts: 4310 		  Quote Tobodai Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09-Mar-2005 at 15:41
What Ive read about Axis nuclear programs has always said they were laughably behind to the point where it wasnt even an issue.
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Posts: 485 		  Quote Serge L Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 10-Mar-2005 at 16:32
Originally posted by Paul

The US built and tested dirty bombs a number of years ago and found they didn't work. The explosion would spread the dust at most only a few hundred yards at best and in a city considerably less all the time dispating. The number of deaths and casualties would be few and if close enough to die from the dust you'd probably die from the HE used to set it off anyway. So rather a pointless exercise.

That maybe was the same conclusion the Nazi reached, and that would explain why they never used dirty bombs, if they invented them.

 

Originally posted by Landsknecht_Doppelsoldner

Heavy water plants.

That was well known yet. However that is belived to be a dead end. Of course, we cannot be really sure, maybe there is some (unknown) way to make an atom bomb using heavy water. That's quite usual with technology, there are many ways to reach (more or less) the same result. Once one of these is discovered, further researches stop, and other alternative system remain undiscovered.

For instance, we don't really know how ancient Egytians built the Pyramids. We could do the same thing by using cranes, but Egyptians had no cranes, and yet they manged to build pyramids. Of course, they had some alternative technology we do not know.

Originally posted by Tobodai

What Ive read about Axis nuclear programs has always said they were laughably behind to the point where it wasnt even an issue.

That is the most commonly accepted theory, at present.

This Mr. Karlsch apparently found some new documents (even blueprints, his publisher stated).

However, just few details have been given so far. For the complete story, we need to wait the book's publication, next March 14
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Posts: 949 		  Quote Illuminati Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 18-Mar-2005 at 02:23
Germany was in the lead at one point, but since they scared alot of their great scientists (Einstein mainly) they eventually fell behind.

No one had any diea what Germany was doing until Einstien told the US that German was trying to make an Atomic bomb when he defected to the US, and thats when the US started producing the bomb.

The US now had the better scientists, and another major blow to the Germans was when a ship carrying a huge supply of Hard Water from Norway to Germany was destroyed by the Norwegian resistance. That was almost the final blow.

This is jsut another example of how Hitler was a horrible war tiem leader. A great poitician perhaps, but a horribl war leader.
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Posts: 369 		  Quote TheOrcRemix Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01-Apr-2005 at 14:03
would the allies win the war if hilter had the a-bomb?
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