Why The Nazis Used V-Missiles Instead Of Atom Bombs

Chronicle (Levin), 14 August 1948, Page 4

Why The Nazis Used V-Missiles Instead Of Atom Bombs

A book by Dr. Hans Thirring explains why the Germans spent researeh, time' and mondy oh V-missilds rathet thdri ori atofnie bombsi The hook is entitled "Die GeSdhidhte ddr Atofnbbmbe," and it is published, iii Vienna. Thirring makes much of the difference between the American.and the German conception of atoipic bombs. In 1942 the4 United States had decided to make a supreme technical and in- * dustrial effort to pfoduce an atpmic bomb# hut the Gerinan Government di'd not. In fact, froni 1942 on, Germany Was never/ in d pofeition to produce ari atdmic bomb. •-

Df. Thirring attributes German. blindness partly to the antiSeiriitic policy- of the Government. When Hitler came into power in 1933, a wave of anti-Semitic fanatieisrii swept the best German p.hysicists off their feet. Important advahces in thfeOfdtical physics were dismissed as "Jewish," in particular the thSory of relativity and the quahtuiri theory. Einstein's hdw-famous niass-energy equation Was k " JeWish lie." Even in 1941, whdn the Germans toyed with the idda of pfoducing an atomic bomb, only to give it up, there were many physicists who maintained that the conversion of mass into ehe'rgy was but a flight of the Semitic imagination. Germany never had a team of physicists comparable with. the' Allied. The best scientists of Germany, Austria, Poland, -HUrigary arid Italy had been driven out because of their Jewish origin or their political libdtaiisrii, and nearly all had .emigrated to the United States. America had Hitlef to thank for presenting her with the „finest group of reseafch physicists that the world has ever seeri, so that they could be assembled on one project. Compare.d with this hundfed or so o-f crack men Germany cduld muster ohly .a haridful, which, according td Thirring, went by the niCkname "Tbe Uranium Club."

These German physicists carried on their research'CS, stich as they were, in the laboratories of the Heereswaffenamt at Kamersdorf and Gatow, near Berlin, and in Planck's institute at Dahlem under the direction of Heisenberg. Studies of atbriiic pilfes Were riidde at Hambufg, Heidelberg, Leipzig, Munich and Vienna. In the first pile an attempt was made .to u^e paraffln as a hioderacor-— that. is, a means of slowing dbwh fast nedtrons. This attempt prbkirig td be a failure, the Germans turned to heavy water. The only supply of heavy water was in Norway. An Allied commando raid on the plant at Rjlikan cut off this • soiirce. The plant was repaired, but bombed later. Thirring holds that even if there had been an uninterrupted supply of hedvy water the Germans would never have SttCceeded ih pfddticihg a bomb because their piles were too sriiail. He says that "at hohe of the numerotls piaces in Gerriiany Where the problem was being at- , tkcked was there sufficient pure . metaliic Uraniurh to start a piie v and iriake ihe Chain reaction work in the manner' established ih America." Uranium 235 was never separated from uranium 238 on a great scaie; thoiigh a cumbroiis techniqtie df gkSeous diff usibn had been worked out in the Berlin laboratories of Siemens and Halske.