All that to say, by all means, draw your own conclusions. But read the book, or at least Chapter 8 and Appendix D, before you pass judgment on both the conventional historical narrative and Rider's dissenting work.
I am continually amazed by people who do little or no reading in a given book, document, thesis, or treatise and yet presume to dismiss it or otherwise make what they seem to believe are authoritative pronouncements about it. They did the same thing to Robert Wilcox when his book,
Japan's Secret War, first appeared in 1985. How well I remember an article that is now very hard to find called "Retroactive Saber Rattling?", which was all about the impossibility of there having been any kind of significant WWII Japanese nuclear weapon development, and therefore Wilcox's book was obviously written by some kind of knuckle-dragger trying to make himself and like minded American simpletons feel better about themselves for nuking poor, peaceful Japan, you see.
Oops.
A JAPANESE nuclear physicist says that he and many of his colleagues were convinced that they could make nuclear weapons during the Second World War. There was even a plan to drop an atom bomb on the American base of Saipan, an island in the Western Pacific. The only thing that held them back was …
www.newscientist.com
A controversial book about Japan’s race to build an atomic weapon in 1945 is published there for the first time. It also raises questions about how North Korea finally got a bomb.
www.thedailybeast.com
So, I'll stick with Dr. Rider, the more so because, like Wilcox, he constructs his dissenting historical narrative directly from original primary source papers.
Beyond this point, I'm headed back to That Other Site That Begins With A Capital Q. If anyone wants to learn more or to interact with me, I'm easy to find over there. Dr. Rider is also readily accessible through his website.
Forgotten Creators is an online reference book released in February 2020. It covers revolutionary scientific innovations during 1800-1945.
riderinstitute.org
It turns out that a number of quite prominent and reputable people who have actually read
Forgotten Creators endorse it wholeheartedly. It will be immediately obvious that these are not the crank lunatic conspiracy theorist fringe, and some of the names that appear below may in fact be familiar to some people on this site. I wish to thank the moderators for allowing me to present the information I have presented here. Have a nice day, everyone.
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"A very valuable part of the book is devoted to the development of nuclear weapons in Germany during WWII, 1939--1945. While the histories of both the US/British Manhattan Project and the Soviet atomic project have been to a large extent declassified, little is actually known about the German work. Rider has done historians a favor by marshalling all of the evidence he could find in US, German, and Russian archives regarding the German atomic project. The inescapable conclusion is that the Germans were much farther advanced in nuclear weapons development than is generally thought."
- Lee Pondrom, Professor Emeritus of Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, author of The Soviet Atomic Project: How the Soviet Union Obtained the Atomic Bomb
"Todd Rider has produced a meticulously researched and cogently argued tour de force on the men and the circumstances that drove the modern German Renaissance in science and technology. Brought out of the long shadow of the Third Reich, the story of this Golden Age of human enquiry is convincingly shown to have as much relevance to our present times as it did then. A remarkable achievement."
- Stephen Walton, Senior Curator, U.K. Imperial War Museum
"Todd H. Rider's Forgotten Creators is a monumental treatise about and an exciting intellectual journey through the contributions of scientists and technologists in Germany and other Central European countries and German-speaking areas to universal progress. It is thoroughly researched, meticulously documented, and presented in an easy-to-perceive way. The pre-war and pre-Nazi German system of science support has lessons that would be difficult to emulate but worthy to ponder about even today. The long-range tragic consequences in science caused by National Socialism are well demonstrated as are the benefits in the West and in the East from the exodus of Jewish scientists before and the importation of others from Germany following World War II. The book is a virtually bottomless well for mining reliable information in the history of science and technology. The 'forgotten creators' are no longer forgotten. Todd is to be congratulated for his accomplishment and thanked for sharing it so generously with the international community."
- István Hargittai, Professor Emeritus of Chemistry, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, author of Buried Glory, Candid Science, Drive and Curiosity, Great Minds, Judging Edward Teller, Martians of Science, and The Road to Stockholm
"Todd H. Rider's Forgotten Creators is an encyclopedic consideration of Germany's central place in the advancement of science and technology between 1800 and 1945. Drawing upon a wide range of sources, Rider has summarized that effort in a survey that will impress the reader just as much for the breadth of German intellectual achievement as for the influence that achievement has had upon the modern world."
- George W. Cully, retired Director, Office of History at Air University, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama
"The book Forgotten Creators is a really impressive book, as Todd H. Rider tries to mention all relevant German-speaking scientists and engineers and their scientific fields up to 1945 in this mammoth project. In this form, nobody has dared to do this before. The author deserves my full respect for this. I am pleased that we were able to support him in his research."
- Thomas Köhler, Peenemünde Historical-Technical Museum historian and head of the archive, author of Vernichtender Fortschritt: Serienfertigung und Kriegseinsatz der Peenemünder "Vergeltungswaffen"
"Forgotten Creators is an examination of mid-twentieth-century German science and technology, studying the question of how this era came to be so productive. Using extensive reproduction of original materials and source accounts, the author is not only able to provide an overview of what is known about wartime activities, but is also able to indicate avenues for future historical research. The careful and comprehensive referencing permits the materials presented to be used in academic studies. A notable feature of this work is the fluid format provided by online publication, allowing revisions and new materials to be added. An especially important emphasis of the book is what can be learned from both the German-speaking scientists and the World War II era in general that could improve scientific productivity and creativity now."
- Thomas Kunkle, Los Alamos National Laboratory, retired
"In the book Forgotten Creators, Todd H. Rider presents interesting perspectives that contribute to rethinking the story of the German nuclear project, as well as the role that heavy water had in it. The book also confirms the importance of the military actions carried out against heavy water production at Vemork."
- Gunhild Lurås, Heavy Water Exhibition Curator, Norwegian Industrial Workers Museum, Vemork
"With his work, based on very comprehensive, thoroughly researched sources, Todd Rider has presented an astonishing study of the history of German science, especially in the first half of the twentieth century, which also reveals many connections that have been unjustly forgotten or little noticed. This also applies to numerous persons whose achievements are hardly known."
- Günter Nagel, author of Wissenschaft für den Krieg, Himmlers Waffenforscher, Atomversuche in Deutschland, and Das geheime deutsche Uranprojekt 1939--1945
"Forgotten Creators by Todd Rider is an extraordinary work of detailed research and new insights into the technological advances contributed by German-speaking scientists. His lengthy and in-depth study of history often overlooked or not even seen in more cursory reviews is a refreshing read. His attempt to create the fullest account possible has resulted in a fine reference book that also serves to introduce new research for the reader. Rider's contention, right up front in the Executive Summary---that inventions and discoveries had their highest concentration of revolutionary innovations from scientists and engineers from the German-speaking central European research world in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries---demands the reader's attention. He then fills an enormous amount of over 4,000 pages with supporting details. Amazing subject matter and new revolutionary insights dug up through meticulous research make Forgotten Creators a 'must read' for serious historians and curious researchers alike."
- D. Ray Smith, Oak Ridge Historian, retired Y-12 Historian, author, and newspaper columnist
"Todd Rider's extensively researched and amazingly detailed book opens a new world for everybody interested in the history of science. Never before has anyone dug as deeply into the sources as Todd has, such that he even discovered interesting details about our father, then a young officer, and revealed some new aspects about him to us, his children. We are very grateful for Todd's interest, dedication, and thorough research."
- Andrea (Stoelzel) Edwards and Bernhard Stoelzel, children of former Peenemünde staff member Heinz Stoelzel
"This truly voluminous study provides an in-depth overview of techno-scientific achievements and innovations which originated from the German-speaking world. It is a rich and fascinating history of the transnational circulation of knowledge over a period of no less than two centuries."
- Helmuth Trischler, Head of Research, Deutsches Museum, Munich, author of Luft- und Raumfahrtforschung in Deutschland 1900--1970 and Building Europe on Expertise: Innovators, Organizers, Networkers
"A most important and deserving book. Todd Rider's research on the German rocket and nuclear programs in World War II is especially impressive because of the number and depth of the sources cited and the meticulousness of their evaluation. Really pioneering work has been done here!"
- Matthias Uhl, Deutsches Historisches Institut, Moscow, author of Stalins V-2: Der Technologietransfer der deutschen Fernlenkwaffentechnik and Die Organisation des Terrors: Der Dienstkalender Heinrich Himmlers 1943--1945
