German Atomic Bombs in WW2

[Hood]

I am sceptical because of the lack of contemporary evidence from Allied intelligence sources.
Notwithstanding any security aspects related to Manhattan/Tube Alloys that may have hampered knowledge of atomic weapons across the wider intelligence gathering bodies, some evidence would have been picked up.
Ultra and Fish were not able to access every communication network but Bletchley had a sizable card index on industrial and military programmes, there is no way that they would have been completely unaware of the construction of these piles, the construction of a test weapon and the construction of a test site. Bletchley probably had a more comprehensive overview of what the German economy was doing than the Germans own ministries in some cases (especially given the lack of any central planning or cooperation in the labyrinthine Nazi state).

Allied photographic reconnaissance might easily have spotted a test site. The fact Rugen is mentioned in the data table posted above is perhaps very telling, if any stretch of the German coastline was heavily photographed and monitored by Allied aerial reconnaissance it was the area around Rugen.
I'm not saying the would have taken the time out to plaster a relatively small test site but it might have been of sufficient interest to keep watch. Certainly if Allied intelligence had got any whiff the Germans had successfully tested, there would have been an all-out effort to smash every facility known to them with heavy bombers - and we know they knew these sites as ASOS knew where to go.

As to the book; we'll its obvious that Rider isn't an historian. I've not download the nuclear section but have looked at the aviation chapter. It is just a never-ending list of quotes from secondary sources and copious images lifted from other publications and online sources. There is no primary research at all, its just a collection of secondary sources (all cited though) and selected quotes and few lines of original text.
There might be some useful biographical detail buried in here, most of the German engineers who left Germany post-1945 are listed along with their achievements for their new US/Soviet/UK/French employers and linked back to the work they did in Germany.
There is a very strong WW2/post-1945 bias to coverage in the book (at least evident in this chapter). It this really a book or a hyper-extended Wiki article? It feels much more like the latter in content.

Just a few of the dubious claims he makes, most being one-liners at best:
Gustav Weisskopf first flew a powered aircraft in 1901, he says its hotly debated then goes into how there is legal safeguards to purpurate the Wright's claims.
The Hs 129 with a 75mm gun was the world's most powerful tank-killing aircraft
Edgar Schmud developed the P-51 from Bf 109 data and the F-86 Sabre based directly on the Me P.1101 and Ta 183 jet fighters.
Whittle's jet engine was very heavy, complex, inefficient and impractical and was a technological dead end, unlike German jets of course, and the US made no attempts to improve them.
Germany designed intercontinental jet bombers.
The Fa 269 mock-up that was destroyed by bombing is a porotype the way Rider tells it, the Lerche was not completed (it wasn't even begun!).
Sikorsky relied on German helicopter research and development to get his VS-300 working.
German helicopters were mass produced and deployed 4-5 years before US helicopters.
German designed rockets got to the moon (who knew Apollo was a German programme?).
UK rockets designed by German-speaking scientists, including Black Knight, Blue Streak, Europa, and Black Arrow.
The DFS 228 influenced the design of the U-2.
The DFS 346 influenced the design of the X-1 series.
German-speaking engineers designed Skylab.

I could go on and on but you get the picture. Given these cases above there doesn't seem much point in critically evaluating anything else in the book.
For me the big give away is the fact its a rambling 4,000 pages that he is giving away free online...

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

To be fair, you picked what looks like the worst chapter, but all the actual chapters are fairly poor and illustrated almost entirely from wikimedia commons. In comparison the appendices include lots of original archival reports at least, and the bibiliography is so detailed (primary and secondary sources) it would take a hundred years to actually read all the cited works.

BIOS 769. German Manufacture of Sewing Machines, Garment Making Machines, Cloth Cutting
Machines, Sewing Machine Needles. [gives lists of documents and machines to be “evacuated” from
Germany for “research” purposes]
...
BIOS 814. A Survey of the German Pile Fabric Industry.

Sounds like some interesting reading....

 

[kaiserd]

Thanks to Hood (& PaulMM) for taking the proverbial bullet for the rest of us.

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

German-speaking engineers designed Skylab.

Clarence "Kelly" Johnson claimed to be of Swedish descent, but he always placed a towel to reserve a sunlounger in the morning while on holiday and reputedly liked sausage and beer. Is this merely a coincidence?

 

[DWG]

German-speaking engineers designed Skylab.

Clarence "Kelly" Johnson claimed to be of Swedish descent, but he always placed a towel to reserve a sunlounger in the morning while on holiday and reputedly liked sausage and beer. Is this merely a coincidence?

Having worked with actual German-speaking engineers for about a decade, the only noticeable difference was that they had better written English than our guys.

 

[williamjpellas]

I was in two minds to approve these posts @williamjpellas as this treads close to the borders of breaking forum rules.

The giant book (almost 1GB) Forgotten Creators book can be downloaded for free here:

Revolutionary Innovation | RIDER Institute | Forgotten Creators

Forgotten Creators is an online reference book released in February 2020. It covers revolutionary scientific innovations during 1800-1945.

riderinstitute.org

It's certainly an immense piece of work. I can't comment on the entire book, but the pages I did read so far from the section on German nuclear weapons read like typical conspiratorial "join-the-dots" arguments drawn from - new and valid research, dubious post-war 'personal recollections', contemporary news articles, coincidences of timing, selective quoting, and a big slice of questions like "can it be a coincidence that x occurred after y?" Well, yes, it might be, that's actually what coincidence means.

I may only have studied history in the medieval period, but this smacks of the ahistorical approach employed by amateur historian Gavin Menzies in 1421 and subsequent books where he developed a thesis and then twisted the evidence to fit, searching for anything that aligned in his mind with his theories and discarding anything that didn't. It had a lot of sensible looking footnotes but most of the academics cited virulently disagreed with his 'interpretation' of their work.

The author of Forgotten Creators is a former senior staff scientist at MIT, so I presume that removes him from the tinfoil hat - crank - lunatic fringe before we get down to brass tacks regarding the details.

No, it really doesn't. Plenty of scientists are crackpots especially in areas outside their specialism. Equally, even if you are perfectly sensible, being good at science doesn't make you good at researching and writing history. I've had engineers tell me things from their memories which are provably wrong. Even archive documents only tell you what was recorded, not what happened, as is clear if you ever see two different records of the same event.

Okay, those caveats are even handed and fairly presented.

It is true that Rider is not a professional historian, that is so.

There is a lengthy backstory to what I guess we could call the "contrarian history" of WWII in general, and the development of nuclear weapons in particular. In my view there are two great virtues to Forgotten Creators. The first is the author's own original archival research, which is considerable. I have seen a good number of declassified documents myself, including some from my own trip to NARA about ten years ago. But the great majority of the papers in Dr. Rider's book are new to me and, probably, to most people reading them. Among these are the NARA documents describing Philip Morrison's work as an intelligence agent while with the Manhattan Project during WWII, as mentioned above.

The second virtue is that the book collects, collates, and expands upon all of the fragmentary research that was done previously by writer-researchers such as Gunter Nagel, Mark Walker, Rainer Karlsch, Thomas Mehner and Edgar Meyer, David Irving (yes, I know), Dean Reuter and others. Nagel in particular did some very important spadework. All of these prior investigators had bits and pieces, hints and traces from their own archival investigations, but until Rider completed his own nearly decade long international research project, no one in the public realm that I have ever seen put all of the recovered pieces from the plane crash together in one room, so to speak. From there he took his best stab at reconstructing what was, like all secret weapon programs then and now, the blackest of "black projects".

Rider's reconstruction and contrarian historical narrative is, of necessity, somewhat speculative. But it is very well documented and I find it highly compelling. For sure, to my mind, it puts paid to the heretofore conventional narrative, which as I have stated is actually composed of very weak sauce and is rooted largely in Goudsmit's book, which dates from 1947 and is demonstrably riddled with errors, omissions, and factual falsehoods. On that score alone, Rider's work deserves thorough consideration. This is because it was not until 1995, at the 50 year mark past the end of the war, that a widescale declassification was enacted in the US National Archives (NARA). A number of other nations followed suit, but to varying degrees. The official secrets act in the UK generally keeps a noticeably tighter lid on sensitive WWII papers at Kew Gardens than NARA does with its own repositories. Russian archives were more or less wide open for several years following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, and have subsequently been closed off once more to a considerable extent. Some of the most crucial documents to come out of the Kremlin were cited by Rainer Karlsch. Yes, I know, he was roundly criticized for his layman's knowledge of such things and for a couple of mistakes he made (and quickly corrected) in his writing about them. I will add that neither Karlsch nor Walker fully grasped what they were looking at quite apart from any errors in scholarship. This was particularly disappointing where Walker is concerned because he has built his academic career largely on his own books about the WWII German nuclear weapons effort. My two cents is that Karlsch didn't really know what he was looking at, while Walker had a better idea but simply didn't want to believe it. I was able to converse, briefly, with Karlsch by email some years ago. He was, at that time, gracious and approachable but I was then in the earliest stages of my own investigation and so I didn't yet have a good idea of what to ask him. Walker spoke with me briefly by telephone a few years later but refused to continue the conversation after I mentioned the 1995 (again, 50 years after the end of WWII) press conference in which the wartime Japanese nuclear scientist Tatsusaburo Suzuki disclosed a number of details about the Japanese atomic bomb project. New Scientist is not exactly a known hangout for the lunatic fringe.

Japan 'came close' to wartime A-bomb

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

I will next post the plain text of the three Soviet - Russian intelligence papers I am talking about so everyone here can read them and draw their own conclusions directly from the primary source evidence itself. Beyond that, I leave it up to the moderators if they believe the information I am presenting here is worthy of deeper investigation and discussion, or not.

 

[edwest4]

When the Germans invaded Belgium they captured uranium from the Belgian Congo. They also confiscated French uranium supplies. There is little clear information about events in the Bohemia-Moravia Protectorate and the University of Brno. Some years ago, I wrote a message to a research group in Austria who were preparing a report about the Austrian conrtribution to the German atomic program. The report never appeared.

Edwest2, there are good reasons why the report never appeared. They have to do with a "six ton bomb" which was described by British, American, German, and Austrian sources. There were a number of newspaper articles regarding this weapon that appeared at or just after war's end in Europe. According to Werner von Braun among a number of others who were quoted for the record, this bomb would have had a blast radius of 6 miles. The major scientists working on it were mostly SS and included George Stetter, Ulrich Jetter, and Alfred Klemm.

My own research and documents review shows that what was reported about the German atomic program after the war was not factual. The web site of the Deutsches Museum states things quite plainly. All the Also Mission accomplished was to prevent the deployment of nuclear weapons.

 

[williamjpellas]

The first Soviet - Russian - GRU original document describes a pending German nuclear weapon test in Thuringia:

General Ivan Ilyichev. 15 November 1944. Intelligence report to General Antonov and Joseph Stalin.
Archive of the President of the Russian Federation, 93-81 (45) 37.

Peoples’ Commissariat of Defense of the USSR
Chief Intelligence Department of the Red Army
15 November 1944 Moscow

To the Head of the Red Army General HQ General of the Army, Comrade Antonov

Report:

Our trustworthy source in Germany reports: “The Germans are preparing to conduct tests of a new secret weapon, which has a large destructive power. The test explosion of a bomb of unusual construction is being prepared under highest secrecy in Thuringia. For the preparations of the tests the local residents are supposed to be transported away by an SS detail; the whole operation is reported to be undertaken in strictest secrecy. The explosions are supposed to take place in a wooded area. For that, special roads to the presumptive test site are being created. The bomb to be tested has a diameter of one and a half meters. It consists of several hollow spheres that nest inside each other. It will be brought to the explosion place with a transporter specially constructed for it. It is still unclear when the test is supposed to take place, but the preparations are going at the maximum fastest pace.

CONCLUSION. In the last months our source has reported more and more often about the feverish efforts of the Germans to test ever more powerful weapons and their means of delivery. Probably these experiments lead directly to an attempt of the Germans to actually carry out tests of atom bombs, about whose existence we have only incomplete, scanty information.”

Head of Chief Intelligence Department of the Red Army Lieutenant General Ilyichev

Typed 4 copies

Copy Nr. 1 — Comrade Stalin Nr. 2 — Comrade Molotov Nr. 3 — Comrade Antonov Nr. 4 — into archive

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The second and most extraordinary report is immediately below. It was cited by Karlsch in his book, Hitler's Bombe, which suspiciously has never appeared in English. Rider's translation of this document was given to him directly by Karlsch. A number of crucial technical details are given, including the fact that these weapons achieved ignition via fusion boosting (known today as "boosted fission") and that they used U-235 (enriched uranium) as the fissile material. This latter point was among the most surprising for me, as I had assumed going in that if the Germans did anything in WWII worth mentioning in terms of nuclear weapons, it was probably with manmade fissiles and/or some kind of alternate approach to a fusion weapon (ie ignition via highly energetic superdense elements/compounds) than U-235. Nevertheless:

General Ivan Ilyichev. 23 March 1945. Intelligence report to General Antonov and Joseph Stalin. Archive of the President of the Russian Federation, 93-81 (45) 37.

Peoples’ Commissariat of Defense of the USSR
Chief Intelligence Department of the Red Army
[2]3 March 1945
Moscow
To the Head of the Red Army General HQ
General of the Army, Comrade Antonov

Report:

Our trustworthy source from Germany reports:

“The Germans have in recent times carried out two large-capacity bomb explosions in Thuringia. The explosions took place in a forest area, under conditions of strictest secrecy. Trees fell at a distance of 500–600 meters from the center of the explosion. Buildings and fortifications specially constructed for the tests have been destroyed.

Prisoners of war who were near the epicenter of the explosion died, often without leaving a trace. Prisoners of war who were in the area beyond the center of the explosion have burns on their face and body, the strength of which depends on their position in relation to the epicenter of the explosion. The tests were carried out in a remote deserted area. The regime of secrecy at the test site was at maximum level. Entrance and exit from the territory are by special pass only. SS soldiers have surrounded the area of tests and interrogated any person approaching the area.

The bomb, supposedly filled with uranium 235 and weighing approximately two tons, was brought to the test site on a specially constructed truck. Dewars of liquid oxygen were delivered together with it. The bomb was permanently guarded by 20 guards with dogs. The bomb explosion was accompanied by a large explosive wave and high temperature. In addition, a massive radioactive effect was observed. The bomb is a sphere with a diameter of 130 cm.

The bomb consists of:
1. High-voltage discharge tube, which is charged by special generators
2. A sphere made of metal uranium 235
3. A delay mechanism
4. Protective casing
5. Explosive substance
6. Detonating mechanism
7. Steel casing
All parts of the bomb fit inside each other.

Initiator or bomb fuse.

Consists of a special tube, which creates fast neutrons. It is charged by special generators, which create high voltage inside the tube. As a result, fast neutrons attack active material.

Active bomb material.

Active bomb material is uranium 235. It represents a sphere with an opening into which an initiator is inserted. Once this is done, the opening is sealed by a cork made of uranium 235.

Protective casing.

The uranium sphere is encased in a protective aluminum casing, which is covered by a layer of cadmium. This significantly slows down thermal neutrons emanating from uranium 235, which can cause premature detonation.

Explosive matter.

After the layer of cadmium it is placed inside explosives that consist of porous TNT saturated with liquid oxygen; TNT is made up of bars of a specially chosen shape. The inner surface of the bars has a spherical curvature, which is the same as that of the external surface of the cadmium layer. Each of the bars is supplied with one detonator or two electrical fuses.

Casing.

TNT is covered by a protective layer made of a light aluminum alloy. A blasting mechanism is attached on top of this casing.

Exterior casing.

An exterior casing of armored steel is installed above the blasting mechanism.

Fairing.

A fairing made of a light alloy can be installed on top of the armored casing for future installation on a rocket of the V-type.

Bomb assembly.

The sphere, which consists of metal uranium, is placed inside a protective casing, which consists of aluminum, covered in a layer of cadmium, so that the opening in the sphere coinciding with the opening is sealed off by a uranium cork. After this the aluminum sphere, covered in cadmium, is sealed off by a cork, on top of which the last bar of TNT is placed. Next, liquid oxygen is pumped through the opening inside a protective casing, which covers the TNT. After this the bomb is ready for deployment.

Bomb ignition.

The bomb ignition is carried out with the help of a high-voltage discharge tube. It forms a flow of neutrons, which attack the active material. When the flow of neutrons impacts upon uranium, element 93 fissions, which speeds up the creation of a chain reaction Next, the detonating mechanism detonates the explosive matter, after which a shock from the explosion of the external layer of TNT mixed with liquid oxygen takes place, which is directed toward the center. This allows the uranium to reach a critical mass.

Ahead of this, before the explosion, the uranium sphere is irradiated with gamma-rays, the energy of which does not exceed 6 million electron volts, which many times increases its explosive qualities.

CONCLUSION.

Without doubt, the Germans are carrying out tests of a bomb of high destructive force. In the event of their successful conclusion and production of such bombs in sufficient quantities, they will have weapons capable of slowing down our advance.

Head of Chief Intelligence Department of the Red Army
Lieutenant General Ilyichev
Typed 4 copies
Copy Nr. 1 — Comrade Stalin
” Nr. 2 — Comrade Molotov
” Nr. 3 — Comrade Antonov
” Nr. 4 — into archive
16 pp.

--------------------------------------------------------------
For comparison, here is Rider's side by side chart listing the essential characteristics of this weapon and its US-Allied cousin in the Manhattan Project:



-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now, here is Igor Kurchatov's response to being shown a copy of the March 1945 report from Ivan Ilyichev, who at that time was either the top spook in the entire Red Army or the second highest (I have seen him described as both and have not yet chased down this particular detail). Kurchatov was the lead scientist in the Soviet Union's own atomic bomb project, which they hid in a phony government entity called "The Bureau of Light Machines".

Here is the complete text of Kurchatov’s note:

Letter from Igor Kurchatov to General Ilyichev. 30 March 1945. Published in L. D. Riabev, ed. 2002. Atomnii Projekt SSR [Soviet Atomic Project] 1938–1945. Vol. 1, Part 2. Moscow. pp. 260–261.

Opinion of I. V. Kurchatov on the document “About a German atomic bomb” that was received by the head office of the General Staff of the Red Army, March 30, 1945 “Secret classified information” (strictly confidential):

The material is extremely interesting. It contains a description of the construction of a German atomic bomb, which is intended to be transported by a carrier rocket of the type “V.” The bringing together of uranium-235 over the critical mass that is required for the achievement of a nuclear chain reaction is caused by the described construction, the explosion of the mixture of granulated trinitrotoluene and liquid oxygen surrounding the U235. The ignition of the uranium is carried out by fast neutrons, which are generated by means of a high-voltage gas discharge tube fed by special generators. To protect against thermal neutrons, the uranium container is surrounded by a cadmium layer.

All of these design details are very credible and agree overall with those according to us that underlie the project of an atomic bomb. It should be noted that I am not totally convinced on the basis of the reviewed material that the Germans have actually made experiments with an atomic bomb. (Kurchatov did not know that these two tests were done with only minimal loads of HEU, reportedly 100g per bomb. The yields were thus around 1 kt or less and therefore not necessarily beyond the reach of a non-nuclear bomb technology — WP.) The level of destruction of a nuclear bomb would be greater than stated, and spread over several kilometers and not just a few hundred meters. The events mentioned in the documents may be preparatory tests with nuclear weapon designs, but conducted without U235 explosive. It would be desirable to obtain additional information about the course of the experiments, in order to get a more precise location and to obtain a sample of the uranium 235.

Some aspects that, judging from the description, very convincingly demonstrate the effect of a bomb, remain unclear to me. These include: 1) the preliminary irradiation of uranium with gamma rays, whose energy potential does not exceed 6 million electron volts; 2) the indication that the radioactive element 93, which is obtained from uranium by neutron irradiation, acts extremely positively on the decay of the uranium-235. It is hard to imagine that some kind of exposure to gamma rays or neutrons could change the explosion characteristics of U235 crucially. Only by the strong intensity of this radiation from utilizing a fission reactor can one change the properties of uranium-235 significantly. Here the wording of specific details at the beginning of the explosion process is rather based on some sort of new physical factors on exposure of the atomic nucleus of uranium to neutrons.

It would be extremely important to obtain detailed and accurate information on these issues. Even more important would be to learn more details about the process of extracting uranium-235 from natural uranium. I must note that it would be extremely important for our physicists to have a conversation with the person who gave the information reviewed here.

30 March 1945

I. Kurchatov Single copy

(Note:Copy sent to Gen. Ilyichev with No. 3GVS-s distribution. A. Vasin

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There is mention elsewhere of Georgy Flerov, another major Soviet nuclear scientist of that period, being sent to at least one reported test site of WWII German prototype nuclear weapons to check for radioactive bomb signatures with Geiger counters.

Anyway, those are some of the Russian sources which speak of the German nuclear weapons program. There are more in Rider's book, along with others that are of US, UK, Austrian, German, Czech, French, and Australian origin.

 

[Orionblamblam]

Uuuuuuugh.

 

[Dilandu]

Archive of the President of the Russian Federation, 93-81 (45) 37.

Which did not exist since 1998. Fake quite obvious. Also, Antonov wasn't chief of the staff in November 1944.

 

[edwest4]

Uuuuuuugh.

Ah, the voice of... of... Oh never mind.

 

[edwest4]

Archive of the President of the Russian Federation, 93-81 (45) 37.

Which did not exist since 1998. Fake quite obvious.

The other voice of... uh... This one has me stumped.

 

[Dilandu]

Ah, the voice of... of... Oh never mind.

The voice of reason. Document is another fake, invented for boosting the stupid myths about "Nazi wunderwaffe".

 

[Dilandu]

The other voice of... uh... This one has me stumped.

Sigh. Learn history, man. Antonov became Head of the Red Army General HQ only in February 1945. The first document is "dated" November 1944 - it should be addressed to Vasilevsky, not Antonov.

Throw the document into dust bin with its author.

 

[Orionblamblam]

Uuuuuuugh.

Ah, the voice of... of... Oh never mind.

It's the voice of someone sick of this BS. The Nazis didn't have a nuke. Full stop.

 

[edwest4]

Again, the voice of uh... someone who has not studied this subject in-depth. I could publish a long list of references but I would be banned after complaints from the 'usual suspects.'

 

[Dilandu]

Again, the voice of uh... someone who has not studied this subject in-depth. I could publish a long list of references but I would be banned after complaints from the 'usual suspects.'

Sigh. Explain first why this "document" from November 1944 is addressed to the Antonov. It should be addressed to Vasilevsky.

 

[Orionblamblam]

Again, the voice of uh... someone who has not studied this subject in-depth.

Oh, I've read a *lot* of science fiction.

The things you have quoted in this thread as evidence of Nazinukes are laughably bad. That you don't understand that... shrug. There is only just so much point in wasting effort arguing with conspiracy theorists. There are really only two good reasons for engaging with people who believe whackadoodle nonsense:
1: The entertainment value (which, for me, burned away decades ago)
2: The possibility of getting to someone who might actually be leaning towards buying the nonsense, but hasn't slipped wholly into the vat of Flavor Aid.

So in benefit of number two, for anyone who still retains the ability to think reasonably and who nevertheless thinks there might be validity to the idea that the Nazis set off a nuke:

Where?

You don't set off a nuclear bomb and not have it leave a mark. Decades later a nuclear test site will still be blatantly obvious. No such sites have been found in formerly Nazi occupied territory.

There would have been no purpose in hiding a Nazinuke from the public had the Allies found out about it. It would have been the biggest news of the war after the revelation of the US nukes. The Allies touted every *other* Wunderwaffen the Nazis came up with; showing the Nazis were advanced was a dandy way of saying "See how good a job we did? Aren't you proud of us?"

 

[Michel Van]

Let me put to the Point

The Nazi were never close to a Nuclear bomb in any form.
They had bloody 35 different groups, that fighting for ever piece of material they needed for there bomb program
While the head scientist on matter believed that Bomb needed 50 metric tons of Uran to work
Hell they not even had Heavy Water

There is no radiological evidence that Germans tested a Atomic bomb during second world war.

in simple words: the Nazi were to stupid to build the atomic Bomb !

 

[edwest4]

At the risk of further derisive comments. The official story is the Germans did very little. Very little. The end.

However, now that many documents have been located in archives, the "official story" above remains the only story. Historical research never works that way. The documents contradict the official story. Contact the Deutsches Museum. Many of those documents are in their archives. A select number were put on display in 2001. They can confirm that. They can also confirm the scope of the German atomic program.

I can confirm that the largest chemical cartel in the world at the time, IG Farben, had part ownership in Norsk Hydro. Heavy water was produced inside Germany at the Linde Eismaschinen A.G.

 

[Dilandu]

However, now that many documents have been located in archives,

Those documents are obvious fakes, because they contain rather crude mistakes. Invent something less ridiculous, like "I seen it in a crystal ball"

 

[williamjpellas]

Archive of the President of the Russian Federation, 93-81 (45) 37.

Which did not exist since 1998. Fake quite obvious. Also, Antonov wasn't chief of the staff in November 1944.

The November 1944 document does not address Antonov by that title. It just says "General Antonov".

The Kremlin archives were in fact the "Archive of the...Russian Federation" in the years immediately following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Which is when Karlsch visited them.

Is this the best you've got?

 

[edwest4]

I plan on contacting the Deutsches Museum and other references. Believe what you like.

 

[Dilandu]

The November 1944 document does not address Antonov by that title. It just says "General Antonov".

Are you kidding?

Peoples’ Commissariat of Defense of the USSR
Chief Intelligence Department of the Red Army
15 November 1944 Moscow

To the Head of the Red Army General HQ General of the Army, Comrade Antonov

Seriously? You are unable to read your own document?

 

[Dilandu]

I plan on contacting the Deutsches Museum and other references. Believe what you like.

I take it I would not see any explanation, why document from November 1944 is addressed to the completely wrong person? Typical.

 

[williamjpellas]

Again, the voice of uh... someone who has not studied this subject in-depth.

Oh, I've read a *lot* of science fiction.

The things you have quoted in this thread as evidence of Nazinukes are laughably bad. That you don't understand that... shrug. There is only just so much point in wasting effort arguing with conspiracy theorists. There are really only two good reasons for engaging with people who believe whackadoodle nonsense:
1: The entertainment value (which, for me, burned away decades ago)
2: The possibility of getting to someone who might actually be leaning towards buying the nonsense, but hasn't slipped wholly into the vat of Flavor Aid.

So in benefit of number two, for anyone who still retains the ability to think reasonably and who nevertheless thinks there might be validity to the idea that the Nazis set off a nuke:

Where?

You don't set off a nuclear bomb and not have it leave a mark. Decades later a nuclear test site will still be blatantly obvious. No such sites have been found in formerly Nazi occupied territory.

There would have been no purpose in hiding a Nazinuke from the public had the Allies found out about it. It would have been the biggest news of the war after the revelation of the US nukes. The Allies touted every *other* Wunderwaffen the Nazis came up with; showing the Nazis were advanced was a dandy way of saying "See how good a job we did? Aren't you proud of us?"

I was wondering when you would show up. The "House" avatar is quite apropos.

Where? In chronological order:

1) In the North Sea off the coast of Norway in the fall of 1943

2) At Bug Peninsula on Rugen Island, in October 1944

3) Somewhere in Poland, not far from Auschwitz, in November or perhaps December of 1944

4) In Thuringia, near Ohrdurf and the Buechenwald concentration camp, March 1945

Again, the voice of uh... someone who has not studied this subject in-depth. I could publish a long list of references but I would be banned after complaints from the 'usual suspects.'

Sigh. Explain first why this "document" from November 1944 is addressed to the Antonov. It should be addressed to Vasilevsky.

Because Vasilevsky was frequently absent from Stavka meetings because he was at the front. Antonov, according to what I have just read, was functionally the Chief of Staff of the Red Army from December 1942, but did not formally hold the rank until February of 1945. However, Antonov seems to have been a sort-of placeholder in the formal sense of that rank, because Vasilevsky resumed his duties as Chief of Staff in March 1946.

So, Antonov was essentially operating in much the same way as a "brevet general" or a "commodore", albeit on a far larger scale. There are many examples of various professional armed services resorting to temporary promotions or reassignments for this or that reason.

 

[Dilandu]

Because Vasilevsky was frequently absent from Stavka meetings because he was at the front. Antonov, according to what I have just read, was functionally the Chief of Staff of the Red Army from December 1942, but did not formally hold the rank until February of 1945. However, Antonov seems to have been a sort-of placeholder in the formal sense of that rank, because Vasilevsky resumed his duties as Chief of Staff in March 1946.

Sigh. This explanation does not hold anything. Nobody uses FULL titles adressing the person, who is not in fact hold it, in OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS. If it was just "General Antonov", it kay be plausible. But not the " Head of the Red Army General HQ General of the Army, Comrade Antonov"

Much more plausible explanation - the document is fake, made up by some Westerner who, like you, have good but imperfect grasp on Soviet history. And made an small but fatal mistake. And since my explanation is simple, and better suit the facts - there is no need for yours.

 

[williamjpellas]

However, now that many documents have been located in archives,

Those documents are obvious fakes, because they contain rather crude mistakes. Invent something less ridiculous, like "I seen it in a crystal ball"

You speak, write, and read Cyrillic Russian then, I take it? You've read the Russian language originals and can offer documentary proof of forgeries and the like?

 

[edwest4]

So, Westerners just sit around creating fake documents? For what purpose? To post them for free online?

I have watched the denial game played on a few forums. Rarely are there mentions of facts but emotion-filled denials without foundation. Again, the "official story" is false. And there is no reason for anyone to create a large number of documents, and publish their locations in named, official archives. So, do you say all of those archives have fake documents? Next I'll be hearing that Germany lost the war.

 

[williamjpellas]

Uuuuuuugh.

Ah, the voice of... of... Oh never mind.

It's the voice of someone sick of this BS. The Nazis didn't have a nuke. Full stop.

There is considerable evidence that they got at least as far as the prototype stage. What evidence do you have for your assertion that they did not?

 

[Orionblamblam]

There is considerable evidence that they got at least as far as the prototype stage.

No there isn;t. If there was, it would have been shown.

What evidence do you have for your assertion that they did not?

The lack of evidence supporting the positive assertion. Or am I to also believe that the Nazis opened a portal to Hell and drew forth Cthulhu, Godzilla and Herman Munster simply because there isn't evidence that they didn't?

 

[Orionblamblam]

However, now that many documents have been located in archives,

Those documents are obvious fakes, because they contain rather crude mistakes. Invent something less ridiculous, like "I seen it in a crystal ball"

You speak, write, and read Cyrillic Russian then, I take it?

The dudes a freakin' *Russian.* One kinda expects that magical ability from them fellers. He and I disagree on political matters, but if I need some weird incomprehensible gibberish like "Блядь" translated, I'm sure he can do it.

 

[williamjpellas]

There is considerable evidence that they got at least as far as the prototype stage.

No there isn;t. If there was, it would have been shown.

What evidence do you have for your assertion that they did not?

The lack of evidence supporting the positive assertion. Or am I to also believe that the Nazis opened a portal to Hell and drew forth Cthulhu, Godzilla and Herman Munster simply because there isn't evidence that they didn't?

Yeah, okay. Clearly what I am discussing here is on the same level and of the same provenance.

Evidently you have absolute faith that "...if there was (evidence for WWII Germany reaching at least the prototype stage with its own nuclear weapons), it would have been shown".

Interesting. So, the Germans would have shown the world what they were doing, the same way the Manhattan Project and the Japanese and the British did, is that correct? Because it didn't take 50 years or longer for even some of the most basic details about the Allied bomb project to come out into the public domain, and that was in the comparatively open societies in the West, not the totalitarian setups in Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and the Soviet Union. Right?

 

[edwest4]

It has been reported that Luigi Romersa, an Italian correspondent during World War II, was personally dispatched by the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) to the island of Rugen to witness the weapons test. Romersa (1917-2007) was the last known witness, at least to have come forward, to what he and some historians have said was the detonation of a Nazi nuclear device. In an article by John Hooper in The Guardian dated September 30, 2005, Romersa, relating his experience, is quoted as saying:

"They took me to a concrete bunker with an aperture of exceptionally thick glass. At a certain moment, the news came through that detonation was imminent," he said. "There was a slight tremor in the bunker; a sudden, blinding flash, and then a thick cloud of smoke. It took the shape of a column and then that of a big flower.
"The officials there told me we had to remain in the bunker for several hours because of the effects of the bomb. When we eventually left, they made us put on a sort of coat and trousers which seemed to me to be made of asbestos and we went to the scene of the explosion, which was about one and a half kilometers away.
"The effects were tragic. The trees around had been turned to carbon. No leaves. Nothing alive. There were some animals - sheep - in the area and they too had been burnt to cinders."

 

[Orionblamblam]

It has been reported that Luigi Romersa, an Italian correspondent during World War II, was personally dispatched by the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) to the island of Rugen to witness the weapons test.

Oh, boy! Unreliable self-serving testimony backed up with no hard evidence whatsoever is so exciting!

A nuclear test site that left no evidence yet more Nazi Occult Space Magic!

If a nuke went off on a known island... go there, test samples. It's not that hard.

 

[Orionblamblam]

So, you have absolute faith that "...if there was (evidence for WWII Germany reaching at least the prototype stage with its own nuclear weapons), it would have been shown".

You said: "There is considerable evidence that they got at least as far as the prototype stage."

And yet no such considerable evidence has been shown. Some vague references in post-war reports - the same sort of reports that turned Oberths 1920's notions for an orbiting mirror into a massive program to build an orbital "Sun Gun" - coupled with obvious fakes. This is Ghost Hunters level of amateur hour.

You people claim bombs went off. Bombs leave evidence. For *centuries.* Go dig it up.

 

[edwest4]

There is considerable evidence that they got at least as far as the prototype stage.

No there isn;t. If there was, it would have been shown.

What evidence do you have for your assertion that they did not?

The lack of evidence supporting the positive assertion. Or am I to also believe that the Nazis opened a portal to Hell and drew forth Cthulhu, Godzilla and Herman Munster simply because there isn't evidence that they didn't?

Yeah, okay. Clearly what I am discussing here is on the same level and of the same provenance.

So, you have absolute faith that "...if there was (evidence for WWII Germany reaching at least the prototype stage with its own nuclear weapons), it would have been shown".

Interesting. So, the Germans would have shown the world what they were doing, the same way the Manhattan Project and the Japanese and the British did, is that correct? Because it didn't take 50 years or longer for even some of the most basic details about the Allied bomb project to come out into the public domain, and that was in the comparatively open societies in the West, not the totalitarian setups in Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and the Soviet Union. Right?

Of course all of the Allies openly published their progress in 1945. The level of secrecy was great. In the United States, a book was published titled Secret Science: Federal Control of American Science and Technology. The secrecy was problematic. "Indeed, among the multitude of secrecy procedures introduced during World War II, none was more dubious than compartmentalization. Employed by the military on national security grounds, the imposition of this philosophy on scientific research was uniformly counterproductive. One government official admitted that 'more harm in arresting research and development was done by this compartmentalization of information than could ever have been done by the additional scrap of information that the enemy might have picked up by a more general dissemination of knowledge.'" Page 25.

 

[edwest4]

It has been reported that Luigi Romersa, an Italian correspondent during World War II, was personally dispatched by the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) to the island of Rugen to witness the weapons test.

Oh, boy! Unreliable self-serving testimony backed up with no hard evidence whatsoever is so exciting!

A nuclear test site that left no evidence yet more Nazi Occult Space Magic!

If a nuke went off on a known island... go there, test samples. It's not that hard.

Willful ignorance of a large number of documents, with document names and locations, is willful ignorance. 'Nope. There's no documents!' And when the details about those documents are mentioned, 'Nope. They're all Fakes!'

 

[Orionblamblam]

Willful ignorance of a large number of documents, with document names and locations, is willful ignorance. 'Nope. There's no documents!' And when the details about those documents are mentioned, 'Nope. They're all Fakes!'

Present documents that present actual evidence. Documents directly from reputable archives that anyone can check on.

 

[Roland55]

If a nuke went off on a known island... go there, test samples. It's not that hard.

Could there be cases where the "footprint" of the bomb is barely noticeable? (the best thing i can't get of that is the supposed Israeli/South African test made on seas). Although i guess the power of the device has a lot more to do with this.