[BRIEF NOTE] The Nazis and the Bomb
Mar. 16th, 2005 08:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldFear of a Female Planet links to Klaus Wiegrefe's article (also available here) on the claims of Berlin historian Rainer Karlsch that Nazi Germany was experimenting with nuclear weapons in 1944 and 1945.
Speaking purely from the perspective of an amateur historian, Karlsch's claims do seem implausible. In the early 21st century, it's easy to develop primitive nuclear weapons, since a half-century of researches into nuclear technology has produced a widely dispersed body of knowledge that could be deployed cheaply. The only reasons preventing dozens of countries from building nuclear weapons--Poland and Romania, Chile and Mexico, South Korea and the Philippines, Egypt and South Africa, Canada and the Netherlands--are political and strategic, not technical or economic.
In the mid-20th century, The United States spent the equivalent of several percent of its GDP on the Manhattan project in the years leading up to Fat Boy and Little Man; the Soviet Union took a further four years to develop nuclear weapons, even with Stalin's unlimited resources and coercive power. Nazi Germany never made comparable investments, and the rag-tag band of scientists apparently described by Karlsch simply wouldn't have been able to make a comparable effort. Contrary to its public image, Nazi Germany was not efficient; if anything, the reverse prevailed.
A dirty bomb, comparable to that described by modern-day security analysts commenting on security threats, might well have been developed. An actual nuke? Unlikely.
Speaking purely from the perspective of an amateur historian, Karlsch's claims do seem implausible. In the early 21st century, it's easy to develop primitive nuclear weapons, since a half-century of researches into nuclear technology has produced a widely dispersed body of knowledge that could be deployed cheaply. The only reasons preventing dozens of countries from building nuclear weapons--Poland and Romania, Chile and Mexico, South Korea and the Philippines, Egypt and South Africa, Canada and the Netherlands--are political and strategic, not technical or economic.
In the mid-20th century, The United States spent the equivalent of several percent of its GDP on the Manhattan project in the years leading up to Fat Boy and Little Man; the Soviet Union took a further four years to develop nuclear weapons, even with Stalin's unlimited resources and coercive power. Nazi Germany never made comparable investments, and the rag-tag band of scientists apparently described by Karlsch simply wouldn't have been able to make a comparable effort. Contrary to its public image, Nazi Germany was not efficient; if anything, the reverse prevailed.
A dirty bomb, comparable to that described by modern-day security analysts commenting on security threats, might well have been developed. An actual nuke? Unlikely.
