Nazi atomic weapons?

[adam_grif]

Did the Nazi atomic energy research ever have a chance of actually producing a weapon? If it had been given more funding, or made a higher priority project, could they have developed something before the War was over in Europe? If so, would it have changed the outcome in any way?

[Ilya Muromets]

IIRC, the German nuke program was a complete clusterfuck. Didn't it eventually split into 8 or 9 different sub-projects with the directors of each pretty much doing their own thing? There was also a lot of politicization and infighting between and within those several divisions. I doubt more funding or primary priority would yield anything useful when the resources would be split between several different, almost self-contained, groups vying against each other and working on whatever their directors tell them to.

[Patrick Degan]

The Nazi nuclear weapons effort was run by idiots. Throwing more money at the man who failed to check his graphite samples for heavy boron and cadmium contamination or the administrator who'd often leave the lab completely unsupervised isn't going to make the programme more effective.

[CaptHawkeye]

The Nazis didn't take the program very seriously because they were not interested in a long term project like the A-bomb. Germany strongly believed the war would be short, because if it wasn't, they were fucked. So development of weaponry was aimed almost squarely on a tactical level and not on a strategic one.

Besides that, we're talking about a time when the concept and capabilities of the A-Bomb were almost totally unknown to all but a handful of people on the entire planet. Many were skeptical of its power and their were plenty even in the US who doubted the A-Bombs would ever even work. Nazi Leadership did not put lots of confidence in the program, and indeed, canceled it before a prototype reactor could even be built.

[TC Pilot]

The German atomic project, as everyone probably already knows, had an initial headstart over everyone else (what with discovering fission and all), but only marginally so. Before anyone could even think of researching a bomb, let alone nuclear energy, they had to prove that it was even theoretically possible, and with what elements (trans-uranic elements, for example, existed purely in theory). To make matters worse, Nazism infected the scientific community; Einstein's work was denounced, his books were burned, and strict "German physics" had to be taught. This became such a thing that even Werner Heisenberg was nearly blacklisted by the SS, until he pulled some strings and got Himmler to salvage him.

Germany had access to some uranium from mines in Czechoslovakia, but the big shipments from the Belgian Congo were seized by the Allies. Besides a scarcity of useable materials, there were plenty of other technical limitations, particularly with regards to experiments. Tools needed were hard to come by or hard for the German economy to produce. The Americans built a ton of cyclotrons, whereas the Nazis relied on the one looted from Joliot-Curie in Paris. The graphite used in moderator experiments were apparently very shoddy (full of impurities), such that they convinced the Germans to use heavy water as reactor moderators. That the British and Norwegians succesfully sabotaged the heavy water plant in Norway certainly didn't help.

A lack of resources was really the major limitation in Germany's bomb project; all Germany's resources were tied up producing conventional weapons for the war. There was no reason to build war-winning superweapons in the early part of the war since Germany was winning on all fronts, and there weren't enough resources left to start development by the time it seemed Germany was losing. Consequently, early on when the Germans still had the lead, it was an impossible sell to the Nazi leadership. Physicists needed money to prove that nuclear weapons were even theoretically possible. Then they had to figure out if diffusion or trans-uranic elements were better. Then they need to figure out the best way to get the U-235 or to build a reactor. Then they need to figure out how the bomb could even go off. Germany never got beyond figuring out whether to go for uranium-235 or plutonium-based bombs (whereas the U.S. just did all, I think, four possibile methods just to be safe). They were still struggling to get a controlled chain reaction out of uranium at the end of the war, something Fermi had done by December '42.

But it actually gets even better: Werner Heisenberg, Germany's best available physicist (since neither Bohr nor Joliot-Curie would work for them), was never big on the nuclear power project in the first place. He was also uninterested in seeing experimentation through, preferring instead theoretical work. What's more, he was also used as a Nazi propaganda piece later in the war, lecturing in the Netherlands, Poland, and even Switzerland.

If the Germans had invested the same time and effort into the a-bomb that the United States did, I seriously doubt they could even have been able to develop a weapon by May '45. In fact, I'd wager the Nazis would actually have lost the war sooner. It's really a sad irony, of sorts: brilliant, decent men sacrificed so much in developing the atomic bomb for the United States under the fear that everything would be lost if the Germans built one first, yet in retrospect there was really no chance of them ever doing so.

[Simon_Jester]

Did the Nazi atomic energy research ever have a chance of actually producing a weapon? If it had been given more funding, or made a higher priority project, could they have developed something before the War was over in Europe? If so, would it have changed the outcome in any way?

My guesses:

1) Yes eventually, but only because if their incompetent clusterfuckery had gone on long enough, someone would have stepped in and forcibly reorganized them into something that could produce a weapon.

2) No, they could not have developed something before the end of the war in Europe. Part of the problem was available industrial capacity- for instance, at one point the Oak Ridge facility for making uranium-235 was consuming one sixth of the entire US electricity supply. Germany didn't have assets on those scale available to spare, because they were fighting a desperate ground war against the Soviets. Even if they did, the disruption caused by Allied bombing raids in 1944-45 would have been a serious problem for the German nuclear programming.

And those are problems that could not be solved by throwing more money at the project at the expense of other things, either: dedicate more industrial capacity to The Bomb and the Eastern Front collapses faster.

3) I doubt it. Even if the Germans had developed a first-generation fission device, it would have been too big to drop from any of their existing planes. Even if it wasn't, they lacked the air superiority to reliably deliver nuclear attacks to their targets. So even if Germany had managed to create two or three nuclear weapons, it would probably not have had more than very minor changes on the outcome of the war.

[Stuart]

Did the Nazi atomic energy research ever have a chance of actually producing a weapon?

Not a hope in hell. In fact, the Nazi atomic energy research programs would make a wonderful "Three Stooges" comedy film. Thess guys were clowns of the first order.

If it had been given more funding, or made a higher priority project, could they have developed something before the War was over in Europe?

No. Germany simply didn't have the resources to develop a nuclear weapon of any sort.

If so, would it have changed the outcome in any way?

It may have ended with an earlier allied victory. The search for superwapons drained off German resources as it was. If they'd thrown the resources needed for a sensible atomic weapons program into that effort, their conventional warmaking capability would have been that much reduced and their armies would have collapsed that much earlier.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Heisenberg was an utter goofball when it came to experimental physics. Giving him a project like this to him is like giving a rubic cube to color blinded fool.

[TC Pilot]

2) No, they could not have developed something before the end of the war in Europe. Part of the problem was available industrial capacity- for instance, at one point the Oak Ridge facility for making uranium-235 was consuming one sixth of the entire US electricity supply. Germany didn't have assets on those scale available to spare, because they were fighting a desperate ground war against the Soviets. Even if they did, the disruption caused by Allied bombing raids in 1944-45 would have been a serious problem for the German nuclear programming.

On the subject of Oak Ridge, can you imagine the sheer nightmare it would have been to repair a German equivalent in the event of Allied bombing? Just building and getting it functional was a massive achievement in and of itself. I can't imagine the Allies not trying to hit it.

[Simon_Jester]

On the subject of Oak Ridge, can you imagine the sheer nightmare it would have been to repair a German equivalent in the event of Allied bombing? Just building and getting it functional was a massive achievement in and of itself. I can't imagine the Allies not trying to hit it.

Yeah. It'd be like what happened to Peenemunde, only worse.

[Gil Hamilton]

As said, Germany lacked the industrial capability, the talent, and the right physics to make a nuclear bomb. Hell, it's a wonder the United States managed to. The Manhattan Project was just about the first time the military actually utilized civilian physicists and things got pretty silly in there by many accounts. Civilian researchers and military folk just don't speak the same language and certainly don't think about things the same way. Oppenheimer practically ended up in a straightjacket by the end of it; they actually had to get one of his former graduate students on the project (Rabi) so that he could keep his shit together. I recommend Richard Feynman's literature on the interaction between physicists and the military.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, I think the Germans would have been able to do it eventually, but it would have taken them an enormous amount of time in which to work undisturbed. They didn't have an enormous amount of time (Ten years? Fifteen? Twenty?). And they didn't have undisturbed time because they were fighting WWII at the same time.

And, again, they'd have had to revamp their own program a few times before the project bore fruit. Any reasonable government would long since have given up on the bomb by the time the Germans could have even gotten close to success, and about the only way I can imagine the Germans sticking to their bomb project through all the enormous expenses (inevitable) and the failures (from their own inept research team) is if time travellers had gone back to tell them to do so.

[Iosef Cross]

Did the Nazi atomic energy research ever have a chance of actually producing a weapon? If it had been given more funding, or made a higher priority project, could they have developed something before the War was over in Europe? If so, would it have changed the outcome in any way?

1- If they focused their resources, they could make a few nukes by 1945 with a significant probability. Though I would agree with Simon that a time traveler would be needed to convince Hitler that atomic weapons are feasible and powerful.

2- But it wouldn't matter. Because a few 10 kiloton nukes cannot change the course of a large war involving 100 million mobilized military personnel.

3- Stuart has argued that a German nuclear program would end the war sooner, because the resources employed would have been taken out from the conventional weapons programs. However, they could reallocate resources from the other super weapons programs like the V program, with also wasted resources from the conventional war effort. The V program in fact consumed a comparable quantity of resources to the Manhattan project.

What was the cost of making the first nukes? The US expenditure on the Manhattan Project was 1.845 billions by 1 October 1945. The exchange rate between the reichmark and the dollar before the war was .40 dollars per RM, with the war, the US experienced a 25% inflation while Germany's prices were frozen right in 1939, while American prices were frozen in 1941, so the relative purchasing power in the war years was .50 dollars per RM. Germany's total military expenditures during WW2 were in the 400-500 billion RM mark, while their military expenditures for 1943 were 112 billion RM (source: Harrison, M., The Economics of World War Two, Page 158). Also, the average hourly wages indicated similar exchange rates.

Hence, the Manhattan project cost about 3.7 billion RM, or about 3% of Germany's war expenditures in 1943 and less than 1% of Germany's total military expenditures. That means that if the Germans embarked in a similar project their war effort wouldn't be noticeably impaired and they would lose the war in the historical time frame.

[Ilya Muromets]

And where would the Nazis summon the industrial capacity and power generation capability the others have mentioned in the other posts? Enough power plants to match one sixth of the US power generation capability, which was what the Manhattan Project ate up, don't just pop up over night. Unlike the US, they don't have the luxury of being on a continent isolated from the ground war and constant carpet bombing. Also unlike the US they don't have the power generation capability and infrastructure already in place.

Nazi Germany has to build that infrastructure to support a serious nuke bomb production effort before it can start. Building the infrastructure to match even the bare minimum needed for a Manhattan Project analogue will take far more money than those simplistic calculations. The US only had to pay for the Manhattan Project, they didn't have to pay for the infrastructure already in place before the US even joined the war used to support said project. Germany did not have a comparable industry and infrastructure even during the war. Especially when their existing infrastructure is already stretched trying to keep their regular forces adequately supplied? Even diverting the funds from all those silly little pet projects of Hitler don't even come close. How do you propose they do that fast enough to get a bomb out by 1945? Answer is, they can't. Not through any realistic means.

[Shroom Man 777]

Not to mention that the Allies were blowing up whatever infrastructure the Nazis already had.

[Ilya Muromets]

Not to mention that the Allies were blowing up whatever infrastructure the Nazis already had.

I think that's implicit in my "Unlike the US, they don't have the luxury of being on a continent isolated from the ground war and constant carpet bombing" statement.

[Simon_Jester]

Iosef, not this again.

You cannot measure a wartime economy purely in terms of dollar values. That is an Economics 101 level mistake. You should know better than to do this.

In wartime, the cash economy is far less relevant if you are the government, because you do not, strictly speaking, need to pay people for things. You can simply confiscate the tools you need, or forcibly conscript/enslave the labor you need.

What matters more than any number of dollars is the specific assets allocated to a program. Even if there's plenty of money to build ten thousand tanks and five hundred warships, if each of those projects requires a million tons of steel and your nation only has a million and a half to spare... you have to compromise. Build fewer tanks, or fewer warships. You don't have an alternative, and you cannot summon up the extra steel from nowhere by throwing money at the problem. Building industrial facilities takes years, even when there isn't a war going on and drawing the cream of the nation's labor and industry away from doing so.

A nuclear program consumes highly skilled engineers, massive amounts of electricity, a great deal of chemical equipment, and so forth. It is these areas where Germany would face dire shortages, where it would have to take assets off other programs in favor of the atomic bomb.

[Shroom Man 777]

And, man, if the Allies took the effort to sabotage the Nazzie's real-life half-assed efforts at making atomic weapons with heavy water or something, then imagine what they'd do to any serious Nazi attempt. Though, to be fair, didn't they think the Nazzies were closer than they really were to making nukes?

[Ilya Muromets]

You cannot measure a wartime economy purely in terms of dollar values. That is an Economics 101 level mistake. You should know better than to do this.

Put in simpler terms, real life militaries don't work on RTS-game-style economies. You don't just subtract the value needed to build something from a total amount then have it magically pop out. You need real, solid materials to actually make your vehicles, weapons, buildings, and whatnot. If you don't have enough material -- and Germany most emphatically did not -- then no matter how you redistribute whatever resources they had you still won't magically belt out a nuclear program geared for production within a few years.

In even simpler terms, you can't make a Lego fortress if you only have enough Legos to make tiny Lego shack.

[Shroom Man 777]

And even if you have the money to buy more legos, the Allies have bombed the toy store so you still can't get any more legos no matter what!

[PeZook]

And even if you have the money to buy more legos, the Allies have bombed the toy store so you still can't get any more legos no matter what!

You have to steal your legos from other kids and then smuggle them back home on submarines and blockade runners just to have enough to patch holes in the walls of your tiny shack.

Resource shortages were such a problem for Germany they had to use piracy (oh, sorry, "auxilliary cruisers") to steal things like copper from merchant ships and try to run it through Allied blockades. And you need a lot of copper for upgrades to power distribution infrastructure...

[TC Pilot]

Though, to be fair, didn't they think the Nazzies were closer than they really were to making nukes?

Just to be on the safe side. Szilard operated under the assumption that the Germans had been continually pursuing further nuclear research when he wrote to Roosevelt. It wasn't until they learned about the Norwegian heavy water plant that the Manhatten scientists thought the Germans were falling behind, but even then they couldn't be sure. They didn't know for certain until the Alsos mission in '45.

[Andras]

There's a book The Day Man Lost: Hiroshima 6 August 1945[/] (c1972) written by a group of Japanese authors called The Pacific War Research Society. It's a well written look at the US and Japanese nuclear programs, but it also includes information about the German program as well.

[Zixinus]

for instance, at one point the Oak Ridge facility for making uranium-235 was consuming one sixth of the entire US electricity supply.

Out of curiosity, can you give me a source for this?

[Simon_Jester]

for instance, at one point the Oak Ridge facility for making uranium-235 was consuming one sixth of the entire US electricity supply.

Out of curiosity, can you give me a source for this?

Thinking back, I might be flat wrong; the only source I can find is Wikipedia. I'm pretty sure I saw it somewhere else, but I cannot for the life of me remember.