Did the Nazis develop the atomic bomb?

Answer 1

The short answer is Yes, the Nazis developed a low yield tactical nuclear weapon with a 5 kilogram warhead and a blast radius of 1200 metres (1.2 kilometres)

An American intelligence report dated 15 June 1945 about German Technical Transfer to Japan during WW2, noted the interrogation of Japanese officer who disclosed during 1944 Germany had transferred details of a matchbox sized warhead with a blast radius of 1200 metres.

Nazi patents hidden in the personal papers of Dr Walter Trinks detail a warhead using just 150 grams of uranium 233, which would make a marble sized warhead core.

Two Nazi scientists General Dr Erich Schumann (nuclear physicist) and Dr Walter Trinks (ballistics Expert) developed 40 patents for a nuclear weapon during WW2 which were later copied or adapted after WW2 by the Americans and the French to create miniaturised or tactical nuclear weapons.

In the early 1950s German wartime nuclear physicist Prof Diebner was recruited to teach the US how to create minature nuclear weapons. Schumann was recruited by the French to teach France how to make nuclear weapons.

These weapons were entirely different in concept from the nuclear weapons created in the Manhattan project which exploited the concept of natural critical mass.

The Nazi nuclear weapons used less than critical mass of Uranium, but used the implosion of opposed hollow charge explosives to drive a plasma pinch at the fissile core.

The plasma pinch was created by the focused explosive compression of superheated Lithium against a 150 gram target of Uranium 233 coated with Lithium Deuteride (heavy Hydrogen). The superheated collision of Deuterium and Lithium sparked a massive release of neutrons which replicated the same neutron flux found in a much larger critical mass of Uranium 235 at the point of criticality similar to the US Little Boy weapon dropped over Hiroshima.

The Nazis used Uranium 233 in preference to Uranium 235 because it could be obtained far more easily and inexpensively than enrichment of Uranium 235 or breeding of Plutonium 239, by simply bombarding Thorium 232 with artificial radiation.

Also the Nazi method using transmutation of Thorium 232 resulted in an extremely high isotopic purity and thus less was required. The method of detonation required much less fissile material again, thus the Nazis had no need for a massive enrichment project on the scale of Oak Ridge and Hanniford River.

Artificial radiation was created using cyclotrons and van der graff generators, but from 1943 the Germans also had an advanced particle accelerator which was more like a spherical tokamak. One of these was captured at Burggrub by General Patton's forces on 14 April 1945 and another was captured at Bisingen at the laboratory of Forschungsstelle D on 22 April 1945.

US intelligence reports cite a successful nuclear test explosion on Bug isthmus of Reugen along the Baltic coast on 12 October 1944. In 2005 an Italian war correspondent Luigi Romersa came forward to confirm that he witnessed this test explosion. Further nuclear test explosions are claimed to have happened at Ohrdruf in March 1945. At least one eyewitness Clare Werner came forward in 2005, corroborated by several other sources.

A Japanese diplomatic signal from Stockholm sent on 12 December 1944 discusses the use of a German Uranium atom smashing weapon on the Russian front south of Kursk in June 1943 and later during the siege of a German garrison at Sevastapol in early 1944. The Magic decrypt of this signal was declassified in 1979.

A US Military archivist who worked on destruction of classified wartime files has published claims that he destroyed US held Nazi records detailing the use of tactical nuclear weapons in Pomerania.

After the war Lt General Walter Dornberger disclosed to hidden microphones at a British internment camp that Hitler had always intended to use the V-2 rocket with nuclear warheads. Dornberger's secretly taped conversations were cited in evidence at Nuremberg trials. At Nuremberg German armaments Minister Albert Speer was also questioned about nuclear test blasts at the Orhdruf Concentration camp. Exactly why the British wanted to know about German nuclear test explosions at Nuremberg was never disclosed.

On 5 August 1944 Hitler visited Romania's leader Marshall Antonescu and told him Germany had a Uranium atom smashing weapon of unimaginable destructive force. A month later Romania fell to a revolution and Antonescu gave evidence of Hitler's disclosure to his soviet interrogators.