It began in January 1942 as project Tor (Thor) under contract to the German Army Special research department #10 (Heeresversuchanstalt no.10) led by Prof Gerlach. The contract codenamed Charite Anlage was let to the electrical company AEG. The first experiments were conducted in the basement of the Charity Hospital in Berlin, hence the code name Charite Anlage.

The aim was to find a way to use a magnetic induction coil to create powerful X-rays from mercury plasma ions. These X-rays in turn were intended to bombard Thorium 232 and convert this to Proactinium 233. After 27 days this material would naturally decay into bomb grade Uranium 233.

Werner Heisenberg strongly advocated at the Harnak Haus conference of July 1942 to create nuclear weapons by breeding Proactinium 233. To this end Heisenberg and Bethe worked closely with Swiss scientist Dr Walter Dallenbach to perfect a design of super-klystron first proposed in pre war patents by Prof Max Steenbeck.

The mercury containment Centrifuge was built by the Berlin firm BAMAG Meguin at Dessau. Dallenbach built one machine at Bisingen which was captured by ALSOS late in April 1945 and disassembled before French occupation forces arrived.

This is also the machine which has been dubbed Nazi Bell, or Die Glocke by writers like Nick Cook, Joseph Farrell, or Igor Witkowski. These writers have engaged in claims for the device which border on pure fantasy and drag it into claims about UFOs or anti-gravity machines.

According to Dr Rolf Wideroe in his autobiography about his wartime work on the project to build such devices these were in effect spherical Tokamaks capable of generating 18 MeV of energy.

Four of these X-ray generators were built during WW2. One was located in Wenceslus mine near present Ludwikowice, Poland in lower Silesia. In 1983 the Soviet Plasma Physicist Georgi Fleyrov was interviewed in Poland about the Wenceslas mine. Fleyrov disclosed that German scientist Prof Manfred von Ardenne directed Fleyrov and Igor Korchetov on a car journey in 1945 from Dresden to the mine. He told the Soviet scientists that he helped to install a "Cyclotron" device in the mine but there was already another one inside the mine which he knew nothing of. He said the mine was under heavy SS guard.

Another one of these particle accelerators was delivered from the bombed out city of Dresden by Wideroe and some colleagues to general Patton's army at Burggrub on 14 April 1945. It is understood that this particular machine was designed to fire a particle beam at Allied bombers.

Another machine at the heart of Forschungsstelle-D in Bisingen was captured by ALSOS and dismantled by US 1269th Engineers Battalion Company B from 22-28 April 1945.

Forschungstelle-C was the Nazi project to develop an Atomic weapon headed by Prof Kurt Diebner. The purpose of Forschungstelle A and B are unclear.

After this ALSOS rushed to Melk in Austria about 7 May 1945 where they recovered the fourth particle accelerator from an underground complex inside a hill behind the village of Roggendorf.

An Argentine Intelligence report declassified in 1993 suggests the original Nazi Bell was flown to Argentina from Norway on 2 May 1945. This device was then re-established at lake Nahuel Huapei in 1947 to create a nuclear project for Argentina's President Juan Peron. It was closed down in 1952 under mounting international pressure to prevent a Nazi revival.

The Nazi particle accelerator was also associated with German efforts to direct particle beams at Allied bombers to interfere with their engines.

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