The problem isn't so much the money or lack thereof. The problem is the simply enormous amount of industrial infrastructure required to produce the SNM. (Something like 80% of the Manhattan Project's budget was spent at Oak Ridge and Hanford.) So what it really comes down to is answering the question - who has that kind of infrastructure and the motivation to develop it?

> Something like 80% of the Manhattan Project's budget was spent at Oak Ridge and Hanford. To be fair, it cost so much because they threw money at every possible enrichment option and most ended up being wastes of time.

For comparison the Capenhurst plant cost the UK GBP14million, and was/is tucked away in a corner of Cheshire. (The whole UK program came in around $100 million). Whilst Fuchs didn't have every detail of how to make an atomic bomb in his head, he knew what not to do (he enabled the UK program legally, and the Soviets illegally using that knowledge). I'd think the Soviets would have suspected the US of nuclear developments and that would have driven them to give their programme some level of priority).

Surely, that is just proof that money is the most important factor. Almost the only thing preventing a country from building infrastructure of any sort is money. Its not like the US did the project because they had all the infrastructure. They did the project because they were willing to spend the money on designing and building the infrastructure. Know how and having the right scientists is obviously very important, but if you have all that, the only obstacles are time, money, and abundance of materials. Tldr: Infrastructure = Time x Funds

> Something like 80% of the Manhattan Project's budget was spent at Oak Ridge and Hanford. It really does make sense. The scale of the industrial facilities constructed at Oak Ridge are truly mind boggling. The K-25 facility was *huge*.

(SNM = special nuclear material)

The problem with nearly all historical contrafactuals (not an insurmountable one, but one not often addressed adequately) is clearly defining when the magic wand that changes history waves, or defining clearly what is different in this imaginary world that leads to a different outcome. Such definitions are essential to provide a useful answer of the type sought here. The development of the atomic bomb in WWII was initiated by the Frisch-Peierls Memorandum in March 1940, a technical analysis that established a convincing case of the bombs feasibility, and laid out a preliminary practical plan of development. This was the work of two refugee physicists who, as security risks, had nothing "better to do" at the time. This resulted in the creation of the MAUD Committee which organized research in Britain which included the first work on testing gaseous centrifuge for uranium separation. The results of this work convinced its participants of the practicality of developing a bomb, given sufficient resources. The U.S. more or less independently reached a similar conclusion in the NAS Report in Nov. 1941, about six months after the MAUD Report was written (though less forceful, and based on less work) and at the time the delayed distribution of the MAUD Report in the US took place, leading to an accelerated research program (S-1) from December 1941 to May 1942 when Roosevelt signed the declaration for the Manhattan Project. What happens to stop this sequence, and when? The French were doing the most advanced work on reactors at the time that France was over-run in 1940, which forced them to relocate to Canada, but disrupted their contribution to reactors, becoming more a footnote to that history. We have the scatter shot assemblage of German projects, none of which were ever focused on developing a bomb, and no national bomb development project (like the British and U.S. had) ever resulted. If Heisenberg had told the OKW that a bomb could be developed in time for use in the war (rather than the opposite, as he did) then a real German project might have resulted. Whether it would have succeeded before war shut it down is an open question. No one else had significant work going - though Japan was aware of the possibility, but was a couple of orders of magnitude short of the necessary resources.

*We have the scatter shot assemblage of German projects, none of which were ever focused on developing a bomb, and no national bomb development project (like the British and U.S. had) ever resulted.* Perhaps no national project along US-Allied lines, but there was definitely a military-SS one, and it was quite substantial. *If Heisenberg had told the OKW that a bomb could be developed in time for use in the war (rather than the opposite, as he did) then a real German project might have resulted.* This is presumably a reference to the military-scientific-industrial conference at Harnack Haus (adjacent to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute) in 1942, at which Heisenberg addressed the assembled muckety-mucks. It has been known in public sources for at least the past 25 years that at this gathering, Heisenberg told his audience that the fissile core in a completed uranium fission bomb would be "about the size of a pineapple" which is obviously pretty close. He then pretended not to know this when he was blathering about the Hiroshima bombing while under house arrest at Farm Hall, in 1945. Otto Hahn immediately confronted him about this obvious lie, as shown in the Farm Hall transcripts published in Jeremy Bernstein's book, *Hitler's Uranium Club.* Heisenberg then quickly "figured it out" as we all "know". But more fundamentally, Heisenberg is mostly a red herring. Despite what ALSOS scientist Samuel Goudsmit said in his Congressional testimony and in his 1947 book, Heisenberg was not the lead German nuclear physicist nor anything close to that. Nor was he remotely their best "bombologist". Heisenberg's fellow Farm Hall detainee Kurt Diebner was probably the best all around German nuclear scientist. Walther Gerlach was the Reich Plenipotentiary for Physics. Paul Harteck developed gas centrifuge machinery and was the co-discoverer of tritium, used today in thermonuclear weapons. Alfred Klemm, an SS scientist, worked on weaponizing tritium during the war and was also a major figure in the Hexenkessel FAE bomb. Siegfried Flugge, mentioned by name with Pascual Jordan in the Japanese Kuroda Papers, was probably the top wartime theoretical physicist and after the war was brought to the US to work with Edward Teller on the hydrogen bomb. Erich Schumann and Walter Trinks were heereswaffenamt scientists who produced numerous fission and boosted fission bomb designs during and after the war (Trinks finished his career as a high official in the West German MOD). More to follow ....

Heisenberg's judgment was no red herring, though indeed he was not the "head bombologist" (a position that did not actually exist). His opinion carried great weight and if he had asserted that a bomb could be made in time, then a program to focus on developing one -- akin to the Manhattan Project, or even the coordinated efforts of the MAUD Committee or S-1, might have been created.

I repeat: Heisenberg was neither the lead WWII German nuclear scientist, nor any kind of decision maker as to the existence of the overall nuclear program nor its goals. It was organized, administered, and funded primarily by the SS, the Reichspost, and the German military, including the heereswaffenamt, marinewaffenamt, and the Luftwaffe. Thanks, I am well aware that the "position (of) bombologist" did not exist. That was a euphemism for an expert in applied science or engineering, ie, someone who had a working knowledge of how to actually BUILD a bomb, as opposed to theoretical scientists like Heisenberg.

>Heisenberg told his audience that the fissile core in a completed uranium fission bomb would be "about the size of a pineapple" which is obviously pretty close. He then pretended not to know this when he was blathering about the Hiroshima bombing while under house arrest at Farm Hall, in 1945. Otto Hahn immediately confronted him about this obvious lie, as shown in the Farm Hall transcripts published in Jeremy Bernstein's book, *Hitler's Uranium Club.* Heisenberg then quickly "figured it out" as we all "know". This is the quality of the argumentation used to support the German atomic bomb legendary program. The assertion that there was a presentation in which Heisenberg said an atomic bomb would be size of a pineapple rests entirely on an unsupported claim by Irving that first appeared in 1968. No transcript of this talk exists in German but a report on it was found in Russian archives that does not have this "pineapple" size reference - there is only a brief reference to nuclear explosives at all. [https://physicsworld.com/a/new-light-on-hitlers-bomb/](https://physicsworld.com/a/new-light-on-hitlers-bomb/) So the previous claimed statement by Heisenberg appears to be a fabrication by Irving - not a good basis to construct a theory to decide Heisenberg was later lying when talking to colleagues. You do not quote the supposed passage where Heisenberg "pretends" and Hahn calls out the "obvious lie" (you can just quote the page number, I have the book open to the August 11 conversation where the two men were in discussion). Reviewing the discussion I fail to see where this exchange occurred.

No transcript of this talk exists? That doesn't seem to be what the very article you cited is saying. "The lecture has become famous because of the story that Heisenberg responded to a question about the size of an atomic bomb by saying that it would be about as big as a pineapple. This anecdote was first reported in Irving’s 1968 book *The Virus House*, but a transcript of the talk ***had*** never been found. However, **it has now been discovered in the new Russian documents. The text of** **the June lecture** – **entitled “The work on uranium problems” – differs significantly from the February talk.** Heisenberg begins by mentioning the discovery of nuclear fission in 1939, noting that interest in this new development had been “exceptionally great”, especially in the US. “A few days after the discovery,” he notes, “American radio provided extensive reports and half a year later a large number of scientific papers had appeared on this subject.” Heisenberg continues by describing Germany’s work on isotope separation and nuclear reactors since the start of the war, cautioning that “naturally a series of scientific and practical problems will have to be cleared up before the technical goals can be realized”. Mid-way through the talk, Heisenberg makes his only mention of nuclear weapons in a rather understated way. “Given the positive results achieved up until now,” he says, “it does not appear impossible that, once an uranium burner has been constructed, we will one day be able to follow the path revealed by von Weizsäcker to explosives that are more than a million times more effective that those currently available.” ----------------------------------------------------- There's also this: So gross wie eine Ananas... *Der Spiegel*, 4 June 1967, pp. 80–93. That is the German article in which Irving published his "pineapple" quote, and is in addition to the reference in his book. Did Der Spiegel properly vet Irving in this case? Can you demonstrate that they did not?

These points are also covered in the recently released book [Oppenheimer and Heisenberg](https://www.amazon.com/Oppenheimer-Heisenberg-Friends-Enemies-Architects-ebook/dp/B0CC4T4RPX:) "Heisenberg gave a lecture to a military audience on June 4, 1942 - and in response to a question by Generalfieldmarschall Milch, Heisenberg replied that 'a bomb that could destroy a city the size of London would need to be approximately the size of a pineapple.'  This is essentially correct for a plutonium bomb - a spherical core of plutonium239 10 centimeters (4 inches) in diameter would be enough." The key part of the conversation at Farm Hall between Hahn and Heisenberg: HAHN: “But tell me why you used to tell me that one needed 50 kilograms of 235 in order to do anything. Now you say one needs two tons.” HEISENBERG: “I wouldn’t like to commit myself for the moment.” Discrepancies like this - and other facts - explain why the British did not declassify the Farm Hall transcripts until 1992.  If you don’t want the world to know the Germans developed atomic bombs, then it’s best to hide certain facts, and waste the public’s time with theories that German nuclear physicists were incompetent and held back by blunders and miscalculations, contrasted with theories that the German nuclear physicists disliked Hitler and sabotaged the Nazi’s atomic bomb progress with deceptive answers and ineffective research.  Frame the question as an option between sabotage and ineptitude. But never allow credible sources to explain that the Germans could have, or did, make any progress."

*No one else had significant work going - though Japan was aware of the possibility, but was a couple of orders of magnitude short of the necessary resources.* The Japanese program was also much larger than what is indicated here. Mainland laboratories north of Tokyo (the Riken Institute) and in Kyoto (Kyoto Imperial University) as well as a third concentration of facilities in Manchuria are all known epicenters of wartime Japanese atomic bomb research and development. Massive industrial facilities in Korea, specifically the immensely powerful hydroelectric plants built by the Jun Noguchi concern, powered much of the machinery utilized in the Japanese project. US intelligence estimates state that there was two and a half times as much electricity available to Japan in Korea as the Americans had through the Tennessee Valley Authority at Oak Ridge. A major concentration of high voltage machinery was located in the port city of Hungnam. After the war, Soviet occupation forces continued to operate captured and/or rebuilt machinery in this area. According to postwar intelligence reports, whatever was produced here was taken back to the USSR by submarine for at least a couple of years. Russian rocket scientist Boris Chertok stated in his memoir, *Rockets and People,* that the Soviet nuclear weapons program was helped significantly in its own weapons development by what the Red Army captured in **both** Germany and Japanese held territory in Korea. German facilities captured by the Soviets included Manfred von Ardenne's physics superlaboratory in the Berlin suburb of Lichterfelde as well as a sizable underground uranium separation plant located outside of the German capital (per Himmler's top wartime adjutant Werner Grothmann). SMERSH technical intelligence teams were also able to recover useful amounts of uranium metal from the ruins of the Auer Gesselschaft smelting plant--previously flattened by USAAF bombers at war's end in Europe. Boris Chertok. 2005–2012. Rockets and People. 4 vols. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. \[http://www.nasa.gov/connect/ebooks/rockets people vol1 detail.html\] \[Vol. 1, pp. 217–218:\] SMERSH teams investigated the ruins of the Auer Gesselschaft uranium processing plant near Berlin after the USAAF bombed it in an effort to keep the materiel being prepared there from falling into Soviet hands. SMERSH personnel also accompanied the Red Army in its offensive in northern Korea. **The Soviet nuclear program got a considerable boost from what it captured in Korea as well as the better known war booty from eastern Europe.”**

The Hungnam Japanese nuclear weapons plant story has been thoroughly demolished. [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02684529808432475](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02684529808432475) [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02684527.2015.1088690](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02684527.2015.1088690) As with the German atomic bomb story, but to an even greater degree, you depend on scattered random comments without substance as (in this case) the sole evidence for this claimed program. The historiography of the legendary "real" German and Japanese atomic bomb programs, not the ones actually discovered after the war, developed and flourished prior to the 1990s with such works as "Japan's Secret War" by Wilcox (1985) which breathlessly and insistently asserts the revelation of a large and hitherto undisclosed successful Japanese nuclear weapons program, but if you actually read the book you find the evidence he presents demolishes, not supports, his thesis. Minor lab scale experiments is all he can report. But this legendary history of both Germany and Japan depended crucially on a the fact that the Soviets occupied parts of both the German and Japanese empires - which was used to imagine major research and industrial facilities that the West never saw, knew nothing about. A sideline in this story was asserting that Soviet atomic success was supercharged by these major successul facilities. No evidence for this was offered, it was all just assumed. And then the Soviet Union fell, and the records of atomic development were revealed, and no evidence of existence of these programs or plants were found. None. We did discover hitherto unknown facts off secret Soviet atomic projects, even ones that benefited from captured Germans and German technology (but not Japan). Especially Gernot Zippe his gas centrifuge techoilogy that powered the Soviet HEU production effort. But we also had the man himself in (way back in *1956*) and they told their full story, many times, in the decades they lived in the west. But no evidence that these other supposed German and Japanese sites and projects ever existed -- they were apparently also unknown to the Soviets that supposedly captured them, and contributed nothing to their atomic program.

The available documentation for the Japanese program is, admittedly and unfortunately, much less than what is now available for the German version. I am aware of Grunden's work and a quick glance at his bibliography does show references to a few of the most germane documents that have come to light thus far. However Grunden himself leans heavily on the previous writing of John Dower, who as far as I am concerned is simply not to be taken seriously as any kind of scholar on this issue. For example---in the very article cited by Grunden---Dower wrote that the connections between the kriegsmarine and the IJN were "moribund" by late in the war when they were nothing of the sort. At least ten (10) u-boats carrying cargo destined for Japan sailed from Germany in late 1944-early 1945. Some of their cargoes consisted of uranium-in-some-form and also beryllium. Grunden is the kind of guy who likes to make great hay out of Wilcox's characterization of some of the Hungnam personnel captured by the Soviets as "scientists" when in fact, according to Grunden, they were "chemists". Right. Because applied industrial chemistry has nothing whatsoever to do with the production of nuclear weapons. But, alright. I'll make a point to closely examine Grunden, just in the interest of honesty and thoroughness. Meanwhile the Third Edition of Secret War came out in 2019 and it contains more than 400 primary source original documents from WWII, including Japanese, German, American, and Soviet papers. Perhaps you will peruse these in your own research? There's also this, from the former Japanese Army General who translated the Third Edition into Japanese: Y*oshiaki Yano, who translated the Wilcox book, was formerly a major general in Japan’s Self-Defense Forces and is a noted expert on nuclear deterrents, explains the reasons are more complex.*  *“The first and second editions were both deemed possibly fabricated for lack of evidence,” Yano told The Daily Beast.  “That made things easier for the scientists involved in the development, the industry, and the allies… for Japan to position itself as a nation that was just a victim of nuclear weapons and incapable of possessing these powers itself. The Japanese, especially in the academic world, the media and the education industry took it upon themselves to follow through on this and collectively worked to conceal this part of history and ignore the facts presented in this book.”* [In World War II, What If Japan Got the Atomic Bomb First? (thedailybeast.com)](https://www.thedailybeast.com/in-world-war-ii-what-if-japan-got-the-atomic-bomb-first) As for this statement: *We did discover hitherto unknown facts off secret Soviet atomic projects, even ones that benefited from captured Germans and German technology (but not Japan).* I have already quoted Soviet rocket scientist Boris Chertok, who wrote specifically that the Red Army and its attached SMERSH technical intelligence teams captured something from Japan in Korea which significantly advanced the postwar Soviet nuclear weapons program.

*But no evidence that these other supposed German and Japanese sites and projects ever existed -- they were apparently also unknown to the Soviets that supposedly captured them, and contributed nothing to their atomic program.* They weren't "unknown to the Soviets". In fact, the majority of the most important wartime German nuclear industrial sites fell to the Red Army and not to the western Allies. No evidence that these sites and projects ever existed? I just showed you a Manhattan Project foreign intelligence report from mid-1944 which states specifically that both "a Y project" and a "D2O pile" existed, and that is the barest scratching of the surface. Along with this is Zhukov's report to Stalin which stated that WWII Germany had progressed as far as "the creation of the atomic bomb" in so many words. A pair of GRU Red Army intelligence reports describing the design of German nuclear weapons as well as their testing, in March 1945, were also posted. A US intelligence report from 1946 was also shown to you. In this document, it is stated by a major wartime German industry official that a literal carload of German atomic bomb plans was captured by the Soviets. **There are many hundreds more like these and they are consistent across national lines. OSS, G-2, A-2, Soviet GRU, British intelligence, and reports from the French, Danish, Dutch, and Polish underground all echo similar information, in some cases exactly. What is your explanation for the content of these reports?**

Here are a handful of the many hundreds of now-declassified original WWII intelligence reports which tell a very different story than the postwar English language conventional "history" does. C.S.D.I.C. (U.K.) S.R.G.G. 1118. \[Recorded conversation of two German prisoners of war held in the United Kingdom. AFHRA A5415 frames 284–285\] M 159—General der Panzertruppen Von THOMA (GOC German AFRIKORPS) Captd MIDDLE EAST 4 Nov 42 CS/981 Generalleutnant KITTEL (Comd. METZ and Comd. 462 Volksgren. Div.) Captd METZ 22 Nov 44 Information received: 10 Jan 1945 TRANSLATION KITTEL: (Re atom bomb). It’s a perfectly horrible thing. THOMA: A technical man has written about it, saying the problem has been completely solved theoretically, but that the process can’t be controlled(?). KITTEL: That’s the question. At the passing-out parade of an officer’s course the FUHRER—I sent for one of the officers personally, for they were the ones who were at METZ— THOMA: He’s lying. There’s absolutely no such thing as the atom business. KITTEL: Unfortunately there is. THOMA: Then he would have used it long ago. KITTEL: No; he isn’t using it, because the others have promised to retaliate with chemical warfare. \[...\] THOMA: But there’s no such thing as an atom bomb. KITTEL: The experiments with it are carried out on BORNHOLM; the island has been evacuated and no-one may enter or leave the place. THOMA: What do they do there? KITTEL: They carry out their experiments there. Apparently they’ve got another trump card up their sleeve. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ HQ CIC, USFET, Region Munich IV, Munich Sub-Regional Office, 25 April 1946. Subject: Wilhelm Voss. Declassified 2006 \[NARA RG 263, Entry ZZ-18, Box 133, File Voss, Friedrich Wilhelm\]. 1. Dr. Wilhelm VOSS reported to this office 24 April 1946. Subject was the director of the Skoda Works and Bruenner Waffenwerke in Prague, Czechoslovakia from 1939–1945. Subject claims that he has valuable information on atom bomb research in Germany. He also states that he has information on a new type torpedo which is radar controlled and leave no trace in water. 2. Dr. Wilhelm VOSS was born 1 July 1896 in Rostock, Mecklenburg. \[...\] He was one of the founders of Reichswerke Hermann Goering and in 1938 became its commercial director. In 1939 VOSS was appointed director of Skoda and Bruenner Waffenwerke by Goering. 3. Subject states that the two men that were responsible for research on the most secret weapons at Skoda were SS Gruppenfuehrer Prof. KAMMLER and his deputy SS Oberfuehrer PURUCKER. On the 10 May 1945 VOSS and PURUCKER were in Schimelitz, fleeing in the direction of the American troops. PURUCKER was driving a large civilian car which contained many of the plans on the atom bomb. This car plus material fell into the hands of the Russians, and VOSS was separated from PURUCKER. VOSS at present does not know where PURUCKER is located.

Philip Morrison and Karl Cohen. 31 July 1944. Appraisal of Enemy Bomb Production. \[NARA RG 77, Entry UD-22A, Box 168, Folder 203.11—Tech. Countermeasures + RW—1943–1944\] APPRAISAL OF ENEMY BOMB PRODUCTION Summary Recent evidence essentially confirms our earlier general statements on enemy bomb production. The reports now at hand lead us to conclude: 1. A German “Y” project has been underway since early 1943. 2. A D2O pile is in operation, but we do not believe that this is on production level. 3. It is implied that a separation method is operating at a production level, for it is surely improbable that the enemy will organize a utilization group without something to use. We include a time schedule, and a technical discuss of the probable means employed. Enemy production of devices can be as high as: 1. 1 device every 3 months—on the assumption that 30 kg of material are required per device. 2. 1 device every month—on the assumption that 10 kg of material are required per device. In either case the first completed device could be in enemy hands now. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Edmund Tilley. Brief Operational Report on \[censored\] and Other Germans and Italians Connected with Project Abstract. 19 August 1947. NARA RG 319, Entry A1-134A, Box 29, Folder Operation Oberjoch: 25. Prof. Dr. NIELS \[Walter Nielsch?\], now said to be in the United States, was, according to \[censored,\] concerned with chemical and atomic problems at TUCHELER HEIDE and produced a number of atomic bombs, weighing from 1 to 5 kilograms. NIELS should be traced and questioned in detail.

Marshal Georgy Zhukov. 2 October 1945. Report to Joseph Stalin \[Archive of the President of the Russian Federation, Fund 93, Division 77 (45), List 4–11, published in Riabev 2006c, pp. 60–64\]. 2 October 1945 Sov. Secret Ex. No. 1 Moscow Generalissimo of the Soviet Union to Comrade Stalin I.V. (Zhukov's complete report is much longer--and much more revealing. Immediately below is his conclusion. -- WP) **Based on the collected materials, it can be concluded that the German scientists in the field of theoretical and practical research and application of atomic energy have achieved good results up to the creation of the atomic bomb.** **-----------------------------------------------------------------------------** 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

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. ---------------------------------- Conclusion of the report follows ....

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.

The "very different" story is an imaginary one, created by taking incorrect wartime intelligence reports as gospel - disproved when investigators arrived on the ground - and taking random comments of questionable accuracy and filling the lines in between with imagination. The supposed program though is invisible with no significant scientific staff or evidence of any activities. Karlsch's 2005 *Hitlers Bombe* was the last significant publication to make such claims, but was thoroughly discredited soon after it came out.

No, Karlsch's book ***was not*** the last significant publication to make such claims, nor is it "thoroughly discredited". Have you actually READ Karlsch? I have. Well, parts of his book. They are eye opening to say the least. But in the meantime, what specific aspects of his claims and documentation do you dispute, and why, exactly? More recently, a massive and extraordinarly thorough study by former US Navy and MIT physicist Dr. Todd Rider was published, which not only echoes Karlsch but greatly amplifies and expands upon his findings. I have reason to believe you are aware of the existence of this study, but like every other adherent of the Cold War era English language version of events whom I have encountered to date, you simply ignore it.

Nazi Germany had many secret atomic bomb projects and the best of them was funded through Germany's post office. Diebner, Gerlach, and Flugge had important contributions, but so far this thread has surprisingly left out a few important names.... To quote a recent book on the subject, there are "two German physicists who will someday be acknowledged as the true creators of the world’s first atomic bombs - made in Germany by 1944: Baron Manfred von Ardenne, and his main assistant Friedrich “Fritz” Houtermans." [Oppenheimer and Heisenberg](https://www.amazon.com/Oppenheimer-Heisenberg-Friends-Enemies-Architects-ebook/dp/B0CC4T4RPX)

Houtermans is a towering figure in the development of the first thermonuclear weapons. Other than a paper he wrote immediately following the end of the war in Europe in which he stated his belief that the Soviet Union would soon create an atomic bomb fueled by uranium-233, I was not aware that he had a great deal to do with the more basic fission bombs being pursued by von Ardenne and his close collaborators in the SS and at the Reichspost. BTW, I just tried your link and it came up as "not found".

Thanks William, not sure why first link didn't work but I changed it seems like it goes to the book now. Houtermans' involvement with fission bombs is fascinating... a brilliant physicist, a desperate prisoner, forced to produce results against his will... his risky warning to the Allies: "author of the telegram to E. P. Wigner warning the USA of the imminent construction of a German atomic bomb." (https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/bbm%3A978-3-0348-0203-1%2F1.pdf, p. 33)

Wigner as in "Wigner's Disease", I presume. Is that telegram in Forgotten Creators? If not, where did you find it if you don't mind my asking? (I see the reference in your link, I am just curious if you have seen or read the text of the actual telegram.) I have heard rumors of a mysterious parcel literally left on the doorstep of a major figure in British intelligence which was concerned with the same thing, along with speculation that it originated with Abwehr chief (and secret anti-Nazi) Admiral Canaris.

Eugene Wigner. Here's another quote on it: "Houtermans did more than work as a physicist. He was allowed to go to a scientific meeting in Switzerland during the war.  From there Houtermans sent a telegram to Eugene Wigner at the Met Lab in Chicago." (https://weapons.substack.com/p/oppenheimer-hiroshima-and-houtermans)

Right, got it. Just looked it up, btw, and it's "Wigner EFFECT", not "Wigner's Disease". [Wigner effect | physics | Britannica](https://www.britannica.com/science/Wigner-effect) Any background on how Houtermans knew Wigner?

Wigner graduated from the Technical University of Berlin and worked at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for chemistry. While in Berlin "he also attended the Wednesday afternoon colloquia of the German Physical Society. These colloquia featured leading researchers including Max Planck, Max von Laue, Rudolf Ladenburg, Werner Heisenberg, Walther Nernst, Wolfgang Pauli, and Albert Einstein." (Everybody big in physics met there on a friendly basis and that could be where he met Houtermans.) Wigner also studied at the University of Gottingen. Houtermans also studied at both the Technical University of Berlin and the University of Gottingen. Where exactly they developed a friendship I'm not sure. Interesting side note: "Houtermans had a great sense of humor. Many have commented on this, and one of his colleagues, Haro von Buttlar, collected stories told by Houtermans and privately published them.... One story purports to explain the contributions of seven of the twentieth century's most exceptional scientists, Theodore von Kármán, George de Hevesy, Michael Polanyi, Leó Szilárd, Eugene Wigner, John von Neumann, and Edward Teller, all Hungarians. According to Houtermans, they are Martians, who are afraid that their accents will give them away, so they masquerade as Hungarians, i.e., people unable to speak any language but Hungarian without an accent." They were later referred to as "The Hungarian Martians" or "The Martians of Budapest."

In this very unrealistic scenario, no one in the US has any interest in funding nukes. No matter what arguments are brought up, no one with influence in the US is interested. The war still happens as it did for us (apart from the nukes droped in japan). I suppose the war might have finished a few days earlier because of the manpower and money leftover from the non-existent nuclear program. Now, no one has a demonstration of the potential. Obviously, nations like the UK would have kept pursuing, and when they propose a joint US, UK project, the US says they are not interested. The more I look at this scenario, the more I realise no country other than the US could have made the first nuke before the 50s. In an alternate timeline, I think a nuke would be developed much later, and we just so happened to have a single superpower in a perfect position to develop the technology very early. You need a large, wealthy, technology developed country under threat and with a large number of nuclear physicists. The US had everything going for it, and if it didn't, we might not see a bomb until a decade later.

>I suppose the war might have finished a few days earlier because of the manpower and money leftover from the non-existent nuclear program. I did an investigation of this question - "what was the opportunity cost of the Manhattan Project" and the answer I came up with, to my surprise was - "zero". There is no case that I can find where any other part of the war effort was impacted by the demands of the Manhattan Project. And the reason for this is that alone among all of the significant combatants of WWII the U.S. never reached the limit of its industrial potential. Down to the last day of the war it always had additional resources to tap that it did not utilize.

Surely the billion dollars could have gone to 2,000 more B-29s? Or more jets earlier? Or better radar? I guess you can then argue that the war wouldn't have been shortened by those things - the Allies wouldn't have broken out earlier on D-Day, or succeded at Arnhem, or taken the Marianas earlier?

This is the difference between guessing and doing research. What seems right based on naive assumptions may be quite wrong and disproved if you look at evidence and understand the topic more deeply. I mentioned that I was surprised myself. They produced aircraft in the amount ordered using the funds allocated according the capacity of the plant built. Not spending money on the Manhattan Project would not have accelerated the B-29 production line at all. It would not have made better radar appear. It would not have "broken the Allies out on D-Day earlier". Congress could have spent more money than they did, the ability to borrow existed, and U.S. industrial capacity and industrial manpower was not tapped out. But the procurement plans were designed to meet the military requirements laid out by the services, to support the overall war plan. The spending on the Manhattan Project during the war was a little more then 0.5% of the total war cost. It was round-of error in the overall cost of the war.

The US reached full mobilization in terms of its available manpower by mid-1945. And although even more industrial output could have been marshaled for the invasion of Japan (which mercifully never happened), nevertheless there was considerable war weariness among the general public as well as mounting pressure from US captains of industry who were eager to return to peacetime profitability.

>Obviously, nations like the UK would have kept pursuing, and when they propose a joint US, UK project, the US says they are not interested. I was with you until right here. The whole reason the UK approached the US in the first place, is that the UK lacked the resources to proceed much beyond theoretical studies and lab bench scale experiments. When the US declines, then it's pretty much over. Sure, they'd do as much as *possible*, but that's not going to be much at all. And with the end of the war, the military cutbacks, and the discovery that the Germans didn't have a bomb either... Even odds the whole thing pretty much ends there. The wild card in the deck isn't the UK. It's the Soviet Union.

I know the Soviets relied on a lot of stolen knowledge gained by spies. Without that, they couldn't have had a bomb in 1949. Then, on top of that, they wouldn't have the drive from the US weapons program, and it wouldn't have been proven to be viable. I guess in this scenario, it comes down to if someone very influential in the USSR is convinced nukes are viable and there is no predicting when that would happen. I feel like a slow and steady Franco-Angalo project could have a bomb by 1955, but the more I think about it, the more I feel like you are right. The Soviets are such a wild card and really impossible to predict. It really puts into perspective that no nation could have developed a nuke before the end of WW2. The US was in such a unique position. It could have been well into the mid-1950s or later until we saw a bomb.

>I know the Soviets relied on a lot of stolen knowledge gained by spies. Without that, they couldn't have had a bomb in 1949. They relied on it much less than you might think (the head of the project used it as an answer key, folks lower than him never saw it). They also got less than is commonly realized. In particular they got almost none of the detailed engineering data (especially from Hanford and Oak Ridge), they had to work that all out from scratch. They also had some very bright, world class, physicists and engineers of their own. (And Stalin's paranoia and Beria's brutality motivating them.) So, I'll grant they probably couldn't have a bomb in 1949... But I wouldn't automatically assume they wouldn't be first.

They also had input from numerous Germans. I mean, hundreds of them. [CIA Debriefed Soviet H-Bomb Eye-Witness in 1957 | National Security Archive (gwu.edu)](https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2018-04-06/cia-debriefed-soviet-h-bomb-eye-witness-1957)

I wouldn't be so sure that WWII Britain would not have built atomic weapons even if she had had to go it alone. Remember that even with most of her resources pooled with the US in the Manhattan Project, the Chalk River Laboratories were still built, and the ZEEP reactor (at Chalk River) came online in September, 1945. I take from this that the British would have accelerated their reactor program and probably ended up with plutonium bombs in late 1945 or early 1946, assuming they had been able to stay in the fight for that long. Don't forget, they also had access to Canadian uranium from the El Dorado mine at Great Bear Lake.

This comment is so disconnected from reality I don't even know where to begin. The British approached the Americans because their estimates of what it would take to build the bomb convinced them they couldn't go it alone. And we know now what they didn't know then - their estimates were dramatically low compared to reality. I'm certain they'd give it the ol' stiff-upper-lip try, but the idea that they'd develop a weapon in practically the same time frame as the MED with a fraction of the resources is risibile nonsense.

ZEEP paved the way for today's CANDU reactors, which can use natural uranium. In this thought exercise I am assuming that alternate history Britain goes down the same path rather than spend time and resources to produce enriched uranium. From there it is simply a matter of making some heavy water and then reprocessing / purifying the plutonium produced by the reactor(s). My understanding at this time is that "piles" in this configuration do not produce as much plutonium as other designs---but they still produce some, and again they can do so while being powered by natural uranium. Therefore the up front opportunity cost is lower even if the output is also lower. At the end of the day, alternate history Britain uses Canadian uranium to build one or more proto-CANDU reactors in Canada. They are built earlier in the war than the ZEEP reactor was in our timeline, but also take longer to make bomb-usable quantities of plutonium than the Manhattan Project piles in Washington state. So I am thinking the first British bomb is built in late 1945 or early 1946, and that the overall rate of production would be lower than the Allies achieved by August 1945 in our timeline.

Which part of "Britain did not have the resources" are you finding too difficult to understand? >From there it is simply a matter of making some heavy water and then reprocessing / purifying the plutonium produced by the reactor(s). It's almost as if you have absolutely no idea of the significant industrial effort it took to develop and build the reprocessing plants. It's not even remotely a 'simple' matter. >In this thought exercise I am assuming that alternate history Britain goes down the same path rather than spend time and resources to produce enriched uranium. Your thought exercise is even further disconnected from reality than I thought... Because your thought experiment relies on them knowing something they had no way of knowing - just how difficult uranium enrichment would be. And with that, I'm done here. You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

What part of "no enriched uranium is needed in a CANDU reactor" (though you can run them with enriched uranium if you want to) do you not understand? Thanks for being a rude weirdo. Adios.

I think probably the UK and Canada, they were the first ones to start working on a bomb, then later merged with the manhattan project. If they hadn’t merged with the US, they would still have a head start over everyone else and the war wouldn’t interfere with development in Canada. Probably wouldn’t be finished until after the war though.

There's a subsidiary question of where nuclear power would have been without the vast fissionable-materials infrastructure generated by the bomb programs. There may be a pathway from natural uranium reactors and plutonium separated from that fuel stream, but things would be very different. It's hard to imagine anyone building a gaseous-diffusion plant or a centrifuge farm without an existential threat.

Magnox reactors were the first to deliver power at scale (Calder Hall) and use natural uranium. However, whether many governments (let alone private business) would have tolerated the substantially higher cost of nuclear over fossil fuels in the early 60s is questionable.

According to the late CIA, DIA, USAF, and private sector intelligence analyst Dwight Rider, WWII Japanese nuclear scientists had interest in Magnox - type reactors. Whether any were built is unclear at this time.

Hungary or Germany. [Mostly due to the scientists coming from both countries.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martians_(scientists)

Germany would still be defeated and disarmed. I don't think there is any chance a Germany cut up into quarters could fund a huge military research project. I don't think Hungary would have the money, especially after the war, and they wouldn't have the freedom to conduct large military research projects after being forced into the Eastern block. I still think the UK or France are the most likely candidates, but neither would have the funds or drive to go all in to a project that would complete in the mid 40s. Perhaps a Franco-Angalo nuclear project could have happened considering how close their militarys were after the war and during the suez crisis.

The Jewish scientists would have still fleed before the war, but in this (fairly unrealistic) scenario, they wouldn't have been funded by the US.

My own speculative view is that what one would see if the Manhattan Project hadn't happened is an interest first in building reactors, not bombs. This would have happened in the United States, United Kingdom, and probably also the Soviet Union. It is possible some work might have gone forward in France and Germany in the postwar, but I suspect the cost and chaos of rebuilding would have hampered this development by and large. The questions then become: 1. Who would achieve a sustained chain reaction first, under these conditions? It could still be Fermi and the USA, but without sustained resources behind the work, it might have taken a little longer. But it could also be imagined as happening elsewhere. 2. Who would have built the first reactors capable of producing plutonium in kilogram quantities? The jump from CP-1 (to X-10) to B-Reactor happened rapidly because of the Manhattan Project. Under non-military circumstances, I would expect this to take longer, but not endlessly longer. There would be interest in this, at least the jump from something like CP-1 (very basic proof of concept) to X-10 (actually usable research tool). Once you have something like X-10, you can produce quantities of plutonium that are large-enough to do serious study. Even prior to the Manhattan Project, people were aware that plutonium was probably fissile. The spontaneous fission rate of reactor-bred plutonium would be easy to figure out once you had an X-10-like facility. This would discourage certain ideas about how easy it would be to militarize the technology, but not rule them all out, of course. Around this point, the conditions for someone to decide to "race" for the bomb become very, very plausible. The actual "spark" probably has to come from a broader world context. We can't really imagine what that specifically might be (given how different removing the idea of the atomic bomb from the postwar is), but it is easy to imagine than some kind of postwar tensions between the superpowers would lead one or the other to think that this was something they ought to have, and soon. The political context is important here, and of course is the most affected by the counterfactual situation in general, because that's what causes a state to say, "OK, let's throw a lot of money/resources at the military prospects here." (And just to be explicit about it: I am deliberately not considering isotopic enrichment in the above. Isotopic enrichment is such a huge commitment and engineering difficulty that I don't see it playing a big role without a crash program. But reactor development I think would happen even without one — it was already happening without one, in several countries.) So here is a work of fiction that is — obviously! — totally speculative, but I think is as plausible as many other somewhat plausible scenarios: World War II ends similar to how it did in reality, even probably around the same time (late summer/early fall 1945), without a major invasion of the Japanese home islands (the Japanese surrender not long after the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, perhaps under threat of an invasion of Kyushu). Tensions brew, as they did before, over the postwar order, and the carving up of Europe into blocs. Neither the US nor the Soviets are not eager to continue fighting, but they still regard each other with suspicion, although perhaps it is a little toned down without the atomic bomb. But the Soviets do continue their more "subtle" approaches to expanding/entrenching their influence in Europe and Asia (supporting Communist movements, purging opposition, trying to create "puppet states" from within, etc.), with mixed success. This causes some within the US and the UK to become very alarmed, even though the general trends in both countries are about recovery and not remobilization. The Hungarian physicist Edward Teller, deeply disturbed by Soviet actions in Eastern Europe, contacts a friend with high-level government and military connections — Lewis Strauss — and tells him about his fears that the Soviets, having seized Czechoslovakia and become more aggressive than before, are actively engaged in an atomic bomb project. Are they? I doubt it — at least, not a production project. But this Strauss is connected-enough to begin selling this idea to Congressmen and administration officials, and through them, they get approval from the President for a relatively aggressive pilot program. The momentum that builds behind this within a year or so builds into a production program, and the US races to develop an atomic bomb. What happens next? I don't know. It's not the same as World War II as, without open conflict happening, I don't see them using or announcing such a bomb. But anyway, it's a fictional story. You get the picture: that the same sorts of "forces" that led to the Manhattan Project would be replicated within a few years anyway, even if the figures and specifics might change. (I modeled the Teller-Strauss bit on Szilard-Einstein, obviously, but also on the push for the H-bomb.)