In January 1942 the military became impatient with a lack of a single military application being developed appropriated, and was recategorized. Still, it was understood that the potential for energy was vast enough that funding continued under the kriegswichtig (vital for the war effort) designation.
On June 9, 1942, Adolf Hitler issued a decree for the reorganization of the RFR as a separate legal entity under the Ministry of Armament and Munitions under Reich marshal Hermann Goering. It was hoped that Goering would manage the effort as aggressively and efficiently as he had the Air Force. This was also a key moment in the history of German science -- there was recognition that it had been a mistake to exclude Jewish scientists from the product, and Abraham Esau was back as Goering's assistant, later replaced by Walther Gerlach.
The administrative control over the project is one of the areas that scholars point to as being a "crux point." Goering was certainly quite an efficient administrator and had he had control over the project earlier he might have seen the need to focus his scientists, or at least bring the teams together to work. It is also likely that Goering would have discussed the nuclear issue with Reichsmarshal Albert Speer, who as a brilliant architect and innovator, would surely have seen the greater applications for nuclear energy.
Nazi Aerospace Engineering -- Could the Bomb have been dropped? An interesting but often ignored side note regarding using a nuclear bomb in wartime was the delivery mechanism. We do know Hitler had an advanced rocketry program, and some research indicates that there may have been speculation on equipping them with "dirty" bombs. However, it was the realization that something new and advanced was needed aeronautically to reshape the war. The result, a stealth fighter the HO-229, which used wood and carbon, to increase radar absorption, and jet engines integrated into the fuselage. The plane would have been over London 8-10 minutes prior to being detected, and was probably 24-36 months ahead of the Allies in technological development. Understanding that the Battle of Britain was lost because of British Radar, Goering commissioned the 2-29 which, under reconstruction, looks amazingly like the stealth bomber of today. Most analysts do believe this could have changed the course of the war, but for our purposes the importance is in the captured notes that this plane was also tasked to the delivery of "a lethal new explosive" device over major European cities.
The Nazi "Brain Drain" - Germany lost many great scientific minds to their political ideology. The stifling atmosphere of Nazi Germany wiped out intellectual undertones in many cases with its sheer brutality and intolerance for the differing people and races within Europe. As rising inflation hit, academic institutions were some of the first to feel the impending suffering with severe funding cuts.
In fact, some of the scientists were German who first split the atom in the early 1930s. However, these successful German scientists actually conducted their work under Allied flags.
This intellectual and highly motivated population then came to the United States and elsewhere. While in the safety of Allied hands, these great German minds insisted powers like the United States and Great Britain to pursue the quest to split uranium atoms in order to harness such mass destruction.
According to research, "Refugee scientists fleeing Hitler's Germany […] soon brought the revolution in physics to America."
Eventually, all German academic institutions suffered great losses in the midst of an over-powering political ideology. Research states that "German universities shriveled as centers of learning as many of their illustrious scientists emigrated to Great Britain, the United States, Switzerland, and elsewhere."
This major problem within the set-up of the Nazi regime; "Later, the Nazis tried to implement their lunatic program of 'Aryan physics,' deliberately hobbling their scientific research by purging physics of the influence of Jewish Scientists."
Eventually, the nuclear program all but fell apart.
One of the major reasons this occurred was that most Nazi resources available were funneled too much into researching rockets and missiles. According to research, "Whereas the United States invested $23 billion of today's dollars, in this project, German funding for nuclear research was sporadic and the Germans made the mistake of having at least two competing teams of ill-equip scientists working at the same time."
Funding for the initial project led by Werner Heisenberg was eventual cut in 1942, as it was believed to be relatively unnecessary by the grander scheme of the Nazi war strategy.
Yet, this funding was...
" The difference in the Manhattan Project and other companies that were very similar in function was due to the need to become quickly successful and investments of "hundreds of millions of dollars in unproven and hitherto unknown processes and did so entirely in secret. Speed and secrecy were the watchwords of the Manhattan Project." Gosling states that the "one overwhelming advantage" of the project's inherent characteristics because it became
There are opinions which consider in fact the invasion of Poland as an excuse for the start of the war. In this sense, the events in 1939 are known to have been an untrue story. More precisely, "Hitler desired war and any further attempts to negotiate peace were doomed to failure. The Nazis then staged a fake attack on a German radio outpost along the German-Polish border and used that
Atomic Bomb and Nuclear Power - Blessing or Curse DANNENBERG, Germany, Nov 14 (Reuters) - A force of 15,000 police sealed roads in part of northern Germany on Wednesday in a crackdown against protesters trying to disrupt the final leg of a shipment of nuclear waste. The security operation, one of Germany's biggest in peacetime and likely to cost at least 50 million marks ($22.52 million), entered its third day with
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's executive order to contain Japanese-Americans in internment camps could have created mistrust in the Japanese and their descendants in the U.S. Such racial antagonism could have made many Americans feel justified to drop the atomic bomb on Japan. Earlier Presidential Statement and Other Motivations The decision to bomb Japan's cities may not be deduced from documents during President Truman's presidency or blamed entirely on President Truman. A
World War II Japan's wars of aggression and conquest began long before the fascist takeover of the 1930s and the alliance with Nazi Germany in 1940, and the idea that the Japanese were a superior race also had a long pedigree -- as indeed did the Nordic-Aryan racism of the Nazis. Both used the tactics of blitzkrieg and surprise to end up in control of most of Europe and Asia by
Nevertheless, the launching of the first atomic bomb on the part of the U.S. was highly criticized, especially because they had found a way to end the war which entailed sacrificing the lives of tens of thousands of innocent civilians. Their initiative to build the first atomic bomb was considered by many as the supreme proof of vanity, American exceptionalism at its best in the sense that it embodied
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