What if Heisenberg got his Sums right?

Yes,Yes I know Germany getting an Atomic weapon in time to effect WW2 is jumping perilously close to ASB territory.

But that doesn't preclude them from attempting it now does it?

So what if Heisenberg says its feasible and dear old Adolf orders a full scale no resources barred effort.

So....
1. How long will it shorten the war (in the Allies favour) ?
2. What other butterflies would ensue ?
 
I wonder if heisenberg wanted them to be right.
I recall a story about when after VE day the german scientists were interred (and of course being monitored what they were talking about) and when they were told about the a-bombs on japan. the story goes that they were able just from the fact that is worked to piece together the entire working principle.

this is a interesting read on them: http://www.aip.org/history/heisenberg/p11a.htm

more extensive version of the farm hall transcripts (of those recordings)
http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=2320

the german scientist say in it that the scale would have been too big for germany, but also that not many of them actually wanted to succeed.
 

Deleted member 1487

I wonder if heisenberg wanted them to be right.
I recall a story about when after VE day the german scientists were interred (and of course being monitored what they were talking about) and when they were told about the a-bombs on japan. the story goes that they were able just from the fact that is worked to piece together the entire working principle.

this is a interesting read on them: http://www.aip.org/history/heisenberg/p11a.htm

more extensive version of the farm hall transcripts (of those recordings)
http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=2320

the german scientist say in it that the scale would have been too big for germany, but also that not many of them actually wanted to succeed.

Much of that was post war rationalization. Heisenberg screwed up his sums and didn't realize it. Moe Berg was ready to kill him when they had a chat in Switzerland about Heisenberg defecting, but realized that Heisenberg was way off and unable to develop a bomb:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moe_Berg#Spying_for_the_U.S._Government
From May 1944 to mid-December, Berg hopped around Europe interviewing physicists and trying to convince several to leave Europe and work in America. At the beginning of December, news about Heisenberg giving a lecture in Zurich, Switzerland reached the OSS, and Berg was assigned the task of attending the lecture and determining "if anything Heisenberg said convinced him the Germans were close to a bomb." If Berg came to the conclusion that the Germans were close, he had orders to shoot Heisenberg; Berg determined that the Germans were not close.

Interestingly enough the V-rocket project cost the same if not more than the Manhattan project in US dollars. So technically the Germans could have afforded a Mahattan project if they avoided the V-weapons, which honestly would have been a net gain.
 
I recall a story about when after VE day the german scientists were interred (and of course being monitored what they were talking about) and when they were told about the a-bombs on japan. the story goes that they were able just from the fact that is worked to piece together the entire working principle.

Actually the story goes that Heisenberg dismissed the radio report as Allied propaganda because making an atomic bomb was impossible as far as he believed.
 
The whole Principle of a German Bomb is Uncertain...

...Except for a contamination bomb.

Germany was at least two years behind the Allies in construction of a small sub-critical fission reactor, even though the 'isotope gate' would have allowed enrichment of uranium to give them either (a) a reactor to make plutonium, or (b) a U-235 bomb.

If Germany had managed to plant enough spies to do a Klaus Fuchs and get Allied data from the Manhattan Project or Tube Alloys, then perhaps Heisenberg would have reappraised his work.
 
...Except for a contamination bomb.

Germany was at least two years behind the Allies in construction of a small sub-critical fission reactor, even though the 'isotope gate' would have allowed enrichment of uranium to give them either (a) a reactor to make plutonium, or (b) a U-235 bomb.

If Germany had managed to plant enough spies to do a Klaus Fuchs and get Allied data from the Manhattan Project or Tube Alloys, then perhaps Heisenberg would have reappraised his work.

Or if Niels Bohr had pointed him in the right direction in 1941.
 
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