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I am sure everyone here has heard of the Maginot Line. I was reading up about it today and was surprised to learn that is cost 3 billion Francs when it was built between 1929 and 1938.

3 billion Francs back then is comparable to 1.5 billion Euros (2007). That is a lot of money, comparable in scale to the project cost of the B-29 bomber or the Manhattan Project (which cost 2 billion USD back then).

Aside from the political will is it possible that France would have managed to develop nuclear weapons just before the outbreak of WW2?

The biggest issue I see is that fission had not been discovered till 1938 itself by Hahn and Strassmann, after the construction of the wall was over, and was not explained theoretically till 1939 by Meitner and Frisch.

But what if, fission had been discovered a decade earlier. Assuming the political will, would France have had the technical capability to develop a nuclear weapon?

Also anyone know any French bomber that could have deployed a crude nuclear bomb, something like a gun-type bomb? What other alternative delivery system could've been used?
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