Conversations among German Nuclear Physicists at Farm Hall (1945) [pdf]
> WEIZSĂ„CKER: I think it's dreadful of the Americans to have done it. I think it is madness on their part.
> HEISENBERG: One can't say that. One could equally well say "That's the quickest way of ending the war.”
And there’s seven decades’ worth of debate summed up in an instant on the day of the first bombing.
Something to keep in mind next time I feel tempted to argue about it.
Such an amazing read. What positively surprised me, but perhaps shouldn't have, is that they seem almost relieved they didn't get there first. It's reassuring in a way I have trouble verbalising.
Highlight for me:
>WEIZSĂ„CKER: I don't think we ought to make excuses now because we did not succeed, but we must admit that we didn't want to succeed. If we had put the same energy into it as the Americans and had wanted it as they did, it is quite certain that we would not have succeeded as they would have smashed up the factories.
>WEIZSĂ„CKER: One can say it might have been a much greater tragedy for the world if Germany had had the uranium bomb. Just imagine, if we had destroyed LONDON with uranium bombs it would not have ended the war, and when the war did end, it is still doubtful whether it would have been a good thing.
>HEISENBERG: I am still convinced that our objective was really the right one and that the fact that we concentrated on uranium may give us the chance of collaboration. I believe this uranium business will give the Anglo–Saxons such tremendous power that EUROPE will become a bloc under Anglo–Saxon domination. If that is the case it will be a very good thing. I wonder whether STALIN will be able to stand up to the others as he has done in the past.
Another timeline that most can be glad we didn't go down. America would be even more dominant over the western world. Russia even more on edge.
As a German I would love to have read it in German or hear the audio files. Nevertheless an interesting piece of history.
DĂĽrrenmatt's famous play The Physicists has a very similar setting, I wonder if he was inspired by this at all.
Note how quickly they feel the need to defend themselves, why they couldn't get the bomb done in time. Considering their situation (prisoners of war in the UK), I find that instinct patently absurd.
Over half of the transcript is them coming up with excuses why the Americans succeeded where they did not. Let it be a lesson about the human condition that the excuses all but eclipse the guilt over having attempted to build such a bomb themselves. Both the guild and envy are powerful emotions. Envy wins.
How did we end up purifying the amount of U235 needed?
I saw on another page "General Leslie Groves consulted with lead scientists of the project and agreed to investigate simultaneously four separate methods of separating and purifying the uranium-235: gaseous diffusion, centrifuge, electromagnetic separation and liquid thermal diffusion."
Seems like a ton of work.
Fascinating stuff, really interesting characters. I for one never knew the Germans were pursuing fission for the production of "engines". Do yourselves a favor and read the entire transcript.
The comments about how they see history being written, specifically about the German contributions, comes across as particularly naive but evident of men who were clearly distraught and disoriented.
And their predictions about Stalin and Russia were ominous but nearly correct several times over.
Previously on HN.[1]
Operation Epsilon is a pretty good (if probably overly literal) play about Farm Hall. Worth going to see if you get a chance.
Overall a neat piece of history to read, to sit in that disbelief as fragments of the world start being lifted back up from the ground where they've shattered. Neat quotes:
Heisenberg: I believe this uranium business will give the Anglo–Saxons such tremendous power that EUROPE will become a bloc under Anglo–Saxon domination. If that is the case it will be a very good thing.
Heisenberg: [T]he days of small countries are over.
Weizsäcker: Our strength is now the fact that we are 'un–Nazi'.
Heisenberg: I believe that we are now far more bound up with the Anglo–Saxons than we were before as we have no possibility of switching over to the Russians even if we wanted to. On the other hand we can do it with a good conscience because we can see that in the immediate future Germany will be under Anglo–Saxon influence.
Weizsäcker: If I ask myself for which side I would prefer to work of course I would say for neither of them.
Weizsäcker: History will record that the Americans and the English made a bomb, and that at the same time the Germans, under the HITLER regime, produced a workable engine. In other words, the peaceful development of the uranium engine was made in Germany under the Hitler regime, whereas the Americans and the English developed this ghastly weapon of war.
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What an interesting read. Also, is it just me or are there a surprising number of german related topics on the frontpage right now?
"We only had one man working on it and they may have had ten thousand"
This is why I always chuckle at the ww2 "documentaries" positing the possibility of german or japanese bomb. Nevermind that both parties were preoccupied fighting far stronger and larger opponents ( US, British Empire, Soviet Union, China ), they lacked the resources, economic power and infrastructure to construct one before the US. We had a much larger economy and resource potential than germany and japan. Just like we do today. It was a race neither had a chance of winning.
Another interesting read is the military's view on hiroshima and nagasaki. Most military leaders saw it as serving no military purpose. So ultimately, hiroshima and nagasaki were the largest human experimentation in ww2. It was a predominately a radiation test on civilian populations and cities. Something we'd continue doing on unsuspecting pacific islanders decades after ww2.
Plugged it in a previous thread but will plug it as relevant again, since I see debate in this thread about Japanese surrender and wheather the Germans were really developing the bomb.
Have a read of Doomsday Machine by Daniel Ellsberg, he was involved and saw a lot of the nuclear planning during the Cold War. It’s pretty clear from his retelling that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were not essential to end the war. Japan was days away from surrender, and we killed more people in a firebomb raid than with the A-Bomb anyway, so it’s not like they weren’t already suffering citywide destructions. In fact Hiroshima and Nagasaki were two cities kept off of the firebombing list simply to still have test targets for the A-Bomb.
On the German front Hitler apparently discontinued the nazi program when he found out it was going to take too long for his timeline to win the war.
In Cold War terms there’s almost too much disturbing in the book to list. But one thing it brought home to me was that we should have a “no first use” policy like other countries, but we don’t because we like to threaten their use. And we have absolutely no need for land based ICBMs anymore given we have SLBMs more than capable of destroying the world, the ICBMs are a strategic liability (targets) and yet instead of getting rid of them we are planning to spend over $100b to replace them.