Were the Germans aware of the Manhattan Project? - #OOTF #shorts

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[marknieuweboer]

There is an anecdote that Heisenberg read the calculations of American physicists and remarked that the Germans were on the wrong track.

[KornPop]

"Guten tag my fellow Americans."

[ottovonbearsmark]

It’s wild every time I hear it, just how awful German intelligence and counterintelligence was in both World Wars.

[petersmythe]

Axis: *researched rocket*
Allies: *researched nuke*
Comintern: *researched spies*

[Soundwave]

I remember hearing an account by Albert Speer, saying the Reich never put much faith in such a weapon to begin with, both for the "Jewish science" aspect and for the sheer amount of resources it would require.

[magicoddeffect]

On top of the "rumors" of the Manhattan Project, scientists even at the time probably suspected something huge was going on because many of the big names in nuclear and general physics suddenly stopped publishing papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals for years.

[florinivan]

The germans probably suspected the allies were at least doing research on the stuff. That much was logical to assume. But they also suspected that allied efforts probably went nowhere due to simple costs. Their own project was stillborn. And even if they knew there was very little they could actually do. North America was outside the range of anything but experimental aircraft.

[ad_astra]

I know that today we know that the heavy water wasn’t as crucial as it seemed. But you have to respect the Norwegians and British troops who worked to blow it up, and who died in accidents and failings along the way

[christopherconard]

Was it a race? Yes, but between a '92 Hyundai and an F1 racer.

[keithalaird]

The U.S. supposedly sent an agent to a lecture Heisenberg gave in a neutral country. The agent was instructed to shoot Heisenberg on the spot if it appeared the Germans had a viable atomic program. The agent quickly realized Heisenberg was clearly going to in the wrong direction, so he decided to let him go, as it wasn’t worth creating an incident in a neutral country if Heisenberg was all wet… I believe it has something to do with Heisenberg and the German scientists grossly overestimating the critical mass required.

[warrmalaski]

At the end of the war the US. Allowed captured german scientists to watch a recorded denotation of a tall boy bomb. They were absolutely astonished. As the Germans believed the bomb would need to be the size of a large room.

[ankoku]

imagine coordinating a spy network to sabotage your enemy's weapon development only to find you don't need to because they won't stop sabotaging themselves

[ImNotCreativeEnoughToMakeUser]

Fun fact: The Soviets, however, were STARKLY aware of the project, as they had spies who were members of research

[MJ-wevu]

The Germans probably didn't think all those refugee physicists came over here to open hot dog stands.

[jmrm]

In the early 2000's, I took a tour of the site of uranium enrichment plant (K-25) at Oak Ridge as it was being demolished. The tour was given annually, and consisted of a bus circling the site so you could see first hand the immense size of what had been the largest building in the world. The guide was a volunteer who had formerly worked at the plant.

He said during the war, there were two German spies who had seen the plant. The spies had been instructed to look for secret aluminum manufacturing plants, and that they should try to find them by following power supply lines since producing aluminum requires a great deal of electricity.

Following power lines eventually led them to the enormous building of the uranium enrichment plant. They had no idea what they had seen.

At one point, Oak Ridge consumed 1/7th of all electricity generated in the US. Most of that was by K-25.

Ironically for its secret purpose of enriching uranium, K-25 was basically a giant U shape.

[festus]

Small Typo: The reactor was in Haigerloch, not Heigerloch

[ejt]

It would have been EXTREMELY risky to conclude that the Germans were definitely not working on the bomb. We probably did also know about the Japanese biological and chemical weapons program in Manchuria. These might have been delivered by their aircraft carrier submarines.

[billharm]

Nothing like have a serious competitor--real or imaginary--to spur you on.

[ChrisJensen-serj]

Even if it was widely known that the Germans were far behind, to the Manhattan Project "workers" and scientific staff, this would never have been "officially admitted".

It would have been an unwelcome "distraction" that might cause a "relaxation" that might well have slowed down the process

[oliviamoore]

The German spies failed, but not the Russian spies