Oleg Zabluda's blog
Wednesday, December 05, 2012
 
After Nazis kicked out a bunch of physicists, especially Jews and anti-Nazis, seemingly the only one of consequence...
After Nazis kicked out a bunch of physicists, especially Jews and anti-Nazis, seemingly the only one of consequence left to do any atom bomb work was Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976). But instead of doing a good job, he probably just kept saying "Principally, things are very uncertain, Mein Führer".

When he grossly miscalculated the amount of U-235 needed for 15kt bomb to be 12500 kg, instead of correct 45 kg spherical untamped (what he assumed) or 20kg spherical tamped, or 65 kg cylindrical tamped (real Little Boy), rendering the whole program moot, there was nobody left to check on his calculations. In US, the correct calculation were made by a Jewish refugee from Austria Otto Robert Frisch (1904-1979), (who fled with his aunt 1/4 baptized Jew Lise Meitner (1878-1968), who refused to participate in Manhattan Project), his friend Jewish refugee from Germany Rudolf Peierls (1907-1995), a  Heisenberg's student (student bested teacher), and baptized 1/2 Jewish refugee from Germany Hans Bethe (1906-2005).

AFAIK, nobody in Germany proposed Plutonium bomb. In US Plutonium bomb was built, among other people, by Jewish refugee from Italy Emilio Segre (1905-1989), Enrico Fermi (1901-1954), whose wife Laura was Jewish (as well as most of his research assistants, who were now out of work), baptized Jewish refugee from Germany John von Neumann (1903-1957), baptized 1/2 Jewish refugee from Germany Hans Bethe (1906-2005), Jewish refugee from Germany Edward Teller (1908-2003)

Leo Szilard (1898-1964), a Jewish refugee from Austria invented chain reaction, patented nuclear reactor with Fermi, and did a lot more. 

German Atom bomb project started April 1939, just months after the discovery of nuclear fission by the Germans (Hahn-Strassman-Meitner-Frisch) in January 1939. Zenith of the project was in Jul 1942, with ~70 scientists working on the project full time, with about 40 devoting more than half time).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Heisenberg#Uranium_Club
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_nuclear_energy_project

In addition to kicking out Jews and anti-Nazis, there was also so common and familiar politicization of the science and education system and the rise of the anti-Semitic "Deutsche Physik" movement (after they called Heisenberg a "White Jew", he had to sent his mother to Himmler's mother to resolve the conflict.

All that immediately produced both quantitative and qualitative losses to the physics community. At the close of the war, physicists born between 1915 and 1925 were almost nonexistent in Germany. Out of 26 German nuclear physicists cited in the literature before 1933, 50% emigrated. 11 physicists and 5 chemists who had won or would win the Nobel Prize emigrated from Germany shortly after Hitler came to power, most of them in 1933.

These 16 (at least partially Jewish, unless otherwise specified below) Nobel Prize winners were:
- Hans Bethe (1906-2005). worked on the bomb
- Felix Bloch (1905-1983), worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory, then on radar at Harvard
- James Franck (1882-1964) worked on the bomb,
- Maria Goeppert-Mayer (1906-1972), worked on the bomb, her husband was Jewish
- Eugene Wigner (1902-1995), sorta worked on the bomb
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955), did not work on the bomb, but signed the famous memo
- Max Born (1882-1970), did not work on the bomb but three of his Ph.D. students (Maria Goeppert-Mayer, Oppenheimer, Weisskopf, and three of his assistants (Fermi, Teller, and Wigner) did,
- Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958), did not work on the bomb, was Max Born's assistant
- Peter Debye (1884-1966), did not work on the bomb
- Dennis Gabor (1884-1966) did not work on the bomb
- Fritz Haber (1868-1934) did not work on the bomb
- Gerhard Herzberg (1904-1999) did not work on the bomb
- Victor Hess (1883-1964) did not work on the bomb, his wife was Jewish
- Otto Stern (1888-1969), did not work on the bomb. Received 1943 Nobel Prize in Physics for Stern-Gerlach experiment, but his friend Walther Gerlach didn't, because he was active in Nazi Germany (in their Atom Bomb project)
- Erwin Schrödinger (1887-1961) a bit cowardly anti-Nazi, fled to Ireland  
- George de Hevesy (1885-1966), fled to Sweden

- 17th Nobel prize winner was Niels Bohr (1885-1962), a Jewish refugee from Denmark (in 1943), worked on the bomb.

The University of Göttingen had 45 dismissals from the staff of 1932–1933, for a loss of 19%. Eight of the students, assistants and colleagues of the Göttingen theoretical physicist Max Born fled and eventually worked on the bomb. They were Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller, Maria Goeppert-Mayer, Eugene Wigner, John von Neumann, James Franck, Victor Weisskopf (1908-2002).

Not everyone who was kicked out worked on Atom Bomb, but many worked on other war-time things, freeing others to work on The Bomb. The opposite was true in Germany.

In 1933, Max Planck(1858-1947) told Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) that forcing Jewish scientists to emigrate would mutilate Germany and the benefits of their work would go to foreign countries. Hitler responded with a rant against Jews. The National Socialist regime would only come around to the same conclusion as Planck in the 6 July 1942 meeting regarding the future agenda of the Reichsforschungsrat (RFR, Reich Research Council) to which control of the nuclear project was transferred on 9 June 1942, but by then it was too late.

In 1945, nine of the prominent German nuclear scientists were incarcerated at Farm Hall in England in England under Operation Epsilon: Erich Bagge, Kurt Diebner, Walther Gerlach, Otto Hahn, Paul Harteck, Werner Heisenberg, Horst Korsching, Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker and Karl Wirtz. Also, incarcerated was Max von Laue, although he had nothing to do with the nuclear energy project. During their detention, their conversations were recorded relevant ones were transcribed and the transcripts were released in 1992. Bernstein has published an annotated version of the transcripts in his book "Hitler's Uranium Club: The Secret Recordings at Farm Hall". From those records we know the nobody but Heisenberg had any clue, and Heisenberg was factor of 200x off. Heisenberg initially thought the Hiroshima was a hoax.

The Soviets also got some of the German nuclear scientists. One of them was Heinz Pose (1905-1975), who was made head of Laboratory V in Obninsk. When he returned to Germany on a recruiting trip for his laboratory, Pose wrote a letter to Werner Heisenberg inviting him to work in the USSR, lauding the working conditions, the available resources, and the favorable attitude of the Soviets towards German scientists. Heisenberg politely declined.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Heisenberg#Uranium_Club

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