German Nuclear Bomb

I am conducting research in support of a novel. I know that the Germans did not get as far as a sustained chain reaction in their nuclear research, much less build a nuclear weapon, but there are those who believe they did. My question is: What evidence do they cite to support this idea? I'm assuming there is at least something. The only information I have is that there was allegedly a test at Ohrdruf training base in Thuringia in March 1945, and the statement of a Clare Werner, describing what sounds like a nuclear detonation. I would love to read Hitlers Bombe by Rainer Karlsch, but as far as I can tell, it's only available in German and French. If there is anyone here familiar with these claims, could you point me to or summarize any evidence supporting these claims?

 

There are several long discussions/debates on this topic in most WWII forums. I'd suggest searching here and the axis history forum as a start. Note that some people are speculating that the Germans were building a chemically powered "dirty" bomb and calling that an atomic or nuclear bomb. Note also that some people use the term "atomic bomb" to mean fission powered devices and the the term "nuclear bomb" to mean those with most of the energy supplied via fission.

 

Thanks for the replies. I was not aware of the axishistory forums; I will search there. I did search here before posting, but mostly what I find is how the Germans didn't succeed in building a bomb. This I know very well. I want to make my story as historically accurate as possible, and have done extensive research (bibliography attached), and that was one of the first facts I encountered; in fact, the first book I read was Alan Beyerchen's Scientists Under Hitler. But trying to find what evidence is presented by those who believe the Germans did succeed has been quite a challenge. Perhaps I'll have to learn German and read Karlsch's book.

 

The problem is you'll encounter a lot of the tinfoil hat brigade in those long debates...and some that are just plain crooked in how they deal with "evidence". One "Simon Gunston", despite everything he was told, wrote the German bomb and Ordhruf test into a three part, alien encounter/illuminati control "revelation" thing in Nexus magazine a few months later...and simply dealt with all the gainsayers and people including myself who told him exactly where and how to find confirmation FOR or against the German Bomb by leaving out those chunks of witness accounts that COULD be checked!

And that is just plain dishonest.

 

In the case above, of the German pilot's nighttime witnessing of the Ordruhf explosion, there were TWO glaring inconsistencies.

One was the pilot's reporting of fission byproducts like a lightshow in the mushroom cloud...and this was supposedly just like the Hiroshima uranium bomb. Except the only decription of that explosion from the air was of a coal-black roiling cloud, no flashing "fission byproducts".

So that description was simply edited out of the pilot's account by Gunston when reproduced in Nexus!

Near the end of the pilot's account is a comment that he was warned of American nightfighters operating nearby his location. I suggested to Gunston that he do what he could to corroborate that night's operations - but it was seemingly never done...and THAT part of the pilot's recollection was similarly edited out of the version in the Nexus article.

Which of course meant that anyone relying on the Nexus article for information wouldn't even know there was something that could be used to corroborate OR disprove the pilot's account!

To my mind "massaging" the historical record like that, removing bits that disagree with an advocate's position or removing checkable/verifiable data is essentially dishonest.

 

There was no nuclear weapon.

SPEER: No, and I consider it utterly improbable. If we had had such a weapon under preparation, I should have known about it. But we did not have such a weapon.

What the Germans were developing and testing, was a kind of thermobaric weapon.

http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wissen/physik-mehr/massenvernichtungswaffe-grossvaters-vakuumbombe-1461621.html

"Thermobaric weapons have the longest sustained blast wave and most destructive force of any known explosive, excluding nuclear weapons."
-wikipedia


And the scientist involved was Mario Zippermayer.


Thermobaric weapons are almost 100% fuel, so thermobaric weapons are significantly more energetic than conventional condensed explosives of equal weight.

Thermobaric explosives apply the principles underlying accidental unconfined vapor cloud explosions, which include those from dispersions of flammable dusts and droplets. Previously, such explosions were most often encountered in flour mills and their storage containers, and later in coal mines. This German bomb was utilizing fine coal dust, and liquid oxygen.

When you consider that;
1) Thermobaric weapons didn't enter development in US or Soviet Union until the 60's.
2) Their destructive potential far exceeds that of conventional explosives of the time. (albiet significantly less than the atomic weapons)

It is easy to see how this German "wonder weapon" that never saw actual use, should give rise to the rumours.

Primarily, the Germans wanted/hoped to use this weapon against the bomber fleets, utilizing the shockwave to bring down any aircraft in approx 1 kilometer radius. If it exploded in the center of a box of bombers, it would bring down the entire box.

Although the explosive weapon was successfully tested earlier (1943), the rocket delivery system (wasserfall) was not ready, and suffered when Walter Thiel was killed in August 1943; even had that not occurred, it is highly unlikely that anything would've been ready by summer '44. Wasserfall is often described as having "a liquid explosive"; this shows the level of misunderstanding on the nature of these terrible and fearful thermobaric explosions.

It is also to be remembered, that the incredible mess that the Nazi state was in with underfunded hobby projects under every rock, and shifting priorities, meant that the development and production of the explosive was understaffed, delayed, and ultimately futile. Why it wasn't used as an offensive weapon, we can only speculate. One of the benefits of a hypersecretive, highly competitive compartmentalised bureaucracy. It was luftwaffe technology. It is possible, that akin to the V-2, there were horrendous difficulties in actually moving from a functioning experimental device, to something that could be easily manufactured with slave labour.

The production was to be in Nordhausen (in the Soviet area of occupation, and an area of rocket production). This also meant that immediate Soviet interest in a thermobaric device was not really top priority, when you consider their urgent need for atomics, and rocketry.

The experimental development of thermobaric weapons would match the descriptions of eye witnesses (such as Clare Werner, Luigi Romersa), and further, explains the lack of radioactive material at the reported test sites.

 

It is interesting to note in this area;

1) Coal dust explosions are a well known phenomenon in coal mines.

Coal dust suspended in air is explosive—coal dust has far more surface area per unit weight than lumps of coal, and is more susceptible to spontaneous combustion. As a result, a nearly empty coal store is a greater explosion risk than a full one. The worst mining accidents in history have been caused by coal dust explosions.

They were scientifically described already in 1844, by Michael Faraday & Charles Lyell, who investigated the Haswell Colliery disaster (95 dead).

2) Germany has lots of Coal mines.

3) The world's worst Coal mining accident took place in Japanese occupied Manchukuo at the Benxihu Colliery in 1942, 26th April. 1549 workers are believed to have died.

The problem is one of consistency;

Below a certain value, the lower explosive limit (LEL), there is simply insufficient dust to support the combustion at the rate required for an explosion. A combustible concentration at or below 25% of the LEL is considered safe Similarly, if the fuel/air ratio increases above the upper explosive limit (UEL), there is insufficient oxidant to permit combustion to continue at the necessary rate.

It is critical to achieving the desired shockwave.

 

I´d guess the heavy water project is the key to those who believe the nazis could make the A bomb? probably not.

https://sites.google.com/site/naziabomb/home/heavy-water

https://sites.google.com/site/naziabomb/home/how-the-nazi-a-bomb-worked

 

Yep. We know there was a long term project looking into atomics. But all the evidence indicates that the German leadership never believed it could be developed in time before the war's end. And in that retrospect, they were right.

They believed the technological difficulties were so great, that it would take at least ten years. Therefore, the project still continued as a low key, low investment, to be revisited once the war was won. There never was a "race to develop the bomb" from the German side.

In amongst all their crazy projects, there were a few to test other possibilities related to atomic weaponry, but none of them were successful in any meaningful way. Other than the value of "Nope, that idea didn't work either..."

Heavy water was needed for their research into reactors. Reactors were needed to get the fissile material. They were nowhere near acquiring an atomic bomb. Nowhere near.

 

Just because they had a successful test doesn't mean that the weapon was ready for use either. From what I've read of the US development of fuel air explosives (i.e. hypobaric weapons) getting them to consistently detonate was non trivial. It would take a string of successful test before a weapon was really ready for use. I'm not sure such a string existed.

Grain elevator explosions are another example by the way. Back when I was in school it was suggested that you could get a pretty good bang out of a coffee can with a little bit of flour in it.

 

On "Hunting Hitler" on the History Channel, newly release classified documents from March 1945 indicate some kind of nuclear explosion testing at the German base near Thuringia, and in South America post-war they were building nuclear bombs.

 

And according to Jim Marrs, the Germans successfully built and tested a Uranium bomb sometime in the Spring of 1945, which is why, according to Marrs, we didn't need to test the Uranium bomb we built because the Germans already gave a trial run.

 

Interesting that the man whose task was to build the bomb did not believe it could bedone unless it was the size of a nuclear power plant...

No one better represents the plight and the conduct of German intellectuals under Hitler than Werner Heisenberg, whose task it was to build an atomic bomb for Nazi Germany.
Digging deep into the archival record among formerly secret technical reports, Rose establishes that Heisenberg never overcame certain misconceptions about nuclear fission, and as a result the German leaders never pushed for atomic weapons.Only when he and his colleagues were interned in England and heard about Hiroshima did Heisenberg realize that his calculations were wrong.

http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520229266

 

And despite all the efforts to find the blast site, it has never been found.

FYI, Trinity is still radioactive decades later, after several cleanup operations.
http://www.randomuseless.info/vacation/trinityrad/trinityrad.html

 

I didn't say I believed it, just referencing it.

 

"Hunting Hitler" is a group of misanthropic misfits trying to scam money off gullible people incapable of reading.