From: Walter Felscher (walter.felscher@UNI-TUEBINGEN.DE)
Date: Wed May 26 1999 - 07:41:10 PDT
Reading through accumulated mail, I noticed with interest Tim
Merry's contribution from April 11th in which he replied to a
question from "Jessie"
> Do you think the (a-) bomb would have been made
> if Japan had offered a conditional surrender?
To this I want to add a small comment.
Jessie wrote "have been made". Had she written instead "have been
thrown", then such question could be discussed from various
points of view. But if Jessie actually meant what she wrote,
namely "made" , then she started from the assumption that the
a-bombs were made in order to be applied against Japan. But this
assumption simply ignores the facts. The a-bombs were made in
order to be applied against Germany. This began after Germany had
declared war against the US in 1941 ; the development took years.
On May 8th 1945 the war ended with the utter defeat of Germany,
and at that point of time the bombs simply were not ready yet to
be applied. Three months later, they were.
In winter 38/39 two German chemistry professors, Otto Hahn and
Fritz Strassmann, performed a laboratory experiment in which an
atomic kernel of uranium was split into two kernels of lighter
elements. Half a year later they published the results of the
experiment in an international journal. Thus these results could
be understood by the knowledgable scientists in this field. The
fission, or splitting, of atoms (in a size far below that of
micrograms) produced tiny, but measurable amounts of heat. It was
clear to those scientists that, IF IT COULD BE MADE POSSIBLE to
perform the experiment on a much larger scale with two pounds,
say, of uranium than much, much more heat would be produced.
IF this production of heat could be made to happen slowly,
something of what we now call an atomic power plant might be
obtained. IF this production of heat could be made to happen
within a moment then the heat set free would amount to the
explosion of a huge ammunitions depot.
There were several very large IFs in these outlooks which to Hahn
and Strassmann seemed to involve unsurmountable technical
difficulties, placing them beyond realizability. Clearly, without
that appreciation they would not have published results which
might lead to blowing up the world. And then the outbreak of the
war in September '39 led to the closure of international scientific
communications. From now on, no side knew whether the other side
had taken up pursuing this matter.
On the German side, the army staff's arms development section
became aware of the theoretical possibilities of atomic fission.
But the scientists' scepticism to surmount the technical
difficulties was so large that funds and manpower were engaged
on a very small scale only. When the allied forces occupied
Germany in 1945, it soon became clear that the German research,
was years behind the American and that no technological
realization had even been attempted. Twenty miles south from the
place where I write, you still can inspect, at a special small
museum in Haigerloch, what little the German scientists had
achieved. In so far, Mr. Merry's statement "The Germans were
well on the way to developing the bomb" is mistaken.
The German failure to progress was, in all likelihood, due to the
fact that the project was staffed by theoretical scientists,
interested in fundamental research, but not experienced in the
development of technologies: there was no driving force. Also,
the political leadership (Hitler, Speer) was essentially unaware
of the possibilities the project would have offered. Given what we
know about Hitler's state of mind, we may well assume that, had
an a-bomb been available to him in the later stage of the war, he
would have used it - even if only to act out the Niebelungen's
demise on an even grander scale as that he actually performed in
in April '45 .
[ You may compare this with the most successful development of
rocketry under the guidance of the engineer von Braun. He
succeeded to persuade the German army that funds and, for the
technical realization, considerable manpower was required; an
army general was delegated to provide all support for von Braun's
group, and in the end even forced labour was employed for the
rocket's production. ]
On the American side, the potential danger of Germany developing
an a-bomb was realized by the phycicist Albert Einstein, himself
Jewish and aware of the large scale (already at pre-Shoa times)
persecution of Jews in Germany and German-occupied territories.
Being the most reknowned phycicist of the century, he could
afford to write a letter to president Roosevelt and expect it to
be read; he pointed out the danger and suggested the only
countermeasure there was: to develop an a-bomb oneself. Supported
by his science advisors, Roosevelt established the Manhattan
project which, employing a multiple of the scientists in the
German group, overcame first the theoretical problems and then,
with a workforce of thousands, the practical problems of the
technical realization of an a-bomb. Given what we know about the
allied bomber command's and its political leadership's state of
mind, we may well assume that, had an a-bomb been available to
them before the German collapse, they would have used it.
W.F.