Hitler's Terror Weapons by Brooks, Geoffrey (life books to read .txt) 📗

Johannes Juilfs, a former student of Heisenberg, who saw to it that he was not brutally treated.

On 21 July 1938, exactly a year since his letter, Himmler exonerated Heisenberg:

“I do not approve of the attacks made against you in the Das Schwarze Korps article and I have therefore ensured that there will be no further outbursts against you. However, I consider it right to mention that in future before an audience, you should clearly distance yourself from the human and political identity of the researcher when recognizing scientific research results.”

A scientific nonentity, Müller, acceded to the Munich Chair of Physics, while Heisenberg resumed academic life at the University of Leipzig. The degree of ferocity with which the proponents of Aryan Physics championed their view of science is difficult to comprehend. Not even Ministers were exempted from attack. Soon after taking over the Armaments Ministry in February 1942, Albert Speer found his attempts to promote atomic physics research, by which he presumably meant the development of the atom bomb, met by a “rubber wall”.30 On one such occasion he was astonished to encounter strident opposition in the Party daily Völkischer Beobachter, the newspaper of which Adolf Hitler himself was the owner. The editorial railed against him in an article entitled Jewish Physics Stirs Again! Speer also found it easy to incur the Führer’s wrath in even mentioning the atom bomb, which Hitler privately described to him as “the spawn of Jewish pseudo-science”.

The Discovery of Neutrons and Nuclear Fission in Uranium

Many scientists assert that the age of nuclear physics began in 1932. On 17 February that year the scientific periodical Nature published an article by the British researcher James Chadwick in which he announced the discovery of the neutron. It was released when alpha-radiation from a radium source penetrated a beryllium atom. The neutrons ejected from the beryllium had no electrical charge and this enabled them to penetrate close to the nucleus of the atom of many other substances tested. This was a new means of splitting the atom, but for the time being at least there was no prospect that the neutron might be used for the production of energy. Nevertheless the discovery was the foundation for the new science of nuclear chemistry and every atom from hydrogen to uranium now came in for experiment in laboratories worldwide.

Since 1934 Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner and Fritz Straßmann had been subjecting uranium to neutron bombardment in experiments at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry in Berlin-Dahlem. In an article appearing in the scientific journal Die Wissenschaften of 6 January 1939,31 Hahn and Straßmann announced that they had demonstrated nuclear fission in uranium. When a U235 isotope of uranium was struck by a neutron, U235 +1n = U236, a new unstable compound, was formed and split up almost instantaneously. As this occurred, the highly charged fragments repelled each other with a violent kinetic energy which was also very radioactive.

Of this discovery Heisenberg’s former pupil Carl Friedrich Freiherr von Weizsäcker wrote:

“I recall that for a week in February 1939 or maybe at the beginning of March I thought through the technical possibilities of atom bombs and atomic engines which all physicists had to get to know about, and discussing theoretically with a close circle of friends the major political consequences of the discovery.”32

A chain reaction was still not absolutely certain until there appeared in the 22 April 1939 edition of the scientific periodical Nature the findings of three experimental physicists at the College de France, Joliot, von Halban and Kowarski, reporting that at least two neutrons eject during fission, followed in the next few minutes by a small supplementary number from the decaying fragments of the atom. As the collision between one neutron and a U235 nucleus brought about the creation of more than two fresh neutrons, it would probably be possible to arrange for the surplus neutrons to cause a chain reaction.

Two days after publication of this article the Heereswqffenamt 33 in Berlin received the first letters from scientific institutes and universities pointing out that:

“the newest developments in nuclear physics which will probably make it possible to produce an explosive many orders of magnitude more powerful than conventional ones: that country which first makes use of [nuclear fission] has an unsurpassable advantage over the others.”

Professor Heisenberg Explains his Stance

In the spring of 1939 Heisenberg made a two-month lecture tour in the United States. By now he had decided not to defect on the grounds that he would almost certainly be co-opted to build the atomic bomb which, if ready in time, was likely to be dropped on Germany. Another reason was that he thought it would be difficult to campaign to rebut Aryan Physics as an expatriate. He also felt the need to explain why he wanted to remain in Germany in the coming war, believing that friendships could outlast political differences between nations. His Italian colleague Fermi was at least able to express understanding for his decision while not agreeing with it. When Fermi suggested that Heisenberg should defect he was told:

“History teached us that sooner or later, every century is shaken by revolutions and wars, and whole populations obviously cannot emigrate every time there is a threat of an upheaval. People must learn to prevent catastrophes, not to run away from them. I have decided to stay in Germany, even if my decision is wrong”34

and in an interview with Robert Jungk Heisenberg explained:

“Under a dictatorship, active resistance can only be practised by those who pretend to collaborate with the regime…. I have always been very much ashamed when I think of the people, some of them friends of my own, who sacrificed their lives on 20 July 1944 and thereby put up a really serious resistance to the regime. But even their example shows that effective resistance can only come from those who pretend to collaborate.”35

Heisenberg was a patriot and a cultural imperialist of the old school who was rooted in Germany and had no desire to be