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

The war is lost.” There are two ways of looking at this statement. Rehbein may have been suggesting that once Germany could make the official announcement that an atom bomb had been successfully tested, Hitler would be in a strong position to negotiate with at least one of his enemies. Because of the conspiracy against him, however, the evidence of disunity and betrayal perceived by foreign governments abroad would reduce figuratively the bomb’s impact.

But there is an alternative interpretation. Along with other scientists in Dr Diebner’s entourage, Dr Rehbein may have been an associate of the anti-Hitler faction who wanted the Führer out of the way so that the German military could use the bombs physically to negotiate peace on terms more favourable than unconditional surrender. If it had become known to the resistance that, once tested, Hitler was resolved not to deploy the small atom bombs operationally, this would explain not only why the plotters struck when they did, but would justify Rehbein’s remark that the war was lost, for with Hitler remaining as leader the atom bombs would never be used, or at least would be used only in response to the enemy’s first use; yet the atom bomb, used in quantities, was, in the view of the plotters, Germany’s last hope. 95 The sense of the words attributed to Dr Rehbein seem to favour the latter interpretation.

The fantastic idea current in 1944 of the effect of even a small atomic explosion is conveyed by an article in the Swedish newspaper Stockholms Tidningen in August 1944, and reported in Germany by the TranSozean Innendienst news agency:

“In the United States scientific experiments are being carried out with a new bomb. Its explosive substance is uranium, and when the elements within its structure are liberated, a force of hitherto undreamed-of violence is generated. A 5-kilo bomb could create a crater one kilometre deep and of forty kilometres radius.”

In all the foregoing we have a possible explanation for Professor Heisenberg’s activities. Throughout the Hitler period he was opposed to the regime. He had remained in Germany in 1939 in order to sabotage the atom bomb and radiological warfare projects. In September 1941 he had taken a philosophical standpoint that a regime is to be considered evil by reference to the means it uses to impose its policies, and the atomic bomb was evil. In 1943 the United States had begun work on its atomic arsenal, a fact of which he would probably have been aware. In Germany a strong military resistance was developing of which Heisenberg had knowledge. He knew from von Weizsäcker that terms for an honourable conclusion to hostilities other than unconditional surrender were not available to Germany if that resistance succeeded in overthrowing Hitler. Heisenberg was a patriot. War was war, and, with Hitler removed, what German wanted Stalin or Roosevelt running the country? Therefore the idea of building a bomb of some description had been forced on him, for there had to be some sort of bomb, a bomb inevitably designed and built during the chancellorship of Hitler as Führer, but intended for use in diplomacy by those who would succeed him.

This pre-supposed, of course, that Hitler actually could be got rid of. The suggestion has been made in various quarters that he was in some way under the protection of higher powers determined that he should see his mission through. 96 No assassination attempt could ever succeed because there would always be the hand to re-position the offending attaché case with its bomb, or Hitler would change his schedule unexpectedly and leave the building minutes before a bomb went off. As was referred to in the Introduction, two well-placed authorities who observed Hitler pre-war had the impression that he was a medium, and mediums do claim that nothing can harm them seriously during the times when they are possessed by gods or spirits. 97

If the plotters had succeeded on 20 July 1944, and the SS had not taken over the running of the country in the aftermath, the death camps would presumably have been abolished, but one sees no easy way how a continuation of the war against the Western Powers could have been avoided. Probably Germany would have found Stalin willing to re-align the Soviet Union in some manner with the new Reich and possibly Japan, particularly if a demonstration of the new explosives or the nerve gases could have been arranged. Whether that was something which the supporters of the plot against Hitler would have found acceptable as the price of removing him we have no means of knowing.

CHAPTER 9

Brighter than a Thousand Suns – for Two Seconds

T HE 114-STRONG Allied Intelligence Mission codenamed Alsos was under the overall control of the head of the Manhattan Project, General Leslie Groves. It had arrived in France in August 1944. Its scientific head was a physicist, Professor Samuel Goudsmit, a Dutch émigré. His selection had been approved by the Office of Scientific Research and Development and by General Groves personally. Although a physicist, he was not connected with the US nuclear weapons project in any way, having spent most of the war working on radar. He may have had limited access to technical information, but probably not enough really to get him to grips with the task he had been given.

Whereas the scope of the intelligence activity extended beyond the German uranium project, Goudsmit’s group of scientists were concentrating their investigation into all aspects of uranium research. From the outset Goudsmit was dogmatic: “No one but Professor Heisenberg could be the brains of a German uranium project and every physicist throughout the world knew that.” 98 When American military realists suggested dryly that possibly other scientists of whom Goudsmit had never heard might be secretly working on some form of uranium weapon, Goudsmit derided the idea as an impossibility: it had to be Heisenberg. And, in the end, he was probably right.

The Logic of Professor Goudsmit

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