German nuclear energy project

The German nuclear energy project was an endeavor by scientists during World War II in Nazi Germany to develop nuclear energy and an atomic bomb for practical use. Unlike the competing Allied effort to develop a nuclear weapon the German effort resulted in two rival teams, one working for the military, the second, a civilian effort co-ordinated by the German Post Office.

Effectiveness and implications

It is generally accepted that the Nuclear Age began with the 1938 publication by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman of results that proved Enrico Fermi had observed the bursting of a uranium nucleus, in other words: nuclear fission. Immediately afterwards, Lise Meitner and Otto Robert Frisch described the theoretical mechanisms of fission and revealed that large amounts of binding energy was released in the process. Thus by the beginning of World War II the scientific community was well aware of the early German lead in this area of theoretical physics.

Related Topics:
Nuclear Age - 1938 - Otto Hahn - Fritz Strassman - Enrico Fermi - Nucleus - Lise Meitner - Otto Robert Frisch - Theoretical physics

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The threat of a Nazi atomic bomb was one of the primary driving forces behind the creation of the British TUBE ALLOYS project which would eventually lead to the Allied nuclear weapons effort under Robert Oppenheimer: the Manhattan Project. (Several Germans eventually would make significant contributions to the Allied nuclear effort.) The German government never did finance a full crash program to develop weapons, as they estimated it could not be completed in time for use in the war, thus the German program was much more limited in capacity and ability when compared to the eventual size and priority of the Manhattan Project. In 1945, a U.S. investigation called Project ALSOS determined that German scientists had only almost reached the point that Allied scientists had reached in 1942, the creation of a sustained nuclear chain reaction, a crucial step for creating a nuclear reactor (which in turn could be used for either peaceful purposes, or for creating plutonium, needed for nuclear weapons). There has been a historical debate, however, as to whether the German scientists purposefully sabotaged the project by under-representing their chances at success, or whether their estimates were based in either error or inadequacy.

Related Topics:
British - TUBE ALLOYS - Robert Oppenheimer - Manhattan Project - 1945 - ALSOS - 1942 - Nuclear chain reaction - Nuclear reactor - Plutonium

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