4 comments

  • expedition3210 hours ago
    This was already known. The British put the German scientists into a big country house after the war and bugged all the rooms. After the US dropped the atomic bombs the German scientists spent weeks discussing with eachother how the Americans could have done it. They never got it right.
    • amsully49 minutes ago
      It’s a great read from beginning to end <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;germanhistorydocs.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;nazi-germany-1933-1945&#x2F;transcript-of-surreptitiously-taped-conversations-among-german-nuclear-physicists-at-farm-hall-august-6-7-1945" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;germanhistorydocs.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;nazi-germany-1933-1945&#x2F;tran...</a>
      • yalok12 minutes ago
        Amazing. Kind of reminds of the modern day discourse on potential dangers of AGI and humans misuse of it.
      • NDlurker11 minutes ago
        That was incredibly interesting. Thank you for sharing.
    • smallmancontrov34 minutes ago
      Heisenberg used a bad approximation that led him to incorrectly believe he would need tons of U235 to produce a bomb. His model for bomb viability was essentially &quot;a random neutron walk should not leave the core until producing enough generations to explode.&quot; In reality, you don&#x27;t need that much U235 because earlier generations have exponentially more descendants and they are closer to the core -- the later generations can leak neutrons out of the core like a sieve and the exponential party deep in the core won&#x27;t even notice, effortlessly replacing them by cooking a tiny fraction of a generation longer.<p>It was Peierls and Frisch, two Jewish German scientists, who figured out those dynamics, modeled them with the Neutron Diffusion equation, and repeatedly prodded UK intelligence until they were taken seriously. Then the project got sent across the Atlantic for safety and scale-up and the rest is history.<p>Germany could have had the Atom Bomb in WWII, but Nazi Germany could not have because Jewish Science gave a decisive advantage.
      • ianburrell7 minutes ago
        Another problem is that Germans went for heavy water reactors and didn&#x27;t even get as far as prototypes. Americans built graphite moderated reactors and quickly built plutonium production reactors at Hanford. Also, Allies were able to prevent Germans getting heavy water from Norway.
      • sandworm10130 minutes ago
        &gt;&gt; Jewish Science<p>Jewish <i>Scientists</i>.
        • smallmancontrov23 minutes ago
          I was mocking the Nazi attacks on the work of Jewish scientists which branded that work as &quot;Jewish Science&quot; and declared it inferior, because this whole story is a Reverse Uno card on that narrative.
          • ahartmetz13 minutes ago
            Some part of the German physics community even did &quot;German physics&quot; which did not include quantum physics and relativity.
          • gloryjulio3 minutes ago
            Agree with that. There were also &#x27;Soviet Science&#x27;.
        • darubedarob25 minutes ago
          [dead]
      • darubedarob27 minutes ago
        [dead]
  • JumpCrisscross14 hours ago
    “the reactor that [Adolf] Hitler tried to build”<p>…as opposed to the other Hitlere who tried to build nukes?
    • moritzwarhier6 hours ago
      the purpose of square-bracketed text in quotes is to mark editorializing
      • happytoexplain32 minutes ago
        That&#x27;s why it&#x27;s notable. If it were part of the original quote, it wouldn&#x27;t be.
      • stackghost38 minutes ago
        I think the point is that in an article about Nazi Germany, editorializing &quot;Hitler&quot; to add &quot;Adolf&quot; is probably not required because almost every adult in the English-speaking world knows who Hitler was.
        • SoftTalker15 minutes ago
          The more I learn about that fella, the less I like him.
    • scun13 hours ago
      Coincidentally TIL about a Namibian politician who decided to drop the &quot;Hitler&quot; from his name. I only mention it because his first name is also Adolf
    • karim7911 hours ago
      Don&#x27;t underestimate the other Hitlers. They might still be around us.
    • joshblack198224 minutes ago
      Not to be confused with Adolf Hitler&#x27;s half-nephew Bill Hitler, who fought against Adolf Hitler.
  • ck225 minutes ago
    but imagine if they did, wow, history would absolutely be completely different and they&#x27;d still be in power<p>speaking of which, pretty sure he&#x27;s turning Iran to sand after the elections, he&#x27;ll have nothing left to lose and US is only country to ever use nuclear weapons on a million innocent civilians, twice, so why stop now?<p>we&#x27;re out of other weapons except these which seems wildly illegal to use especially on civilians<p>* <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;apnews.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;iran-lamerd-us-prsm-lockheed-martin-b4a37c59bcf5d1a11eb87aa79f153648" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;apnews.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;iran-lamerd-us-prsm-lockheed-mart...</a><p>Imagine if Putin was using those on Ukraine civilians but US uses them no problem?
    • AnimalMuppet1 minute ago
      Why do you think that anyone here considers US use to be &quot;no problem&quot;?
  • LightBug159 minutes ago
    [flagged]
    • bigyabai55 minutes ago
      Today&#x27;s analysts would be quick to point out that Nazi Germany&#x27;s progress was about 3 weeks away from getting the bomb.