Abstract
This article is not a history of the German efforts to create and employ nuclear weapons during the National Socialist period. Instead, this essay will try to explain why, forty years after the end of World War II, we are still so concerned and disturbed by the question, would German scientists have made atomic bombs for Adolf Hitler? Why is it so important, so controversial and so persistent? I have dubbed this question the ‘myth of the German atomic bomb’. Like most myths, this fable can be interpreted in several ways, and therefore this question has more than one answer.2
Department of History, Union College, Schenectady, New York; This essay is a condensed version of M. Walker, ‘Legenden um die deutsche Atombombe’, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 38 (1990) 45–74; I would like to thank my colleagues Faye Dudden and Teresa Meade as well as the editorial board of the Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte for their assistance.
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Notes
See M. Walker, German National Socialism and the Quest for Nuclear Power 1939–1949 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
Also see P. Forman, ‘Scientific internationalism and the Weimar physicists: the ideology and its manipulation in Germany after World War I’, Isis, 64 (1973) 151–80;
and F. Ringer, The Decline of the German Mandarins (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969).
S. Goudsmit, ‘How Germany lost the race’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 1 (1946) 4–5;
S. Goudsmit, ‘Secrecy or science?’, Science Illustrated, 1 (1946) 97–9;
S. Goudsmit, ‘War physics in Germany’, The Review of Scientific Instruments, 17 (1946) 49–52;
W. Heisenberg, ‘Über die Arbeiten zur technischen Ausnutzung der Atomkernenergie in Deutschland’, Die Naturwissenschaften, 33 (1947) 325–9,
also reprinted in W. Heisenberg, Die Physik der Atomkerne, 2nd ed., (Braunschweig: Viewig und Sohn, 1947).
see A. Beyerchen, Scientists under Hitler (New Haven: Yale University, 1977);
M. Walker, ‘National Socialism and German Physics’, Journal of Contemporary History, 24 (1989) 63–89.
S. Goudsmit, Alsos, 2nd ed. (Los Angeles: Tomash, 1983);
Goudsmit, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 1 (1946) 4–5;
Goudsmit, Science Illustrated, 1 (1946) 97–9;
Goudsmit, The Review of Scientific Instruments, 17 (1946) 49–52.
S. Goudsmit, ‘Heisenberg on the German nuclear power project’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 3 (1947) 64, 67;
S. Goudsmit, ‘Nazis’ atomic secrets’, Life, 23 (1947) 123–34.
R. Jungk, Heller als tausend Sonnen (Bern: Scherz, 1956).
The translation is taken from the first English edition, R. Jungk, Brighter than a Thousand Suns (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1958) p. 105.
C. F. von Weizsäcker, Bewusstseinswandel (Munich: Hanser, 1988), p. 383.
also see R. Jungk, ‘Vorwort’, in M. Walker, Die Uranmaschine. Mythos und Wirklichkeit der deutschen Atombombe (Berlin: Siedler, 1990).
L. Groves, Now It Can Be Told, 2nd ed. (New York: DaCapo, 1983) pp. 336–7.
D. Irving, The German Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967).
W. Heisenberg, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (9 December 1967).
R. Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986);
M. Broszat, ‘Hitler and the Genesis of the “Final Solution”: An Assessment of David Irving’s Theses’, in H. W. Koch (ed.), Aspects of the Third Reich (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1985) pp. 390–429.
A. Hermann, Werner Heisenberg 1901–1976 (Bonn-Bad Godesberg: Inter Nationes, 1976) pp. 63–84;
A. Hermann, Die Jahrhundertswissenschaft Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1977) pp. 148–70;
A. Hermann, Wie die Wissenschaft ihre Unschuld Verlor (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1982) pp. 180–94;
A. Hermann, ‘Die fünf historischen Epochen in der Geschichte der Atomenergie’, in A. Hermann and R. Schumacher (eds), Das Ende des Atomzeitalters? (Munich: Moos, 1986) pp. 11–22;
A. Hermann, ‘Heisenberg und das deutsche Atomprojekt’, Bild der Wissenschaft, 10 (1988) 139–45;
W. Heisenberg, Physics and Beyond (New York: Harper and Row, 1971);
A. Kramish, The Griffin (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986) pp. 118–9.
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© 1991 Teresa Meade and Mark Walker
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Walker, M. (1991). Legends Surrounding the German Atomic Bomb. In: Meade, T., Walker, M. (eds) Science, Medicine and Cultural Imperialism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-12445-9_9
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