Realistically, what WWII German secret/advanced weapons programme had the best chance of being a gam

Clearly, nuclear weapons could have been a game changer for Nazi Germany. In light of the copious evidence for their existence collected by Dr. Rider and other researchers in recent years (especially since widescale archival declassifications began in 1995), the real question is, Why weren't they?

 

That's a question for you to answer, or anyone else who thinks the Germans had operational atomic weapons.

They were facing total defeat, by enemies demanding unconditional surrender, potentially encompassing trial and likely execution of the decision makers themselves. Why wouldn't they use a potentially game-changing weapon?

For most of us, the answer is simple: they didn't use it because they didn't have it.

 

Here is Grothmann's answer.

“[p. 13] Himmler had in any case come up with a report, and a consultation took place regarding what we could make now. The one problem was the small quantity [of fuel, that is, fissile material] and always still the uncertainty of how it would work in action. (Grothmann stated elsewhere that “we did not expect mass production (of nuclear weapons) until 1946”.) The other was the question of the real political effect. [p. 13] Some said that a direct hit on Moscow must be the first goal. But this has been countered by the argument that this would not change anything on the eastern front. [p. 14] If we were now to use such a weapon on Hitler’s order, for example to employ it on London, a completely new situation would arise, but not in our favor. If the weapon’s impact corresponds to the calculations, important parts of the political and military leadership will fall, but many other levels that have been relocated outside will be preserved. There are heavy casualties among the civilian population, and when the horror has subsided, it is clear that the supply of potential British troops in the Reich is still possible via their ports and is still under their control. Besides, the British are also on our territory. And the most important argument: with us, no one really believed that they would then withdraw. Quite the contrary! We could picture their reactions to our population. The other side, which must also be considered, is the Americans. [p. 15] At the meetings I attended, or about which I learned in hints, no one was so crazy to use a weapon which could no longer help us, but would only make things even much worse. (This is entirely consistent with the OSS document quoted upthread in which Albert Kesselring said he would resign his command if he was ordered to use the Nazis' "desperation weapon".)

[p. 16] So, the first point was that the decisionmakers had to know how they personally fared, if a completely new, terrible mass-destruction weapon were deployed by our side and achieved its effect, but the war were nevertheless lost by us. What the victors would then read out of the Geneva Convention was clear. The second point was that: At that time, the demand for unconditional surrender had long been on the table. And that was the result of the normal war situation. What would have happened after the use of our atomic bomb? You are certainly familiar with the ideas of Morgenthau. Everything would be much worse.”

Dr. Todd Rider comments:

“Grothmann made several points:

• By the end of the war, there was only enough fission fuel for a very small number of bombs.

• With the possibilities of rockets malfunctioning, aircraft getting shot down, or the bombs themselves malfunctioning, there was no guarantee that those bombs could be successfully delivered to Allied targets.

• Even if the bombs were successfully delivered and destroyed a very small number of Allied cities, they would not stop the large Allied military forces that were invading Germany, and in fact they would only inspire the Allied forces to defeat Germany more quickly before it could deliver more bombs.

• If Germany had used nuclear bombs against Allied targets, the Allies would have retaliated with even greater destruction (such as firebombing or mustard gas) against German targets than what the Allies were already doing.

• If Germany had used nuclear bombs against Allied targets, those individuals who were responsible would have been prosecuted for war crimes after the war.

• If Germany had used nuclear bombs against Allied targets, the Allies would have imposed much harsher terms on Germany after the war. Grothmann mentioned the Allied Morgenthau plan that was actually considered but not implemented, which would have eliminated all industry in postwar Germany.

Grothmann’s arguments are the same reasons why Germany did not use its stockpile of very advanced nerve gas [Tucker 2006], which was far larger than its stockpile of nuclear weapons as estimated by Grothmann.”

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There is much more detail and nuance in the papers contained in Rider's book, but the bottom line is that they just didn't have enough operational nuclear weapons to gamble that they could cause sufficient damage to the Allies to prevent the otherwise inevitable non-nuclear WMD counterstrike. It appears probable that Hitler himself, who knew that he was a dead man walking by that point, nevertheless gave the order for attacks with both nerve gas (including the bombardment of New York City with gas shells fired from u-boat deck guns) and a handful of air dropped nuclear weapons, likely the three bombs mentioned by Mussolini and others. These were apparently small battlefield type devices---again, as Kesselring described, sufficient to "cause (a) bloodbath" but not enough to overturn the strategic calculus then in effect.

You can readily see where this is going, and there are indeed indicators of several probable mutinies in the luftwaffe, the kriegsmarine, and even the SS.

Here is Albert Speer on his final meeting with SS General - Engineer Hans Kammler.

Albert Speer. 1981. Infiltration: How Heinrich Himmler Schemed to Build an SS Industrial Empire. p. 243

[...] Kammler [...] came to me in early April in order to say goodbye. For the first time in our four-year association, Kammler did not display his usual dash. On the contrary, he seemed insecure and slippery with his vague, obscure hints about why I should transfer to Munich with him. He said efforts were being made in the SS to get rid of the Fuhrer. He himself, however, was planning to contact the Americans. In exchange for their guaranty of his freedom, he would offer them the entire technology of our jet planes, as well as the A-4 rocket and other important developments, including the transcontinental rocket. For this purpose, he was assembling all development experts in Upper Bavaria in order to hand them over to the Americans.

Grothmann added that:

After the test of the test bomb in March 45 and when one could see that the front was no longer held anywhere, hotheads from the political side had demanded an attack with the prototype [America rocket] and a hastily assembled uranium bomb. But that was none of us, and it was quite opposed, as I said before. In addition, it would have been a ridiculous attempt because there was not enough [fissionable] material and the rocket had never been tested.

[p. 11] Gerlach did not go to Bormann until we got the first successful launch of our big rocket or the big rocket for the distance from Thuringia to London, which was also a new development. That was on March 16th. I will never forget that, when Himmler’s staff got phone calls from people, whom I had never heard of before and who acted as if we had now won the war.

[p. 18] In February or early March, the goal of the first attack on America in October was reaffirmed internally. In the consultation there were papers that (SS Commando leader Otto) Skorzeny had put together for the rocket technicians, or he certainly had not written them himself, rather someone from his people, and explanations were also discussed by the scientists. It looked like we could do it.

The large rocket had already been under construction for a long time, and those who saw it, or the parts for it, were impressed. We were certainly convinced of the technical preparation for the weapon and the carrier, that it would then work. In any case, we were convinced of the technical preparations for the weapon and the launch vehicle, that they would work out. It could not have happened sooner. I know some of the literature, which makes it such exaggerated claims. The authors just overlook the fact that a comprehensive attack on cities in America can only be done with strategic weapons, not with tactical ones. Then also the technology had to work safely. Imagine if you throw the ‘egg’ over New York and it does not detonate! In the end, the Americans would deliver it four weeks later on their own.

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The picture that emerges is of a German nuclear weapons program that had just completed the prototype testing phase and had one fingernail past the finish line into the serial production stage --- not enough to overcome the overwhelming material superiority the Allies had built up by that point in time. Along with this, there was endgame dirty dealmaking between Kammler (and by extension the SS) and the United States. This may or may not have included the cargo of the German submarine U-234. More to follow....

 

Some here may be familiar with Carter Hydrick's work, specifically his book, Critical Mass. The foreword to the Third Edition was written by the late Dr. Delmar Bergen, who was the director of the US nuclear weapons program at Los Alamos for some time. Bergen was obviously in a position to know what he was talking about.

Dr. Delmar Bergen, former director of the nuclear weapons program at Los Alamos National Laboratory [Hydrick 2016, pp. ix–xi].

“I began my career at Los Alamos in the summer of 1957, directly involved in nuclear weapons work, which remained the case until my retirement. I started as a staff member working on nuclear weapon design, and eventually was promoted to Director of the LANL (Los Alamos National Laboratory) Nuclear Weapons Program. Other assignments included serving as a consultant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Atomic Energy, and as a consultant to the US delegation developing the protocols for the Short and Intermediate Range Missile Treaty between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.

[...] I would like to stress two points that I believe materially change the important history of the birth of the Nuclear Age as we know it:

First, it is my view as a physicist, based on documentation provided here in Critical Mass that the effort the Germans put into preparing and shipping the 560 kilograms of uranium oxide surrendered on board the German submarine U-234, was enriched in the isotope U235. In other words, it was enriched to create a nuclear weapon. [. . .]

The second material information you should take note of, I believe, is that the contributions to the Manhattan Project of the surrendered U-234 did not stop there. I believe the surrender of U-234 had impact on the development of the implosion device—the plutonium bomb dropped on Nagasaki—as well.

I was well acquainted with the development of the implosion device and the difficulties our scientists experienced in developing a detonation system that would give a proper spherical implosion. This concern kept the entire group on edge until the famous Trinity Test in New Mexico proved it to be successful... Surprisingly, as the date of the test approached, last-minute improvements in the firing system reduced their concern enough about the reliability of the detonation system...

I was never told how the details of the improvements came about, but it was during this period that the passengers on board U-234 were debriefed and it was learned that one in particular, the scientist Heinz Schlicke, had knowledge of fast operating energy transfer systems. The rapid and consistent release of electrical energy was a key part of the problem the LANL scientists were experiencing triggering the detonators with the simultaneity necessary to achieve a clean spherical implosion. There apparently is no written unclassified record available to provide us with what may have come from the debriefing of Heinz Schlicke but this we do know, over the summer months after his capture and the surrender of U-234 the confidence in the detonation system greatly improved, and the production of uranium for the gun weapon increased significantly.”

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So there is the contrarian history of "the birth of the Nuclear Age". If anyone wants to see all of the latest archival and other evidence, it is available on Rider's website. I have written a number of posts on Quora that are derived primarily from his research, with some of my own findings thrown in here and there (particularly regarding the Japanese atomic bomb program, which at least later in the war was working directly with the German version). Dr. Rider offers periodic web conferences that are open to the public and which I usually announce on "The Axis Nuclear Weapons Page" on Quora. So here are the links. Thanks for reading.

Revolutionary Innovation | RIDER Institute | Forgotten Creators

The Axis Nuclear Weapons Page

 

How would 560 kg of uranium oxide make a difference to the US nuclear bomb program when the US was producing well over 1000 kg of uranium oxide A DAY by 1944?

Mallinckrodt Chemical Works outside St Louis by itself was producing a ton + a day in 1942, let alone what they were making by 1944.

Manhattan Project: Processes > Uranium Mining, Milling, and Refining > URANIUM MILLING AND REFINING (osti.gov)
St. Louis's Scandalous Nuclear History (stanford.edu)
The Manhattan Project in St. Louis - by Jackie Dana (substack.com)

What was captured with the surrender of U 234 didn't amount to a day's production on what the US was already doing. Mallinckrodt processed over 100,000 tons of uranium during its operations.

 

Some info:
The Shinkolobwe mine in the Katanga province of the Belgian Congo provided two-thirds of the Manhattan Project's uranium from an extraordinarily rich pitchblende deposit averaging more than 2 percent uranium content. Virtually all of this had been mined and was above ground at the start of the war.

Although some of the uranium came from Bear Lake in Canada – about 907 tonnes (1,000 tons) are thought to have been supplied by the Eldorado mining company – and a mine in Colorado, the majority came from the Congo.

 

WWII Germany also got its hands on some of the output from the Shinkolowbwe mine. This is another aspect of the real history of the conflict that has only emerged in recent years. I will have to dig the documentation out of my files but hope to post it in the near future. Meanwhile everyone forgets about what was probably the second richest known uranium deposit in the world at the time, at the Jachymov mine in northwestern Czechoslovakia on the border with Germany. At least 1,500 tons of uranium ore was mined by the Germans during the war years at Jachymov, at another notable mine in Bulgaria which later became an important site for the Cold War Soviet nuclear program, and at sites in eastern Germany and the outskirts of Dresden. There was also extensive thorium mining (the raw material for the manmade fissile uranium-233) to the tune of around 1,300 tons. That's kind of a lot for a paltry laboratory level "program" that employed 50 mostly part time scientists, wouldn't you say?

 

I am going to return later to try and upload the pages from Dr. Rider's book in their original form rather than leave my original post up, because as far as I could tell there was no way to magnify the images I initially included with this post. In the meantime there is extensive information in Forgotten Creators about WWII German uranium and thorium mining.

 

Regarding the true scope and scale of WWII German uranium and thorium mining and German acquisition of ores from the Shinkolobwe mine (the main source of the Manhattan Project's uranium). From pages 3370-3371 in Forgotten Creators:

While uranium ores found at various sites in Europe were good (and later proved sufficient for the large postwar Soviet nuclear weapons program), the ore with the highest natural concentration of uranium was found in Congo, which was controlled by Belgium at that time [Susan Williams 2016].

Just exactly how much Congolese ore did the whole German nuclear program manage to acquire, via Belgium or any other means?

Most sources give a total number of 1200 tons or so (see for example p. 3307). However, at least two sources say that the actual amount was 3500 tons:


1. Nikolaus Riehl, the head nuclear chemist at Auergesellschaft, in information that he gave to David Irving [Irving 1967, pp. 65, 90–91].

The Ministry of Economic Warfare, whose department it was, was requested to attempt to deprive the Germans of the stockpiles of uranium-oxide in Belgium; Tizard opposed the outright purchase of the thousands of tons of uranium-oxide there, and proposed that it should merely be moved to the United Kingdom. The Ministry acted with ponderous precision, and when the German armies fell upon Belgium a month later by far the greater part of the uranium was still there.

Up to June 1940, Union Miniere had sold no more than about a ton of the various compounds to Germany each month; the company now received an immediate order for sixty tons of refined uranium compounds, to be supplied to the Auer company in Berlin. During the next five years, the Germans seized three thousand five hundred tons of uranium compounds from the Belgium stockpiles, and shipped it under the general supervision of Dr. Egon Ihwe back to Central Germany, where it was stacked in the surface buildings of the old salt-mines at Stassfurt, owned by the Industrial Research Association (WiFo). It was from this huge stockpile of sodium- and ammonium- uranate that the Auer company would now meet its requirements. [...]

[T]he committee stressed: ‘[...] Although steps were taken beforehand to induce the Belgian company to reduce stocks of uranium oxide, some of which are now in Canada, some eight tons are believed to have fallen into the hands of the Germans when Belgium was invaded.’

General Manager of Auer’s subsidiary, the Oranienburg Rare Earths Factory; and an agent of the Reichsstelle Chemie, the Reich Chemicals Authority.

Margaret Gowing, Britain and Atomic Energy 1939–1945, quoting the committee’s report, drew attention to this error and said that it was discovered that the Germans had acquired the equivalent of 600 tons of uranium-oxide; but Professor N. Riehl has informed the author that it was in fact very much more.


2. William Casey, who was a senior official in the OSS and later head of the CIA, and thus should have been in a position to know the correct answer, along with his staff archivists and analysts [Casey 1988, The Secret War Against Hitler. Washington, DC: Regnery Gateway, p. 49]:

When the British government learned that the Germans, on occupying Norway and Belgium, were increasing Norwegian heavy water production and had seized 3500 tons of uranium from Union Miniere in Belgium, the Ministry of Supply was directed to study what would happen if an atom bomb was detonated in the center of a large British city.

[Dust jacket back flap:] WILLIAM CASEY was Chief of the London OSS headquarters during World War II, and Chief of Secret Intelligence for General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s European operations. He was awarded the Bronze Star. In 1981 Mr. Casey became director of the CIA. He died May 6, 1987.

[During the war, the United States had a comparable amount of the same Congolese ore (∼1100 metric tons from a warehouse in New York, with more arriving later in the war) and managed most of the Manhattan Project with that stock. See for example:

https://www.osti.gov/includes/opennet/includes/MED scans/Book%20VII%20-%20%20Volume% 201%20-%20Feed%20Materials%20and%20Special%20Procuremen.pdf

https://www.governmentattic.org/5docs/TheNewWorld1939-1946.pdf
The Germans could potentially have done just as well with what they had.

 

Again all of that ^^^^ was from the Belgian Congo. The figure of 3,500 tons does NOT count the uranium and thorium bearing ores that WWII Germany extracted from the Joachimstahl site in northwestern Czechoslovakia on the German frontier, nor does it count the uranium ores mined by the Germans in Romania, Bulgaria, eastern Germany, and outside of Dresden, among other places.

From pages 1563-1564 in Rider:

8.8.3 Sources of Uranium and Thorium

Scientists such as Nikolaus Riehl (German, 1901–1990), Günter Wirths (German, 1911–2005), Egon Ihwe (German, 18??–19??), and many others played vital roles in the processing of uranium and thorium for the German nuclear weapons program (Section D.3). Many of those scientists went on to play equally important roles in the postwar Soviet nuclear weapons program (Section 8.9).

During the war, Germany obtained over 1500 tons of natural uranium ore and over 1300 tons of thorium ore, and had access to additional uranium and thorium ore from a number of different sources (see map on p. 3367), by:

- Acquiring at least 1200 tons, and according to some sources 3500 tons, of uranium ore (originally mined in the Belgian Congo) from Union Miniere in Brussels [pp. 3307, 3370–3371].

- Expanding uranium mining at St. Joachimsthal (Jachymov), Bohemia [Hayes 2004, pp. 132–133, 235, 243].

- Mining uranium at Prıbram/Przibram/Pibrans, Bohemia [pp. 3613–3616].

- Mining uranium at Schmiedeberg, Silesia (p. 3299).

- Possibly using any of several uranium deposits in Thuringia [Zeman and Karlsch 2008].

- Mining uranium at Schneeberg, Saxony (deposits discovered no later than 1943); see pp. 3373–3374, 3384–3385, 3651, 4487 [Zeman and Karlsch 2008].

- Mining uranium at Johanngeorgenstadt, Saxony (deposits discovered no later than 1943); see pp. 3373–3374, 3384–3385, 3651, 4487 [Zeman and Karlsch 2008].

- Operating and receiving shipments from a uranium mine at Buchovo (Buhovo), outside Sofia, Bulgaria, since 1938 [Hayes 2004, p. 235; Ej Atlas mines-in-buhovo-bulgaria]. See also p. 4273.

- Mining uranium at Baita-Plai and other sites in Romania; see pp. 3376–3382.

- Acquiring uranium from mines at Viseu and Guarda, Portugal [Hayes 2004, p. 235].

- Procuring all available monazite thorium ore in occupied Europe [information from Nikolaus Riehl, in Irving 1967].

- Exploiting other possible sources—Spain, Scandinavia, etc.?

One 1946 U.S. intelligence report on Czech uranium mines noted, “The Germans put mining on a high priority and only mining was done throughout the 6 years occupation. The ore was delivered by special planes to Germany and Austria” (p. 3816). Another 1946 U.S. intelligence report added: “The Germans continued operations in this mine to the very last moment” (p. 4545).

Thus Germany began actively mining uranium in 1938 and continued until the end of the war. During that time, Germany had access to (1) the same quality and a comparable quantity of Congolese uranium that served the Manhattan Project well, (2) Central/Eastern European uranium mines that later served the Soviet nuclear program well, and (3) additional uranium mines too.

Germany processed uranium and thorium ore to uranium oxide and thorium oxide, and thence to uranium or thorium metal or to a variety of useful chemical compounds—uranium hexafluoride, uranium tetrachloride, uranium nitrate, etc.—at numerous locations including (see map on p. 3369):

- Union Miniere in Brussels [[information from Nikolaus Riehl, in Irving 1967, p. 65].

- Auer in Oranienburg, Katowice/Kattowitz, and other locations [p. 4544; Nagel 2016].

- Buchler in Braunschweig [p. 4544].

- Treibacher Chemische Werke in Althofen, Austria [pp. 3372–3374, 4544; Gollmann 1994].

- Degussa Frankfurt [Hayes 2004; Nagel 2016].

- Degussa Berlin [Hayes 2004; Nagel 2016].

- Degussa Stadtilm [Hayes 2004; Nagel 2016].

- I.G. Farben in Leverkusen and other locations [Mader 1965, pp. 193–202, 229-233].

- Prıbram/Przibram/Pibrans, Bohemia [pp. 3613–3616].

- W. Maier KG Radiumchemische Industrie und Laboratorium in Villingen-Schwenningen am Neckar [Oleynikov 2000].

- Possibly other facilities.

At the end of the war, Allied countries removed over 2800 tons of uranium and thorium in various chemical states from former German-controlled territory (p. 3384). In addition, in 1974, Alwin Urff, deputy technical plant manager of the Asse nuclear disposal site in Germany, stated: “When we began storage in 1967, our company first sank radioactive waste from the last war, that uranium waste which arose in the preparation of the German atomic bomb” (p. 3394).

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I dunno, man. Heisenberg must've had a reeaaalllyyyy big laboratory where he kept all of this uranium. You know, the stuff that was mined for his glorified laboratory-scale project, according to Samuel Goudsmit and everyone else who has obediently parroted his blatant and obvious falsehoods for the past 75 years and change.