Why 3rd Reich produced no atomic bomb ⚛

The Army Ordnance Office had decided that we first have to demonstrate the chain reaction. It is also obvious, before you get no money for all these purposes. Here it must first of all be shown that it works at all, from the principle. For so long, no one has believed the incredible stories that the scientists have told. So it was quite logically said: "We don’t care about power reactors, nor about bombs in the first phase, but try to demonstrate the principle. Work on the bomb was simply postponed. The report also clearly does not have a guilty conscience (the authors of the report) that there is so little in it about the bomb, because they did not expect that anything about the bomb would be researched. So this is a point that must not be overlooked.

And then there is the famous question … (the cover pictures, fast and slow neutrons. Here are the processes that were known and studied at that time for nuclear technology. And there is the fission of [U] 235 by slow neutrons and the fission of [U] 238 by fast neutrons, which contributed to the reactor). A chain reaction with 238 is therefore not possible and the fission of 235 by fast neutrons, which is important for the bomb, is missing. So, this is really a statement. Both, the postponement of the bomb to a later phase, which never happened and the statement [and this]. Mr. Walker never took note of these two very clear statements, never quoted them.

Although he interpreted this report in detail, he even described himself as an attentive reader of the report in his book. But these two parts have escaped his notice, and so basically of course all that he has written is wastepaper. Then there is a formulation - I don’t want to go into too much detail about it now - there is again such a coincidence. So here it is again a matter of enrichment. And it all always sounds as if it is the same as with the real bomb. But it just happens to mean something completely different. You can see [that] very clearly in this report: there is only this general text by Heisenberg, the little that is written about the bomb, times 20 Zeil and this one publication by Mr. Müller, which is from the beginning of 1940 and after?

We are now in February 1942, obviously nothing else has been published about the bomb for two years. That too can be seen in the report. Nobody has yet wanted to admit that either. Then the astonishing thing is that the report mentions the right scale for a critical mass. 10 to 100 kilograms is super, about 50 is correct. At the same time, the value in the USA was 1 to 100 - that alone is enough … the Americans had all the data, the Germans none and how they should have calculated it more precisely. Nor did they have a theory - nobody knows - but it always convinced historians that they knew the right thing to do. But that can’t be, because the paragraph starts again with the destructive effect of uranium 238, but there is none in the bomb. So that can’t be right either. Again, they didn’t look closely at it and you can’t find a source.

Karl Wirtz once made an attempt to get a patent not only for the reactor, but also for the bomb. The Reichst Patent Office could not be convinced of their wrong idea of the bomb. And here he calculates how big such a device and even a plate would have to be, which could then either permanently generate heat or explode. And if you take the data, the square meter a few millimeters, then with the raw density of uranium you get 10 to 100 kilograms, so that’s more likely to be the case.

As a result of the review by the German Army Ordnance Office, the project was returned to the civilian management of the Reich Research Council. The Army Weapons Office, however, has continued with the project itself. Then came another key scene when the Minister of Armaments Speer came into office and asked himself how he should turn this war around, which had got stuck in the meantime. In the beginning they had said that they didn’t need a great miracle weapon. They can do it in such a short time. Now they would have wanted one urgently. And now, unfortunately or thank God, the scientists stood there empty-handed. If they had started right away and built an apparatus like Fermi’s, which would have been possible with this academic style - Fermi also built his apparatus with working students, then they could have pressed a piece of plutonium into his hand long ago, then there would have been no stopping them.

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Then the program would certainly have been decided. So the spear could only conclude that in the remaining time, what we had not done in the two, almost three years before, ne, three years before had not happened, could not be made up for. And it then abandoned the bomb and instead gave the green light for the development of the rocket. If you know the conditions under which this took place, then you can also be glad and grateful that we were spared this in nuclear physics.

All the knowledge and not-knowing can be reconstructed in an impressive way, because there is a phenomenal event in history. The ten leading people of the Uranium Association were interned after they were all arrested by the Alsos Group. On an English country estate [Farm Hall], which was totally bugged. They listened to all the conversations, even in their private rooms. In some cases there are verbatim transcripts of these conversations, but otherwise there are also summary transcripts in English. Unfortunately the tapes never turned up again. It is possible that they have been overwritten. At that time there were not so many. It would be really fantastic to know how they spoke to each other. But it is very well documented.

And above all, you can practically still hear today how people heard about the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima from the radio. And then it starts and then they start thinking "What could have done that? There are passages where you blush a little as a physicist because even these luminaries slip into science fiction and start thinking all sorts of fuzzy thoughts about what the bomb might have been made of. They can’t - and above all they don’t want to - believe that the Americans did it, because they still believe that they are the best and that they naturally achieved more than they did.

And then you realize from the answers that they really have no idea at all. Otto Hahn is surprised that the bomb was so weak. He can calculate, he could calculate. He knew what a destructive potential he had discovered and asked Heisenberg "Is it possible that only a few percent exploded? And then the Heisenberg says “No, no, it all happens at the speed of light. It all blows up at the same time.” Just wrong again.

Then the Heisenberg starts calculating and wants to try to determine this critical mass. In the first attempt he has at 400 kilograms. At the second attempt … (so this is done according to the Rennsenbord method …). This is "How far does a drunken man get from a lantern if he makes uncoordinated movements? This is then done with the square root of the number of steps). That, he then tried that. This is not a very good model for the bomb. He ends up with a ton, but he just miscalculated. By the way, he often did - was a brilliant mathematician, but as soon as it came to numbers, things got queasy.

So he miscalculated the volume of the sphere - which should have been, he should have … his calculation should have been 13 tons … Well, that was way off the mark. Well, that was funny and it just shows - that’s why even the best physicists, the weapons physicists Edward Teller [?] or Hans Bethe [?] said: He’s doing that for the first time. No scientist in the world would make the same mistake twice. So this is a clear proof. He has never calculated this before. The historians don’t want to admit it, but it is recorded here and can be traced there.

And then he starts to calculate, he withdraws for a week and gives a seminar lecture on August 14th, in which he has already understood quite a lot. He did the math; of course he has one advantage: he has some data about the bomb, so he could keep on doing the math until he got the right result. That was already, no, that helps a lot. And he found out that you need a bit more material than just [for] criticality. Of course, as soon as the splits start, criticality is already gone again. With the reactor you have to have supplies anyway, but with the bomb you first have to make sure that the neutrons reach a corresponding density. […] If they are there in large numbers, then they can also bridge the loss of criticality a bit.

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He had also recognized the problem that the bomb would eventually fly apart, but had not yet really assessed it. He then did a fantastic calculation on how the explosion would go off. Totally perfect also the order of the light and the shock wave and so everything. He did that really well. So you can say that it took him a week to understand, let’s say, [the] basics of bomb physics. Because he didn’t know them a week before, you know it only took a week. And you also know that he didn’t use that week in the war.

We also know what he did. He has put together a three-part publication on the measurable quantities of elementary particle physics. He laid the foundation for the next physics, elementary particle physics, nuclear physics was no longer of interest.

  • He held a conference on cosmic radiation and published the results. The Russians were taken aback, said “If he does something like that, he is not working on the bomb. So the Germans are not making a bomb”.
  • He played the piano, seriously again, he had studied piano.
  • He gave concerts,
  • he has done something socially.
  • He was in the Wednesday societies, heard and held lectures there.
  • He then withdrew when he noticed how insanely naive and open they were about Hitler and talking about the assassination attempt, it made him feel uneasy.
  • He preserved fruit, for example, and all kinds of things
    so, from the stress they had there in Los Alamos, behind barbed wire and with only censored contact to their relatives. For years no trace. So there he had a relaxed life. He was always complaining that it was so boring and the work was so pointless. So that, that was not his thing.

And now you ask yourself, of course, "Why did he put himself at the head of the movement when he wasn’t really interested in it at all? You can only answer that by saying that he was probably trying to keep control of the whole thing. That is also the reason why he did not go to America, as I see it. He could have gone to Columbia University in 1939. But he probably felt responsible.

I mean the idea of keeping such a development of an atomic bomb in the Third Reich under Hitler under control as a scientist is incredibly naive, but good to very great scientists can also be incredibly naive, for one thing. But one should not make fun of it: It worked. He really did it.

What I am saying is underlined by these oddities that I noticed in this program as well as as a science manager. So actually the Kurt Diebner / the Army Ordnance Office had confiscated the Wilhelm Institute and wanted to make a nuclear research center out of it, move everyone together. The professors all refused. Suddenly they had their own opinions, and the Hartwig stayed in Hamburg, and the Bothe in Heidelberg, and altogether they were scattered in a dozen different places. They hardly ever saw or met each other. There was no cooperation.

The worst thing was when the Hamburg physicist chemist Paul Harteck [?] suddenly got a whole freight car full of dry ice from IG Farben, -150 degrees cold CO2, carbon - suitable as a moderator, cold is even good (so for a power reactor it’s nonsense, you can’t cool with ice, but for an experiment it’s great because it’s even cooler). Then he asked to be provided with all available uranium for the experiment. And that’s when everyone got all dressed up. And the Heisenberg said "If he really was in such a hurry, he could give him 100 kilograms. Do you know how many hundred kilograms of uranium there are? Five liters! And the dittmer [?] did the same thing. You don’t even have … only small amounts.

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The bark [?] thinks it is fair, but it is idiotic. If you have a chance to quickly demonstrate such an effect in a national program, then why not throw everything together for the experiment you are doing? They have never done that, not in five years. Until the end of this program, they always had too little uranium, too little heavy water, but they never threw it all together. They always had parallel. Until 1943 Heisenberg divided his materials between the experiments in Berlin and Leipzig. None of them were successful. Then, when the institutes were moved to the Swabian province when Berlin was bombed, there was a moment when all the uranium and heavy water was in Ilmenau, where Kurt Diebner opened his branch. But then Karl Wirtz came with a convoy of trucks and took his half to Haigerloch [?], who then did the Heisenberg experiment. That was exactly the half that was missing.

Yes, the whole thing was not at all designed for success. You simply have to find out: There was no control of success. There were five to seven groups that were doing loose separation of troops. They were never called together to report what they had achieved or to give the program leadership the opportunity to say, “This is probably less promising, we’ll stop there for now. Instead, we are now concentrating on the promising ones.” Over five years, you do something like that at least once a year. Nothing. Not even once.

So it’s a completely crazy procedure what they did there. It was a single economy of scarcity. We still had to wait forever for components from the industry because, of course, other armaments were more important - you won’t find a single letter in all those documents that complains, that pushes, that demands more. In my whole life as the head of a major research institution, I have never found a single scientist, well, almost no scientist, who was ever satisfied with what he had.

At every success report - and we have written success reports, we have all collected them. Every success report is followed by what he has now, now we have to do even more, and now we have to have more staff and a larger laboratory, and, to make sure that the successes are really … not … a single … time! The only thing they cared about, the only thing where they wrote applications. These are OK position notes for their employees, i.e. exemption from military service. There is such a thing. Applications, which are a lot, that’s what they fought for. Otherwise they didn’t. It’s quite extraordinary and that’s something very special.

Then there are the oddities that Heisenberg wanted to have his strange plates, which we saw earlier, here forever, he had also excluded graphite. For Heikelog [?] everything suddenly worked out: in 1944 he gave up his resistance to graphite and his resistance to the better fuel elements by Kurt Diebner. Why only in 1944? Because the danger of success was no longer there? So it is very, very strange. This statement that they did not know how a real bomb works is also evident from the fact that they did not do certain investigations that they would have had to do otherwise. This is one of the interesting omissions, which of course nobody has noticed yet.

Lise Meitner’s successor was Josef Mattau [?], also not a nuclear physicist, but a specialist in isotope separation with mass spectrometers, so actually for detection, for analytical proof. Otto Hahn called him in as an institute to measure the exact mass of the fission products, because he wanted to understand the composition of the fission products very quickly, and worked on it for a whole war. He had the world’s best mass spectrometry method and also the best spectrometer, he was the leader in this field (you can still read about him in an encyclopedia today) at the institute here in Dahlem. Of course, he could have produced a few micrograms of uranium 235 with this thing and then at least some properties could have been measured, e.g. the fissure cross section. He did not do it. It was not made. In America they did it like that with these micromen [?].

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The Otto Hahn, just as he found the fission product barium in its core experiment, should have looked for transuranium elements, he had even researched transuranium elements for years before. Then he would have found the plutonium. He could have won the second Nobel Prize for the discovery of plutonium, for which Mr. Sieburg was awarded the Nobel Prize a few years later. That was there, that was present in his samples, he could have only… And Otto Hahn was really the world champion of microchemistry at that time. So if anyone could have done it, it was him. He didn’t even come up with the idea, did he? … if he had the idea, he said: "Let’s not go there.

Whatever. If you had done that, you could have used the Copenhagen cyclotron [?]. There was a Copenhagen cyclotron, it was a copy of the most modern one in California. The Rockefeller Foundation had donated it to Niels Bohr for his institute. That was a 5 MeV deuteron [?] cyclotron - you nod acknowledges. It would have been super good, it would have been ideal for simulating these fast neutrons from nuclear fission and measuring exactly what happened there. It has never been confiscated, the Danes were allowed to research it peacefully. There have been several attempts that the Wehrmacht has said, let’s bring the thing to Berlin. And then Heisenberg always said, “We don’t want it and we don’t need it and …”. That was also his institute, where he had worked before, he always held his protective hand over it.

And at the meeting with Speer in June, Heisenberg himself complained about how poor the equipment was in basic research, they didn’t even have a cyclotron. Then Speer said “Yes, with all my resources I’ll give you two or more large cyclotrons”. Said the Heisenberg. “Thank you very much, we don’t know that much about it yet.”

It’s adventurous. So the demonstration in front of Speer there, it was really pathetic. Von Weizsäcker says, “Don’t you need more money?” Von Weizsäcker says, "Yes, 40,000 marks. That could be moved to the realm of fairy tales, but Walter Speer doesn’t believe anything he wrote anyway. But there are also memories of Generalfeldmarschall Milch, who was also there. And there is the same scene. And then Speer and I looked at each other and nodded at each other: "No turn of the war was to be expected from these heroes.

So they really acted like schoolboys. And then I found out, which is quite interesting, that they almost measured it by accident. In Vienna, there was Willibald Jenkedas [?], when the Reiter was the first director of the … German Electro … early on, later as a young man. They once measured the fissure cross sections in uranium 235 to the medium-fast neutrons simply by 1 MeV. So this is below the fissure limit of uranium 238, at least, which is why uranium could be measured with the rare 235 in nature, because the 238 remained silent. And then they actually measured that and they published that.

Now it would have been quite easy to extrapolate with the well-known law 1/ V from one or just under one MeV to two MeV. If you calculate that, you get exactly the value, they had predicted the right value with maybe a bigger error, because extrapolation is always a thing - but they could have, they almost had it in mind and they could have written a publication. “Finally we have the fission cross section for fast neutrons Uranium 235 We can determine the fission cross section for fast neutrons Uranium 235 We can determine our ingenious experiment, which was measured with half the energy and so to say we outsmarted the fact that we had no or no isotope enrichment”. They did not do that at all, they just published the data. Nothing at all, which also shows that they didn’t even know that it was interesting. So it’s all quite clear, but as I said, it hasn’t really found the necessary perception yet.

So, and now comes another point, I feel a bit uncomfortable doing this, but I can’t suppress it. So somehow this uranium club really reminds me of the German soccer championship at the World Cup. Not much is left of its former size. These massive mistakes: the Heisenberg invents a perpetual motion machine and forgets that the furnace goes out after the first fissions if you don’t have a supply and that it controls itself. And then they build about 5 to 15 different reactor experiments in 5 years and nobody notices this mistake. And that the things go out or fly apart anyway, that’s just unbelievable.

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And if you read in the Farm Hall protocols - As they say, the Heisenberg doesn’t do well there either, the power also makes a lot of mistakes and that can be a bit embarrassing when you see it like that. So if he miscalculates or if he claims something that can’t be right. And you always think, that’s actually how I get to criticize the great Heisenberg here. But the questions that the others ask are partly so that they feel like a voyeur when they read it. It makes them so uncomfortable what they are witnessing of a performance that is actually below the level of these people.

The Walther Gerlach, the messenger was there, he wasn’t there, he wasn’t in Farm Hall. But the Walther Gerlach is also a physicist whose name every student has to learn today. Together with Otto Stern, he proved spin quantization, and that is in every textbook. And that was a really great physicist - he asks such stupid questions, you can’t do that … it’s unbelievable! And that’s why, I mean, it’s a simple diagnosis to begin with. I just have to say that. It is, it is also unpleasant for me, but I cannot change it. As I said, the only explanation is that the German people really succumbed to the collective stupidity under Hitler, there’s no other way to say it, and somehow it must have rubbed off on the people. So I don’t know any other explanation, but it is a certain mental paralysis. Is there something there? I do not know.

In her first reaction to Otto Hahn’s letter with the question whether the core could be burst, Lise Meitner also gave an answer that wasn’t so up to date either. After all, she hadn’t been out of Nazi Germany for long. Perhaps it was also still under the shadow? I do not know. In any case, it is noticeable that they were simply not good. Maybe they just didn’t feel like it.

Karl Wirtz always said that you can’t do something like this if there is no trust in the leadership and no trust among each other. And both were not there. Heisenberg already said that you can only hide from a totalitarian regime what you don’t know. And that certainly explains why he did not investigate certain things, even out of curiosity, and afterwards drew the beautiful conclusion “We let the war serve science”.

The conclusion is that this is just a myth, that there was a Hitler bomb. There was no order not to work on the bomb at any time, because one just wanted to demonstrate its functionality in the first place. There was no work on the physics of the bomb, not even independent work out of curiosity. In itself, of course, this is a fascinating topic for physicists, What is actually happening? They did not know the correct principle. Nor did they measure the data that is at stake.

So how did this myth come about? So how did it come to be understood, what is in the history books today? Unfortunately, I have to say that I have shown you by selectively citing the documents, i.e. these clear references in the Army Weapons Reports,

  • the subordinate role of the bomb among the distant ones,
  • the postponement of the work on the bomb to later times, which did not occur.
  • the missing work on bomb physics
    These are all massive indications that nothing has been done. Walker never mentioned any of this. I’m just going to say this now: I don’t know anything.

In addition to this, there is a misinterpretation of physical arguments. Most of all because of some coincidences of numbers, which can result in different ways, even by wrong calculation. There they were easily misled by the fact, that of course they did not recognize, how important also not made investigations are. And, of course, for many people, including Walker, knowledge of physics and nuclear physics and nuclear technology is not up to the level that is actually needed to be able to judge this. And then you simply have to make a sobering statement - I wouldn’t say that in a judgmental way, but simply to make a statement. The result that he presented was what was most pleasant for the Allies.

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It would have been even nicer if the troops had found a half-finished bomb. Then, of course, there would have been no need to discuss whether the Manhattan Project was actually justified or not. But the news that the Germans had wanted, could, knew, just economically it would not have been possible. This news was of course the second best consolation one could give to the bomb farmers, and it was no coincidence that this opinion prevailed. This is of course also a problem that I see and have. It is difficult even today for a German physicist to damage this facade that the Allies built for themselves.

It would be nicer if someone else had done it. By themselves, but I cannot change that. I am only there. I didn’t do it on purpose either, I stumbled into it. But maybe now, after more than 70 years, it’s possible to get a little closer to the truth, because all the acting figures are no longer alive. But it is quite clear, as you may have seen, that the Germans have steered clear of the bomb, even under a totalitarian regime that normally would not have given them the freedom to say no. While the Americans could have said no rather in a liberal - as Weizsäcker once said - in a free state, they would not have had to build the bomb.

The prevention of this success of the German program was

  • lack of trust among each other,
  • Lack of trust in science on the part of the political leadership and vice versa,
  • Overestimation of the Wehrmacht,
  • a very clever dampening of expectations by Heisenberg (who was the only one who ever put the word bomb in the mouth of anyone)
  • his [Heisenberg’s] leading role despite disinterest
  • that everyone was basically satisfied to be able to do academic research during the war, nothing better could have happened to them.
  • (By a large program they could actually only worsen)
  • that they were all basically too good to do engineering work and deal with technology.

The famous question “did the German scientists prevent the bomb for Hitler for moral reasons?” is actually not to be answered. The fear of the large-scale program, the fear of responsibility, the fear of punishment in case of failure, which the officials and the scientists shared, is, so to speak, the lowest common denominator that explains the behavior. Whether one or the other of the - with some I think I know, with Otto Hahn for example (it is obvious that he could not, of course, have wanted anything so terrible to come out of his discovery, let alone to work on it himself. Of course he wanted a blessing for mankind to come out of his discovery, which motivated many afterwards). So whether not some of them too …? I wonder if Heisenberg didn’t also want to consciously prevent something like this from happening in this Germany under Hitler? In the end, one cannot prove this, but one cannot exclude it either. So it can’t refute it either. That is something that these people had in their heads.

They did not say it afterwards. They did not boast about it. And maybe just because you have to consider that the German resistance after the war was still considered illegal for a long time. It took a long time, actually until 1985, before the resistance against Hitler was no longer classified as treason. The widows of the conspirators of July 20 did not receive pensions because their husbands were convicted of high treason. So this was already a difficult thing in Germany after the war, and they would not admit that they had deliberately prevented the bomb. That’s what Gerlach said, that they had taken care of it. So what they said is of course decisive. I tried to tell them what it was like. A very strange program with very strange behavior. Finally influenced by the fear and lawlessness of a totalitarian regime and it’s a nice thought and it’s a nice thought that it was these negative characteristics of this regime that led to the fact that they didn’t get these tools to continue living.

I will end with a final word, that Lise Meisner certainly also felt what Otto Hahn said in Farm Hall “I thank God kneeling down that we did not build this bomb”.

There you go again, ask me on any questions.
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Thanks for the translation in English but it is simply not correct. For one the British were convinced there would be no German Atomic bomb in 1943 and the Americans in 1944 also because of the Alsos missions. Source: Gerhard L. Weinberg, A World at Arms, second edition 2005 page 570. Obviously the Manhattan project was still on the way and massive numbers of people were often unknowingly working on it. Of course they were not aware of that in 1941 and there always COULD BE the possibility Germany or anyone else was working on it. It would be prudent to do so anyway and the USA had multiple Atomic projects, and the resources to choose all options if you can’t decide for e.g. Plutonium or Uranium. Also they expected a long war ahead based in WW1 expectations.

So it is simply incorrect that the Allies were not up to speed. Also words like “Bomb Farmers” are dubious. They were trying to win the most horrendous war in history.

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“spoiler alert ahead”
To me and others in would be very bad policy to do nothing if you have a war winning weapon. In the end a great argument can be made that the Bomb made an invasion of Japan unnecessary. Hiro-Hito referenced the nuclear bombing (World Destroying weapon) in his surrender speech. Also it prevented the mass murder and starvation in Asia that a continuation of the war would cause. So this moralizing is a bit weird as in essence the Allied efforts to pour massive amounts in the nuclear weapons was the result of German free state overthrowing its Democratic Weimar Republic.

Yes, I know he was friendly to the Jews after the war and apparently involved with murder attempts on Hitler long after it was clear Germany would lose the war.

Also, a what if scenario could be thought out what would have happened had the bomb been completed earlier. Is it ok to stop the holocaust? by using the bomb?

So you can also argue about what is moral or not but the people who made the decision in the early 1940s had their own history and a war to win and other people to prevent dying.

All very sad and traumatizing decisions.

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:crazy_face: Bomb Farmers? I found the translation to be about 85% right, sometimes even better than the German original. Let’s see … “Bauer” means Farmer, but its more like Konstrukteur here. I’ll fix that flaw.

Actually, not possible to fix translation issues? That’s a pitty. Feel free to edit the text for me and inser “bomb designer” instead of farmers.

Anyhow, yes, you are right with your critics

In my opinion, the speaker touched this right in the beginning, so for me that is O. K.

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Hi Thanks, I did check the German-English dictionary before because I assumed it could mean something similar in use as builder.
The cambridge dictionary did come up as “farmer” / “pawn” from chess.
Bauer | translate German to English: Cambridge Dictionary

Also Duden doesn’t talk about builders Hence my comment. Duden | Bauer | Rechtschreibung, Bedeutung, Definition, Herkunft

I didn’t realize it was used as builder as well and then again normal speech is sometimes used differently from dictionaries. So that is OK. That ik can mean “Konstrukteur” as well is new to me, but I learned something new, thanks. (And I really did check the dictionary before replying as my German isn’t perfect;)

Then again the premise that the bomb builders/konstrukteure would have been disappointed at the lack of progress still makes no sense as that justification was not needed. The bomb was developed to shorten the war against Hitler and stop the holocaust and other horrors. That’s why Roosevelt AFTER knowing of the Alsos conclusions in 1944 pressed on. The author “forgets” to mention this essential piece of information in order to justify his "justification myth’'.

OK so there is 1 case of him being incorrect about Allied history, putting up some straw man image (see Weinberg) in order to criticize Allied history. Than there is a second false statement "Farmers/constructors) needed justification. (as if shortening the war/holocaust was not enough, feel free to think differently on this but that WAS the justification for Roosevelt) . Thirdly yes the article mentions Alsos but not their conclusion in 1944/and British in 1943 that Germany wouldn’t make a bomb. Had he bother to check those he would have known that, but then again this would have destroyed his premise.

It is not the translation that worries me but the deliberately or not (whether he did not know or not) cutting out pieces of the narrative that matters to support an earlier conclusion. Thanks for posting, maybe it are honest unclarities, and I learned full source checking at school and when grading (not quote out of context if that makes sense).

PS I am also glad Nukes cannot be farmed in my backyard :exploding_head: :crazy_face:, the fireworks here in the Netherlands are proof we are clueless with explosives anyway :scream_cat:.