NationStates Jolt Archive

Ran accross a story in BBC. Heard about this in college years ago. Didnt give it much thought. There was no credible evidence for it to be true back then. You think he would have used them in WWII if given a chance?

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4348497.stm (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4348497.stm)

Ran accross a story in BBC. Heard about this in college years ago. Didnt give it much thought. There was no credible evidence for it to be true back then. You think he would have used them in WWII if given a chance?

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4348497.stm (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4348497.stm)


He had no way of mass production or a viable delivery system, so their use would have been severly restricted IMHO...its still disputed by the way...but where there is smoke there is usually fire as always...

Maybe Hitler wasn't just crazy/evil enough to use such weapon...

No, seriously, I don't believe Germany had nukes.

Its generally thought that while they had the knowhow to make them, the nazis lacked the necessary resources to build a functioning battlefield bomb. (i think my history teacher mentioned production of Heavy water (deuterium oxide) as a problem, as they couldnt do it till the end, having already been practically defeated).

Edit: And on the subject of delivery systems, Germany had the best rocket technology available on the planet at the time, not to mention the Luftwaffe.

Maybe Hitler wasn't just crazy/evil enough to use such weapon...

No, seriously, I don't believe Germany had nukes.

Me neither, certainly they had done the research, but with the destruction of the 'Heavy Water Plant' in Norway by the Norwegien Resistance and the British (I think it was 1943), and a severe lack of possible production, i don't think any nukes of a decent size could have been produced.

Actually they had enough resources to make a couple nukes, even after the destruction of the plant in Norway.
But they found only two ways to use it as a weapon. 1st like a dirty bomb, but you can read that in the story I believe and secondly they saw no other way but to drop a whole reactor(which is offcourse, way to big)

Its generally thought that while they had the knowhow to make them, the nazis lacked the necessary resources to build a functioning battlefield bomb. (i think my history teacher mentioned production of Heavy water (deuterium oxide) as a problem, as they couldnt do it till the end, having already been practically defeated).

Edit: And on the subject of delivery systems, Germany had the best rocket technology available on the planet at the time, not to mention the Luftwaffe.

Just caus you can send it in a rocket doesn't mean it will hit the target, even the V1 and V2 were hit and miss at best. Their guidence was based on fuel for the most part.

Some later V-2s used "guide beams", i.e. radio signals transmitted from the ground, to navigate the missile toward its target, but the first models used a simple analog computer that would adjust the azimuth for the rocket, and the flying distance was controlled by the amount of fuel, so that when the fuel ran out "brennschluss", the rocket would stop accelerating and soon reach the top of the parabolic flight curve.

from Here (http://www.zamandayolculuk.com/cetinbal/V2RROCKET.htm)

As for the Luftwaffe, although the tech was there, it had severe logistical problems esp. for spare parts and replacements towards the end of the war so that would have been a very risky strategy too.

Just caus you can send it in a rocket doesn't mean it will hit the target, even the V1 and V2 were hit and miss at best. As for the Luftwaffe, although the tech was there, it had severe logistical problems esp. for spare parts and replacements by the end of the way so that would have been a very risky strategy too.

I don't think hit and miss is such a concern with a nuclear weapon. Just aim the thing roughly in the direction of London, Moscow or Paris (after liberation) and you'll cause a mess.

I don't think hit and miss is such a concern with a nuclear weapon. Just aim the thing roughly in the direction of London, Moscow or Paris (after liberation) and you'll cause a mess.

True, but with the quality of the weapons they had available at the time, you wanted to be pretty precise to make the most of the bomb.

He had no way of mass production or a viable delivery system, so their use would have been severly restricted IMHO...its still disputed by the way...but where there is smoke there is usually fire as always...
Hitler nearly had Nukes
Germany increased NArdvik(?)heavy water production 10 fold+ only the acts of British special forces destroyed there transport to Germany.
the V1 and V2 are good enough transportation vehicles(after summer of 44 of course.
Plus the Krupp guns.

Hitler nearly had Nukes
Germany increased NArdvik(?)heavy water production 10 fold+ only the acts of British special forces destroyed there transport to Germany.
the V1 and V2 are good enough transportation vehicles(after summer of 44 of course.
Plus the Krupp guns.

I kinda said all that in my later posts...but as for V1 and V2 being good enough...the V1 wasn't, it was just a rather large firework, aim and fire...the later V2's maybe (esp. when they got a decent navigation system). But still, they could only really release them in the 'dirty bomb' fashion...like the one claimed in the book.

I kinda said all that in my later posts...but as for V1 and V2 being good enough...the V1 wasn't, it was just a rather large firework, aim and fire...the later V2's maybe (esp. when they got a decent navigation system). But still, they could only really release them in the 'dirty bomb' fashion...like the one claimed in the book.
Yes yes you did i have seen that to appease you i shall change my sig. ;)
The V1 was the doodlebug.Any RAF plane had them sorted just tip them.
V2 was a problem because of their dive.

Yes yes you did i have seen that to appease you i shall change my sig. ;)

:eek:

The V1 was the doodlebug. Any RAF plane had them sorted just tip them. V2 was a problem because of their dive

Theres an old film shot from the ground of a Spitfire tipping a V1 off its course with its wings...must have been some pilot to do that!

According to something I saw on TV, Hitler was ripped on Meth as well.

According to something I saw on TV, Hitler was ripped on Meth as well.
I read about that somewhere!

This page contains a reference to a book about it:
http://preventragedy.com/worldpress/index.php?p=55

Some papers about Hitler:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Search&db=PubMed&term=hitler+amphetamines&tool=QuerySuggestion

I'm extremely sceptical about Hitler having nukes. I remember hearing that the scientists who had worked on the bomb were in allied hand s when they dropped the bomb on Japan. They were together in a room when the news came in and were tape-recorded. Apparently the scientists couldn't believe it, they said "but it's impossible, we tried it you'd need millions of dollars and thousands of workers." To which the allies replied "yep that's about right".

They mention it a bit on wikipedia

"After the war, a number of German scientists including Heisenberg, Otto Hahn (who had co-discovered nuclear fission), and Max von Laue (an ardent anti-Nazi), were taken captive by Allied troups and put under secret watch at Farm Hall, England, as part of Operation Epsilon. Their conversations were recorded as Allied analysts attempted to discover the extent of German knowledge about nuclear weapons. The results were inconclusive, but they allowed them to hear the results of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, which sent Hahn into a near-suicidal despair. By the next morning, Heisenberg claimed to have worked out exactly how the American atomic bomb must have worked, judging from reports of the damage and explosive size, and gave a lecture to the rest of the captive scientists on the effort."

I know that the new research is about a smaller bomb than the ones dropped on Japan but I think it probably still overstates the case.

Hitler Has nukes and could him Brition, America, France within 45 minuates, and was giving WMD's to terrorist goups that why we can't find any evidence...... lol

(this is a joke for those who have had a sence of hummour by-pass)

I kinda said all that in my later posts...but as for V1 and V2 being good enough...the V1 wasn't, it was just a rather large firework, aim and fire...the later V2's maybe (esp. when they got a decent navigation system). But still, they could only really release them in the 'dirty bomb' fashion...like the one claimed in the book.I don't know if it's the same thing, but I'd previously heard about a German nuke project which essentially had a heavy cast-iron element, above which were plates of uranium suspended within some fuel (kerosene?) armed with an impact-driven detonator.

It was a heavy thing and the plans were either to drop it from a plane ('heavy lifters' that were capable of carrying it existed) or as the warhead of the impending V3.

From what I hear, and personal educated guesses, the plane-dropped device would essentially be an incendary-assisted dirty bomb (as the fuel is ignited and the plates of uranium come together and shatter/boil before 'Chernobyling' into the atmosphere), the true nature of which might not have been evident to the Allies until some time had passed and radiation symptoms were evident at the site of impact and downwind.

The V3 delivery, however, might well have forced the fissile material into supercriticality (through impact forces alone) and produced a low yield atomic reaction of some kind (if not a true explosion) which would certainly attract more attention from its scintilation effects at least. (It would also be exceedingly 'dirty', but the Allies should realise what was thrown at them much sooner and do what they could for those downwind...

However, this is 2nd/3rd-hand knowledge, so I could be wrong about the whole thing.

They had the resources to build a bomb, but were never able to. They never really got past the reactor stage. The reason for this is that while the first American reactor was made of graphite bricks, the Germans had tried to use an impure graphite, and it didn't work for them, so they instead relied heavily on heavy water to make their reactors. However, it was very difficult to produce the heavy water, hence the creation of the plant that was later destroyed. Once they had no more heavy water, which was used to try to build reactors, they had little to no chance of building a funtioning bomb.

Just caus you can send it in a rocket doesn't mean it will hit the target, even the V1 and V2 were hit and miss at best. Their guidence was based on fuel for the most part.
Nukes arn't really big on precise targetting.

Nukes arn't really big on precise targetting.

Below a certain size and if you want to hit a specific target, they are.

Armored vehicles and hardened concrete shelters require a nuclear weapon with an extraordinarily high pK - either the bomb has to be in the megaton range, or you have to land it within a few hundred yards of the target.

Just landing it within a few kilometers won't do.

According to something I saw on TV, Hitler was ripped on Meth as well.
The History chamnnel is full of lies.
Bah according to them Rommel lost the battle of Normandy because he didnt move a Panzer Div too bad he wasnt in Normandy or here of the invasion till 20 in the morning!

From what I understand the German atomic bomb project was headed by Heisenberg and a couple other physicists. If what I remember is correct, they kept taking the project off on false tangents intentionally. I'm not sure about that though. I'm not sure about this, I think I saw it on the history channel one night, but I'm not totally sure, so if you could either inform me otherwise or confirm me I'd be appreciative. I don't like holding such...non-solid info.

To have produced a weapons such as described would have been an interesting feat, espescially in light of the US attempts to make a mini-nuke for artillery guns in the nineteen fifties and sixties. I do not think that the Nazis had nukes.

And Hitler was a meth fiend. I know that for a fact.

I don't think hit and miss is such a concern with a nuclear weapon. Just aim the thing roughly in the direction of London, Moscow or Paris (after liberation) and you'll cause a mess.

I had always thought that a near miss was only good with horseshoes, hand grenades and nukes. :p

I had seen a show about Hitler's Germany in the last days, and a very large bomb or a small nuke had been exploded killing several thousand people in country. But the program, if there was one, never really took off, Hitler was too spastic trying to save his reich. The same could be said about their jet aircraft program.

Since nukes were a new technology exploding one didn't really have to be a direct hit, the threat of having another even if it's only a lie in propaganda would have been enough to make the allies think twice, but Hitler would have certainly had to be ready to use another if his bluff was called.