Misplaced Pages

#591408

115-493: Operation Epsilon was the codename of a program in which Allied forces near the end of World War II detained ten German scientists who were thought to have worked on Nazi Germany's nuclear program . The scientists were captured between May 1 and June 30, 1945, as part of the Allied Alsos Mission , mainly as part of its Operation Big sweep through southwestern Germany. They were interned at Farm Hall ,

230-550: A bugged house in Godmanchester , near Cambridge , England , from July 3, 1945, to January 3, 1946. The primary goal of the program was to determine how close Nazi Germany had been to constructing an atomic bomb by listening to their conversations. The following German scientists were captured and detained during Operation Epsilon: The participants of the Manhattan Project perceived themselves as being in

345-502: A bursting and correctly interpreted the results as " nuclear fission " – a term coined by Frisch. Frisch confirmed this experimentally on 13 January 1939. On 22 April 1939, after hearing a colloquium paper by his colleague Wilhelm Hanle at the University of Göttingen proposing the use of uranium fission in an Uranmaschine (uranium machine, i.e., nuclear reactor ), Georg Joos , along with Hanle, notified Wilhelm Dames, at

460-497: A marketing buzz for the project). Still others (such as Microsoft ) discuss code names publicly, and routinely use project code names on beta releases and such, but remove them from final product(s). In the case of Windows 95, the code name "CHICAGO" was left embedded in the INF File structure and remained required through Windows Me. At the other end of the spectrum, Apple includes the project code names for Mac OS X as part of

575-453: A "B", cargo aircraft with a "C". Training aircraft and reconnaissance aircraft were grouped under the word "miscellaneous", and received "M". The same convention applies to missiles, with air-launched ground attack missiles beginning with the letter "K" and surface-to-surface missiles (ranging from intercontinental ballistic missiles to antitank rockets) with the letter "S", air-to-air missiles "A", and surface-to-air missiles "G". Throughout

690-482: A "pivotal" role in Soviet air-strategy. Code names were adopted by the following process. Aerial or space reconnaissance would note a new aircraft at a Warsaw Pact airbase. The intelligence units would then assign it a code name consisting of the official abbreviation of the base, then a letter, for example, "Ram-A", signifying an aircraft sighted at Ramenskoye Airport . Missiles were given designations like "TT-5", for

805-574: A bomb in wartime Germany was unfeasible on technical and economic grounds. It was simply too big and too costly. Morality had nothing to do with it. The Lesart has been perpetuated in many popular accounts of the German atomic program, notably in Michael Frayn 's 1998 play Copenhagen , which itself was based heavily on the Lesart -endorsing work of popular history, Heisenberg's War (1993), by

920-608: A business opportunity for the company, and July 1939 contacted the Army Ordnance Office on the matter. Army Ordnance eventually provided an order for the production of uranium oxide, which took place in the Auer plant in Oranienburg , north of Berlin. These three efforts, as noted, were independent and lasted until the fall of 1939, when the outbreak of World War II disrupted the work at Göttingen, and also prompted

1035-698: A company in Paris that handled rare earths and had been taken over by the Auergesellschaft . This, combined with information gathered in the same month through an Alsos team in Strasbourg , confirmed that the Oranienburg plant was involved in the production of uranium and thorium metals. Since the plant was to be in the future Soviet zone of occupation and the Red Army's troops would get there before

1150-696: A competition with the Germans, who had a head start due to the discovery of nuclear fission by Otto Hahn in Germany in late 1938. In 1944, the ALSOS mission , under scientific leadership of Samuel Goudsmit , was tasked with closely following the Western Allied invading forces to locate and seize individuals, documents, and materials related to the German Atomic Bomb program. By November 1944,

1265-660: A cube of uranium attained from this mission from March 2020. A major goal of the Operation Alsos effort in Germany was the location, capture, and interrogation of German atomic scientists. This involved some significant effort as many of them had become scattered during the chaotic last weeks of the war in Europe. Ultimately, nine of the prominent German scientists who published reports in Kernphysikalische Forschungsberichte as members of

SECTION 10

#1732776312592

1380-484: A high concentration of (separate) atoms; such a bomb would have had a tenfold increase over a conventional bomb. The scientists then contemplated how the American bomb was made and why Germany did not produce one. The transcripts seem to indicate that the physicists, in particular Heisenberg, had either overestimated the amount of enriched uranium that an atomic bomb would require or consciously overstated it, and that

1495-547: A major of the Soviet Army, who was also a leading Soviet chemist, and they issued Ardenne a protective letter ( Schutzbrief ). The United States, British, and Canadian governments worked together to create the Manhattan Project that developed the uranium and plutonium atomic bombs. Its success has been attributed to meeting all four of the following conditions: Even with all four of these conditions in place

1610-454: A scientific Manhattan Project leader, had a "unique double aptitude for theoretical and experimental work" in the 20th century, the successes at Leipzig until 1942 resulted from the cooperation between the theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg and the experimentalist Robert Döpel . Most important was their experimental proof of an effective neutron increase in April 1942. At the end of July of

1725-816: A vanguard group. Targets on the top of their list were the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut für Physik (KWIP, Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics ), the Frederick William University (today, the University of Berlin ), and the Technische Hochschule in Charlottenburg (now Technische Universität Berlin ). German physicists who worked on the Uranverein and were sent to the Soviet Union to work on

1840-637: Is a means of identification where the official nomenclature is unknown or uncertain. The policy of recognition reporting names was continued into the Cold War for Soviet, other Warsaw Pact , and Communist Chinese aircraft. Although this was started by the Air Standards Co-ordinating Committee (ASCC) formed by the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, it was extended throughout NATO as

1955-499: Is preserved as a typed manuscript and it appeared after the War in 1948 virtually unchanged (with just a few additions on the US atomic bomb released in 1945). In October 1944, Hugo Watzlawek wrote an article on the potential usage of nuclear energy and its many potential applications. In his view, to follow up this route of research and development was the "new pathway" to becoming the "Master of

2070-447: Is to never have to report to anyone that their son "was killed in an operation called 'Bunnyhug' or 'Ballyhoo'." Presently, British forces tend to use one-word names, presumably in keeping with their post-World War II policy of reserving single words for operations and two-word names for exercises. British operation code names are usually randomly generated by a computer and rarely reveal its components or any political implications unlike

2185-703: The Reichserziehungsministerium (REM, Reich Ministry of Education), of potential military and economic applications of nuclear energy. Abraham Esau , a physicist at the Reich Research Council of the REM, organized a meeting for what become informally known as a Uranverein (Uranium Club). The group included the physicists Walther Bothe , Robert Döpel , Hans Geiger , Wolfgang Gentner (probably sent by Walther Bothe ), Wilhelm Hanle , Gerhard Hoffmann , and Georg Joos ; Peter Debye

2300-749: The Forschungslaboratorium für Elektronenphysik , in Berlin-Lichterfelde, to conduct his own research on radio and television technology and electron microscopy . He financed the laboratory with income he received from his inventions and from contracts with other concerns. For example, his research on nuclear physics and high-frequency technology was financed by the Reichspostministerium (RPM, Reich Postal Ministry), headed by Wilhelm Ohnesorge . Von Ardenne attracted top-notch personnel to work in his facility, such as

2415-829: The Fritz Haber Institute of the Max-Planck Society ), and Max Volmer , director of the Physical Chemistry Institute at the Technische Hochschule in Charlottenburg (now Technische Universität Berlin ), who all had made a pact that whoever first made contact with the Soviets would speak for the rest. Before the end of World War II, Thiessen, a member of the Nazi Party , had Communist contacts. On 27 April 1945, Thiessen arrived at von Ardenne's institute in an armored vehicle with

SECTION 20

#1732776312592

2530-538: The Lesart is true. As the historian and physicist Jeremy Bernstein put it in an annotated edition of the Farm Hall transcripts: What the Farm Hall reports make transparently clear is that, while they knew a few general principles — the use of fast fission from separated U and the possibility of plutonium — they had not seriously investigated any of the details. All of the really hard problems were left untackled and unsolved. ... They had decided that making

2645-643: The NATO reporting name for aircraft, rockets and missiles. These names were considered by the Soviets as being like a nickname given to one's unit by the opponents in a battle. The Soviets did not like the Sukhoi Su-25 getting the code name " Frogfoot ". However, some names were appropriate, such as "Condor" for the Antonov An-124 , or, most famously, "Fulcrum" for the Mikoyan MiG-29 , which had

2760-460: The Rhine ) was deliberately named to suggest the opposite of its purpose – a defensive "watch" as opposed to a massive blitzkrieg operation, just as was Operation Weserübung ( Weser -exercise), which signified the plans to invade Norway and Denmark in April 1940. Britain and the United States developed the security policy of assigning code names intended to give no such clues to

2875-596: The Soviet atomic bomb project included: Werner Czulius  [ de ] , Robert Döpel , Walter Herrmann , Heinz Pose , Ernst Rexer , Nikolaus Riehl , and Karl Zimmer . Günter Wirths , while not a member of the Uranverein , worked for Riehl at the Auergesellschaft on reactor-grade uranium production and was also sent to the Soviet Union. Zimmer's path to work on the Soviet atomic bomb project

2990-681: The Soviet atomic bomb project . The exploitation teams were under the Soviet Alsos and they were headed by Lavrentij Beria's deputy, Colonel General A. P. Zavenyagin . These teams were composed of scientific staff members, in NKVD officer's uniforms, from the bomb project's only laboratory, Laboratory No. 2, in Moscow, and included Yulij Borisovich Khariton , Isaak Konstantinovich Kikoin , and Lev Andreevich Artsimovich . Georgij Nikolaevich Flerov had arrived earlier, although Kikoin did not recall

3105-715: The Theatre Royal Haymarket in London with the original cast for a short run in August 2024. 52°18′57″N 0°10′45″W  /  52.31583°N 0.17917°W  / 52.31583; -0.17917 Codename During World War I , names common to the Allies referring to nations, cities, geographical features, military units, military operations, diplomatic meetings, places, and individual persons were agreed upon, adapting pre-war naming procedures in use by

3220-611: The USAAF , invented a system for the identification of Japanese military aircraft. Initially using short, " hillbilly " boys' names such as " Pete ", " Jake ", and " Rufe ", the system was later extended to include girls' names and names of trees and birds, and became widely used by the Allies throughout the Pacific theater of war. This type of naming scheme differs from the other use of code names in that it does not have to be kept secret, but

3335-516: The Uranverein were picked up by the Alsos team and incarcerated in England as part of what was called Operation Epsilon : Erich Bagge , Kurt Diebner , Walther Gerlach , Otto Hahn , Paul Harteck , Werner Heisenberg , Horst Korsching , Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker , and Karl Wirtz . Also incarcerated was Max von Laue , although he had nothing to do with the nuclear weapon project. Goudsmit ,

3450-867: The discovery of nuclear fission in Berlin in December 1938, but ended only a few months later, shortly ahead of the September 1939 German invasion of Poland , for which many notable German physicists were drafted into the Wehrmacht . A second effort under the administrative purview of the Wehrmacht 's Heereswaffenamt began on September 1, 1939, the day of the invasion of Poland. The program eventually expanded into three main efforts: Uranmaschine ( nuclear reactor ) development, uranium and heavy water production, and uranium isotope separation . Eventually,

3565-596: The Allied scientists, despite the fact that they worked for the Nazis. In the postwar, several scientists, notably von Weizsäcker and Heisenberg, gave this version of the story to journalists and historians, notably Robert Jungk , who reprinted and amplified it uncritically in the 1950s. At that time, accuracy of the Lesart was challenged forcefully by von Laue (who coined the term Lesart ). Most professional historians of science who have worked on this subject do not believe that

Operation Epsilon - Misplaced Pages Continue

3680-486: The Alsos Mission were flown to England. Harteck said in a 1967 interview that some scientists had not adjusted to losing their German elite status. When Max von Laue was told they were to fly to England the next day, he said, "Impossible .... tomorrow is my colloquium .... Couldn’t you have the airplane come some other time?". Walther Gerlach expected respect for the "plenipotentiary for nuclear physics" in Germany; he

3795-546: The American and Soviet occupation forces, it was just carried out on a smaller scale. In order to put pressure on Bopp to evacuate the KWIP to France, the French Naval Commission imprisoned him for five days and threatened him with further imprisonment if he did not cooperate in the evacuation. During his imprisonment, the spectroscopist Hermann Schüler  [ de ] , who had a better relationship with

3910-570: The American names (e.g., the 2003 invasion of Iraq was called "Operation Telic" compared to Americans' "Operation Iraqi Freedom", obviously chosen for propaganda rather than secrecy). Americans prefer two-word names, whereas the Canadians and Australians use either. The French military currently prefer names drawn from nature (such as colors or the names of animals), for instance Opération Daguet ("brocket deer") or Opération Baliste ("Triggerfish"). The CIA uses alphabetical prefixes to designate

4025-642: The Aviation Ministry (RLM) to found and fund an Institute for Nuclear Technology and Nuclear Chemistry ( Reichsinstituts für Kerntechnik und Kernchemie ) failed, but Watzlawek continued to explore potential applications of nuclear energy and wrote a detailed textbook on technical nuclear physics. It includes one of the most detailed presentations of contemporary German knowledge about the various processes of isotope separation, and recommends their combined usage to get to sufficient amounts of enriched uranium. Walther Gerlach refused to print this textbook, but it

4140-628: The Frederick William University (later, University of Berlin), which was commissioned and funded by the Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH, Army High Command) to conduct physics research projects. He was also head of the research department of the HWA, assistant secretary of the Science Department of the OKW, and Bevollmächtigter (plenipotentiary) for high explosives. Diebner, throughout the life of

4255-674: The French, persuaded the French to appoint him as Deputy Director of the KWIP. This incident caused tension between the physicists and spectroscopists at the KWIP and within its umbrella organization the Kaiser-Wilhelm Gesellschaft (Kaiser Wilhelm Society). At the close of World War II, the Soviet Union had special search teams operating in Austria and Germany, especially in Berlin, to identify and obtain equipment, material, intellectual property, and personnel useful to

4370-520: The German military determined that nuclear fission would not contribute significantly to the war, and in January 1942 the Heereswaffenamt turned the program over to the Reich Research Council ( Reichsforschungsrat ) while continuing to fund the activity. The program was split up among nine major institutes where the directors dominated research and set their own objectives. Subsequently,

4485-412: The German nuclear project. During his incarceration in Farm Hall, Hahn was awarded the 1944 Nobel Prize for Chemistry "for his discovery of the fission of heavy nuclei" . A group of eight people, including Peter Ganz , led by Major T. H. Rittner, was responsible for eavesdropping, recording, copying and translating. Only relevant technical or political information, about ten percent of all words heard,

4600-430: The German nuclear weapon project. Speer states that the project to develop the atom bomb was scuttled in the autumn of 1942. Though the scientific solution was there, it would have taken all of Germany's production resources to produce a bomb, and then no sooner than 1947. Development did continue with a "uranium motor" for the navy and development of a German cyclotron . However, by the summer of 1943, Speer released

4715-438: The German project was at best in a very early, theoretical stage of thinking about how atomic bombs would work; in fact, it is estimated that they would have never been able to produce the amount they needed in the four years they wanted to create an atomic bomb. Heisenberg specifically thought that the amount of Uranium 235 needed at critical mass was about a thousand times more than what would make an atomic bomb explode. Some of

Operation Epsilon - Misplaced Pages Continue

4830-525: The German scientists discussed why Germany did not create an atomic bomb, and the United States and United Kingdom did. The transcripts reveal them developing what has been called the Lesart ("version"). The basic version the Lesart argued that the German scientists chose not to build a bomb for Hitler, either by dragging their feet, being insufficiently enthusiastic, or, in some versions, active sabotage. The Lesart both offers up an explanation for their "failure" and also elevates their moral authority above

4945-527: The HWA (Army Ordnance) to take over the work from the Reich Research Council. After the fact, this early work was designated as the first Uranverein , with the HWA's reorganized project being designated the second Uranverein . In August 1939, just before the German invasion of Poland precipitated the formal start of World War II, the Army Ordnance Office (HWA) moved to take over the work of the Reichsforschungsrat (RFR, Reich Research Council) of

5060-566: The Institute's Deputy Director. When the American Alsos Mission evacuated Hechingen and Haigerloch , near the end of World War II, French armed forces occupied Hechingen. Bopp did not get along with them and described the initial French policy objectives towards the KWIP as exploitation, forced evacuation to France, and seizure of documents and equipment. The French occupation policy was not qualitatively different from that of

5175-405: The Manhattan Project allowed for the recruitment and concentration of capable scientists on the project. In Germany, on the other hand, a great many young scientists and technicians who would have been of great use to such a project were conscripted into the German armed forces, while others had fled the country before the war due to antisemitism and political persecution. Whereas Enrico Fermi ,

5290-399: The Manhattan Project succeeded only after the war in Europe had been brought to a conclusion. For the Manhattan Project, the second condition was met on 9 October 1941 or shortly thereafter. Germany for a long time was thought to have fallen short of what was required to make an atomic bomb. Mutual distrust existed between the German government and some scientists. By the end of 1941, it

5405-744: The Nora Theatre Company at Central Square Theater (Cambridge, Massachusetts). A further adaptation, Farm Hall by Katherine M. Moar, was performed as a staged reading at the Theatre Royal, Bath on 21 September 2019. It was later revived as a full production directed by Stephen Unwin at Jermyn Street Theatre and the Theatre Royal, Bath in 2023, and as a tour of the same production at Cambridge Arts Theatre , Perth Theatre , Yvonne Arnaud Theatre , Oxford Playhouse and Richmond Theatre later in 2023. Farm Hall transferred to

5520-760: The Reich Education Ministry (REM), and ordered the RFR to halt all experiments and work on nuclear energy. Esau protested that the discovery of nuclear fission was too recent to warrant such an action, but was ignored. These actions were initiated by the physicist Kurt Diebner , an advisor to the HWA, in association with Erich Bagge . In September 1939, Diebner organized a meeting in Berlin on 16 September. The invitees to this meeting included Walther Bothe , Siegfried Flügge , Hans Geiger , Otto Hahn , Paul Harteck , Gerhard Hoffmann , Josef Mattauch , and Georg Stetter . Its purpose, as Bagge later recalled,

5635-409: The Reich Ministry for Armament and War Production), decided on its continuation merely for the aim of energy production. On 9 June 1942, Adolf Hitler issued a decree for the reorganization of the RFR as a separate legal entity under the RMBM; the decree appointed Reich Marshal Hermann Göring as its president. The reorganization was done under the initiative of Minister Albert Speer of the RMBM; it

5750-516: The Second World War, the British allocation practice favored one-word code names ( Jubilee , Frankton ). That of the Americans favored longer compound words, although the name Overlord was personally chosen by Winston Churchill himself. Many examples of both types can be cited, as can exceptions. Winston Churchill was particular about the quality of code names. He insisted that code words, especially for dangerous operations, would be not overly grand nor petty nor common. One emotional goal he mentions

5865-512: The Soviet Union at Laboratory B in Sungul' . Von Ardenne , who had worked on isotope separation for the Reichspostministerium (Reich Postal Ministry), was also sent to the Soviet Union to work on their atomic bomb project, along with Gustav Hertz , Nobel laureate and director of Research Laboratory II at Siemens , Peter Adolf Thiessen , director of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut für physikalische Chemie und Elektrochemie (KWIPC, Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry and Electrochemistry, today

SECTION 50

#1732776312592

5980-439: The US (just across the Bering Strait from Nome, Alaska). The names of colors are generally avoided in American practice to avoid confusion with meteorological reporting practices. Britain, in contrast, made deliberately non-meaningful use of them, through the system of rainbow codes . Although German and Italian aircraft were not given code names by their Allied opponents, in 1942, Captain Frank T. McCoy, an intelligence officer of

6095-461: The United States code names are commonly set entirely in upper case. This is not done in other countries, though for the UK in British documents the code name is in upper case while operation is shortened to OP e.g., "Op. TELIC". This presents an opportunity for a bit of public-relations ( Operation Just Cause ), or for controversy over the naming choice (Operation Infinite Justice, renamed Operation Enduring Freedom ). Computers are now used to aid in

6210-417: The Western Allies, General Leslie Groves , commander of the Manhattan Project , recommended to General George Marshall that the plant be destroyed by aerial bombardment, in order to deny its uranium production equipment to the Soviets. On 15 March 1945, 612 B-17 Flying Fortress bombers of the Eighth Air Force dropped 1,506 tons of high-explosive and 178 tons of incendiary bombs on the plant. Riehl visited

6325-431: The World". The production of heavy water was already under way in Norway when the Germans invaded on 9 April 1940. The Norwegian production facilities for heavy water were quickly secured (though some heavy water had already been removed) and improved by the Germans. The Allies and Norwegians had sabotaged Norwegian heavy water production and destroyed stocks of heavy water by 1943. Graphite (carbon) as an alternative

6440-452: The administrative director, and the military control of the nuclear research commenced. Heisenberg said in 1939 that the physicists at the (second) meeting said that "in principle atomic bombs could be made.... it would take years.... not before five." He said, "I didn't report it to the Führer until two weeks later and very casually because I did not want the Führer to get so interested that he would order great efforts immediately to make

6555-493: The announcement of Hiroshima, the German scientists, though worried about the future, expressed confidence in their value to the Allies on the basis of their advanced knowledge of nuclear matters. The British then told the scientists that the BBC had announced the use of the atomic bomb after the attack on Hiroshima. Reactions from the Germans varied; Hahn expressed guilt for his role in the discovery of nuclear fission, while many others, including Heisenberg, expressed incredulity at

6670-519: The atomic bomb. Speer felt it was better that the whole thing should be dropped and the Führer also reacted that way." He said they presented the matter in this way for their personal safety as the probability (of success) was nearly zero, but if many thousands (of) people developed nothing, that could have "extremely disagreeable consequences for us." So we turned the slogan around to make use of warfare for physics not "make use of physics for warfare." Erhard Milch asked how long America would take and

6785-403: The available allocation could result in clever meanings and result in an aptronym or backronym , although policy was to select words that had no obviously deducible connection with what they were supposed to be concealing. Those for the major conference meetings had a partial naming sequence referring to devices or instruments which had a number as part of their meaning, e.g., the third meeting

6900-459: The bombing, Heisenberg had given a more formal lecture to his colleagues on the physics of the atomic bomb, which corrected many of his early mistakes and indicated a much smaller critical mass. Historians have cited Heisenberg's error as evidence of the degree to which his role in the project had been confined almost entirely to reactors, as the original equation is much more similar to how a reactor would work than to an atomic bomb. At Farm Hall,

7015-400: The chief scientific advisor to Operation Alsos, thought von Laue might be beneficial to the postwar rebuilding of Germany and would benefit from the high level contacts he would have in England. The ten scientists were secretly relocated and kept confined and incommunicado with the broader world in Farm Hall , a manor house in Godmanchester . The legal authority for this, the legal status of

SECTION 60

#1732776312592

7130-537: The codename for the Soviet operation, it is referred to by the historian Oleynikov as the Russian "Alsos" . Berlin had been a location of many German scientific research facilities. To limit casualties and loss of equipment, many of these facilities were dispersed to other locations in the later years of the war. Unfortunately for the Soviets, the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Physik (KWIP, Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics) had mostly been moved in 1943 and 1944 to Hechingen and its neighboring town of Haigerloch , on

7245-572: The critical mass for an atomic bomb which contained serious errors. The transcripts were declassified in 1992, and this particular section of discussion was subjected to expert scrutiny. Two scientists on the Manhattan Project, Edward Teller and Hans Bethe , concluded after reading the transcripts that Heisenberg had never done the calculation before. Heisenberg himself, in the transcript, said that, "quite honestly I have never worked it [the critical mass calculation for an atomic bomb] out as I never believed one could get pure [uranium-]235." A week after

7360-440: The different directors dominated the research and set their own research agendas. The dominant personnel, facilities, and areas of research were: The point in 1942 when the army relinquished control of the project was its zenith in terms of the number of personnel devoted to the effort, and this was no more than about seventy scientists, with about forty devoting more than half their time to nuclear fission research. After this

7475-499: The edge of the Black Forest , which eventually became the French occupation zone. This move allowed the Americans to take into custody a large number of German scientists associated with nuclear research. The only section of the institute which remained in Berlin was the low-temperature physics section, headed by Ludwig Bewilogua  [ de ] , who was in charge of the experimental uranium pile. American Alsos teams carrying out Operation BIG raced through Baden-Württemberg near

7590-466: The element barium after bombarding uranium with neutrons . Their article was published on 6 January 1939. On 19 December 1938, eighteen days before the publication, Otto Hahn communicated these results and his conclusion of a bursting of the uranium nucleus in a letter to his colleague and friend Lise Meitner , who had fled Germany in July to the Netherlands and then to Sweden. Meitner and her nephew Otto Robert Frisch confirmed Hahn's conclusion of

7705-426: The evidence gathered was sufficient to convince Goudsmit that there was no German Atomic Bomb under development. Despite this, many individuals, particularly in America, remained skeptical. The mission continued with a similar objective, primarily for intelligence purposes. Goudsmit hand-picked ten individuals who were apprehended, mostly in Hechingen, by a joint Anglo-American raiding party led by Colonel Boris Pash ,

7820-810: The fifth rocket seen at Tyura-Tam . When more information resulted in knowing a bit about what a missile was used for, it would be given a designation like "SS-6", for the sixth surface-to-surface missile design reported. Finally, when either an aircraft or a missile was able to be photographed with a hand-held camera, instead of a reconnaissance aircraft, it was given a name like " Flanker " or " Scud " – always an English word, as international pilots worldwide are required to learn English. The Soviet manufacturer or designation – which may be mistakenly inferred by NATO – has nothing to do with it. Jet-powered aircraft received two-syllable names like Foxbat , while propeller aircraft were designated with short names like Bull . Fighter names began with an "F", bombers with

7935-436: The first Uranverein , Nikolaus Riehl , the head of the scientific headquarters at Auergesellschaft (usually known as just "Auer"), a German industrial firm, read a June 1939 paper by Siegfried Flügge , on the technical use of nuclear energy from uranium. As Auer had a substantial amount of uranium on hand as a waste product from the process of extracting radium , Riehl recognized the possibility of uranium production as

8050-506: The governments concerned. In the British case names were administered and controlled by the Inter Services Security Board (ISSB) staffed by the War Office . This procedure was coordinated with the United States when it entered the war . Random lists of names were issued to users in alphabetical blocks of ten words and were selected as required. Words became available for re-use after six months and unused allocations could be reassigned at discretion and according to need. Judicious selection from

8165-403: The house be fitted with microphones to gauge the physicists' reactions to Allied progress with the dropping of the bomb. On July 6, the microphones picked up the following conversation between Werner Heisenberg and Kurt Diebner , both of whom had worked on the German nuclear project and had been seized as part of the Allied Alsos Mission, Diebner in Berlin and Heisenberg in Urfeld , All of

8280-705: The interpreters, Peter Ganz. A play titled Operation Epsilon by Alan Brody , based on the original transcripts, received its first reading as part of the Catalyst Collaborative at MIT (Boston) in 2008, followed by a workshop reading in New York in 2010, directed by Andy Sandberg and produced by Ellen Berman. Brody and Sandberg subsequently developed the play in a 2011 workshop at the Asolo Repertory Theatre (Sarasota, Florida). Prior to its world premiere production in early 2013 with

8395-592: The journalist Thomas Powers . With the interest of the Heereswaffenamt (HWA, Army Ordnance Office), Nikolaus Riehl , and his colleague Günter Wirths , set up an industrial-scale production of high-purity uranium oxide at the Auergesellschaft plant in Oranienburg . Adding to the capabilities in the final stages of metallic uranium production were the strengths of the Degussa corporation's capabilities in metals production. The Oranienburg plant provided

8510-895: The key military figure of ALSOS. Hechingen , located on the eastern edge of the Black Forest, was where the majority of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institut für Physik , including an incomplete nuclear reactor pile that had been moved after being bombed out in Berlin. R. V. Jones proposed that Farm Hall in England, owned by the Secret Service, would be suitable to accommodate the captured individuals. He also recommended installing microphones there before their arrival. This practice had become standard with high-ranking prisoners of war since it had been observed that their private conversations could be more revealing than formal interrogations. The scientists captured in Germany by

8625-422: The laboratory level" with the "modest goal" to "build a nuclear reactor which could sustain a nuclear fission chain reaction for a significant amount of time and to achieve the complete separation of at least tiny amounts of the uranium isotopes". The scholarly consensus is that it failed to achieve these goals, and that despite fears at the time, the Germans had never been close to producing nuclear weapons. With

8740-527: The nuclear physicist Fritz Houtermans , in 1940. Von Ardenne had also conducted research on isotope separation. Taking Ewald's suggestion he began building a prototype for the RPM. The work was hampered by war shortages and ultimately ended by the war. Aside from the Uranverein and von Ardenne's team in Berlin-Lichterfelde, there was also a small research team in the Henschel Flugzeugwerke :

8855-573: The nuclear weapon project, had more control over nuclear fission research than did Walther Bothe , Klaus Clusius , Otto Hahn, Paul Harteck , or Werner Heisenberg. Paul Peter Ewald , a member of the Uranverein , had proposed an electromagnetic isotope separator , which was thought applicable to U production and enrichment. This was picked up by Manfred von Ardenne , who ran a private research establishment. In 1928, von Ardenne had come into his inheritance with full control as to how it could be spent, and he established his private research laboratory

8970-404: The number diminished dramatically, and many of those not working with the main institutes stopped working on nuclear fission and devoted their efforts to more pressing war related work. On 4 June 1942, a conference regarding the project, initiated by Albert Speer as head of the " Reich Ministry for Armament and Ammunition " (RMBM: Reichsministerium für Bewaffnung und Munition ; after late 1943

9085-627: The number of scientists working on applied nuclear fission began to diminish as many researchers applied their talents to more pressing wartime demands. The most influential people in the Uranverein included Kurt Diebner , Abraham Esau , Walther Gerlach , and Erich Schumann . Schumann was one of the most powerful and influential physicists in Germany. Diebner, throughout the life of the nuclear weapon project, had more control over nuclear-fission research than did Walther Bothe , Klaus Clusius , Otto Hahn , Paul Harteck , or Werner Heisenberg . Esau

9200-689: The official name of the final product, a practice that was started in 2002 with Mac OS X v10.2 "Jaguar". Google and the AOSP also used this for their Android operating system until 2013, where the code name was different from the release name. German nuclear weapons program Nazi Germany undertook several research programs relating to nuclear technology , including nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors , before and during World War II . These were variously called Uranverein ( Uranium Society ) or Uranprojekt ( Uranium Project ). The first effort started in April 1939, just months after

9315-579: The one before it, referred to itself informally as a Uranverein . A second meeting was held soon thereafter and included Klaus Clusius , Robert Döpel , Werner Heisenberg , and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker . Also at this time, the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut für Physik (KWIP, Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics, after World War II the Max Planck Institute for Physics ), in Berlin-Dahlem , was placed under HWA authority, with Diebner as

9430-507: The part of the agency supporting an operation. In many cases with the United States, the first word of the name has to do with the intent of the program. Programs with "have" as the first word, such as Have Blue for the stealth fighter development, are developmental programs, not meant to produce a production aircraft. Programs that start with Senior, such as Senior Trend for the F-117, are for aircraft in testing meant to enter production. In

9545-487: The physical chemistry department at the University of Hamburg and an advisor to the Heereswaffenamt (HWA, Army Ordnance Office), and his teaching assistant Wilhelm Groth wrote a letter on 24 April 1939 to Army Ordnance which also mentioned the military application of nuclear chain reactions. Harteck would not receive a reply until August 1939, however, as part of the second Uranverein . Also independently of

9660-469: The policies which drove Jewish scientists out of Germany were a mistake, as the Reich needed their expertise. Abraham Esau was appointed on 8 December 1942 as Hermann Göring's Bevollmächtigter (plenipotentiary) for nuclear physics research under the RFR; in December 1943, Esau was replaced by Walther Gerlach . In the final analysis, placing the RFR under Göring's administrative control had little effect on

9775-455: The prisoners, and the ultimate intentions of the British were unclear to all involved, to the great discomfort of the scientists. The manor house was wired with covert listening devices , and conversations between the German scientists were monitored and translated into English. It is unclear whether the scientists were aware, or whether they suspected, that they were being monitored. Prior to

9890-536: The project was subsequently passed to the RFR in July 1942. The nuclear weapon project thereafter maintained its kriegswichtig (war importance) designation, and funding continued from the military, but it was then split into the areas of uranium and heavy water production, uranium isotope separation, and the Uranmaschine (uranium machine, i.e., nuclear reactor). It was in effect broken up between institutes where

10005-419: The ranks of researchers. The politicization of the universities, along with German armed forces demands for more manpower (many scientists and technical personnel were conscripted, despite possessing technical and engineering skills), substantially reduced the number of able German physicists. Developments took place in several phases, but in the words of historian Mark Walker, it ultimately became "frozen at

10120-483: The remaining 1200 metric tons of uranium stock for the production of solid-core ammunition. Over time, the HWA and then the RFR controlled the German nuclear weapon project. The most influential people were Kurt Diebner , Abraham Esau , Walther Gerlach , and Erich Schumann . Schumann was one of the most powerful and influential physicists in Germany. He was director of the Physics Department II at

10235-406: The report ("I don’t believe a word of the whole thing"). Later that evening, the scientists were allowed to listen to a longer BBC announcement, which invited further debate. Throughout all of this, Heisenberg made arguments that it would take very large amounts of enriched uranium ("about a ton") to make such a weapon. In justifying his reasoning, he gave a brief explanation of how one would calculate

10350-523: The scientists expressed shock when informed of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Some first doubted that the report was genuine. They were told initially of an official announcement that an "atomic bomb" had been dropped on Hiroshima, with no mention of uranium or nuclear fission. Harteck said that he would have understood the words "uranium" or "nuclear (fission) bomb", but he had worked with atomic hydrogen and atomic oxygen and thought that American scientists might have succeeded in stabilising

10465-650: The scientists indicated that they were happy that they had not been able to build a nuclear bomb for Adolf Hitler , while others more sympathetic to the Nazi party (Diebner and Gerlach) were dismayed at having failed. Otto Hahn, one of those who were grateful that Germany had not built a bomb, chided those who had worked on the German project, saying "If the Americans have a uranium bomb then you're all second-raters." All were physicists except for Hahn and Harteck, who were chemists, and all except Max von Laue had participated in

10580-452: The selection. And further, there is a distinction between the secret names during former wars and the published names of recent ones. A project code name is a code name (usually a single word, short phrase or acronym) which is given to a project being developed by industry , academia , government, and other concerns. Project code names are typically used for several reasons: Different organizations have different policies regarding

10695-568: The site with the Soviets and said that the facility was mostly destroyed. Riehl also recalled long after the war that the Soviets knew precisely why the Americans had bombed the facility—the attack had been directed at them rather than the Germans. From 1941 to 1947, Fritz Bopp was a staff scientist at the KWIP, and worked with the Uranverein . In 1944, he went with most of the KWIP staff when they were evacuated to Hechingen in Southern Germany due to air raids on Berlin, and became

10810-590: The study group under the direction of Prof. Dr. Ing. Herbert Wagner (1900–1982) searched for alternative sources of energy for airplanes and became interested in nuclear energy in 1940. In August 1941, they finished a detailed internal survey of the history and potential of technical nuclear physics and its applications ( Übersicht und Darstellung der historischen Entwicklung der modernen technischen Kernphysik und deren Anwendungsmöglichkeit sowie Zusammenfassung eigener Arbeitsziele und Pläne , signed by Herbert Wagner and Hugo Watzlawek (1912–1995) in Berlin. Their application to

10925-546: The transcripts were declassified and published. On 24 February 1992 the BBC broadcast a Horizon drama-documentary entitled Hitler's Bomb based on the events at Farm Hall and examining the reasons for the failure of the German nuclear weapons program. The documentary was produced by David Sington with dramatic reconstructions written by Nick Perry . The events at Farm Hall were dramatised on BBC Radio 4 on 15 June 2010, in "Nuclear Reactions", written by Adam Ganz, son of one of

11040-649: The uninitiated. For example, the British counter measures against the V-2 was called Operation Crossbow . The atomic bomb project centered in New Mexico was called the Manhattan Project , derived from the Manhattan Engineer District which managed the program. The code name for the American A-12 / SR-71 spy plane project, producing the fastest, highest-flying aircraft in the world,

11155-728: The uranium sheets and cubes for the Uranmaschine experiments conducted at the KWIP and the Versuchsstelle (testing station) of the Heereswaffenamt (Army Ordnance Office) in Gottow. The G-1 experiment performed at the HWA testing station, under the direction of Kurt Diebner , had lattices of 6,800 uranium oxide cubes (about 25 tons), in the nuclear moderator paraffin. Work of the American Operation Alsos teams, in November 1944, uncovered leads which took them to

11270-438: The use and publication of project code names. Some companies take great pains to never discuss or disclose project code names outside of the company (other than with outside entities who have a need to know, and typically are bound with a non-disclosure agreement ). Other companies never use them in official or formal communications, but widely disseminate project code names through informal channels (often in an attempt to create

11385-478: The war in Europe ending in the spring of 1945, various Allied powers competed with each other to obtain surviving components of the German nuclear industry (personnel, facilities, and materiel ), as they did with the pioneering V-2 SRBM program. In December 1938, German chemist Otto Hahn and his assistant Fritz Strassmann sent a manuscript to the German science journal Naturwissenschaften ("Natural Sciences") reporting that they had detected and identified

11500-485: The war's end in 1945, uncovering, collecting, and selectively destroying Uranverein elements, including capturing a prototype reactor at Haigerloch and records, heavy water, and uranium ingots at Tailfingen . These were all shipped to the US for study and utilization in the US atomic program. Although many of these materials remain unaccounted for, the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History displayed

11615-414: Was to make all preparations to be able to answer beyond doubt the question of whether generating nuclear energy was feasible. It would certainly be very nice if it were possible to acquire a new source of energy, it would also very probably have military importance; a negative answer would be just as important, since we could be sure that the enemy would also not be able to make use of it. This group, like

11730-405: Was Operation Paperclip , a broad dragnet that encompassed a wide range of advanced fields, including jet and rocket propulsion, nuclear physics, and other developments with military applications such as infrared technology. Operations directed specifically towards German nuclear fission were Operation Alsos and Operation Epsilon , the latter being done in collaboration with the British. In lieu of

11845-612: Was Oxcart . The American group that planned that country's first ICBM was called the Teapot Committee . Although the word could stand for a menace to shipping (in this case, that of Japan), the American code name for the attack on the subtropical island of Okinawa in World War II was Operation Iceberg . The Soviet Union's project to base missiles in Cuba was named Operation Anadyr after their closest bomber base to

11960-555: Was "TRIDENT". Joseph Stalin , whose last name means "man of steel", was given the name "GLYPTIC", meaning "an image carved out of stone". Ewen Montagu , a British Naval intelligence officer, discloses in Beyond Top Secret Ultra that during World War II , Nazi Germany habitually used ad hoc code names as nicknames which often openly revealed or strongly hinted at their content or function. Some German code names: Conversely, Operation Wacht am Rhein (Watch on

12075-573: Was a driving force of their efforts. This typically meant getting to these resources first, which to some extent put the Soviets at a disadvantage in some geographic locations easily reached by the Western Allies, even if the area was allotted to the Soviet zone of occupation at the Potsdam Conference . At times, all parties were heavy-handed in their pursuit and denial to others. The best known US denial and exploitation effort

12190-414: Was already apparent among German science and military elites that the German nuclear weapon project would not make a decisive contribution to ending the German war effort in the near term, and control of the project was relinquished by the Heereswaffenamt (HWA, Army Ordnance Office) to the Reichsforschungsrat (RFR, Reich Research Council) in July 1942. As to condition four, the high priority allocated to

12305-497: Was appointed as Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring 's plenipotentiary for nuclear-physics research in December 1942, and was succeeded by Walther Gerlach after he resigned in December 1943. Politicization of German academia under the Nazi régime of 1933–1945 had driven many physicists, engineers, and mathematicians out of Germany as early as 1933. Those of Jewish heritage who did not leave were quickly purged, further thinning

12420-623: Was invited, but he did not attend. After this, informal work began at the Georg-August University of Göttingen by Joos, Hanle, and their colleague Reinhold Mannkopff . Formally the group of physicists was known as the Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Kernphysik (Nuclear Physics Association). This initial work at Göttingen lasted until the fall of 1939, when Joos and Hanle were drafted into other military research. Independently of this effort, Paul Harteck , director of

12535-511: Was necessary as the RFR under Bernhard Rust the Minister of Science, Education and National Culture was ineffective and was not achieving its purpose. The hope was that Göring would manage the RFR with the same discipline and efficiency as he had the aviation sector. A meeting was held on 6 July 1942 to discuss the function of the RFR and set its agenda. The meeting was a turning point in Nazi attitudes towards science, as well as recognition that

12650-572: Was not considered, because the neutron absorption coefficient value for carbon calculated by Walther Bothe was too high, probably due to the boron in the graphite pieces having high neutron absorption. Near the end of World War II, the principal Allied war powers each made plans for exploitation of German science. In light of the implications of nuclear weapons, German nuclear fission and related technologies were singled out for special attention. In addition to exploitation, denial of these technologies, their personnel, and related materials to rival allies

12765-419: Was recorded, transcribed and translated. The recordings were made with six to eight machines on shellac -coated metal discs. After the selective transcriptions had been made, the discs and recordings were destroyed. The transcripts were sent as reports to London and the American consulate, and were then forwarded to General Leslie Groves of the Manhattan Project in 24 reports, over 250 pages. In February 1992

12880-544: Was shocked when he asked for a glass of water and was told by the guard to "look for an empty can in the trash barrel". Harteck joked with the British officer when he saw the plane taking them to England that if an "accident" was planned they would have used an older plane. Farm Hall, a country house in Godmanchester , Huntingdonshire (now in Cambridgeshire ), had been used by M.I.6 and S.O.E for agents who were to be flown into occupied Europe from RAF Tempsford but

12995-709: Was through a prisoner of war camp in Krasnogorsk , as was that of his colleagues Hans-Joachim Born and Alexander Catsch from the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut für Hirnforschung (KWIH, Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research , today the Max-Planck-Institut für Hirnforschung ), who worked there for N. V. Timofeev-Resovskij , director of the Abteilung für Experimentelle Genetik (Department of Experimental Genetics). All four eventually worked for Riehl in

13110-518: Was told 1944 though the group between ourselves thought it would take longer, three or four years. When it was apparent that the nuclear weapon project would not make a decisive contribution to ending the war in the near term, control of the KWIP was returned in January 1942 to its umbrella organization, the Kaiser-Wilhelm Gesellschaft (KWG, Kaiser Wilhelm Society, after World War II the Max-Planck Gesellschaft ). HWA control of

13225-454: Was vacant. R V Jones suggested to Stewart Menzies that German nuclear physicists then held in France at an American internment camp known as "Dustbin" (partly because he was told that an American general had said that the best way of dealing with the post-war nuclear physics problem in Germany was to shoot all their nuclear physicists ). He also recommended to Menzies, the head of M.I.6, that

#591408