Germany and the atomic bomb - Lessons to Learn

Germany and the Atomic Bomb - Lessons to Learn I have just finished reading Heisenberg’s War by Thomas Powers . I have had this book on my book shelves for quite a while. Although I am interested in Heisenberg as a physicist, I was wary of his idealistic philosophy, so I left the book unread. It was only when I read one of the many articles that come to my email address, from a source in the USA claiming that the failure of Germany to produce an Atomic Bomb was due to the fact that Heisenberg made a simple mistake in estimating the quantity of Uranium that would be needed to make a bomb.The thought that Heisenberg, recognised by everyone who had any knowledge of the subject as one of the leading, if not the leading, authority on this subject, should make such a simple error is not plausible. So I turned to this book to gain further insight into the matter. My efforts were rewarded. The book provides a detailed account and analysis of events.back in Germany and in the United State, interweaving these actions into a compelling account which reveals a great deal about the structure of society, the way it is organised, and the immense change that has come about. It tells us much about the nature of the modern world. But to understand what these changes are and why they are so important we have to go back at least 150/200 years. I am not sufficient of a historian to be precise, but I want to refer to a period before the rise of Hitler in Germany. This event, the rise of Hitler is, I believe, the watershed. In the (undefined) period I am talking about, Germany was pre-eminent in culture generally, and in particular for our concerns, in scientific knowledge. This does not mean that all scientists, physicists and chemists, were German or lived in Germany. There was a whole ‘family’ of physicists and chemists, who worked together, corresponded, attended lectures and seminars, visited and studied at each others institutes. Science, particularly Physics and Chemistry, was open, with free debate and discussion. Many major advances of knowledge took place within this atmosphere of freedom. I use the term ‘family’ because that is the feel you get when you read about these scientists and their work. They visited each others families, they were friends who trusted and admired each other. Young scientists were eager to meet them and learn from them. The older scientists were keen to see younger scientists grow and develop in their studies and knowledge, to gain promotion within the various institutes. I use the term ‘familiy’ because, as with all families, there were discussions, disagreements, debates. One of the most famous debates of modern scientific times took place between Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein over the question of Quantum Theory. Amongst this ‘family of scientists’ were people such as Bohr, Einstein, Summerfeld, Heisenberg, Max Planck, Enrico Fermi,Lise Meitner, Otto Hahn, Max Born, and many others. Göttingen, Leipzig, Berlin-Dahlem in Germany; Bohr in Copenhagen, Fermi in Italy, housed leading institutes as did Princeton in the USA, Cambridge, Oxford and Manchester in Britain. It encompassed the whole of the Western World. And then came Hitler.His hatred of the Jews had many devastating effects, the impact of which is too great to underestimate or ignore. It led to atrocities that can never be forgotten or forgiven. One way in which it affected German Science was that the Nazi approach to science rejected what it considered as ‘Jewish Science’ , the Relativity of Albert Einstein and the Quantum Theory of Niels Bohr. Those scientists who defended such concepts were highly suspect and in some danger as the purge on Jewish Scientists began.Jewish scientists were removed from their posts and were unable to continue their work. Many of them left, others were eventually helped to escape. A major effort was made to find employment for them outside of Germany. Those Jewish scientists, and in particular their families, who were unable to leave were in grave danger and along with millions of other Jews perished in the concentration camps. This is the background to the situation in Germany leading up to the Second World War. It is the background in which we have to asses the events and actions of individual over the following years. Many scientists, Jewish and Non Jewish left Germany and went to work in the United States and Britain. Some may have gone to Russia, if so, I know nothing. There was a period on which scientists could move freely. As opportunities arose, the friends of Heisenberg tried extremely hard to persuade him to leave Germany. They could not understand why he should wish to stay in Germany. For them, for Heisenberg to do so was for Heisenberg to use his immense scientific ability in the service and support of Hitler. This was beyond belief for them and it stretched the bounds of friendship, in many cases to breaking. We have however, to look at Heisenberg also from a different perspective. As a physicist he was central to the development of what the Nazis described as ‘Jewish Science’. He made a major contribution to quantum mechanics based on matrices and introduced the Uncertainty Principle. A principle that has major consequences for the whole of Physics and Science generally. As.a person he was self confident, but not domineering. He had a great many scientific friends. It was this level of friendship which led to them feeling a sense of shock and betrayal when Heusenberg decided to stay in Germany. As a supporter of ‘Jewish Science’ he was suspect and vulnerable. But pragmatism led the Nazi Authorities eventually to follow the science that worked but tried to hide the link with Jewishness. So in a sense Heisenberg led a charmed life The Authorities knew of his pre-eminence and so left him free to do his work. There is another aspect of Heisenberg that we have to take into account. As I noted earlier, he was an idealist philosopher. He was fully immersed in the culture of Old Germany. The spirit of openness and freedom, of discussion and debate. Everything that, to his mind, had been good in the Germany of Old. This may be overstating a general perception but I believe there is an element of truth in it. As Marx noted, Being determines Consciousness, and we have to accept that a man whose life had been spent in developing the inner most secrets of the atom and the mathematical aspects of those secrets could well, subconsciously, develop idealist concepts in accord with the prevailing ideas. These had developed prior to Hitler and, in Heisenberg’s view, the ideas that Hitler promoted were in contrast to these older concepts. How much of this is relevant to the views that Heisenberg had we shall never know. Nothing in this book referred to these ideas. What we do know is what Beisenberg said and did. The reason he gave for remaining in Germany was that he considered that Hitler’s regime could not last. It would be refined or defeated. Heisenberg’s concern was with Germany, and his concept of Germany. He wished for a return to the Old Germany. He saw his role as defending German Science ( his view of German Science) and as supporting German scientists, so that with the fall of Hitler German Science and its Institutions could be rebuilt. It is clear that to be able to fulfil this mission, compromises would be needed. Privately, to those whom he trusted, he could be more open and explicit; in public he had to be very circumspect. What he failed to do was to do in private sufficient to completely convince his friends that he was fully opposed to a German victory. Maybe he hoped that Germany would not be completely defeated. We are not able to fully put ourselves into the minds of other, there is always room for doubt. The particularly Important message he had to convey was in regard to the atomic bomb. The view that those physicists who remained in Germany held was that so long as there was doubt about the possibility of it being able to produce an atomic bomb, the scientists were in control. At the moment when the scientists expressed the view that it was possible to make a bomb, the scientists would lose control to the p9liticiams. In the case of Germany, to the Nazis. It was this position that Heisenberg took to Neils Bohr and that was promoted in other ways by Heisenberg and other Scientists. The argument was that if all scientists stated that an atomic bomb was not possible, then ther3 would be no bomb. With regard to the Nazis, as expressed at a meeting with Albert Speer, a leading, influential Nazi, the view stated was that though a bomb might be possible it would take a great deal of effort, at tremendous cost, and would take longer than the war was expected to last. In other words, there was no possibility of a bomb, but that what was possible was to develop the possibility of using uranium as a source of fuel so that scientists should engage in reactor research. It was in this respect that the mutual trust that had existed, pre Hitler, broke down. When Heisenberg approached Bohr with his proposal that all scientists should follow the lead of the German Scientists and deny the possibility of producing an atomic bomb, Bohr distrusted Heisenberg’s motives. He did not believe that Heisenberg believed what he was saying and considered that what Heisenberg was seeking was to stop the United States from developing the atomic bomb in order that Germany should have the monopoly of the bomb. In the United States and to a lesser extent in Britain, those scientists who had escaped from Germany were extremely fearful of a German bomb. They recognised the pre-eminence of Heisenberg as the leading authority on nuclear fission. If anyone could produce a bomb it was Heisenberg. Therefore these scientists used every means possible to persuade the USA and Britain to produce the bomb. Eventually their efforts paid off. An immense programme was under way in the USA, the Manhattan Project to build a bomb. They were eventually successful. But, as the German Scientists had foreseen, once the possibility of a bomb was known, the politicians would take controll and the scientists would have no say. This was proved by history. Not only did the US put a great deal of money and effort into making a bomb, they also put a great deal of effort into finding out exactly what the Germans were up to in this respect. Although the book is entitled ‘Heisenberg’s War’ the major part of what is a long book, is not concerned with Heisenberg but with the efforts of the United States Secret Service. At one level this operated within the Manhattan Project itself. Extremely tight security was imposed. There were certain words that were not allowed to bespoken or written. No hint of the programme must escape out of the actual programme. Security Officers were employed to enforce this security. The major effort of the Security Services was devoted to finding out what the Germans were up to. This was difficult and relied to a great deal on people who had some contact with scientists in Germany. Such things as the transport of Uranium; the process of producing heavy water which was taking place in one place in one particular location; the places where the important scientists were working; the location of their Institutes; any thing related to any possibility of atomic bomb development. There were also detailed plans proposed for the kidnapping of certain German Scientists, in particular Heisenberg. At one stage plans were well developed to either kidnap or to kill him. A United States operative even met up with Heisenberg in Zurich, with a gun in his pocket, with instructions to shoot him if he gave any indication that he was working on the atomic bomb. In the event, Heisenberg lectured on S-Matrices, connected with Quantum Theory (String Theory was a future developments from S-matrices) and this convinced the operative that he need not go ahead with his commission. This incident had a psychological effect on the operative in later life. There was another aspect of the security campaign This was to destroy any Facility that could form part of the atomic bomb programme. A key area was a Heavy Water Plant at Rjukan in Norway. A British sabotage attempt had only held up production for a short period and the plant was eventually destroyed by US bombing. Earlier suggestions of bombing the plant had been rejected because of the danger of civilian casualties. A key target were the German Scientific Institutes. Max Planck was away when the British Royal Air Force’s bombing of Grunwald led to the destruction of all of his scientific papers, diaries and letters. Otto Hahn was also away when his Institut fur Chemie in Berlin-Dahlem was destroyed. He also lost his scientific papers including correspondence with Ernest Rutherford. A major effort was made to try to save the library at the Institute. The nearby Institute, Kaiser Wilhem Gesellschaft, of Heisenberg, was not damaged. It may seem a bit heartless to talk about lost scientific papers when so many civilians were killed in bombing raids. But I am very aware of the importance to me (not to anyone else) of my papers, so I can feel for those scientists who suffered the loss of much of their life’s work. However, the efffect of bombing on civilian populations is indeed of greater concern. Cities such as Hamburg, Leipzig, and Dresden were all destroyed by British and United States of America bombing. But also destroyed were large parts of London, Coventry suffered very badly, and Sheffield showed the signs of war well after the end of the war. Guernica was an earlier example during the Soanish Civil War. This is what war means. There is great deal of comment about the wickedness of the Russians in their war against Ukraine, but the approach taken is very narrow. There is no real effort to seek a solution, no attempt at understanding of the Russian position as NATO encroached ever nearer. There is no thought given to the destruction of Iraq, nor of the attempted encirclement of China. Economic warfare is being carried out through sanctions affecting populations in many countries including Iran, Afghanistan, and Russia. I believe we have to keep an open mind about all of these events and question the cause and seek a solution. War is something that we must oppose but we need to look beyond a pacifist isolationism and seek a world order that has no place for war. This may seem a digression but it is one of the questions that the book brings to my mind. The result of all the efforts made by the US Security (spying) operations led only to the same conclusion that had been expressed by the German scientists. There was no German atomic bomb programme. Perhaps the gravest indictment that comes from the end of this war is the fact that the reason that those scientists in the United States who fought, first to persuade the Authorities to provide the resources to build a bomb, and then worked hard to overcome all the problems that were in the way of that production, to finally produce the atomic bomb, the reason they gave was their fear that Germany would inevitably produce the bomb. The United States had to get there first. The United States did get there first. But there was no German bomb. They were not even trying. The scientists were afraid that Hitler would triumph through the use of the atomic bomb. In their different ways the scientists who went to Britain and the United States, and those who stayed in Germany, were afraid that Hitler would get the bomb and acted to deal with that situation. But the German Scientists in Germany were correct in one respect. Once the politicians knew a bomb was possible, scientists would lose control. This is what happened. The threat from Germany was over, they did not have the bomb, and were defeated. But the politicians, supported to some extent by the scientists saw a new threat. Ever since the Russian Revolution took out Russia as an ally (of sorts) of the Western Nations, those Western Nations had sought to undermine Russia. They were successful, up to a point, in that they helped to destroy the early hopes of a new form of, communist, society. That dream finally faded with the advent of Stalinist power. But still the opposition West/Russia prevailed. The leading politicians of the West feared Russia would get the bomb, they felt a need to demonstrate their power. This they did, not against a defeated Germany, but against the all but defeated Japanese. The atomic bombs on Hiroshima (I believe Uranium 235) and Nagasaki (I believe Plutonium) demonstrated that power. It has to be said that these events brought the war to an end, but the war was already almost over. A claim that cannot be proved because the bombs overcame developments. But it is hard, I believe, to justify the use of such a powerful weapon when the end was in sight. There has never been any suggestion that Japan had ever thought in terms of nuclear power. The argument that the bomb had to be used in order to convince people of its awful power does not hold water to my mind. But the story does not end there. Heisenberg’s hope that Germany’s Science would be restored did come to pass, but I am not sure it was in the way that he expected. There was one last effort by the United States and the British Security Services to determine the truth about the German effort to build a bomb. Ten German scientists, Otto Hahn, Erich Bragge, Walther Gerlach, Karl Wirtz, Max Von Laue, Kurt Diebner, Paul Hartock, Werner Heisenberg, Horst Korsching, Carl Friedrich Weisacker, were kept in a secure location and given complete freedom to talk for six months. Every room was bugged so that the security services could here what they had to say. It was here that they heard news of the bombs exploded over Japan. Otto Hahn was particularly badly affected by this news because it was he who had initially discovered radio activity; a discovery that led directly to the atomic bomb. He was to receive the Nobel Prize for this discovery.His concerns over this discovery and the possibilities that flowed from it had, some years earlier, led him to contemplate suicide. His friends and comrades now felt grave concern for him. During their period of isolation they talked much about their experiences. Once the bomb had been demonstrated, Heisenberg gave lectures on how the bomb worked. Although scientists outside, led by Samual Goudsmith, argued that the knowledge for these lectures came only after hearing about the bomb, it was clear from the speed with which Heisenberg mastered the facts that he must have known these facts much earlier. The question of the quantity of Uranium235 needed was discussed by Heisenberg and Hahn and they did begin with a large amount but debated it at length. Heisenberg stated that he had never worked it out in detail because he did not believe they could get pure Uranium235. He did at one point mention the idea of enclosing the uranium in a heaving layer (lead or preferable Uranium) which would reflect the neutrons back into the mass (an advanced theoretical concept). The question under consideration was the mean free path of the neutrons (how far they would travel before a collision). It was clear that had he wanted to do so Heisenberg could have produced a bomb. But the information he gave to Speer was also correct. It would have required a massive effort in terms of cost, time, money and manpower. This was shown by the effort required by the United States. As a further note of caution, Heisenberg also believed that possession of the bomb gave the United States an advantage over the Russians. Post war rivalry continued, but not now between the West and Germany but between the West and Stalinist Russia, The concern was over the Hydrogen bomb with which many scientists in the West did not want to be involved. But others, including Edward Teller argued strongly and successfully for. The argument used was that the United States had to have the hydrogen bomb before Russia. A much more recent argument arose following a Report from all the major group of people concerned with the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The Report contained a combined warning of the dangers of AI and argued that action should be taken in this respect. The response came that the West could do nothing to hinder development because such development would be pursued in Russia and China. The new age of division and absence of any semblance of cooperation that came with Hitler has long outlived the Nazis. It is now the dominant basis of international politics. The future of humanity is now a distant second to the preservation of the economic structures of the great, and not so great, powers. This is the important consideration we have to keep in mind. The idealism that many scientists felt, including Bohr and Heisenberg, must be surpassed. What is needed is a revolution in our thinking and in our way of life which changes the economic structure but also the way in which we all relate to each other. Trust and compassion are overriding instincts but can on,y be developed in a society which is based upon the self fulfilment of all individuals. That is the true meaning of communism that has largely been lost. SCRIBAR. 13.6.23