16 Nazi Mysteries Uncovered and Answered

16. Were the Nazis close to developing an atomic bomb?

Though German physicists and scientists were pioneers in the field of nuclear fission and developing atomic weapons, they quickly fell behind the Americans. One of the reasons for their failure to complete an atomic bomb – which would have proved regrettable for the Allies, especially the British and the Russians – was that it was decided early in the war that a weapon would not be available for many years. The Germans continued to work on both nuclear power and weapons, but they never developed the coordinated national effort symbolized by America’s Manhattan Project. An assessment of German progress conducted after the war indicated that the German’s were about as far along as the Americans had been in January, 1942, and the lack of a dedicated national program placed them more than a decade from producing a weapon.

From 1942 onward the German effort was in the hands of civilian authorities, rather than the Wehrmacht, and the project grew smaller with each year, though the funding for the effort remained steady. German scientists, physicists, and engineers turned towards projects which could have an immediate impact on the war, rather than the atomic bomb which was still considered by many to be entirely theoretical. When the war ended the allies competed with each other to obtain the services of leading German scientists and other experts in technology, at the same time claiming the results of their efforts, such as von Braun and other leaders of the rocketry program. The United States also claimed the German stockpile of uranium and transferred it to the Manhattan Project, through which America was far ahead of the German effort to produce an atomic bomb.