22. The Third Reich’s Atom Bomb
A commonly accepted WWII narrative has it that the race to the atom bomb was a close run one between America and Germany. Supposedly, German physicists were about to give Hitler an atomic bomb, and would have done so if the war had lasted just a little bit longer. It is true that throughout the war, American and British scientists assumed that Hitler had an advanced nuclear program that might bear fruit at any time. They thus figured that they were in a race against Germany over who would first produce nuclear weapons.
In reality, the Third Reich never came close to cracking the secrets of the atom. It was discovered after the war that Germany’s nuclear program was nowhere near as advanced as had been assumed: early in their research, German physicists took a wrong turn and followed it away from the path that leads to nuclear weapons. Given that context, WWII could have lasted another decade, and Germany would have been no closer to having an atomic bomb in 1955 than it was in 1945.