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Conversations among German Nuclear Physicists at Farm Hall (1945) [pdf]

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Re: Conversations among German Nuclear Physicists at Farm Hall (1945) [pdf]

#31

Post by deogeo »

skadamou wrote: post #26
porpoisely wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't debatable because we know hiroshima and nagasaki had no bearing on the japanese decision to surrender. If the nukes were the cause of japan's surrender, hiroshima would have been enough and nagasaki wouldn't have happened. Also, there is no ambiguity to the morality of hiroshima or nagasaki. No more than there is any ambiguity to the morality of nazi death camps. They were both racially driven war crimes and…

>...we know hiroshima and nagasaki had no bearing on the japanese decision to surrender. I think this is an interesting idea but I would love to see a source on this. When I took a Japan at War class in college our professor seemed to be of the opinion that using the atom bomb was what finally convinced the Japanese to surrender unconditionally but that they would have agreed to a conditional surrender as long as the…

avn2109 gave some sources in another comment - let me add one more: https://mises.org/wire/atomic-bombing-japan-reconsidered

Re: Conversations among German Nuclear Physicists at Farm Hall (1945) [pdf]

#32

Post by lqet »

remon wrote: post #9

Such an amazing read. What positively surprised me, but perhaps shouldn't have, is that they seem almost relieved they didn't get there first. It's reassuring in a way I have trouble verbalising.

If you happen to be in the Stuttgart / Tübingen area of Germany, you should visit the experimental reactor in Haigerloch, now a museum [1]. You really get the impression that the team around Heisenberg was trying to build a reactor to generate energy, but you have to be careful: I am not sure that if they would've gotten to a state where a bomb was also feasible, they would've been openly (or even secretly) against building it. This quote by Heisenberg makes it seem like he thought about this quite a bit during his time at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut, and maybe came to a personal conclusion:

HEISENBERG: One can't say that. One could equally well say "That's the quickest way of ending the war.”

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forschungsreaktor_Haigerloch

Re: Conversations among German Nuclear Physicists at Farm Hall (1945) [pdf]

#33

Post by dash2 »

olaf wrote: post #28
mgoetzke wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Richard von Weizsäcker (President of Germany) was fabulous. Every interview worth reading, every word well chosen. Nobody since has lived up to that high standard yet in my opinion.

No coin without flipside: "... Er war - für die Bundesrepublik in dieser Form bis heute einmalig - der intellektuelle Gegenentwurf zum Kanzler, und er hat diese Rolle auch gerne angenommen. Im privaten Leben war er zwar oft unbeherrscht, hochfahrend und anmaßend. Untergebene schurigelte er zuweilen aus nichtigem Anlass. Doch seine öffentlichen Auftritte inszenierte Weizsäcker untadelig. ..." Source [german]: http://w…

Translation: "He was - uniquely to this day for the Federal Republic - the intellectual counterbalance to the Chancellor [Kohl?], and happily played this role. In private life, he was often uncontrolled, arrogant and overbearing. He sometimes bullied his staff for trivial reasons. But Weizsäcker played his public appearances flawlessly."

Re: Conversations among German Nuclear Physicists at Farm Hall (1945) [pdf]

#35

Post by newsgremlin »

>HEISENBERG: I am still convinced that our objective was really the right one and that the fact that we concentrated on uranium may give us the chance of collaboration. I believe this uranium business will give the Anglo–Saxons such tremendous power that EUROPE will become a bloc under Anglo–Saxon domination. If that is the case it will be a very good thing. I wonder whether STALIN will be able to stand up to the others as he has done in the past.

Another timeline that most can be glad we didn't go down. America would be even more dominant over the western world. Russia even more on edge.

Re: Conversations among German Nuclear Physicists at Farm Hall (1945) [pdf]

#36

Post by iguy »

erentz wrote: post #25

Plugged it in a previous thread but will plug it as relevant again, since I see debate in this thread about Japanese surrender and wheather the Germans were really developing the bomb. Have a read of Doomsday Machine by Daniel Ellsberg, he was involved and saw a lot of the nuclear planning during the Cold War. It’s pretty clear from his retelling that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were not essential to end the war…

An under-emphasised point: If defeating Japanese fascism was a valid war aim, then the bomb was a really efficient weapon. Even if mining the harbors was much cheaper & had more military effect. The lesson from Versailles is that surrender wasn't enough to defeat German militarism, just a few years later they could spin stories about the army being stabbed in the back... but such stories didn't sell so well in 1950, 1960, with Soviet & US tanks facing each other in Berlin. The US ability to fly over in 1 plane, 1 bomb, 1 city was another really hard-to-deny reality.

And: It's not clear that "no first use" policies are anything more than PR tools. IIRC it emerged that not one of the USSR war plans for Germany was nuclear-free.

Re: Conversations among German Nuclear Physicists at Farm Hall (1945) [pdf]

#37

Post by lqet »

newsgremlin wrote: post #35

>HEISENBERG: I am still convinced that our objective was really the right one and that the fact that we concentrated on uranium may give us the chance of collaboration. I believe this uranium business will give the Anglo–Saxons such tremendous power that EUROPE will become a bloc under Anglo–Saxon domination. If that is the case it will be a very good thing. I wonder whether STALIN will be able to stand up to the oth…

Not sure if you are being sarcastic - but isn't he in 1945 correctly predicting the development of the western world over the next 30-40 years, in which the US were clearly the dominating NATO power? I don't think Heisenberg meant that the US will threaten European nations with annihilation.

Re: Conversations among German Nuclear Physicists at Farm Hall (1945) [pdf]

#38

Post by jpfr »

skadamou wrote: post #26
porpoisely wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't debatable because we know hiroshima and nagasaki had no bearing on the japanese decision to surrender. If the nukes were the cause of japan's surrender, hiroshima would have been enough and nagasaki wouldn't have happened. Also, there is no ambiguity to the morality of hiroshima or nagasaki. No more than there is any ambiguity to the morality of nazi death camps. They were both racially driven war crimes and…

>...we know hiroshima and nagasaki had no bearing on the japanese decision to surrender. I think this is an interesting idea but I would love to see a source on this. When I took a Japan at War class in college our professor seemed to be of the opinion that using the atom bomb was what finally convinced the Japanese to surrender unconditionally but that they would have agreed to a conditional surrender as long as the…

That is the justification for the bomb for the American public.

Many Japanese cities (sixty-ish) were destroyed by traditional firebombing. For the Japanese, Hiroshima and Nagasaki simply meant "two more cities".

Two days after Hiroshima, Russia declared war against Japan. So their strategic position in the war became hopeless. Historians believe Russia entering the war shaped the surrender much more than the atomic bomb.

https://nationalpost.com/news/did-the-atomic-bombings-of-hir...

Re: Conversations among German Nuclear Physicists at Farm Hall (1945) [pdf]

#39

Post by dekhn »

lqet wrote: post #37
newsgremlin wrote: post #35

>HEISENBERG: I am still convinced that our objective was really the right one and that the fact that we concentrated on uranium may give us the chance of collaboration. I believe this uranium business will give the Anglo–Saxons such tremendous power that EUROPE will become a bloc under Anglo–Saxon domination. If that is the case it will be a very good thing. I wonder whether STALIN will be able to stand up to the oth…

Not sure if you are being sarcastic - but isn't he in 1945 correctly predicting the development of the western world over the next 30-40 years, in which the US were clearly the dominating NATO power? I don't think Heisenberg meant that the US will threaten European nations with annihilation.

I'm having trouble parsing the quote, I think by 'Anglo-Saxon' he really means 'England and the US', and it's not really clear that England the US have true "power and control" over Europe. Instead what we see is a Europe dominated by England and Germany with large military influence by US.

Re: Conversations among German Nuclear Physicists at Farm Hall (1945) [pdf]

#40

Post by gandhium »

ceejayoz wrote: post #27
gandhium wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's debatable on whether or not those bombings did indeed cause the surrender of Japan They were specifically mentioned in emperor's address. Yes, they caused the surrender. > Nagasaki and Hiroshima were not military targets They were military targets. There was army HQ, troops stationed there, factories which were producing military goods.

Citing the Emperor's address as evidence isn't a great idea. It contains plenty of demonstrably false statements, like this: > Indeed, we declared war on America and Britain out of our sincere desire to ensure Japan's self-preservation and the stabilization of East Asia, it being far from our thought either to infringe upon the sovereignty of other nations or to embark upon territorial aggrandizement.

If you're cherry-pick anything, you will find plenty of demonstrably false statements anywhere.
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