Filmmaker says he has uncovered a Nazi underground weapons facility • Hacker News Board

Re: Filmmaker says he has uncovered a Nazi underground weapons facility

#11

Post by tjradcliffe » Fri, Jan 02, 2015, 1:02 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #2

Those "Nazi tunnels" shown are clean, dry, and equipped with modern fluorescent lights. Those are not recently discovered tunnels. The "Nazi atomic bomb program" never went anywhere. There was one. It was never very big or very successful. The US effort to find out about the Nazi atomic bomb program was bigger than the Nazi atomic bomb program. After the war, the big-name physicists were kept in a mansion called Farm…

The NAZIs had some nuclear research, but its a stretch to call it a bomb program, as they hadn't even done the most basic back-of-the-envelope calculations as to the size of assembly required for criticality. Thus Heisenberg's initial estimate at Farm Hall was wildly wrong, but he refined it to something more-or-less correct in about a week.

If anyone at Farm Hall had been working on a bomb program of any kind they would have done that basic diffusion equation calculation the very first thing, before they even started, to get an idea if the whole thing was practical. No one did. Ergo, no one was working on a bomb, or if they were they were spectacularly incompetent.

Re: Filmmaker says he has uncovered a Nazi underground weapons facility

#12

Post by ChuckMcM » Fri, Jan 02, 2015, 1:58 AM UTC

benzofuran wrote: post #4

This is some more fancy fishing out of a filmmaker - as Animats has indicated, the Nazi's had no serious atomic bomb program - their leading physicists hadn't worked out 'fast fission' and had no workable design for a bomb. The logistics involved with Uranium separation on an industrial scale simply were impossible during the second half of WW2 for the Nazis - they did not have the materials or the expertise to const…

Well one thing is true, nuclear piles leave behind marks of their operation, some with half-lives measured in centuries. So if they did have a program and it was buried under Austria somewhere, then it could be easily 'proven' or not by the presence of those elements. It could kill an ill prepared film crew or exploratory group if they weren't equipped to detect and avoid nuclear hot spots.

Re: Filmmaker says he has uncovered a Nazi underground weapons facility

#13

Post by ChuckMcM » Fri, Jan 02, 2015, 1:58 AM UTC

benzofuran wrote: post #4

This is some more fancy fishing out of a filmmaker - as Animats has indicated, the Nazi's had no serious atomic bomb program - their leading physicists hadn't worked out 'fast fission' and had no workable design for a bomb. The logistics involved with Uranium separation on an industrial scale simply were impossible during the second half of WW2 for the Nazis - they did not have the materials or the expertise to const…

Well one thing is true, nuclear piles leave behind marks of their operation, some with half-lives measured in centuries. So if they did have a program and it was buried under Austria somewhere, then it could be easily 'proven' or not by the presence of those elements. It could kill an ill prepared film crew or exploratory group if they weren't equipped to detect and avoid nuclear hot spots.

Re: Filmmaker says he has uncovered a Nazi underground weapons facility

#14

Post by Houshalter » Fri, Jan 02, 2015, 4:52 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #2

Those "Nazi tunnels" shown are clean, dry, and equipped with modern fluorescent lights. Those are not recently discovered tunnels. The "Nazi atomic bomb program" never went anywhere. There was one. It was never very big or very successful. The US effort to find out about the Nazi atomic bomb program was bigger than the Nazi atomic bomb program. After the war, the big-name physicists were kept in a mansion called Farm…

A nuclear bomb was only one of the possibilities listed:

>“aspired to create a combination of missiles and weapons of mass destruction,” historian Rainer Karlsch, who has long researched Hitler’s pursuit of an atomic bomb and worked with Sulzer on the project, told the Sunday Times. “They wanted to equip [a V-2] missile, or more advanced rockets, with poison gas, radioactive material or nuclear warheads.”

Re: Filmmaker says he has uncovered a Nazi underground weapons facility

#15

Post by Guthur » Fri, Jan 02, 2015, 9:31 AM UTC

tokenadult wrote: post #10

Guthur wrote: post #7

"where thousands of Jews were killed." Would be more appropriate and reflective to say "where thousands of people/inmates were killed.". There were many victims in this camp, why is one group held above the rest? I don't think there is even evidence to suggest any particular group was in the majority; considering figures for actual victims varies wildly from 150K to 300K. In my opinion this sort of emotive journalism…

You have offered no evidence whatsoever that that statement in the article is incorrect. By contrast, I just finished reading a while ago the three-volume series about the history of the Third Reich by historian Richard Evans (which was recommended in a Hacker News comment in August 2014), and I am sure that there is nothing incorrect at all about saying that thousands of Jews were killed as part of that project. It…

I did not say it was incorrect. I said it was not appropriate to single out one single group of a disparate grouping of victims. Why single out anyone, what purpose does that serve?

There is no definitive evidence about the exact number of inmates killed, and therefore there will be no definitive evidence about the proportional make up. Many records were destroyed and what has survived is from many second hand sources.

Therefore the figures seem to vary widely: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauthausen-Gusen_concentration...

But I am not writing for Washington Post and so my comments will not be widely read. So why do you ask for sources from me but not this article.

Re: Filmmaker says he has uncovered a Nazi underground weapons facility

#16

Post by ajuc » Fri, Jan 02, 2015, 12:59 PM UTC

tokenadult wrote: post #10

Guthur wrote: post #7

"where thousands of Jews were killed." Would be more appropriate and reflective to say "where thousands of people/inmates were killed.". There were many victims in this camp, why is one group held above the rest? I don't think there is even evidence to suggest any particular group was in the majority; considering figures for actual victims varies wildly from 150K to 300K. In my opinion this sort of emotive journalism…

You have offered no evidence whatsoever that that statement in the article is incorrect. By contrast, I just finished reading a while ago the three-volume series about the history of the Third Reich by historian Richard Evans (which was recommended in a Hacker News comment in August 2014), and I am sure that there is nothing incorrect at all about saying that thousands of Jews were killed as part of that project. It…

Compare to "where thousands of white people were killed" to see why some people may have issue with that. Also technicaly true.

Re: Filmmaker says he has uncovered a Nazi underground weapons facility

#17

Post by tokenadult » Fri, Jan 02, 2015, 4:19 PM UTC

Guthur wrote: post #15

tokenadult wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have offered no evidence whatsoever that that statement in the article is incorrect. By contrast, I just finished reading a while ago the three-volume series about the history of the Third Reich by historian Richard Evans (which was recommended in a Hacker News comment in August 2014), and I am sure that there is nothing incorrect at all about saying that thousands of Jews were killed as part of that project. It…

I did not say it was incorrect. I said it was not appropriate to single out one single group of a disparate grouping of victims. Why single out anyone, what purpose does that serve? There is no definitive evidence about the exact number of inmates killed, and therefore there will be no definitive evidence about the proportional make up. Many records were destroyed and what has survived is from many second hand source…

Because there are already are sources that show that the article statement was just fine, and because I was quite astonished that you would object to that statement on the grounds you mentioned.