Conversations among German Nuclear Physicists at Farm Hall (1945) [pdf] • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by int_19h » Sun, Feb 10, 2019, 12:59 AM UTC

mannykannot wrote: post #117

int_19h wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No other participant in the war could have duplicated that level of effort. Effort aside, there's also luck. Americans couldn't assume that Germans haven't tried despite the lack of resources, and scored on first attempt by sheer chance. This is one of those races where even if you're very confident that you're faster than everybody else, you still give it everything you have, because the consequences of not winnin…

It was not by sheer chance that Groves et.al. showed up at Alamogordo with plutonium, in a sphere of exactly the right size, containing a carefully-constructed initiator, and surrounded by explosive blocks of exactly the right shape, with their detonators connected to timing circuitry specifically developed to have the necessary accuracy, and all components thoroughly tested. If it had not detonated, that would have…

And long before that could have been done, they had to do a lot of research and engineering, much of which was dead ends. US could afford to fund all that, including the dead ends. OPs argument above is that Germany couldn't compete, because they didn't have such resources, and had to pick one direction and stick to it. My point is that it's true in general, but there was a chance that Germans would have picked the right one from the get go, and managed to get similar results with a lot less effort.

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

#122

Post by opo » Sun, Feb 10, 2019, 6:03 AM UTC

theoh wrote: post #107

opo wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The atomic bomb was the only reason given by the Emperor for the surrender in his address to the nation. Even after 2 atomic bombs were dropped there was an attempted military coup to prevent the Emperor from surrendering. >...They were both racially driven war crimes and crimes against humanity. Why do you say they were racially driven? The same types of civilian bombing was done in Germany as was done in Japan. If…

There are serious debates about these issues. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombing... Your stated confidence that there was no difference in the way Germany and Japan were viewed in terms of racial difference from the US—come on, how is that supposed to demonstrate anything other than a personal desire to prove that racially-tinged animosity wasn't a factor? Protip: don't expect a historically…

>...There are serious debates about these issues.

Of course there is debate - I never said their wasn't.

It was the original poster who wrote:

>>..It isn't debatable because we know hiroshima and nagasaki had no bearing on the japanese decision to surrender.

>…Your stated confidence that there was no difference in the way Germany and Japan were viewed in terms of racial difference from the US—come on, how is that supposed to demonstrate anything other than a personal desire to prove that racially-tinged animosity wasn't a factor?

Don't misrepresent what I wrote. I never said "there was no difference in the way Germany and Japan were viewed in terms of racial difference from the US".

The original poster wrote:

>>…They were both racially driven war crimes and crimes against humanity.

If someone makes extraordinary claims, they need to provide some evidence. Maybe there is some proof of this, so in my reply I asked for some evidence. I also pointed out that the same types of bombing was done in Germany and if the bomb had been available earlier I ams sure it would have been used there also. I wrote:

>…Why do you say they were racially driven? The same types of civilian bombing was done in Germany as was done in Japan. If we had the atomic bomb before the war ended in Germany, I am sure it would have been used there.

To clarify what I said about the same types of bombing done to cities in Germany, there is this account by the physicist Freeman Dyson who was a civilian scientist working for the Operational Research Section of RAF Bomber Command headquarters:

>…We killed altogether about 400,000 Germans,* one third of them in the two fire storms in Hamburg and Dresden. The Dresden fire storm was the worst. But from our point of view it was only a fluke. We attacked Berlin sixteen times with the same kind of force that attacked Dresden once. We were trying every time to raise a fire storm. There was nothing special about Dresden except that for once everything worked as we intended.

http://www.bible-researcher.com/dresden/dyson.html

Roosevelt wanted to use the bomb on Germany if it could be made available. before the war in Europe was over. I've never seen any suggestions that any of the Roosevelt administration (or any of the allies) proposed the atomic bomb not be used over Germany because of their race. If someone wants to claim that the use of the atomic bomb in Japan was "racially driven", it is entirely fair to ask for some evidence.

>Protip: don't expect a historically sophisticated, humane, balanced historical account to emerge from HN comments.

I agree.

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

#123

Post by mannykannot » Sun, Feb 10, 2019, 5:08 PM UTC

int_19h wrote: post #121

mannykannot wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was not by sheer chance that Groves et.al. showed up at Alamogordo with plutonium, in a sphere of exactly the right size, containing a carefully-constructed initiator, and surrounded by explosive blocks of exactly the right shape, with their detonators connected to timing circuitry specifically developed to have the necessary accuracy, and all components thoroughly tested. If it had not detonated, that would have…

And long before that could have been done, they had to do a lot of research and engineering, much of which was dead ends. US could afford to fund all that, including the dead ends. OPs argument above is that Germany couldn't compete, because they didn't have such resources, and had to pick one direction and stick to it. My point is that it's true in general, but there was a chance that Germans would have picked the r…

Ah, I see what you mean. I think it is clear, however, from what they did do, that they were heading in the wrong direction and had some serious misconceptions that would have prevented them being lucky in that sense. There is the question of whether they even did a correct calculation of critical masses prior to hearing about the Hiroshima bomb (while being held at Farm Hall), and they apparently did not understand the relevance of prompt neutrons. I believe one of the Alsos team members said that the German scientists were lucky they did not kill themselves with their primitive experiments.

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

#124

Post by newsgremlin » Mon, Feb 11, 2019, 2:36 PM UTC

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 thought by Anglo-saxons he specifically means English/England, as by the end of the war it would look like England being the remaining empire readying to take chunks out of Europe. Not American as they seem to differentiate in several conversations. America running NATO is intentional by European powers and is not the same as the colonial attitude at the time. The US was not as well known for foreign interventionism at this time, especially during the peak of colonial empires before their decline post-WW2