Hitler's Terror Weapons (6 page)

At Munich in 1923 he obtained a doctorate
cum laude
in theoretical physics, his aversion to the experimental side of the discipline having let him down. He was still aged 22 when he qualified as a university lecturer. From May 1926 he lectured in the Danish language at Niels Bohr's Institute in Copenhagen and was called to the Chair of Theoretical Physics at the University of Leipzig in October 1927. He transformed Leipzig into a leading research centre. One of his pupils there was Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker who would later assist him in his campaign to deflect attention away from a major atom bomb project.

When Einstein's theories were attacked in an article published by the
Völkischer Beobachter
in its edition of 26 February 1936, Heisenberg prepared a paper signed by seventy-seven professors of physics, including a number of Party members, expressing his concern to the Reichsminister for Education, Bernhard Rust, at the official policy of discrediting theoretical physics.

The nomination of Heisenberg as the leading candidate to succeed to the vacant Chair at the Faculty of the University of Munich the following year brought the matter to a head and the vehemence of the opposition to him from supporters of Aryan Physics rallying around its founders, Lenard and Stark, became almost hysterical. The swell of protest culminated in an anonymous article entitled
White Jews in Science
attributed to Johannes Stark which appeared in the SS-journal
Das Schwarze Korps
in its edition of 15 July 1937.

“Just how secure the White Jews feel themselves to be is demonstrated by the behaviour of the Professor of Theoretical Physics at Leipzig, Professor Werner Heisenberg, who in 1936 managed to smuggle an article into an official party newspaper describing Einstein's relativity theory as ‘the obvious basis for further research'.”

After a catalogue of complaints alleging a pro-Jewish bias in making appointments the article continued:

“In 1933 Heisenberg received the Nobel Prize at the same time as the Einstein boys, Schroedinger and Dirac – proof of the ways Jews influence the Nobel Committee against National Socialist Germany. Heisenberg paid his own tribute in August 1934 by refusing to sign the Declaration of German Nobel Prize Winners For the Führer and Reichskanzler. His answer was: ‘Although I am personally in favour, political affirmations by scientists seem wrong, since it was never the practice in the past. Therefore I won't sign.' This answer identifies the Jewish spirit of its author, who considers the unity of the people and national responsibility of scientists to be improper. Heisenberg is only one example of many. They are all vessels of Jewishness in German intellectual life and must disappear as must the Jews themselves.”

Johannes Stark contributed his opinion in a footnote to the article warning that:

“whilst the influence of the Jewish spirit has been removed from the German Press, literature and art as well as from German jurisprudence, it still has its defenders and protagonists among Aryan associates of Jews and those who have been pupils of Jews. In this situation, the
Schwarze Korps
renders great service if by virtue of its courageous and important utterances it directs public awareness to the amage to which German intellectual life and the education of its academic youth is being exposed by White Jews.”

Realizing now that he was in serious danger, on 21 July 1937 Heisenberg responded with a letter to SS-Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler requesting a decision on the principle and offering to resign if the view of Herr Stark corresponded with that of the Government,

“But if that is not the case, as I have already been expressly assured by Reich Education Minister Rust, then I request you as SS-Reichsführer to defend me effectively against such attacks in this newspaper.”

During the next twelve months Heisenberg was frequently summoned to hearings in Berlin. These were under the personal direction of Gestapo Chief Reinhard Heydrich. Many interrogations were conducted in the notorious Gestapo prison on the Prinz Albrecht Strasse, from where Heisenberg would return exhausted and distressed. One of the problems confronting the SS inquisition was their uncertainty of the political implications of a science they did not understand. The frightening interviews were attended by an SS physicist, Johannes Juilfs, a former student of Heisenberg, who saw to it that he was not brutally treated.

On 21 July 1938, exactly a year since his letter, Himmler exonerated Heisenberg:

“I do not approve of the attacks made against you in the
Das Schwarze Korps
article and I have therefore ensured that there will be no further outbursts against you. However, I consider it right to mention that in future before an audience, you should clearly distance yourself from the human and political identity of the researcher when recognizing scientific research results.”

A scientific nonentity, Müller, acceded to the Munich Chair of Physics, while Heisenberg resumed academic life at the University of Leipzig. The degree of ferocity with which the proponents of Aryan Physics championed their view of science is difficult to comprehend. Not even Ministers were exempted from attack. Soon after taking over the Armaments Ministry in February 1942, Albert Speer found his attempts to promote atomic physics research, by which he presumably meant the development of the atom bomb, met by a “rubber wall”.
³⁰
On one such occasion he was astonished to encounter strident opposition in the Party daily
Völkischer Beobachter,
the newspaper of which Adolf Hitler himself was the owner. The editorial railed against him in an article entitled
Jewish Physics Stirs Again!
Speer also found it easy to incur the Führer's wrath in even mentioning the atom bomb, which Hitler privately described to him as “the spawn of Jewish pseudo-science”.

The Discovery of Neutrons and Nuclear Fission in Uranium

Many scientists assert that the age of nuclear physics began in 1932. On 17 February that year the scientific periodical
Nature
published an article by the British researcher James Chadwick in which he announced the discovery of the neutron. It was released when alpha-radiation from a radium source penetrated a beryllium atom. The neutrons ejected from the beryllium had no electrical charge and this enabled them to penetrate close to the nucleus of the atom of many other substances tested. This was a new means of splitting the atom, but for the time being at least there was no prospect that the neutron might be used for the production of energy. Nevertheless the discovery was the foundation for the new science of nuclear chemistry and every atom from hydrogen to uranium now came in for experiment in laboratories worldwide.

Since 1934 Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner and Fritz Straßmann had been subjecting uranium to neutron bombardment in experiments at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry in Berlin-Dahlem. In an article appearing in the scientific journal
Die Wissenschaften
of 6 January 1939,
³¹
Hahn and Straßmann announced that they had demonstrated nuclear fission in uranium. When a U
²³⁵
isotope of uranium was struck by a neutron, U
²³⁵
+1n = U
²³⁶
, a new unstable compound, was formed and split up almost instantaneously. As this occurred, the highly charged fragments repelled each other with a violent kinetic energy which was also very radioactive.

Of this discovery Heisenberg's former pupil Carl Friedrich Freiherr von Weizsäcker wrote:

“I recall that for a week in February 1939 or maybe at the beginning of March I thought through the technical possibilities of atom bombs and atomic engines which all physicists had to get to know about, and discussing theoretically with a close circle of friends the major political consequences of the discovery.”
³²

A chain reaction was still not absolutely certain until there appeared in the 22 April 1939 edition of the scientific periodical
Nature
the findings of three experimental physicists at the College de France, Joliot, von Halban and Kowarski, reporting that at least two neutrons eject during fission, followed in the next few minutes by a small supplementary number from the decaying fragments of the atom. As the collision between one neutron and a U
²³⁵
nucleus brought about the creation of more than two fresh neutrons, it would probably be possible to arrange for the surplus neutrons to cause a chain reaction.

Two days after publication of this article the
Heereswqffenamt
³³
in Berlin received the first letters from scientific institutes and universities pointing out that:

“the newest developments in nuclear physics which will probably make it possible to produce an explosive many orders of magnitude more powerful than conventional ones: that country which first makes use of [nuclear fission] has an unsurpassable advantage over the others.”

Professor Heisenberg Explains his Stance

In the spring of 1939 Heisenberg made a two-month lecture tour in the United States. By now he had decided not to defect on the grounds that he would almost certainly be co-opted to build the atomic bomb which, if ready in time, was likely to be dropped on Germany. Another reason was that he thought it would be difficult to campaign to rebut Aryan Physics as an expatriate. He also felt the need to explain why he wanted to remain in Germany in the coming war, believing that friendships could outlast political differences between nations. His Italian colleague Fermi was at least able to express understanding for his decision while not agreeing with it. When Fermi suggested that Heisenberg should defect he was told:

“History teached us that sooner or later, every century is shaken by revolutions and wars, and whole populations obviously cannot emigrate every time there is a threat of an upheaval. People must learn to prevent catastrophes, not to run away from them. I have decided to stay in Germany, even if my decision is wrong”
³⁴

and in an interview with Robert Jungk Heisenberg explained:

“Under a dictatorship, active resistance can only be practised by those who pretend to collaborate with the regime…. I have always been very much ashamed when I think of the people, some of them friends of my own, who sacrificed their lives on 20 July 1944 and thereby put up a really serious resistance to the regime. But even their example shows that effective resistance can only come from those who pretend to collaborate.”
³⁵

Heisenberg was a patriot and a cultural imperialist of the old school who was rooted in Germany and had no desire to be anywhere else. In an interview immediately after the war with Professor Samuel Goudsmit, head of the
Alsos
US Scientific Mission to Europe, he stated that in his opinion physicists in the Reich had, on the whole, done only the work necessary to preserve their university positions and hold together what remained of the great German tradition in physics. His own small circle had dominated the uranium project and steered the research away from the production of nuclear weapons. To him the war was an interlude. Emphasizing that Germany had not constructed atomic weapons, he made a public ritual of contrasting the moral character of German scientists, who had deliberately obstructed the research, with that of Allied scientists and politicians who had not only built those weapons, but also used them. It is clear that Goudsmit did not accept this explanation and remained convinced that Heisenberg had been in some way involved in a German atom bomb project.

This book concludes that Professor Goudsmit was right. The fact of the matter seems to be that somebody in Germany designed an ‘atomic-type' weapon, somebody then built it, a scientist described how he had seen it tested and eighty lead cases containing enough material for two more of these small atom bombs turned up on a Tokyo-bound U-boat when searched after being surrendered to the US Navy at the end of the war. Heisenberg directed the German uranium project, but as regards an atomic-type bomb he was quite certain that he had not designed it and nor could he personally have been involved in the experimental foundation work for it in any way whatsoever because there was no such thing.

As a means of correcting Press inaccuracies following the announcement of the American atomic attack on the city of Hiroshima, the contingent of German atom scientists confined at Farm Hall, Cambridgeshire, England, issued a memorandum on 7 August 1945 presenting an outline in brief of the official German Uranium Project. The document was drafted by Heisenberg, Dr Karl Wirtz, his experimental assistant, and Professor Walter Gerlach, last Plenipotentiary for Nuclear Science, after consultation with Professors Diebner, Hahn, von Weizsäcker, von Laue, Korsching, Harteck and Bagge. Three scientists present abstained from signing.

The second paragraph alone alluded to the philosophy of developing nuclear weapons, asserting in a single sentence that “it did not appear feasible at the time to produce a bomb with the technical possibilities available in Germany”. There was an explanatory footnote:

“As to the question of the atom bomb, the undersigned confirm that they have no knowledge of any other group in Germany which had the production of the bomb
as an immediate goal.
However, if such an attempt was in fact undertaken, then it was made by dilettantes, and should not be taken seriously.”

If the interned group of physicists had no knowledge of a bomb project there was no need to add the final sentence. Ultimately all that is denied is the existence of a group working towards the atom bomb
as an immediate goal.
If we suppose for a moment that there was a group which had been working on an experiment whose methodology and materials could be adapted if so desired to create a small atomic bomb, then that group would fall outside the German physicists' denial. Heisenberg was very careful with words. When he took up his pen to draft this crafty document all nine of his colleagues knew exactly which group of ‘amateurs' they had in mind. As Baron Manfred von Ardenne had defected to the Russians and was building their nuclear weapons for them, they all thought it was a very good idea to point the finger in his direction early on just in case any awkward questions were asked about who built a small-scale German atom bomb during the period 1941–1944.