20
. Price,
The Last Year of the Luftwaffe, May 1944 to May 1945
, 176.
21
. Isby,
Fighter Combat in the Jet Age
, see chapter 1 generally.
22
. Weber, “Objective Possibility and Adequate Causation in Historical Explanation,” in
The Methodology of the Social Sciences
, 164-88.
23
. Quoted in Evans,
In Defense of History
, 118.
Forrest R. Lindsey
“As for my participation in making the bomb, there was no choice. The original discovery that made it possible was made in Germany, and we had believed that the German scientists were ahead of us in the development of a nuclear weapon. I shudder to think what would have happened if Germany had been first to acquire the weapon.”
—Eugene Wigner, physicist
Professor Heisenberg was startled and more than a little bit uneasy when he was summoned in the middle of the night. It was unprecedented for anyone to summon him to anything, since as the top theoretical physicist in the country and a Nobel Prize winner, he was used to some degree of deference. Nonetheless, when the black-uniformed SS officers came for him at his home, he dressed quickly and quietly got in the car. In Hitler’s Germany, you did what you were told when the SS came for you.
He was led to a large darkened building up a wide stairway to the last office in a hall. When the door opened, he was seated in a dimly lit and sparsely furnished office whose main features were a very large desk and a portrait of the Führer centered behind it on the wall. His escorts left him there alone, and for several minutes all he could hear was his own breathing. For a second he closed his eyes and thought of what he might have done to be brought to this room. His meeting with Niels Bohr the previous month
1
—was that seen as something treasonous? Were some of his conversations with his fellow scientists overheard? He opened his eyes and stared across that giant desk into the unblinking gaze behind the flat, round-rimmed glasses of Heinrich Himmler.
“Good evening Herr Professor,” the Reichsführer said without expecting an answer. “I understand that you have made some exceptional contributions to our Fatherland in the field of atomic fission.” Heisenberg was surprised that this was what the Reichsführer wanted to talk to him about, yet this was hardly a secret. “We need a weapon that will decisively crush our enemies, and you and your department have the best chance of giving Germany this weapon,” Himmler continued. A flash from Himmler’s glasses dismissed the reflexive shrug from Professor Heisenberg that was meant to say that he did not think an atomic bomb was possible yet. “The SS under my direction is taking over the leadership of this project as of this moment. You will be given everything and anything that you will need. You will have the highest priority for funds, materials, and workers.”
Himmler paused for a second to make his final point as clearly as possible. “You will continue the leadership of your department as a member of my SS with full authority to lead as you choose. You will have any scientists, engineers, and technicians that you choose—including any that may be prisoners of the Reich.” He paused again to let that last item fully sink in—he was allowing Heisenberg to recruit Jewish prisoners from the concentration camps. “You must succeed at any cost. The British and the Americans are working to have the same weapons, so we must have them first. When you succeed, you will have done great service to your Fatherland and your Führer and you will be amply rewarded. If you fail, the price will be beyond your imagining. Good night, Herr Professor.”
After the SS car had dropped him off, Heisenberg spent a long time sitting helplessly on the steps in front of his home. He felt like a man who had been standing in the water at the beach when a large ocean wave struck and carried him along, tumbling and choking, powerless.
It was clear to him that he had no one to appeal to, no power above the Reichsführer to avoid his future. He had quietly advocated a passive resistance to bomb development among his scientific community, and even hinted that he would not help the Nazis get one during his meeting with Bohr in Copenhagen, but that was over now. He knew only too well that the man in that darkened room meant exactly what he said, and that he had all the power he needed to make Heisenberg do what he wanted. After a long while, Heisenberg opened his door and went inside.
Heisenberg’s Special Weapons team—the “Uranium Club”—grew geometrically as more physicists, engineers, and workers were brought in to the new facilities dedicated to the nuclear weapon project. Thanks to Albert Speer, materials and supplies poured in and the funding was literally limitless. Branches were established throughout Germany and occupied Europe to assure that the facilities and capabilities were under one leader, one focus. Naturally, the security at each of these facilities was immeasurably tightened as the responsibilities transitioned to the SS. The cyclotron near Paris, the heavy water plant in Norway, the uranium mines in Czechoslovakia, and much more all became part of Himmler’s direct sphere, and therefore Heisenberg’s as well.
The work on a functioning reactor, various methods of isotope separation, and research on the many mathematical models for chain reactions in fissionable material were conducted simultaneously. The unspeakable became more possible every day the research went on, and under the SS, that was every day of the week.
Bits of information, hints, and clues trickled out of Germany to the Allies despite the best efforts of the SS, the Gestapo, and the Abwehr. The Allies devoted an ever greater portion of their intelligence collection effort to the discovery of where the Germans were in atomic design,
2
and the various commando entities and resistance movements increased reconnaissance and planning. Yet from all external signs, the German effort was unusually quiet. Unknown to the Allied code breakers at Bletchley Park, Himmler had prevailed on his communications sections to adopt a whole new code system, over and above the existing Enigma method, to deal with the heightened communications security requirements for the Special Weapons Project. Communications concerning the project would be kept on this network and sent on landlines whenever possible. One could not be too careful.
By September 1943 the Special Weapons Project had made significant breakthroughs; the first functioning atomic pile had been used to conduct controlled fission experiments, and the role of slow neutrons was proven for the initiation of chain reactions within fissionable material. The concept of enriching uranium to form a new, more fissionable element was successfully demonstrated, and the breeder reactor was born in Germany. For the first time, a working atomic weapon would be a certainty, and with the experience of the last two years of warfare, it was clear that the war would last long enough for it to be built—and used.
Hitler was kept advised of the progress of the atomic team nearly weekly. References crept into his speeches that hinted at a new “superweapon that no power on Earth can resist.” As the Allies came closer to the Reich, as the bombing by the British and Americans intensified, Hitler became more involved in the development process, and for the first time targeting this new monster bomb became the primary issue.
The combined efforts of several of Heisenberg’s U-235 and uranium enrichment plants had produced several kilograms of fissionable material by January 1944, and the Führer was notified that within two to four months, two weapons would be available for testing. As was typical of Hitler, he directed that the tests be carried out on actual targets. Within the highest echelons of command, Hitler’s senior staff were briefed on the expected capabilities of these first atomic weapons, and they recommended using them against Red Army concentrations opposite Army Group Center in Byelorussia and against the expected Allied landings in France. Hitler would have none of that. These new weapons would be used against his enemies’ cities to break their wills and to exact revenge for the destruction of Germany’s cities. With Hitler’s final word on the subject, planning for the employment of the first two weapons began.
The first element of the plans was to determine the specific targets. Next, the bomber crews would have to be trained in the special characteristics of atomic weapon preparation, arming, and employment. Bombers were modified for the nearly 4,500-kilogram weight and the increased bulk of these bombs, and preparations made to allow the crews the capability for in-flight arming and, if necessary, disarming of the bombs.
The crews and the planners learned that atomic weapons work best if detonated at medium altitude above a target: the primary destructive capability of the atomic explosion is a massive spherical shock wave that expands until it touches the surface of the Earth. There, it reflects back against itself to form a compounded wave that travels rapidly away from the center of the burst, smashing everything in its path. The scientists also mentioned the enormous heat and ionizing radiation that would come from the explosion, but it was not known just how much of a factor these destructive effects would have on a target.
Since the last major Allied conference in Tehran in December 1943, the Allied focus had been the destruction from the air of German industry and the German will to fight as Allied ground forces advanced in the East and slowly up the length of Italy. The Allies would open a second front on continental Europe as soon as possible to relieve some of the pressure on the Red Army. In the Pacific, the Japanese faced an inexorable tide of naval advances since their defeats at Midway, then Guadalcanal, then the Gilberts and the Marshalls, and now the Allies were on the doorstep of their key bases in Saipan, Formosa, and the Philippines.
In March 1944 alone over 2,000 tons of high explosive and incendiary bombs rained on Berlin, and it was clear that the American and British air forces were only beginning to reach their stride. It was also clear that the German air defenses were incapable of stopping them.
In carefully protected communications with Roosevelt, Churchill sought to discuss the analysis of Hitler’s progress toward an atomic bomb. While the Germans were communicating about everything but nuclear matters, the silence itself was telling. Most of the identified laboratories and facilities had been targeted for bombing or commando attacks but it was clear that feverish activity was still present. Churchill was sure it was only a matter of time, and not much time at that. Roosevelt described as fully as he felt he could the status of the Manhattan project and his estimate that working weapons would be available sometime late in 1944. Neither man was sure they could beat the Germans to the punch, and with the invasion of Europe approaching quickly, the possibility of a German atomic attack strongly affected planning. All of England was one big military staging area for the largest amphibious attack in history, and everything depended on surprise, good weather, air superiority, and luck.
“But what I want is annihilation—annihilation effect.”
3
—Adolf Hitler
Even as the Allied leaders were preparing for their next phase of offensives, events had already moved inexorably to a new and terrible future: specially prepared and heavily escorted Heinkel 177 bombers took off from French and Polish airfields into the dark night sky. Late in the morning of April 15, 1944, just before the first glimmer of dawn in Moscow and at 0322 in London, intense, blinding light and searing heat erupted, followed within one or two heartbeats by irresistible waves of moving earth and walls of titanic pressure. For the two cities and millions of sleeping people, it was the end of the world.
Hitler’s revenge had arrived.
The first few hours after the attacks, when the last echoes of the loudest man-made blasts ever heard on Earth faded, it was eerily still around the world as the news began to travel. In the two bombings, the leadership and nerve centers of two of the major Allied powers had been instantly silenced. For the British and to a degree the American leadership in England, communications with the capital were completely gone and confusion reigned. Fires throughout central London, from the East End to Westminster, burned out of control, and the entire center of the city, from the Tower of London to Whitehall, was gray and burning rubble without signs of life. The surprise attack had been particularly cruel for the victims near windows or just aboveground: the atomic flash ignited any exposed flammable material out to a radius of three miles from the weapon’s hypocenter. Human beings are flammable material at those temperatures.
Photoreconnaissance Spitfires were sent to get the first pictures of the damage to London and then back to get the film developed. Army units were trucked in from bases all over Britain to try to rescue survivors, and these first soldiers to enter the outskirts found themselves encountering clumps of terribly burned people and saw for themselves the first signs of a new terror, radiation sickness. In a world war in which every possible atrocity had been tried, the Nazis had introduced the most monstrous of them all.