[lit-ideas] Re: Ought we to do something about Iran?
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2006 21:33:22 -0800
Quote also the first part of your note which is what I was responding
to:"However, we didn't start them because we learned that Germany was
developing 'an atomic weapon.' We couldn't have learned that because they
weren't. . ."
The article I quoted said that they we were doing what I recalled that we
were doing from the books I have read over the years: the first article that
popped up on Google. The Germans as we know were not ultimately successful,
but that couldn't have been foreseen.
Lawrence
-----Original Message-----
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Robert Paul
Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2006 9:09 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Ought we to do something about Iran?
Lawrence Helm wrote:
> "in 1939, the Nazis were rumored to be developing an atomic bomb. The
> United States initiated its own program under the Army Corps of
> Engineers in June 1942. America needed to build an atomic weapon before
> Germany or Japan did."
This is, to put it politely, so oversimplied as to be uninformative. It
is also a slight to the British and European scientists, who were
essential to the success of the Manhattan Project. The author is too
cynical or too lazy even to mention that it was the Allies, not just the
Americans who believed that an atomic weapon should be built.
> World War II started September 1, 1939, when Germany attacked Poland. By
> 1941, the Germans were leading the race for the atomic bomb. They had a
> heavy-water plant, high-grade uranium compounds, a nearly complete
> cyclotron, capable scientists and engineers, and the greatest chemical
> engineering industry in the world.
Whatever. The Germans tried to build a nuclear reactor, using 'heavy
water' (deuterium oxide). They could not. They could not even sustain a
chain reaction. To say that 'they were leading in the race for the
atomic bomb' is like saying that the backers of Icarus were leading in
the race to outer space. (Do people read what they write anymore?)
> Factors including internal struggles, a major scientific error, and the
> devastation of total war compromised any successful research toward a
> German atom bomb. Unlike the American program, the Germans never had a
> clear mission under continuously unified leadership."
Whoever wrote this seems blind to the fact that 'a major scientific
error' meant that the Germans did not build, or, as it turns out, even
come close to building an atomic weapon.
I will quote myself again:
> The US/UK ultimately began work on atomic weapons because they believed
>
> (a) that such weapons were possible and (b) that whether or not there
>
> was a German atomic weapons project, the fact that there might be was
>
> sufficient reason to try to get there first.
Robert Paul
Reed College
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
