[lit-ideas] Re: History
- From: Robert Paul <robert.paul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 01 Feb 2006 23:09:01 -0800
> Robert Paul wrote:
>
>>
>> (The German scientists really are too much.)
Ursula asked:
Meaning...?
Meaning that I hear them looking for a way out of their failure as
physicists and technicians everywhere but in the mirror. I also hear
them speaking as if they were well aware that their conversations were
being monitored. I grant that the complete transcripts (nearly complete
compilations are listed on the site) may tell a different story.
Heisenberg, in a postwar interview
<http://www.haigerloch.de/stadt/atomkeller/heisenberg.html>
says that on the German side, there was never a race to see who could
make the first atomic bomb:
‘The situation psychologically was different. It was a new situation for
us scientists in Germany. Now for the first time we could get money from
our government to do something interesting and we intended to use this
situation. The official slogan of the government was: We must make use
of physics for warfare. We turned it around for our slogan: We must make
use of warfare for physics. It was a very natural reaction. everybody
likes to make interesting experiments.
‘We felt already in the beginning that if it were possible at all to
actually make explosives it would take such a long time and require such
an enormous effort that there was a very good chance the War would be
over before that could be accomplished.’
I find the first paragraph hard to believe.
Robert Paul
Reed College
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