[lit-ideas] Re: Ought we to do something about Iran?

  • From: Robert Paul <robert.paul@xxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 01 Feb 2006 21:08:48 -0800

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:

  1. Home
  2. lit-ideas
  3. Archive
  4. 02-2006