Author : Mark Walker
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 306 pages
File Size : 36,57 MB
Release : 1992-12-17
Category : History
ISBN : 9780521438049
This a paperback edition of Professor Walker's full-scale examination of the German efforts to harness the economic, military and political power of nuclear fission between 1939 and 1949. The book explains clearly, in terms that the non-specialist can understand, what was involved in the Germans' quest, and in what ways the German scientists succeeded or failed in the development of 'the bomb'.
Author : Allan S. Krass
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 325 pages
File Size : 19,17 MB
Release : 2020-11-20
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 100020054X
Originally published in 1983, this book presents both the technical and political information necessary to evaluate the emerging threat to world security posed by recent advances in uranium enrichment technology. Uranium enrichment has played a relatively quiet but important role in the history of efforts by a number of nations to acquire nuclear weapons and by a number of others to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. For many years the uranium enrichment industry was dominated by a single method, gaseous diffusion, which was technically complex, extremely capital-intensive, and highly inefficient in its use of energy. As long as this remained true, only the richest and most technically advanced nations could afford to pursue the enrichment route to weapon acquisition. But during the 1970s this situation changed dramatically. Several new and far more accessible enrichment techniques were developed, stimulated largely by the anticipation of a rapidly growing demand for enrichment services by the world-wide nuclear power industry. This proliferation of new techniques, coupled with the subsequent contraction of the commercial market for enriched uranium, has created a situation in which uranium enrichment technology might well become the most important contributor to further nuclear weapon proliferation. Some of the issues addressed in this book are: A technical analysis of the most important enrichment techniques in a form that is relevant to analysis of proliferation risks; A detailed projection of the world demand for uranium enrichment services; A summary and critique of present institutional non-proliferation arrangements in the world enrichment industry, and An identification of the states most likely to pursue the enrichment route to acquisition of nuclear weapons.
Author : Sam Kean
Publisher : Little, Brown
Page : 464 pages
File Size : 11,6 MB
Release : 2019-07-09
Category : History
ISBN : 0316381667
From New York Times bestselling author Sam Kean comes the gripping, untold story of a renegade group of scientists and spies determined to keep Adolf Hitler from obtaining the ultimate prize: a nuclear bomb. Scientists have always kept secrets. But rarely have the secrets been as vital as they were during World War II. In the middle of building an atomic bomb, the leaders of the Manhattan Project were alarmed to learn that Nazi Germany was far outpacing the Allies in nuclear weapons research. Hitler, with just a few pounds of uranium, would have the capability to reverse the entire D-Day operation and conquer Europe. So they assembled a rough and motley crew of geniuses -- dubbed the Alsos Mission -- and sent them careening into Axis territory to spy on, sabotage, and even assassinate members of Nazi Germany's feared Uranium Club. The details of the mission rival the finest spy thriller, but what makes this story sing is the incredible cast of characters -- both heroes and rogues alike -- including: Moe Bergm, the major league catcher who abandoned the game for a career as a multilingual international spy; the strangest fellow to ever play professional baseball. Werner Heisenberg, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist credited as the discoverer of quantum mechanics; a key contributor to the Nazi's atomic bomb project and the primary target of the Alsos mission. Colonel Boris Pash, a high school science teacher and veteran of the Russian Revolution who fled the Soviet Union with a deep disdain for Communists and who later led the Alsos mission. Joe Kennedy Jr., the charismatic, thrill-seeking older brother of JFK whose need for adventure led him to volunteer for the most dangerous missions the Navy had to offer. Samuel Goudsmit, a washed-up physics prodigy who spent his life hunting Nazi scientists -- and his parents, who had been swept into a concentration camp -- across the globe. Irène and Frederic Joliot-Curie, a physics Nobel-Prize winning power couple who used their unassuming status as scientists to become active members of the resistance. Thrust into the dark world of international espionage, these scientists and soldiers played a vital and largely untold role in turning back one of the darkest tides in human history.
Author : Alex Wellerstein
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 558 pages
File Size : 43,81 MB
Release : 2021-04-09
Category : History
ISBN : 022602038X
"Nuclear weapons, since their conception, have been the subject of secrecy. In the months after the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the American scientific establishment, the American government, and the American public all wrestled with what was called the "problem of secrecy," wondering not only whether secrecy was appropriate and effective as a means of controlling this new technology but also whether it was compatible with the country's core values. Out of a messy context of propaganda, confusion, spy scares, and the grave counsel of competing groups of scientists, what historian Alex Wellerstein calls a "new regime of secrecy" was put into place. It was unlike any other previous or since. Nuclear secrets were given their own unique legal designation in American law ("restricted data"), one that operates differently than all other forms of national security classification and exists to this day. Drawing on massive amounts of declassified files, including records released by the government for the first time at the author's request, Restricted Data is a narrative account of nuclear secrecy and the tensions and uncertainty that built as the Cold War continued. In the US, both science and democracy are pitted against nuclear secrecy, and this makes its history uniquely compelling and timely"--
Author : Jeremy Bernstein
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 393 pages
File Size : 34,81 MB
Release : 2013-03-09
Category : History
ISBN : 1475754124
From April through December of 1945, ten of Nazi Germany's greatest nuclear physicists were detained by Allied military and intelligence services in a kind of gilded cage at Farm Hall, an English country manor near Cambridge. The physicists knew the Reich had failed to develop an atomic bomb, and they soon learned, from a BBC radio report on August 6, that the Allies had succeeded in their own efforts to create such a weapon. But what they did not know was that many of their meetings and private conversations were being monitored and recorded by British agents. This book contains the complete collection of transcripts that were made from these secret recordings, providing an unprecedented view of how the German scientists, including two Nobel Laureates, thought and spoke about their roles during the war.
Author : Mark Walker
Publisher : Springer
Page : 325 pages
File Size : 11,25 MB
Release : 2013-11-11
Category : Science
ISBN : 1489960740
In this book, Mark Walker - a historical scholar of Nazi science - brings to light the overwhelming impact of Hitler's regime on science and, ultimately, on the pursuit of the German atomic bomb. Walker meticulously draws on hundreds of original documents to examine the role of German scientists in the rise and fall of the Third Reich. He investigates whether most German scientists during Hitler's regime enthusiastically embraced the tenets of National Socialism or cooperated in a Faustian pact for financial support, which contributed to National Socialism's running rampant and culminated in the rape of Europe and the genocide of millions of Jews. This work unravels the myths and controversies surrounding Hitler's atomic bomb project. It provides a look at what surprisingly turned out to be an Achilles' heel for Hitler - the misuse of science and scientists in the service of the Third Reich.
Author : Jeffrey Richelson
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
Page : 732 pages
File Size : 27,40 MB
Release : 2007-09-17
Category : History
ISBN : 0393329828
'Spying on the Bomb' focuses on the past & present nuclear activities of various countries, intermingling what the US believed was happening with accounts of what actually occurred in each country's laboratories, test sites and decision-making councils.
Author : Samuel Goudsmit
Publisher : Plunkett Lake Press
Page : 150 pages
File Size : 35,40 MB
Release : 2019-07-31
Category : History
ISBN :
Near the end of World War II, as Allied armies swept across battle-torn Germany and leading scientists at Los Alamos were racing to assemble the atomic bombs America would drop over Japan later that summer, General Leslie Groves, the military head of the Manhattan Project, established Alsos, a unit of scientists, soldiers, and secret agents to find the Nazi Germany’s physicists and technicians working on the development of a German atomic bomb and to determine how far along they were. In this book, Samuel Goudsmit, the Dutch-American physicist who was the scientific leader of the Alsos mission, recounts the mission and its findings. “Alsos is more than a dramatic chronicle of how Goudsmit and his staff accompanied Allied troops in order to ferret out German atomic secrets and round up German scientists who might have been working on a fission bomb. It is also an overview and critique of the German research establishment under Nazi control.” — Albert Moyer,American Scientist “Highly readable and informative... [T]he immediacy of Goudsmit’s experience makes this memoir of enduring value... inspired story-telling that provides in retrospect a great deal of information on the operations of the postwar intelligence teams... An extraordinary book.” — Alan Beyerchen, New Scientist “Samuel Goudsmit... the scientific leader of Alsos... tells the fascinating story of the mission’s work... To the extent that the average citizen is permitted to learn how his servants spend his money for the purpose of insuring his safety, it will be useful for every intelligent American to hear Goudsmit’s story and ponder his views. In any case,Alsos is highly entertaining... Goudsmit’s assessment of Nazi war science is excellent... There are a lot of things in Goudsmit’s book that we had better keep in mind.” — Paul Ridenour, The New York Times “[Goudsmit’s] short memoir is a thrilling combination of detective story and scientific deduction.” — Stephen Budiansky, Wall Street Journal “[Alsos] is the compelling story of what the Germans did [to develop an atomic bomb], what went wrong and why.” — Lee Dembart, Los Angeles Times “For the history of science this chatty little book is surely one of the most important books to emerge from World War II, since it is the account of one of the most absorbing war assignments to fall to the lot of any scientist.” — Henri Guerlac, Isis, A Journal of the History of Science Society
Author : Klaus Hentschel
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 615 pages
File Size : 48,90 MB
Release : 2011-10-02
Category : Mathematics
ISBN : 303480203X
1 Aim and General Description of the Anthology The purpose of this anthology is to introduce the English speaking public to the wide spectrum of texts authored predominently by physicists portraying the ac tual and perceived role of physics in the Nazi state. Up to now no broad and well balanced documentation of German physics during this time has been available in English, despite the significant role physics has played both politically (e. g. , in weaponry planning) and ideologically (e. g. , in the controversy over the value of theoretical ('Jewish') vs. experimental ('Aryan') physics), and even though prominent figures like the scientist-philosopher and emigre Albert Einstein and the controversial nuclear physicist Werner Heisenberg have become household names. This anthology will attempt to bridge this gap by presenting contempo rary documents and eye-witness accounts by the physicists themselves. Authors were chosen to represent the various political opinions and specialties within the physics community, omitting some of the more readily accessible texts by leading physicists (e. g. , Einstein, Heisenberg, Lenard) in favor of those by less well-known but nonetheless important figures (e. g. , Finkelnburg, Max Wien, Ramsauer). In this way we hope not only to circumvent the constricted 'Great Men' approach to history but also to offer a broader picture of the activities and conflicts within the field and the effects of the political forces exerted upon them.
Author : Boris T. Pash
Publisher :
Page : 268 pages
File Size : 15,22 MB
Release : 1969
Category : Atomic bomb
ISBN :
The time was 1944, a critical period in World War II. The Allies were just beginning to get a foothold on the Axis stronghold. But Hitler was stubbornly holding back the pressure and bragging about his secret arsenal of super-weapons. Intelligence reports were coming in of huge concrete installations and underground constructions, and Allied scientists were feverishly searching for the anser to the one crucial question that plagued their governments: Did the Nazis have the secret of the Atomic bomb? To find the answer Col. Borish T. Pash was directed to head a dangerous intelligence operation at times through the front lines of both the Allies and the Axis. Its code was the Alsos Mission.
