how did the USA made the atomic bomb so quickly? Were the German scientists from operation paperclip already working on it for the Nazis?
In: Engineering
A lot of scientists were aware that such a weapon could *theoretically* be made. Once the war started, the volume of publications related to nuclear science precipitously dropped as scientists realized there were competing programmes to weaponize the technology.
The USA mobilized a huge amount of resources, since their industrial base was protected from active warfare. The USA also had the dual advantages of close cooperation with the UK nuclear group and the many scientists who had fled to the USA in the 1930’s to avoid creeping nationalism in Germany and nearby areas.
The Germans were absolutely working on building a nuclear weapon. They were largely hamstrung by competing resource needs and active saboteurs within their projects.
If you are interested in the details, I highly recommend two books:
* Richard Rhodes’ The Making of the Atomic Bomb, is a narrative history of period roughly 1920-1950, primarily from the Allied point of view. It covers who, how and why, without assuming you know a lot of physics or military jargon.
* Neal Bascomb’s The Winter Fortress, covers German nuclear plans, their efforts to use a Norwegian hydroelectric plant to aid them and the UK/Norwegian strikes against it. Again, not too much tricky science and it moves pretty quickly.
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