The Pete Quiñones Show - Germany's WW2 Atomic Weapons Program Thomas777 - Complete

Episode Date: July 25, 2025

2 Hours and 47 MinutesPG-13Here is the complete audio of Thomas talking about Germany's atomic program during WW2.Thomas' SubstackRadio Free Chicago - T777 and J BurdenThomas777 MerchandiseThomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 1"Thomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 2"Thomas on TwitterThomas' CashApp - $7homas777Pete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's SubstackPete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

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Trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pete Cagnonez show. Thomas, we got a new series that you wanted to start here. You mentioned it and I was like, we need to jump all over it. especially since you mentioned the Oppenheimer movie that's out and that this would be a good supplement or side by side to it. So tell everybody a little bit about what you're thinking.

I want to discuss the German atomic bomb, like everything about it. Like if such a program existed, you know, conceptually, what was the catalyst for? for it, you know, what was the state of science at the time? And also, um, in, in kind of more apocal terms, you know, I want to talk about nuclear weapons generally or atomic weapons in that era. Um, you know, people, people, people of a misunderstanding about, about, about the bomb and about nuclear weapons generally. Um, they, uh, people like Thomas Schilling and like Herman Kahn, they made the point that nuclear weapons or like any other weapons. They're just far, far more muscle bound.

The ability to impose, you know, devastating attrition in an instant system, you know, marks them apart. As does, you know, very, like strategic variables relating to their destructive power. It creates peculiar paradigms. I mean, oh, that is true, okay? But they don't have, they don't have great utility in any kind of like general applied sense. And there's actually very few paradigms where they really are a game changer, or that they really advance, you know, the, the military ranges of a state, you know, instantaneously. You know, like it, there's this kind of like, this is kind of like mythical belief in superweapons.

just, I mean, it's like an ongoing thing. It just seems to people assign a kind of mystique, you know, to war tech. And I guess like nuclear weapons could be viewed as kind of like the zenith of that. So, I mean, there's just that. But beyond that, there's deliberately cultivated narratives around, around the issue historically, like the development of the first atomic bomb. A lot of this has to do with anti-fascism, you know, like ideological anti-fascism. A lot of This has to do with rationalizations for, you know, America's development of the bomb and attempt to defend its monopoly on such capabilities. You know, the, there's this idea that was presented by the war department in the aftermath of, you know, the nuclear assault on Japan. That, well, we developed this thing because, you know, the Third Reich was feverously developing a,

an atomic capability and you know that would have that would that would have changed everything you know and this this evil tyrannical regime set bent on world domination could have held hold hold the planet hostage with atomic weapons that's and that's preposterous for a lot of reasons but it does beg the question as to was uh was the german rike developing an atomic bomb actively uh that's a complicated question for a lot of reason not the least of which um Not the least of what, for reasons, not the least of which is the fact that, Oppenheimer was not the quote father of the atomic bomb. Now there was Einstein, a man of Otto Hahn was.

And this didn't used to be controversial, okay? Who was Otto Hahn? I don't Han was born in 1879. He died when he was quite elderly in July in 1968. Han is the father of nuclear chemistry and specifically nuclear fission. Okay. Han and his assistant, a lady named

Lisset Maitner, they discovered the radioactive isotopes of radium, thorium, protecting them and most importantly uranium in the second episode i'm no physics guy but i do know something as much as a layman can kind of understand these things looking into why uranium is so important and like what uranium actually is i'm going to like bore everybody to death but it's important to understand and applied capacities you know how atomic research um developed into a um a a a a discreetly military endeavor okay but um han also through his experience through his experiments

which were myriad he discovered the phenomena of what's called atomic recoil in nuclear isomerism and uh he pioneered uh a lot of the techniques that ultimately um gave rise to carbon baiting okay so the guy was a the guy was a was was was an intellectual giant but um quite literally everybody subsequent every every every researcher um engaged in nuclear science and specifically uh um weapons-based nuclear research they were they were literally they were literally borrowing from hans research okay that's indisputable and um like i said it in the epoch he was credited as such um this idea that you know like oh that the germans were just like these crazy fools

and they didn't understand physics or something or i mean that's ass nine von belief also like this idea that like oh like you know because of anti-semitism you know the the germans didn't have a coterie of top scientific minds like that that's preposterous like not only is that preposterous but quite literally um you know the technology that facilitated the development of nuclear weapons was literally invented by the Germans. Okay. Now, for background two, Han, he received in 94 the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. And just we'll get into this again in the second and third episodes. I think we, I think it should probably be a three-part series, but the, but just nuclear fission was the, wasn't is the basis for nuclear reactors as well as nuclear weapons. Okay. It makes all

those things not just possible but conceivable. Okay. Interestingly, um, interestingly, um, Interestingly, during World War I, because Han was a little bit older, he served with a Landveh Regiment, which, you know, in the Kaiser's, and the Kaiser Reich was like a reserve regiment generally consistent. It was kind of like the home guard, or like what the British used to call the territorial army. But he actually was mobilized and deployed.

and he was attached to a chemical weapons unit, chemical warfare unit, headed by Fritz Hobber on the Western Front, Eastern Front and Italian Front. He was in heavy action. He was awarded the Iron Cross second class. So, I mean, he, why do I raise this specifically? It's not just because it's interesting trivia. but um it uh i'm trying to demonstrate the aspect of han's character han was not averse to the you know applying science in um in uh in uh in military endeavors okay including the somewhat horrible

endeavor of chemical warfare all right this becomes an issue later on um as to um what hans view was of you know, applying nuclear fission to to weapons development. And plus it's just interesting background. And there's, I believe there's very much I believe there's very much a natural progression

conceptually, okay, from chemical warfare to nuclear warfare. And I, I, I mean that's arguable, but I think it's important. And I think people, people understand people who understand institutional thinking and the men who popularize institutions and the way they kind of the paradigms that they play with as it were I think that it's somewhat inarguable but um this kind of thing was very much on on on the minds of of uh european physicists okay um the concrete engineering of what became the atomic bomb wasn't and we'll get into why that was but um

It's like I said, there's this like mythology, there's this punitive mythology that it's that both somehow simultaneously the Germans were idiots who had no idea how to apply what's called the new physics to war fighting and the engineering of weapons. But in the other hand, they were like these maniacs hell-bent on developing an atomic bomb. And only these like, only these like, you know, genius ashernalism, like, you know, were able to save the day. And of course, like Einstein is the first. father of nuclear physics and Oppenheimer is the fire of the atomic bomb. That's total

nonsense. Okay. And that's not a partisan take. It's an arguable. For those who I'm sure are going to send me hate messages about it, that's just not true. It's like, well, I can you know, I can source all of these claims. Let's jump to the end

of the war because I think Irving's book, The Virus House, as well as a source I rely on tremendously. It's the best book on the German atomic bomb. There's also a book by, not by, it's about Edmund Teller. And the narrative kind of begins on the date of the Hiroshima attack. Because that's really, people don't realize that they agree to what a Manhattan Project truly was secret. and the attack did shock the world.

It's rather amazing the degree to which the Manhattan Project was able to maintain operational security. But I say let's start there for a few reasons, as will become evident. It's the point at which the world was quite literally introduced to the atomic bomb, including a coterie of German scientists who had been taken prisoner by MI6 and squirled off to the United Kingdom. So August 6,945,

the BBC Home Service. They broadcast the first news that an atomic bomb had been dropped in Hiroshima. The bullet announced that the bomb in question contained as much explosive power as 2,000 of the RIF's 10-ton bombs. President

Truman had declared that the Germans had worked feverishly to find a way to use atomic energy, but had failed. Now, at a premise it's called Farm Hall. This was a country house near Huntington in England. A codery of German physicists were being held prisoner there. Incidents, what was called Operation Epsilon. Operation Epsilon was the code name for this...

endeavor that took place in may 1st and june 30th 1945 um whereby uh the allies identified um 10 german scientists who were believed we've worked on the german atomic bomb program and uh these men were uh they were captured and they were again they were squirled away to uh to england and detained in this in this kind of mansion house near Cambridge called Farm Hall. Okay. The proximity to the university is not an accident either because it was a weird kind of incarceration that these guys endured because in the one hand, it was very punitive. And the other hand, you know, if you wanted these men to speak, you know, London wanted

these men to speak to, you know, their own academics about the, you know, about the bomb and things. and if you're, and if you're just, you know, kind of like treating people, like, forcing them to live, you know, like, you know, like abject in squal or whatever, or, you know, or abject prisoners in the traditional sense that that wouldn't have happened. So, I mean, it's, it kind of reminds me of the early days of, like, Speer's detention, okay? Although, obviously, he ultimately endured true horrors as we got into in an earlier series. but um the uh the goal nominally i think this is basically true what m i 6 and um the u.s war department both claimed independently was that the goal was to determine how close the german right had counter the development of a viable atomic bomb um first among the detainees was otohan okay um it uh and this was attested to not just by um not not just by his fellow detainees but but by his interrogators and and in the um you know in the MI6 men who were guarding him and debriefing him there there was concern that han would commit suicide because he was so beside himself that this bomb had been created and he blamed himself you know um it's not uh it was

You know, this was very poignant, okay? And I don't, this is on my mind, like I watched the Oppenheimer movie the other day, like this idea that like Oppenheimer single-himmolly created the atomic bomb and lived with this terrible guilt. That's ridiculous. Ready for huge savings? Well, mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th

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Terms and conditions apply. Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited. Trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. It's not, you know, it's as if they, like, extrapolated, like, Hans' life and mind and memories and, you know, transposed it on to this kind of. a character of Oppenheimer who has some relation to the historical man was become kind of like this you know this almost like mythical figure but um the uh a major t h writtener he was the british officer in charge at farm hall um he he he he asked rhan to be brought to his office

immediately to make sure that his he was stable of mind and also he just wanted to speak to him about, you know, what had just happened. According to Rittner, Han was horrified, and again, he felt personally responsible for the best of hundreds of thousands of people. He told Rittner, Han told Rittner. And apparently, according to independent witnesses, not just Ritner himself, Han Ritner developed something of rapport, okay, during his time there. and

Han had told Rittner on multiple occasions that he'd had forebodings about the potentialities of his discovery of nuclear fission

but he never thought that you know a weapon would be rapidly engineered and deployed with that kind of destructive power not because it was impossible but we'll get into

what what you know he thought would give a would give the scientific community pause and other things now who are the other detainees of farm hall um they were dr eric baggie or baj dr kurt deetner a professor named walter gerlock adohan of course um paul hartek the famous verner heisenberg Horst Coaching A professor named Max von Lau Another professor named Carl Friedrich

Von Weissker And Dr. Carl Wirtz Now The premises at Farm Hall were Bugged, okay? Everywhere it was from, you know, the kind of common recreation area to the private court of the men.

And this wasn't just incidental. One of the key purposes of detaining the German atomic scientist was the eavesdrop on the conversations between the men themselves. Now, as the, what the migrants picked up, as the news was relayed, was that Heisenberg disputed the possibility that the Americans even had a bomb and dropped it. Like he didn't dispute that Hiroshima was destroyed. But uh, he, um, he, he, he believed with some kind of conventional weapon, like some kind of muscle bound conventional weapon or series

of firebomb raids, like had been conducted over Tokyo where 100,000 people died in 24 hours. Like, he thought this was, he thought this was propaganda, okay? Um, not because it would be impossible to create a bomb, but he, you know, the scientific community was, it was a peculiar thing in the even even um you know even on the eve of hostilities um the number of men who truly understood you know the new physics and were insinuated into um you know the applied research of these things it was incredibly small fraternity okay and um men like that then kind of looked at themselves with the exception of a certain coterie um that ended up in america they looked at themselves as being part of a that kind of transcended politics, okay?

Heisenberg, he was personally friendly with a doctor, Gautzmint, who was the head of the American intelligence mission, which had debriefed him when he was initially taking prisoner. And Gautzmint was a fellow physicist, and they, Heisenberg and Gautzmint knew of each other. And Heisenberg developed, like, a pretty good rapport with him. And he'd asked Gautzmitt whether atomic weapons research was something that the allies were endeavoring to, you know, take on or if there was any, you know, background of such applied experiments, you know, the end goal of weaponizing atomic energy. And Gautzmint assured him that that was not the case. and I, Gautsmith, I guarantee he had no idea about the Manhattan Project.

He was speaking totally honestly. Okay. So maybe it was naivete, something might say on the part of Heisenberg, thinking like, that, you know, the kind of fraternity of pure science would mean that, you know, no one would, no colleague would lie to another

on such an important and, like, literally earth-shaking matter, but, um, that, again, it was different times. It was different. You know, it was, these guys weren't ordinary academics or scientists. You know, they, they were like the elite of the elite of the elite. Um, and also, again, like, Gautsmith, I believe was selling the truth. Like, he didn't know about the Manhattan Project.

You know, and, um, plus two, I mean, like the, it shocked everybody because like the war in Europe was done. Like, Japan was utterly destroyed and couldn't even defend itself. You know, that's why it was like, that's why there's this lame, like, oh, Japan had to be invaded because they were just crazy. and like a million Americans would have died. Like that, that's ridiculous. The bomb was deployed. These things developed their own momentum. The bomb was going to be deployed somewhere.

It had been developed to destroy Europe, which is totally insane. If you think about that, you know, like genociding your own race with nuclear weapons. But aside from that, it's, I don't think the Soviets would have stopped. You know, and, you know, they, you know, they were, they were active. the Soviets had gone to war against Japan in the final days. You know, like, who's to say they would have abided, you know, Truman's demands had the bombs, plural, not been deployed. But in any event, that's the rapidity to which, too,

that's something to keep in mind, like the kind of the core concepts of weaponizing nuclear energy, this is really only something. six years old. Okay. So I believe there was something of this idea that, um, America could just rapidly, you know, kind of, um, develop a competency in the new physics, you know, and within basically half a decade, um, you know, develop a, a weaponized capability. Like, it seemed unlikely. You know, it's, it was extraordinary. Um, and putting oneself in the shoes of, um, Heisenberg, I mean, think about the disorientation of what he had just endured and kind of like what of the German like experience generally, like in, you know, 945, 1946. And finally, too, the Americans and the British came, who, you know, in operational terms, they worked fairly closely in the immediate aftermath of the German defeat.

practical reasons those are political ones um the uh the last german uranium pile laboratory um to be seized that was the laboratory staffed by visager and verts it was actually located in the french occupation zone um and uh the u s army with the assistance of the british at all costs aimed to prevent radioactive material and the research data from this uranium pile laboratory from falling into French hands like they they were singularly fixated on this okay and the Germans knew this and that's and that's how and that's why Weisager and Verst ended up in the hands

of the British and not the French but the reasoning too in Heisenberg's mind was like okay like if you if you guys have the bomb like why why you fixated on you know grabbing all the uranium you can't and preventing it from falling into, you know, rival hands or whatever. Like it just, but again, too, nobody, nobody knew about the Manhattan Project other than those involved. And, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the feelings of the Germans, Irving, characterized it as a sense of recrimination um they were shocked by the fanaticism of people who are not

under direct like physical threat who just develop like rapidly develop an atomic bomb it uh like in their mind it's like it indicated the kind of fanaticism that had been like hysterically treated to them and the japanese by the new dealers you know it's like you guys have you guys have you guys have an ocean between uh the people you claim your enemies and you're like feverishly developing atomic bombs. Like, there's something frankly insane about that. Ready for huge savings? Well, mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th

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Well, let me ask. Could they really have been shocked? I mean, how would a Han and Heisenberg, how up would they have been on, you know, new deal, what the new deal was bringing in? And what was basically going to happen where, yeah, of course, this group of people once control of the bomb. They're megalomaniacal. Because these guys are scientists, not politicians. And again, too, we're speaking of things that happened 80 years ago and that we take for granted.

Like it didn't, you know, and also I believe they thought that. You know, the degree to which, the degree to, I mean, listen to the, listen to the, listen to the, listen to the, listen to the, listen to the, listen to the, listen to the, people were somewhat flabbergasted that America was literally talking about making total war on Europe for frankly ambiguous reasons. You know what I mean? Then, um, people didn't even, there was a question as to whether, um, you know, an atomic bomb would even work as intended. you know there's a fact like we addressed um at the beginning of you know what military utility does really have outside of very narrow kind of strategic paradigms other than the fact that you can like kill a whole lot of people immediately you know and um america had uh germany was in ruins the red army was in berlin the japanese uh japan was literally a pile of rubble that was getting bombed back to the Stone Age every day

like deploying launching a nuclear attack on like a ruined country under those conditions that's somewhat shocking you know I mean even even if one understands

the character of the men in control of the enterprise so yeah I don't make I don't I don't think he was like feigning putting on errors or something and like I said too these are the guys who actually made this possible. It wasn't Oppenheimer. It wasn't Einstein. You know, it wasn't Enrico Fermi. You know, it was

these guys, you know, and it's, I mean, there's something, you know, yeah, it's a trope that scientists are naive, but it's also kind of true. It was certainly true here. I mean, like I said, who are these guys faking it to? Like, they, you know, they had, um, they weren't, uh, and like none of these guys were national socialists. It's not like they were going out to like, it's not like they were pulling a garing and saying like I've got to protect the historical record and you know wrong foot my enemies like that didn't even feature into the equation you know like Heisenberg was a national socialist Han actually like was at odds with the regime not to do some liberal but he just he just didn't like national socialism and he didn't you know he was um he wasn't a guy who was

unlike von Braun was you know willing to go along and be pragmatic you know um these guys were you know but von Braun was uh was a um was basically like a uh uh and you know, a mechanical engineer and like an aviation, um, prodigy. You know, like he wasn't, that's a different, like, theoretical physics is a weird thing. And it's like, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's very, it's, it's, it's like, it's, it's like both concrete and abstract and it, it tends to, it tends to attract kind of, you know,

dreamy hyper-intellectual personalities and stuff. So no, I don't, I don't think there's anything fake about it. But, um, the, uh, Han, Han, um, Han had described, um, and people, and,

and independent witnesses attested to this. Like, people had been with him when he was, first, uh, when he had his first breakthroughs in his, you know, efficient research,

um, when Han first learned the potentiality, um, or the implications, rather, it wasn't clear what the concrete potential was. of uranium efficient

discovery. He said that, considering that war was obviously imminent, he contemplated seizing as much uranium as possible, the majority of which in Europe was in Belgium and literally throwing it into the sea or otherwise hiding it

to ward off some kind of catastrophe you know resulting from one of the combatant states attempting to weaponize it. And then he realized that's not practicable and also you know,

um, but I mean I, you know, that's, that's, that's the core, the cost of the core of your question, like, Han had those kinds of thoughts because that, in his mind, that's what any remotely, kind of like morally, anybody with remotely normal, normal, like moral constitution

would have those kinds of thoughts. Like he wouldn't just like, you know, there's something wrong here with the Americans and British. It's like putting up huge factories and like feverishly like, you know, producing pure uranium, like without question because like, you know, and it's like why? Like was, was, was the Red Army storming across America? It was like, I mean, was, were the Japanese threatening America? Like, no. I mean, like there's something. There's something that's seemingly about it. You know, and like, it's not, I, I, I totally understand what he's getting at or was getting at. And I'm not at all some peace-knick.

In fact, like, at scale on these questions, I think I'm pretty callous. Okay, at least that's what I'm told. The, interestingly, caution, what he stated in the course of this conversation with his fellow detainees after the broadcast that, you know, Hiroshima had been destroyed. what he said and what he reiterated later was that the level of cooperation you know under military auspices, obviously

that facilitated the Manhattan project, that would have been impossible in Germany. You know, he made the point he's like, he's like, you know, the men in the room, he's like, some of us wouldn't have wanted to do it. on principle, but he's like, even if we had, you know, there would have, there would have been different ideas on how to proceed with this. And there would have been different ideas on, you know, managing outcomes potentially, you know, and like, and trying to like build in, you know,

safeguards into the, into the structure itself or, you know, there would have been, there would have been resentments from, you know, taking orders from party men, you know, and that's your point, yeah, that's the subtext of what he said. of what coarsing said is that these men who worked on that Manhattan Project, they were like absolute fanatics. Like they were, you know, they were, they were frankly crazy.

And that, yeah, that goes without saying, especially you consider the confessional background and motives and things of these men, in America, I mean. But it, um, the, uh, now what, what was the background here of,

um, just going to introduce the back. of what if any understanding of the weapons potential of Han's experiments existed on April 29th 1939 this was this was kind of when the world became aware of the potential of some kind of potential potentially you know game-changing of the new physics on Hans experiments have been widely publicized, obviously, throughout Europe. And there's a French professor named Frederick Jolo, or Jolouille. He was the son-in-law of Madame Curry.

He reproduced Hans' experiments meticulously. And he and his team, they were confirmed. And like it was confirmed that like Han was, you know, what he had stated to have proven. As regards, among other things, the existence in neutrons and the process and uranium fission and their situation like that it was, it was signed off on his, yes, this is legitimate. No, no, letter to nature magazine, which in those days was like a leading kind of like, it was a combination of kind of like pop science stuff, but also like major. scientific discoveries that's where they would be featured in which it mightily sounds weird today but i mean

that's the way things were you know it's um um this french team led by jeloid um their letter was titled quote liberation of neutrons and the nuclear explosion of uranium um and uh essentially that was sort of like the first kind of like public declaration of uh you know nuclear fission having like tremendous weaponous potential um but i emphasize potential you know it there was nothing there's nothing demonstrably proven here but uh ready for huge savings will mark your calendars from november 28th 30th because the Lidl Newbridge warehouse sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favourite Liddle items all reduced to clear. From home essentials to seasonal must-habs, when the doors open, the deals go fast. Come see for yourself. The Lidl Newbridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November.

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or at least it was then in Germany. At the physics colloquium, a guy named Vilhelm Hanley, who was, he didn't know Han, but he was like a protege of him because, like, you know, he was an up-and-coming physicist. You know, everybody, you know, he was kind of the, he was kind of like the grand old man,

everybody looked to. He read his short paper on what he called a uranium burning engine. I mean, we're talking about as a nuclear reactor, okay? And that

like little paper by this guy, the trajectory of German atomic research was basically going towards nuclear reactors. You know, the idea of like or like a uranium burning engine, okay? You know, like an endless energy source. And that,

frankly, that would have solved what became Germany's quagmire militarily in part, more so than an atomic bomb would. And that's a really interesting counterfactual. But that, and amidst all of this kind of excitement, you know, it's got to be said despite the impression people have. I mean, not just court historians, even people who, you know, are more kind of critical in their thinking about historical topics. there's this idea that the so that that the german rike was some kind was almost some kind of like rightist mirror of the soviet union it's not true at all you know like the national socialist party um it was it was literally elected um hitler himself by the enabling act and by um various referendums he had tremendous power but even that wasn't really unprecedented you know like the rike president had literally like extra constitutional authority as he saw fit but um You know, the German state and the National Socialist Party were discrete entities. And it, um, it, there, there was tension there, like, structurally, you know, and there was, even beyond that, even, uh, it wasn't, it wasn't, um, it wasn't simply because there's plenty of professors who weren't national socialists, even the guys who were basically sympathetic, like, they didn't want the government messing in their affairs, you know, like, these were not just guys who, you know, owed their, owed their, um,

careers and prestige to, you know, something the Berlin government had done for them, you know, and they also, they didn't want to be ordered to work with other people, you know, like they, that they didn't feel comfortable with or didn't, you know, respect or whatever. It was like very provincial, kind of like very ego driven, but also just very, you know, I mean, that's the nature of acadine, you know, and that's, that's, and especially, you know, especially the, especially the, especially the hard sciences and especially what was then called the new physics, which was literally like the cutting edge of of a scientific endeavor you know so i mean it's um it was like trying to herd cats you know this this this idea that you know this this idea that the rike

was like just some party state is nonsense it has this idea like germans like you know some prussian some prussian officer type just like snaps his fingers and then like the crowds all like you know do what they're told like that's that's nonsense too like um it was uh you know it's a you know it's It's, uh, it's, it was, um, it was, it was, it was, it was highly chaotic, you know, um, this, uh, the subsequent conference, um, that was a, that, that was arranged based on all these, um, based on all these, you know, kind of findings and confirmed, um, confirmed, um, and confirmed research. Um, it ultimately was, uh, it ultimately was, uh, uh, held in Seversy at uh at um in Berlin at a building on a winter then Linden um the and this was when the war department um got very interested in what was going on um the the war office um as well as Reich ministries attached to it, actually or just kind of like practically because they were in the same orbit or had overlapping spheres of authority. We had a very short space of time in

1933 had begun their own uranium research program. It was low-key. It was basically, you know, corraling data that had already been produced. produced, you know, in France and in the German Reich. You know, I'm kind of running a comparative analysis and again, like, duplicating some of these experiments to make sure that, you know, this was, in fact, the results were what they purported to be. And this led to a Hamburg professor named Paul Hartek and his assistant, a guy named Dr. Vilhelm. McGrath. They'd written a letter to the war office just before the Berlin Conference and about 10 days after the publication of the of the Paris, the French physicist letter in Nature magazine. And this letter was cited again and again and again by American New Dealer Media as well as

OSS-ty, all in sundry. The letter stated quote, and this was the letter of the war office. okay, by this by this Hamburg professor. It said, quote, we take the liberty of calling your attention to the newest development in nuclear physics, which in our opinion will probably make it possible to produce an explosive, many orders of magnitude more powerful

than the conventional ones. That wasn't really a groundbreaking statement. I mean, yeah, people speculated that that was true. And obviously what was right into this statement was that this was some sort of a this was some sort of like you know low key and what's kind of hidden communication

between German scientific academic academic academe and the war office saying like look like this is not only possible this is you know essential we've got to beat the allies to the punch and you know pursue this course of research essentially like take this letter to the fur

and the armist ministry and like let's make it happen there's no evidence that that's what this letter are indicated. Okay. And frankly, like, if that's what it was, like, why wouldn't open a letter be written? You know, like, it's not really, things are done. But, you know, so I think some of what is argued around

these, um, these, um, these surviving kind of statements. Um, I say surviving, I mean, you know, like a literal letter form. I think, I think some of it is in bad faith.

Um, the, uh, you know, and again, the, um, something the letter concluded with quote the country that makes first use of unsurpassable advantage over the others I believe what he meant by it is just nuclear fission generally and again

the trajectory of this kind of research was towards nuclear reactors okay or uranium burning engine I believe that's what they were getting at and which is true okay i mean any anybody who found a way to you know utilize um atomic energy for uh industrial military purpose like yeah obviously like first use compares uh confers a a massive advantage but i don't read it as being like again some kind of secret agreement

you know to pursue atomic weapons research in concert and i don't read that final sentence as a statement to the effect of, you know, we have got to develop and deploy atomic bombs as soon as possible. It's not in context. That's not what it means. And I'm not playing lawyer ball at all. And frankly, too, it's a bit outside the scope, but the course of German scientific research, not just relating to the new physics, but even in conventional engineering and other things, it makes sense that a nuclear reactor would kind of be the holy graham. of German research or that makes any sense. You know, and again, that would have alleviated not just emergent exigencies in the

Second World War, but, you know, problems that had compromised Germany's operational effectiveness and its ability to survive protracted wars generally, okay? I mean, in the preceding, you know, millennia or what have you. But that, the reaction in London was especially kind of severe. to the French physicist letter, you know, the Nature magazine letter. Employers, did you know, you can now reward you and your staff

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and your input and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans. Our consultation closes on the 25th of November. Have your say, online or in person. So together we can create a more reliable, sustainable electricity supply free. your community. Find out more at airgrid.i. 4.4 slash northwest. Um, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, they, you know, just like as they did, subsequently, when insinuating Mr. Churchill into office, they undertook this, like, full court press, um, full of lowered accounts of, of, of, of a new, quote, super bomb based on uranium

fissure, and that was being developed in Germany, you know, like, they, They just presented this as a foregone conclusion as a fact. You know, the four days after the letter appeared, both the British Treasury and the foreign office were approached by Sir Henry Tissard. He was chairman of the committee on the scientific survey of air defense, which had outsized power, as did pretty much everything, related to the air ministry. I think we talked about that in our tertial series.

He said that in the uncertain terms, Britain should take preemptive action to deny large sources of uranium to the Germans. And as I stated, the largest stockpile of uranium in Europe was in Belgium. And there's a sizable industry for extracting radium from uranium from uranium oreys imported from the Belgian Congo as well. So, like, in Belgium, you didn't just have, you know, like, the raw storage of uranium. There was, like, the infrastructure to, you know, process it in basic ways to make it Utah. So, essentially, what Tissard was suggesting or demanding, perhaps, was, you know, that Britain find a way to, you know, wage war on the continent. capture whatever uranium Belgium had, you know, with hostility, which operationally, obviously, that was not going to happen. But the fact that this was well within their

contemplation, and I don't think this was just propaganda in the case of the UK. I think they probably actually believed this. I mean, obviously, their conceptual horizon was totally corrupted by this kind of hysterical idea of, you know, Germany is our enemy. But within the bound of rationality of that paradigm. I think they actually did believe that a fission bomb was at that moment possible. And that's kind of a fascinating

that's kind of a, there's it's like Frederick Forsyth's stuff, but in real life. I think that's kind of fascinating. And there's many, many intrigues, really to like espionage and stuff and and what have you that like around that. But I, I'm going to stop here.

And second episode, I think we'll have to go a little bit longer. And I want to get into the actual virus house, which is the title of the book, which was the dedicated research facility for the German atomic bomb, such that it could be said to have existed. as a dedicated program. And then in the third episode, we'll deal with kind of like the aftermath. And things to that nature. That sounds good. Are you going to address the popular conception that the furor was adamant about getting a bomb and that the scientists were working against him?

Yeah. And I think it's basically like Heisenberg said. And some of his colleagues said, when he said that, you know, we didn't really want to develop a bomb, he was talking in terms of, like, personal conscience, not like the hell with Hitler and let's sabotage the war efforts. It was that if, you know, if they'd been ordered in a formal capacity, or if the atomic program had been like the rocket program and under direct military authority, you know, that they would have resisted that because, you know, the unpredictability of outcome. and just kind of like the in their mind like the naked immorality of just unleashing that much power

when not you know necessary for you know in a matter of existential survival i think that's uh i mean that's the way to understand it but people want people want to rehabilitate heisenberg and i mean they should be like no german needs to be called rehabilitated but in their mind they want to think of heisenberg and and han as you know good guys so they like exaggerate the degree to which You know, these men had some kind of ideological objection to fascism. But yeah, we'll get into that. We'll start with just like a brief understanding of what uranium is. I'm very much a layman, okay?

So I mean, like I, I'm not suggesting, I'm not being pedantic. Like, I, when I started reading about this topic, like, I had to read up on uranium. So like, we'll take like 10 million minutes next episode and like learn about our friend uranium. And then we'll get into, um, you know, we'll get into the views of the war ministry, you know, contra the New Dealer War Department,

you know, and the kind of lack of convergence, respectively, of a common understanding of the military potential of atomic weapons. And, you know, like I said, I want to get into like the

motivations of why America developed a bomb and you know that's a complicated topic but yeah we'll try to wrap it up in three episodes all right do plugs and we'll end this yeah

you can still find me on Twitter which I guess now is X or whatever like formerly Burbap capital REAL underscore number 7 HMAS 7777 you can always find me on Substack, which is my primary platform.

It's Real, R-A-E-A-E-L underscore, Thomas-777.substack.com. You can always find me on my website, number 7, H-M-A-S-777.com. I'm preparing season two of the Mind Phaser podcast, and as well as I'm going to Utah in a couple weeks to film the first dedicated episode of Thomas TV on the channel. My YouTube channel is Thomas TV. Number seven, HMAS, TV. So exciting things are afoot. In addition to like this, you know, Pete and Keith Woods and other fellows are nice enough to host me and, you know, like be looking out for that stuff too.

But yeah, that's all I got. Thank you. Until the next time. Yeah, thank you, man. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekinjana show. Part two on what I'm calling the German bomb series, little mini series with Thomas. How are you doing, Thomas, and where are we going today? I wanted to continue kind of with, you know, the background of, you know, what the state of what was called the new physics was in the lead-up to the Second World War. especially because as we touched on, more than touched on, as we got into, but not completely last time, there's this idea very much reinforced by the Oppenheimer film, which in some ways I thought was a good film. In other ways, I thought it was not a good film at all.

I mean, well, we can get into that maybe when it's more apropos. There's this narrative that there is a good film. there's this kind of mad race. There's two one or two narratives. It's either that there was this race by all major powers to weaponize atomic energy. And feverously, you know, at Cambridge, University of Chicago, at University of Berlin, you know, presumably somewhere in the Soviet Union, you know, this was all going on. And, you know, this desperate race was, proverbially speaking, was won, you know, by the Manhattan Project team. That's not true at all. Nothing like that was afoot. the other the other the other the other kind of a narrative is that you know the Einstein memo was born of some kind of secret knowledge Einstein presumably had or that he had gleaned you know from the kind of German fraternity as it were of of you know researchers in the new physics that you know Heisenberg presumably was you know had had come to end the knowledge presumably you know presumably you know

borrowing from Fermi's concrete experiments that, you know, uranium could be weaponized into a, into a super bomb. So Einstein desperately, you know, contacted, you know, people he knew and then close to the New Deal regime, you know, including people he talked about in another series, you know, on the board of Jewish deputies, the American Jewish committee. They put him in touch with Sacks, you know, Einstein, or I said, Roosevelt's Wall Street man, who then said, oh, my God, you know, this is, you know, there's like some corny movie plot. this evil Nazi regime is, you know, months away from this super weapon. You know, we've got to alert Mr. Roosevelt immediately. Like that, that's ridiculous. I mean, aside from the, aside of many, like, value judgments they were in about. Employers, did you know, you can now reward you and your staff,

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Our consultation closes on the 25th of November. Have your say online or in person. So together we can create a more reliable, sustainable electricity supply for your community. Find out more at airgrid.i. 4.n. Northwest. The combatant regimes, like, this was not underway at all. Like, we talked about last time, literally on the eve of war in 1939, the best mines in Germany. First of all, there was no organization here, like the war office, which itself was kind of a hodgepodge of academics, you know, like bureaucratic administrators, you know, like party men, like guys, you know, like military men, at least in a liaison capacity, you know, who had some idea that, you know, that there's a, you know, that there's some kind of applied potential, you know, to atomic physics. the direction they were going was what we consider to be, you know,

conceptualizing what I mean what was for a crude nuclear reactor. Okay. That did change somewhat as time went on, but there was never, not only was there never a third Reich version of the Manhattan Project underway, but that wasn't even within anybody's contemplation, and nor was the kind of organization in place to do that. You know, I mean, anybody will tell you when you're talking about academics, especially men at the top of their field in some kind of experimental science, trying to organize these people in a dedicated capacity is like hurting cats, number one. Number two, you know, the Third Reich was really a,

the Third Reich, unlike the Soviet Union, and frankly, unlike the New Dealer United States, it was this kind of like competing off and hostile fiefdoms of authority and these factions who really didn't like each other who were kind of only bound by like faith in the furor you know like as just kind of like messianic personage I don't mean that in crude terms nor in overly praising terms

it's just the reality okay so like people have this kind of mistaken idea you know like we talked about before the third Reich is kind of like this like fascistoid like version of the Soviet Union. We're like from the top down, just everything was, you know, corralled into the service of the state and its military needs. Like, that wasn't the case at all. And that that's one of the things that, you know, the catalyst for Gerbil's total,

was going to be known as the total war speech. The catalyst for that was he was making the case, like, basically, like, begging a lot of some of the patrons of the party. Like, look, like put aside your differences. We have to mobilize completely, you know, if we're going to serve. And by that point, I mean, the die was cast, you know, so it, but be that as it may, I'll also say finally, and then we'll get into the meat of this, there's this idea in America. And I think, I mean, even among restorations with a critical eye, and even with some people who have military knowledge, either through direct experience or based on their theoretical, you know, endeavors. there's this idea that nuclear weapons is kind of like this trump card you know or that you know like thomas schelling said and in the context he said it was correct that they're just like any other

weapons except only to command and control nuances you know and the computerization of decision making at key junctures and the destructive power of them you know they they're just capable of implementing far, far more attrition, far quicker than conventional weapons. And that is the correct way to think about them in conditions of bipolarity as regards as a political map and general parity in terms of strategic forces in being. In a military situation, such as the world of 1939 or even of 1943, 44, it's not clear how an atomic bomb would have helped Germany. I mean, Germany could have annihilated the UK.

And, I mean, yeah, that would have helped. I mean, in terms of, obviously, it could no longer be utilized as, you know, U.S. Army Air Corps and Royal Air Force is unsinkable aircraft carrier from which to, you know, strategically bombed Germany with massive conventional loads. But, you know, the path of victory in World War II for Germany is the conquest of the Soviet Union. you know, Moscow has to fall in 1941. And thereby, you know, Germany becomes a superpower. You know, it captures the

Central Asian World Island, if you want to use McKinder's language. Okay. Just, you know, atomic bombing Moscow and killing, you know, 10 million Russians. Well, I mean, the third right killed 10 million Russians. I mean, did that win

the war? You know, like, I think it was a, Ahmadinejad was an interesting guy, at least more, I mean, he was at least most interesting Iranian ahead of state since Khomeini. You know, he made the point when kind of Netanyahu was as most kind of histrionic, you know, freaking that everybody's developing a bomb, you know, all Israel's enemies are, are developing the bomb. You know, it's like, did nuclear weapons help the Soviet Union? You know, like when the Soviet Union went down, not with a bang, what a whimper. I think it had

I think it had something like 12,000 warheads. You know, that could be married, launched vehicles and deployed, you know, as like strategically, you know, like intercontinately, you know,

or at least like within theater, you know, over intermediate distance. I mean, it's like this idea like nuclear weapons just, you know, you like own your enemy, like in proverbial or actual terms. You just own the battle space. Like that doesn't make any sense. You know, in the case of America, obviously, I mean, America just had to devastate Germany

and Japan, you know, like, and it could, and then America gets the planet, you know, but I mean, nobody else was in that situation, you know, um, ironically, in a totally counterfactual scenario, there were like a nuclear armed Japan, like that actually, like Japan could have extorted a lot of concessions if they had nuclear atomic bombs or something comparable. I thought about that. And not, I think not incidentally, that's why they were so fixated on a biological weapons program. You know, and like the father of modern bio-warfare is Shiroishi, and he got poached immediately by U.S. occupation forces and delivered the war department, soon to be the defense department,

They ended up actually teaching at Berkeley of all places, you know, as, like, in this kind of role, of civilian role, is like this, in old age, is like this unassuming, like, biologists. But he, he was a, he was a, he was a warmaster of bioweapons, okay? That's something of a tangent, but in any event, all these things are important. They're not, they're not just speculative, you know, sort of, uh, counterfactuals that are fun to play with. As we, I think we finished last time with the letter by the French physicist to nature magazine, you know, which discussed the potential of, you know, some kind of military application of uranium, you know, and reactions from uranium. if, you know, the isotope needed could be, you know, cultivated. Okay. And this really, this caused a, the same cause a stir in the scientific community would be a gross understatement.

But the response, essentially by the Germans, was a guy named Abraham Issao. He was chairman of the quote, Reich Bureau of Standards, what translates is the Reich Bureau of, the Righteuro of Standards, the Right Bureau of Standards and education. specifically the physical sciences was its, you know, a domain of authority and kind of keeping, you know, such that the universities could be corralled into a directly military role. It was, you know, this was kind of like this.

This was kind of like the party's way of, of not just keeping tabs on these things, but trying, but, you know, we're trying to direct such potential. as it emerged in a constructive capacity. But of course, again, we're talking about, you know, literally cutting-edge theoretical physics here. Like, you can't pick and choose who you want to staff these things. You need people to actually understand the damn thing in question.

You need, and beyond the any people are competent. It's like, Esau, he wasn't any kind of like national socialist or party man, but he was basically patriotic. He, uh, he'd been a leading authority on high frequency electronics. he'd been an academic physicist for most of his career, but he was politically active. Again, he wasn't any kind of like party loyalist, but he had followed kind of the ascendancy of nationalism in Germany, and he was like definitely behind it, you know, at least in like,

but frankly, I mean, like Patriotic Germans generally were, you know. But he, uh, he was excited at, you know, kind of nuclear physics being brought within his, you know, kind of pernumper of authority. you don't want to wait it that way. And he convened a conference. I think we mentioned the Jenna conference. Employers, did you know,

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sustainable electricity supply for your community find out more at airgrid dot ae forward slash northwest um which was directly convened in response you know to the announcement by the by the French researchers on um their applied experiments on his short last of course was you know Ato Han Han was unable to attend because he was engaged otherwise in Sweden. A guy named Professor Yosef Mattock from Vienna was deputized in favor of his regular assistant, Liza Maitner, who was also in Sweden, with the man himself, to like to speak for him or sit in for him. the conference took place in you know relative secrecy April 29th 1939 at the Ministry of Education building as we talked about um the uh doctor uh dr doms who's the head of the ministry's research department he vocally attacked han in absentia for publishing you know his vital discovery what he received as like a vital discovery, you know, to the wider scientific community.

Um, when that's not the way science works, okay, unless you're, I mean, if had this been two years later, you know, and had, um, Germany been, uh, actively at war, I think that case could be made. But even then, again, this was not the Manhattan project. Nobody, um, nobody had, nobody among this coterie of new physicists in Germany or Austria

had an idea that this is a military technology I mean beyond the fact that excuse me I'm sorry beyond the fact that you know any kind of any kind of applied technology where you're talking about a truly renewable energy source

that theoretically at least you know is is essentially inexhaustible. I mean, yeah, obviously there's military implications of that. Just say there's military implications to everything else. But that's, but that was, that that would have been like saying, you know, that, you know, that would have been like saying that, you know, aviation should have been kept secret, you know, as it was under, as, you know, as trials were underway in America to, you know, perfect a truly viable aircraft.

But American elsewhere. But the, but Metac took up, he went to bed very much on Han's behalf, and he basically cowed the committee into silence. You know, things were not, we're not a military, this is not a military, this is not neither a party nor a military, you know, conference. You know, we're not, we're not under your authority or anybody else's, you know, basically like, how dare you insult the man who's, you know, basically changed the world by his research and discoveries. And that honestly set the tenor, man. Like, not just in the genoc Conference, but moving onward again. Like something like I just described never could have happened in the Soviet Union. Like no matter what the technology under discussion was, even if it was a purely speculative technology at that juncture.

You know, so it's there is more of a, you know, I say this is important, not just because I've got, you know, peculiar, fixations as a researcher, but you know, it's important to you know, developing a properly characteristic view of the German Reich and its internal situation.

You know, this is not a place where scientists were cowed by the party or by the regime. You know, there certainly were, as always, representative official done, we tried to throw their weight around, but they were not in the driver's seat here at all for a lot of reasons. The

basically the long story short um in addition to a lot of the theoretical postulates unrelated directly you know to the subject of hand which i have no understanding of because i'm no physicist at all um i'm not even like an educated leeman in physics okay and first we admit that but um to uh the kind of highlight of the event if you want to look at in those terms to Gottengen professors got him juice and I got him Hanley. They'd outlined once again, not them once again, but they'd outlined again, as it was on the mind of every man present, you know, the practical ability of a quote uranium burner. Okay. I mean, this was, again, this was such that there could be said to be a sort of priority afforded to any conceptual model.

I mean, this was it. Okay. And again, that that obviously has tremendous military application, but not in the way that was being bandied by, you know, people like Einstein later on. And also by some people, some people, particularly in MI6 and later on. In the case of the former, it's interesting, and we'll get into that. I don't want to jump too far ahead. We'll get into the kind of the take from London, or the view from London, and the potentiality of an atomic bomb. But in any event, there had been a general ban placed on the export of uranium compounds from Germany. and the Reich Ministry of Economics was, they were adjusting,

well, they were trying to determine, like, there was recently captured mines in Czechoslovakia. I cannot pronounce Yakimov. If anybody on deck, like in the comments, I'm sorry if I'm butchering that. I first admit I'm terrible with these pronunciations but Central Europe

is rich in in uranium war okay like natural uranium war the this hadn't been mined yet but it you know had been accessed in some basic capacity

but you know who basically who is going to get get it first, like hadn't been decided, you know, was it just going to be squirled away and given to the, you know, given to the OKW to basically sit on so nobody else could have it? You know, was it going to be given to, you know, this, to, what was it basically going to be given to like, you know, the burgeoning kind of committee that, or the burdening on a quorum that attended the conference at Jenna, like what would become of it? But what they had allowed was a uranium sample had been dispatched to Gothengin for special analysis.

And the special analyst who was dispatched, you know, essentially to report his findings was a guy from the war office. okay and what was not known to the attendees of the genoconference and was not probably known to really anybody um the right chancery i'm sure that there was some line of communication there and Hitler himself i speculate and again this is pure speculation probably knew just because he was so hands on in in terms of uh weapons development and things like that um the war of his head begun its own uranium research program. But again, you know, it's, um,

if they were developing a bomb and if this was like the raison d'etra of it, you know, like why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why were they appealing to civilians at all? You know, I mean, it, because that, that would presume the knowledge, that, that would presume not just the, the conceptual basis for such a program, but the knowledge in order to implement it. as well as the political will. And it's just not, you know, it depicts, what develops here is a, I think,

an indisputable picture of, you know, basically everybody, everybody within the party administration, who had an understanding, you know, who's realistic about, you know, the fact that, you know, inevitably like a war was going to emerge between, you know, the Third Reich and the Soviet Union. anybody in the scientific community, you know, who was it all engaged, you know, with the reality of national politics at the time. And anybody who, you know, had been paying attention, you know, to the new physics with any, with any sort of understanding of it beyond that of a layman. Like, understood that there was some kind of, like, great applied potential for this.

But that might not be emergent for 20 years. You know, it might, you know, it, you know, it might never be fully realized. But again, too, it wasn't clear what that was. And such that there was any kind of like agreement in these like very kind of crude conceptual terms in Germany, it was as, you know, it was basically as like this is an energy source that's going to change the world. You know, it was not like this is how we built super bombs. Employers, did you know, you can now reward you and your staff with up to 1500 euro and gift cards annually, completely tax-free and even better.

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You know, and interestingly, but such that the United Kingdom had a view of this. After the chairman of a Belgian mining concern, he got wind of the situation in Czechoslovakia with respect to uranium. A guy named M. Edgar Cingier. he was president of the Belgian mining concern Union Mideur okay I think that's how you pronounce it

he contacted a guy named Tussard who was chairman of the committee on the scientific survey of air defense in London okay um and when he did uh the outcome of their meeting was basically Tazard he was unwilling to he was not willing to provide the funds or the authority for singia to or cingia to to purchase all available uranium stocks which there were several thousand tons in belgium and far more um available on the open market that had been extricated from chicooslovakia or extracted you know before the before the um before the country fell apart and, you know, what have you and became, came under the Dominion of the Reich. But, you know, it, uh, the fact was, I mean, it, this was not, it was, um, the UK was very much by this point, um, this was a May of 939, you know, they were shifting to a war footing,

you know, I mean, it can't be argued that this was, you know, oh, you know, the climate of appeasement was ruling and nobody, you know, realized, you know, the danger that way ahead. If you want to take that kind of court historian's view, I mean, that, that can't be argued, okay? The, um, the, uh, what Tazar did say is that, uh, if some kind of mass of, uh, uranium reserves, or at least that, which was then available on the open market, But if the bulk of that should fall into enemy hands, he said that may be something that, you know, that could be catastrophic and strategic terms. But, I mean, it wasn't, it wasn't clear what that was. You know, it's like it was basically that, you know, we hear that, you know, the crowds want it.

So we don't want, you know, because they want it. We want them to not have it, you know, but we don't want it either because it may be nothing. You know, the, the Admiral. Basically, this Tizarre took this to the Admiralty, which in the UK then, as I assume now, even always had outsized clout in terms of like war and peace questions. They said that, you know, they said that, you know, not only to win out of the funds to gamble with on this, like literally, but they said the possibility of developing a quote, explosive. of unprecedented power from uranium was so remote as to be negligible. So again, this was like science fiction. Okay, it kind of reminds me of if you keep up with, I don't know if anybody does,

but I, and maybe they've moved on from this kind of fixation, but like some years back, you know, if you picked up parameters, you know, like the US Army War College magazine, or read these, speaking of the Brits, read some of these like Royal Navy publications. They were talking about like rail guns and these kinds of like super guns that we're going to, that were primarily going to be based on um you know uh there's basically going to be like some kind of new like quasi surface warfare platform that's just going to like change everything you know it was a lot of uh i mean then is now like i mean now it's more you know guys kind of trying to rationalize already bloated budgets and stuff but there's there's always there's always

there's always there's always uh there's always generals and admirals as well as civilian analysts and intelligence men, you know, like, like sounding alarm bells about, about some future, you know, like super weapon. You know, this was not like, this was not something new. Okay. Yeah, I mean, the 20th century was remarkable in terms of got the punctuated, the punctuated equilibrium, so to speak, of, you know, scientific advancement by leaps and bounds. But this, this idea that, you know, there was a firm understanding of the potential of uranium that and that you know this somehow would you know absolutely make you know Germany its strategic situation as it was in 1983. You know the master of the world like that's

that's ridiculous. G.P. Thompson had an interesting take. He was a he was he was a leading British physicist perhaps perhaps the leading physicist who was close to a you know the like not just the war party as it as it were but to uh you know military circles and uh both intelligence and the admiralty he said uh you know it's highly he said he said the germans are probably more afraid of us um developing some uranium based technology you know is then we are of them and uh he said suggested a disinfo campaign indicating that the British had in fact tested uranium bombs of unprecedented force, you know, so potent that the authorities had, you know, stopped, stopped testing of them for fear of compromising the, uh, compromising the, uh, the, the program completely, you know, um, it, uh, Churchill, himself he said that any talk of uh and my july church was like something of a technology i mean

on the one hand he's like pan as a ludite i mean which he was um and he and he he he was a disaster as a as a as a commander in chief but he did have like a fetish for like war tech you know it'll be not an informed way but his view was uh the same he said that like any any german talk of a quote super bomb is pure bluff you know uh he's like, you know, this is ridiculous, like nothing like this. There's no indicators. There's no kind of indicators that something like this is going to be deployed, you know. And he said even if it was, you know, the, you know, both the Admiralty and the Air Ministry, as well as the Army, you know, their view is that, you know, even if such an application had been cultivated, it would, you know, anything that would lead to results on a large scale.

would not be emergent for years. You know, and this was Churchill talking. You know, this was like Arch Warmarker Churchill, you know. So, I mean, it, the, he... Can I ask you a question? Yeah, yeah. Could that, the line of, you know, we've been testing these plutonium-based weapons,

and it's remarkable, what the kind of power they have, could that be a way of proper? propagandizing and saying, we know what these things can do. We can't allow the enemy to have them. Yeah, I think that that's where, I think that, I think the people who are agitating for that disinvote campaign, I think that was the subtext of it too. You know, it wasn't just to, you know, kind of like bluff the Germans.

Because frankly, the UK did not really have the forces in being to bluff in other ways, other than Ledger Main. But yeah, also, I think it could have served, yeah, exactly what you said. It could have served as, you know, an ongoing pretext as well, you know, like these kinds of things are being developed and an enemy hands. Oh my God. Like basically what became, you know, kind of like the, the, albeit it was, it was, it was top secret. But what became, you know, like the new dealer rationale for the Manhattan Project. But it's, but again, I mean, the reason it didn't is because it seemed like just so outland.

And again, these weren't, these weren't a bunch of, you know, these weren't a bunch of World War I generals who were like, oh, wait, I don't know about this, you know, this, this, this high fluid in science. Like, you know, these were like, these were guys at the top of the field, you know, in the UK, you know, in the 1930s, I mean, to say that like, they, they, they didn't, you know, have an indigenous, you know, um, uh, academic community that was very much on the cusp of new physics research, I mean, that is preposterous. It just didn't seem, it just wasn't, it wasn't what people were thinking.

Okay. And I mean, yeah, okay, anytime you're talking about, anytime you're talking about, anytime you're talking about a rare element, okay, obviously like explosives or something that comes to mind. This is like the nature of it. But that wasn't, um, that this was not something that was just universal, like, the way it's presented is that this was just something that was like universally understood to be like, you know, the potential of uh employers did you know you can now reward you and your staff with up to 1500 euro and gift cards annually completely tax-free and even better you can spread it over five different

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Have your say, online or in-person, so together we can create a more reliable, sustainable electricity supply for your community. Find out more at AirGridor. in dot a ee forward slash northwest you know of uh of uranium and it was only a matter of time before you know the the the correct formula as it were was calculated in order like bring it into reality um you know and that's uh you know all we can the closest we can get to literally peek inside the minds of people in the epoch is you know there's their, you know, their, their, uh, their declarations, either they're, you know, there were,

there's, you know, either their, either their, either their, their, their, their public declarations or, you know, their statements, the presence of witnesses. And there's not any, there's not any indication that, you know, anybody within the scientific or military community in Europe, as of 1939, um, you know, had this in, in, within, their contemplation. And again, part of this was, part of this was, you know, part of this was a conceptual bias. Because again, like, if you're, if you're, if you're a Feld Marshal in the Vermacht, or, you know, if you're a British Admiral of the Royal Navy, like, why, what's, what's, what's an atomic bomb going to do for you? You know, like what, like, honestly, like, how,

how is that going to solve, you know, the exigencies that you're charged? with resolving. You know, I mean, it's Germany, Germany becomes a superpower and, and, um, and resolves, uh, it's, uh, and, and resolves like the long emergency, it's, it's faced with if it, if it, if it can drop atomic bombs on people. I mean, it's not, you know, again, it's, it's, there's a very, there's very, there's a very, there's a very, there's a very, there's a very, very peculiar strategic configuration where nuclear weapons have real utility

and that basically never emerges and, you know, it certainly, it certainly wasn't emergent in the case of Germany in 1939. You know, and people can argue that point all they want, but I don't, I've got to come across a

convincing case otherwise, even in even in even in the abstract. In more concrete terms, relying on the direct, relying on the direct advice and claims of Professor F.A. Lindemann and later Lord Sherwell. Churchill wrote to the Secretary of State for air defense, saying that any suggestion of,

of quote, Nazi superweapons were without foundation. He said only, you know, as his expert, namely Lindemann, it told him only a minor constituent, the uranium was effective, which, which took, which took, quote, many years to extract. You know, the chain process can take place only if concentrated in a large mass. You know, the, as soon as the energy develops, you know, it's, you know, likely that, you know, we would require a mild detonation instead of a chain reaction, which presumably, you know, would, would incinerate, you know, like the uranium core that was needed in the first place.

and, you know, or, you know, based on this, based on the nature of these things and, you know, unknown variables, you know, if inadequate mass were cultivated, you know, a chain reaction could ensue that, you know, was just massively destructive, you know, in ways we can't even conceptualize, you know, all the basic, not not basic in terms of like uninformed, because this was a new science, but all the kind of, all, all the kind of, you know, usual objections at the time to, you know, why. You know, we don't, this is, you know, we don't want to, we don't want to tickle the dragon's tail, as it were. You know, and this was Churchill himself, like, relying on his experts, you know, and it's, again, like what, if anything, he had, he had an incentive to, you know, confabulate, you know, some kind of threat where there wasn't one, not, not diminish a threat where, you know, where it was. I mean, obviously. but that um but that uh and just uh

for those who don't know a lot about this and I mean I'm one of them so I'm not being pedantic um like what is uranium and why uranium again uranium is what was available Central Europe is uh

one of the natural um you know deposits of uranium that can be uh harvested and extracted, mine utilized in weapons development.

Obviously, uranium is a chemical element. What is a chemical element? It's an irreducible substance that cannot be broken down into other substances. Its symbol is you. Its atomic number is 92. In solid form, it's a silvery gray metal. Uranium atom is 92-procels.

photons and 92 electrons, of which six are valence electrons. Uranium radioactive decays by emitting alpha radiation. And the half-life of this is, it's between something like 200,000 and like 4.5 billion years of isotopes. So like uranium, like this is, this was like revolutionary and being able to like date the earth, like quite literally. I did not know that until recently. but um the most common isotopes and natural uranium is uranium 238 um and uranium 235 okay and uranium incidentally is the highest atomic weight of the primordially occurring elements now why uranium

235 uranium 235 um is uh it's uh it's uh It's in every thousand parts, about in every thousand parts of natural uranium, there's about seven parts of a lighter isotope, which is the mass number 235. The chemical properties are the same, obviously,

but the physical properties differ. Iranian 2305, essentially, it's got to be, the atomic structure of it has got to be manipulated in a way so that in very crude terms, it does not absorb what

it is being bombarded with the reaction has to actually be cultivated and this can only be achieved with the uranium 235 isotope okay such that

Professor Esau had any idea the Aranum 235 was like something that was like special that it you know, it was distinguishable in terms of its potential for, you know, applied, um, applied, um, utility, you know, like military or otherwise. Um, he, if he knew, if he had a deep understanding than his colleagues of why he didn't disclose that, but he did say that at once we should secure all available uranium stocks in Germany and we should cultivate uranium

235 where we find it um he said that it joins research group over his administration but representing you know like all interested factions you know party state military um you know uh and this was you know people kind of like shrug this off like well it's other assail like trying to you know insinuate himself into some kind of you know hancho role i mean which within with under under the under the German Reich, especially, you know, in the pre-war years that was not in common. But, or they kind of viewed him as just, you know, another scientist kind of, you know, being hysterical. And for most of the people present at the, at the Gen of Conference and these subsequent sort of meetings of this coterie that had, you know, that was involved in the, you know, or that there was, you know, within this kind of core of people from the, the department. of educational standards as well as the war office, you know, that nobody heard about uranium or uranium

research until the war broke out, you know. As it happened, when the war did break out, there was a, you know, there was the, there was the, there was the, there was the nominally civilian research team that we just mentioned that the war office had kind of secretly, you know, organized and like I said, like I believe there's a direct line from them to the chance for you to Edolf Hitler, although I can't prove that. But there were actually two teams in total

working on really small scale uranium research, like on the day World War II broke out, okay? At Dr. Kurt Deidner, who was the here, the Army's expert on nuclear physics. Employers, rewarding your staff? Why choose

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Our consultation closes on the 25th of November. Have your say online or in person. So together we can create a more reliable, sustainable electricity supply for your community. Find out more at airgrid.i.4 slash northwest. The deebner's was, unremonestly dismantled. The very day after Britain and France declared war in Germany, Professor Esau somehow secured an interview with General Becker, who was the chief of army ordinance.

He obtained a promise of full war office support and full and exclusive support for his, for his, you know, for his team's research endeavors at the expense of Deibner's. Now, some people will speculate. It's kind of like the dog that didn't bark in evidentiary terms. Like, well, how did he pull this off, especially considering he was a civilian and Deibner was insinuated into the Army establishment. He must have promised some kind of results.

I don't think that, I don't, I don't see how that's possible because, I mean, you know, Becker, among other things, you know, he didn't get to that position without having a basic understanding of of of you know of chemistry at least you know i mean you're not talking about some man in the street as relates to um applied science you know even something that was then is kind of theoretically abstract or you know unknown as as as atomic physics but i i don't um you know i don't i don't see what isa could have produced either in order to kind of like, in consideration of that guarantee that supposedly would have been made, that Deebner couldn't have.

I speculate it just comes down to Becker having more confidence in one man over the other. But again, who knows? I think all of this is kind of much to do about nothing because the point, I think the key takeaway is that this was not viewed as a priority. You know, not that it was, you know, I think probably. probably in crude terms, Becker didn't really give a shit. You know, I mean, he, Germany was now at war with Britain and France.

You know, and his priority was, you know, doing what he had to to win that war. You know, like what one egghead is bringing to the table versus another one. Well, he makes the better argument. He gets the, you know, he gets the, he gets the, you know, I mean, that's, these things often are, and like I said, I mean, the speculation is basically people filling in the gaps with what they want to

to substantiate a narrative that's not that's not substantiated by the record you know I mean so that's species anyway what Becker did agree to what ESAB did come away with

aside from like a promise of you know kind of funding and support was an official voucher certifying the military importance of the project for the war efforts but I mean like all kinds of all kinds of things were kind of given that proverbial stamp. I mean, especially later on and kind of more liberally by the SS, believe it or not.

I mean, anything, and it gives the SS, basically, whatever you give in as Himmler, like, any kind of scientific merit, you know, whether it was, you know, like, you know, transforming, like, you know, coordinated jet fuel or anything silly, but you know what I mean. Like, I don't, like, the fact that, the fact that ESA was able to, the value was able to get, you know, like the chief of army ordinance. you know, to sign off on his research. I mean, that basically means he was competent and, like, whatever he came up with, like, probably would, you know, be utile.

Whether it was or not, you know, like, whatever he came up with belonging to the army, you know, not to, not to ESA or not to any, you know, private sector or university patron. So that's, um, that's kind of the foundation of, uh, that's kind of the foundation of, you know, like leading into the war. like what what the state of uh you know atomic research was of course ultimately like during the war the title of mr irving's book the virus house i mean that was the heavy water facility that was dedicated to um you know um that was dedicated to you know cultivating uranium 235 um so i mean there's something there yeah and uh

I hope not boring it ready to death. I'll try to wrap this up in the next episode. But it, but yeah, that's, I don't want to get into that now because then we'd be talking for the next hour. But, yeah, that's, that's basically the foundation. And, you know, like I said,

I think it's, the reason why I wanted to cover this now was, I think it's timely, I'm going to go out to the Avonair movie, which in a lot of ways is not a bad film, especially for Hollywood. And like, some people believe Chris Rundleon, was kind of surreptitiously signaling the political things. I mean, that's a subject for another stream. But I thought it was timely, man.

I hope people are, I mean, it's essential understanding the total picture of the conflict. So I hope people are getting something out of it. The feedback seems good so far. Yeah, I think the, the, yeah, I think the very first time we ever talked, we talked about the spelling and changing narratives. and the narrative of this is wrong. The narrative that people believe of the German bomb program is wrong. So I don't see how anybody can, if one of the goals is to open people's eyes to

World War II and exactly what it was, I think there's no more important There's no more important subject than a potential, you know, bomb that, you know, they, oh, he would have just dropped it on. Yeah, it's also because. It would have dropped in everywhere. No, I mean, and people too, like I said, the important, you know, I spent a lot of time with game theory and like formal logic. I mean, it's like my background, like educationally, but also, you know, the Cold War was so. I mean nuclear weapons like the Cold War can only be understood within the context of the nuclear paradigm. You know, like it was just, it literally defined every aspect of it, like military, political, philosophical.

Like people can't get their minds around really the idea that, you know, in a different strategic paradigm, let alone one in the 20th century, that, you know, nuclear weapons could have not been, you know, the kind of trump card the, or like the key to victory that obviated, you know, all like lesser killing technologies. You know, and like, I can't emphasize that enough. It's like, again, like, even people, I'm not, any people who've got their own consensual prejudices, one way the other about the Third Reich. Like, it's not, put that out of your mind totally. Think it's really strategic terms and about a rationality of what Berlin had to accomplish

in order to realize its war aims and win the war. Like, again, how would an atomic bomb facilitate that? I mean, on the one hand, like, yeah, it's better always to have, like, potential firepower on hand that's devastating. But it's not, okay. I mean, it's, you know, it's not, it's not, like the utility of these weapons is not, there's not a spectrum, a wide spectrum utility to them. You know, it, um, and I think people forget that, you know, even people who are, you know, even people who are, basically informed about things and you know conceptually literate but yeah all right i'm i'm rambling man i won't i won't i won't keep you any longer but thanks so much for hosting me man um

i owe you a lot aside i mean we're friends and i appreciate being able to cover these things but um i really really appreciate the chance to appear on your program like believe no i'm very you're always you're always welcome all you have to do is contact me with the subject and you know we'll do it But before we do that, hit up some plugs and we'll get out of here. Yeah, legit. I'm always on Substack. And in September, I'll be dropping season two of the podcast in the interim. I'll keep dropping like one-off content that you can listen to like the Nico Klau interview and other stuff, I promise.

But in September, season two will drop. And when it does all other content, all other podcast content, it will be free. It's RealThomas-777.substack.com. You can find me on the app, formerly known as Twitter. It's Real, R-CAPAL-R-E-A-L-L-U-S-7-H-M-A-S-7-7-7. I'm on Telegram. It's at Thomas Graham, number 7-H-M-A-S-7-7-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-M-G.

Um, or no, it's Thomas. Yeah, no, it's, that's right. It's right. I'm not going to see anile. I'm just tired. Um, and that's, uh, the YouTube channel, there's nothing there yet except a couple one-off things. Um, you know, like an intro and, you know, some stuff that I've recorded with friends, like my dear friend Carrie. Um, on my YouTube channel, it's Thomas TV. Um, that's, uh, when I go to Utah in a couple weeks, it's to begin shooting dedicated. content for Thomas TV. So I'm excited about that. Employers, rewarding your staff? Why choose between a shop voucher or a spend anywhere card when with options card

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Airgrid, operator of Ireland's electricity grid, is powering up the northwest. We're planning to upgrade the electricity grid in your area and your input and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans. Our consultation closes on the 25th of November. Have your say, online or in person. So together, we can create a more reliable, sustainable electricity supply for your community. Find out more at airgrid.i.4 slash Northwest. You know, we're doing a lot more with the brand,

not just like sexing up the production values, which I owed to my dear friend, Rake and his team, like literally, like I could not do any of this stuff without them. They're the guys who do all, like, the editing and stuff and make things like presentable, like legit. I'd be, if it was just me, like, I'd be like some, like, hobo, like, looking like he was on public access in, like, 1980 or something. Like, it'd be, like, something from, like,

like, yeah, it'd be like something from like public access and like some alternate dimension of shit. But, uh, so keep that in mind. Um, that they're the guys who really are owed props for anything I do in this regard. But, uh, yeah, that's about where we're at. I, uh, I'm hoping to be able to drop, uh, Steelstorm 3 by early spring. Nuremberg by summer and that's all I got for right now. Until part three. Thank you, Thomas. Yeah, thank you, Pete.

I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekingones show. I'm here with Thomas. How are you doing, Thomas? I'm doing very well. Thanks for hosting me again. I hope people have been getting something out of this series. You know, I'm a historical writer. and I know something about political theory and the law and formal logic, but I'm not a scientist at all.

I'm not even like a layman who, you know, is highly competent in science or something. So I hope I'm not embarrassing myself in the way I explain some of these things. But I've gotten feedback, like a friend of ours, who's a German dude, who also has a degree in physics, like, told me that, like, he's like, yeah, I'm proud of you for, like,

not totally fucking this up. So that may feel kind of good. Like our German friends as well as like our physicist friends generally don't pull any punches in that regard. So but today, I mean, there's just a lot here. Okay. I mean, but I think we'll maybe go one more episode just as a, you know, after this one is kind of a bookend and maybe field questions. but I'll explain what I mean with a statement I'm about to issue fourth

as we get into the meat of today's episode but you know the German atomic bomb program such that it such that there could even be said to be one that existed it was basically strangled in utero when the Vermeck was like stopping his tracks at the gates of Moscow okay I'll get into what I mean by that as we move along. Okay.

If nothing else, you know, military exigencies and, and, and, and, and, and, and, the long emergency of, of a, of a long war, a prolonged war, which Germany could not afford the wage made, rendered any, any, any kind of German version of Manhattan project, you know, um, not feasible, even if it was strategically sound as regards, you know, it's impetus. you know, would it even resolve Germany's military quagmire, emergent military quagmire. But there's a lot in between, you know, 1939 and December 1941. This still needs to be addressed. And the person of Heisenberg features very prominently here, okay?

For those who know, Heisenberg was not an experimental physicist. he was very much a theoretical physicist. And frankly, something of a philosopher with theological interests. You know, he was not really the counterpart to Oppenheimer or something. You know, and I say that like in the most praising terms, I think a guy like Wolfgang Smith is kind of very much a descendant, a spiritual descendant of Heisenberg. So the fact that Heisenberg came to be, you know,

kind of helm the virus house research and all attendant projects. I mean, that tells you something too, you know? I mean, it's and I'll expand upon that with discrete facts and testimony.

But that's something people need to keep in mind. You know, it's just, there's a lot of connecting the proverbial dots in the absence of direct testimony or concrete evidence to point to in order to, you know, paint a picture of what this, of what this endeavor was and, you know, what gave rise to it, and how it was not, what was claimed. But, you know, to what degree,

to what, to what degree it was, the people who claimed the German atomic bomb program was, was well underway in a dedicated capacity, the degree to which that was propaganda, deliberately cultivated by interested parties. Contra, you know, people actually believing this was the case, owing to not just the fog of war, but, you know, the kind of opaque nature of what was then, you know, the new science, you know, and everything else. It's hard to say. I think it depends on who we were talking about.

But we'll get into that too, particularly the views of people like Stimson. Versus, you know, those in, you know, I don't. I mean, Stimson was an outlier in the New Deal administration anyway, but, you know, the view of him versus, you know, people who, people in the administration who are most receptive to Einstein and Saxes claim. I mean, there's a difference in conceptual horizon there. But I want to get into, we left off last time with, the April 29th,

1939 conference. And as we got into the focus of that discussion really was the feasibility of a quote uranium engine. You know, like we said, such that these discussions among this coterie

that the war office had corralled had a focus and later such that their um the sense that their experimental activities you know had a discrete focus it it was um

it was really towards what we conceptually what we'd consider a nuclear reactor and that becomes relevant that becomes independently relevant um as a as time went on um really relating to the weaponization of of uranium

235 as we'll see but a few days prior a guy named Niels Bohr who was a Dane but he was in some way he had like an outsized impact on German physics okay and he was very much like a mentor of Heisenberg

among other other luminaries he and a guy named J.E. Wheeler they published the American Physical Review which was read pretty much by everybody in the Western world who was it all involved in physics even throughout the war, you know, this endured.

It, it reiterated the idea that uranium 235 had weapons potential. You know, so this was even independent of any New Deal propaganda, independent of any, you know, kind of anxieties, well-founded or not, within the British intelligence establishment. like there were just like worldwide there were people who were arguably you know like splendidly disinterested in the political climate and the burgeoning you know battle lines who were playing with this idea you know it was at least on their radar okay so the climate the intellectual climate into which everybody was sort of thrust who was taking on um a role in experimental

physics and in any combat nation, actual potential, you know, there was, there was, there was this kind of subtext of, you know, military potential here, okay? So, I mean, to be fair, like, that's got to, uh, that's got to be, um, accounted for. Otto Hahn, who, you know, who was, an experimental physicist and who did have tremendous clout, uh, just just, just across the board, like not just but it's particularly within the uh within the committee um in uh berlin uh he said that any project to essentially you know try and um cultivate um uranium 235 it'd be it'd be astronomically expensive um anyway to present you know just insoluble difficulties um professor bagge who was uh a preeminent researcher and he was kind of the top researcher was attached to Heisenberg in a direct capacity.

Like he was literally his protege. He said, well, let's call it Heisenberg himself. And, you know, if this is possible or if this is just, you know, a pipe dream, not even the development of a bomb. Isn't that's not the question on the table. Just, you know, the, you know, the, you know, the, but the, the, the, the extraction of light uranium isotope. in appreciable quantities. You know, like he, if this is possible,

and if it's feasible, you know, within, you know, our present means, you know, he'd be the man who could, this Black Friday, game stream and go full speed with one gig Sky broadband. And watch unmissable shows like all her fault on Sky. These nice people killing each other. And Ballad of a Small Player starring Colin Farrell on Netflix.

I've made some mistakes. Right, who hasn't? Get one gig Sky Broadband, Essential TV, and Netflix, all for just 44 euro a month for 12 months, our lowest ever price. Availability subject location, new customers only, 12-month minimum terms, standard pricing thereafter, TV and broadband sold separately, terms apply for more infoise sky.a slash speeds. Who could, you know, sort of shed light on this?

Um, now, Heisenborough universally respected. Like again, um, there was a basic element of disdain for theoretical physics among many of these experimental physicists and that very much that very much, that very significant of a parent when Heisenberg kind of joined this this, this quorum.

Not in a quorum, I mean, it was anything but a quorum. It was a coterie. You know, and that there was a lot of, there's a lot of, there's a lot of contrarianism for its own sake kind of thrown up in these discussions, which in fact David Irving in his book makes that point and he had opportunity to you know speak to some of the men who actually were in attendance at these meetings um at least in like a more than oblique capacity um the uh what was finally agreed upon was basically that if there was any um if there was if there's any slight the official statement what was decided upon like the minutes of uh of um these kinds of like the collected minutes of these kinds of like the collected minutes of these

of these debates, discussions was what Professor Geiger said, if there was even the slightest chance of liberating energy from the atomic nucleus, it would, you know, in any of these experiments, it had to be followed up, okay? The,

it was recommended to General Becker, you know, the, the ordinance department chief, that it dedicated, quote, nuclear physics research group. Be organized under these auspices, And, you know, like we talked about last time, like, you saw an amicable relationship already with Becker. And so it was made so.

For security reasons, and this two, I think, clouded perception of the allies, at least in those who were within military intelligence. for security reasons the project the language employed in documents relating to it it was all characterized as as research for the creation of potential fuel sources for rocket propulsion okay um like the actual rike rocket program was it became it came into the auspices of the SS eventually you know that's why von Braun like actually was in was in uniform in the SS you know like it was uh you know you like it was formally incorporated into the organization and in a very top down way um you know the the rocket program uh is an example of how of everything that you know the that that the virus house program wasn't you know um and i also believe owing to the intrinsically uh um military language of uh you know this kind of deliberate mischaracterization of the program as a rocket program i think that may have convinced people who came across kind of scraps and and statements out of the air you know

who were spying on the third rike i i think they just made they the axiomatic determined like, you know, well, this is this is a direct, this is a, this is a direct military endeavor, you know, and that's not unreasonable. It's not an unreasonable conclusion to draw, especially if one understood how the German general staff system worked and kind of what the interplay was between, you know, technological research within what was not only the private sector. and, you know, it's, it's, um, the ability of, uh, the military to capitalize on, on these, on these, um, developments, you know, but it, um, I think that's, uh, I think that's interesting. And it's also, uh, it goes to, like, where, where priorities were, you know, like, kind of the people, uh, people in the Vermacht, kind of like what they viewed as like the zenith kind of of, of, of, of, of, of vortex, um, you know, was, uh, what was aerospace stuff. You know, with, like, like, with with with with with with with with rocketry obviously kind of being the the absolute de zenith of of that but um the the uh it uh it uh what also happened was on uh on a on a

on a on september 16th um for the deed the curt deidner who we talked about last time he was appointed to lead uh at least nominally the nuclear physics research group under ordinance department auspices. Dr. Bagge began keeping a diary for the first time of his life. Because I mean, I think he realized, I'm sure he realized that whatever the outcome of these endeavors, it was something, you know, he was participating in scientific history, you know, as it was being made. But on the, he notes that on September 16th, 1939, um deearner summoned him personally uh to report the army ordinance department he writes participating in the con quote conference about an important matter then returned to leipsic

um this was the last from this point on um the reason why he uses that uh that deliberately minimalist language and he referenced the possibilities of uranium for any of any application reactors, super bombs, anything, was considered, was classified as a state secret. And all references the possibilities of uranium and energy derived from uranium was actively suppressed. Okay. The first instance, and again, this goes to show you the kind of frosty relationship between the private sector and the army in this regard, you know, kind of splendidly contra the situation is, is it, is this in between the aviation. industry and the military establishment who was positively incestuous a Siemens research chemist you know a seaman or research physicist you know seaman was a huge um you know like they uh

they were they were basically insinuated everything we're on the cutting edge of of uh of applied sciences you know as related to industry and everything else um the uh he submitted an article uh to the main like German news agency. It contained a detailed description of, you know, like a kind of like the atomic science of the day, you know, and it's supposed, you know, like marvelous potential for purposes, civilian and military. And it refers specifically to the power contained in the uranium nucleus. And it said, quote, it potentially contained enough to blast the ruins of, of a giant city up into the stratosphere. What terrific powers of annihilation and airfers were ahead.

It could fight an enemy with bombs like these, end quote. And the writer called, in un Certain terms, for increased experiments with masses of uranium, which, again, the Reich had access to in Czechoslovakia. There were uranium reserves in Portugal, too. later on late late late at late at late in the war even the British were convinced that this played into um some of the kind of you know the reasons why like in their review uh the fear sort of treated um uh Franco with kid gloves the majority of these the majority of these

resources were in Portugal but obviously you know it um it uh the the key to the uh to the Peninsula was Spain, but that's something of a tangent. But the, uh, the, um, this article was totally suppressed. And, uh, the author was warned like nothing of this nature can appear in print. Um, when, uh, there was, uh, papers on general atomic research were allowed, um, including, uh, directly related to, you know, experience involving uranium and including the light isotope but no direct mention of their context was to be made and certainly not any even speculative suggestion about you know their

employment and weapons programs now we can look at that any number of ways you know like it's like we talked about before and i think you raised when you're looking ahead um i mean the germans are actively at war by this point this was the you know the you know it's the you know know the two weeks prior um the united kingdom and france had declared war on germany but even at even at nominal peace um you know in a strategic landscape such that germany was situated you know the way you've got to be careful with what you introduce into the stream of information you got to be carefully about the disinformation you insinuate and um probably it was in the minds of plenty of people.

That the last thing that the Reich needed was, you know, the New Dealers and the British being able to seize upon statements by top scientists that Germany is working on super weapons. You know, Hitler especially was very cognizant of this. Like, so was Burbles. And that there's a very interesting give and take around both. men's respective ideas on the role of, you know, media at war and as a political apparatus. But my point is that it's not just like prima facie evidence that, oh, Berlin demanded this be suppressed.

They obviously were, you know, this was their goal was to, you know, do exactly that. What was suggested in the article by the Siemens physicist, you know, it's quite a bit more nuanced. because I've run across very, very basic treatments of that anecdote that, you know, proffer precisely that asinine conclusion. Now, one of the problems faced whatever the state of applied research utilizing uranium 235, by the German scientist was, you know, whether as a dedicated weapons program or just as, you know, I'm trying to identify what potentiality existed, utilizing these, you know, this element specifically uranium-23-5 as an energy source. like whatever whatever the ultimate goal was um there was a there there's a problem with uh

there's a problem with isolating uranium 235 and cultivating it okay um and uh this such was the you know there from there from whence emerges the concern about you know it just being a cost prohibitive affair which makes it you know functionally useless particularly as a a military a military endeavor um the uh september 26 1939 um the second conference of uh the nuclear physicists at the ordnance department was held um the subject of that conference was specifically um means of extracting energy from the uranium nucleus, either in controlled amounts, you know, as would facilitate a reactor or uranium furnace or the uncontrolled chain reaction, reactive violence of an explosion. Okay. The first, the first accomplishing, the first, accomplishing the first would involve mixing the uranium with some substance capable of literally slowing down the high energy fast neutrons emitted during the fission process without absorbing them um

for technical reasons i don't quite understand neutrons of a certain energy band are particularly prone to capture by uranium so for them not to be lost uh uh they these these these fish and neutrons had to be had to be rapidly slowed down by some kind of breaking substance or in science scientific language like moderating elements or moderator okay the the second possibility was that if if if ever's going to be made to be utilized this as an explosive you know if a super bomb was in fact possible you know the, uh, it was the rare

isotope that was needed to fish in with thermal neutrons. Okay, so how do you how do you get the, how do you get the uranium 235 that you need? You know, um, in the case of the first

question, um, Professor Hartek, um, he discussed the design of the uranium reactor to solve both problems. Okay. Um, he had a colleague named Dr.

Hans Seuss. Not Dr. Seuss, the guy who wrote like the cat in the head. Like, this guy was like an actual doctor named Seuss. Like, take from that way you will. I know some dick is going to mention Starbelly to sneeze or something. Like, it's not about that. Seuss that proposed that heavy water was to be used in the, in the, as the moderating element.

Okay. What is heavy water? It's a form of water, obviously, whose hydrogen atoms are all deuterium, also known as heavy hydrogen, rather than the common hydrogen isotope that makes up most of the hydrogen and normal water. The presence of heavier hydrogen isotope, it gives the water different nuclear properties, and the increase in mass alters the physical and chemical properties as relates to normal water. Okay. Now, so as this research went on, in other words, you know, kind of like the challenges like stacked up and up and up. And as I'm sure you've gleaned, basically what became clear according to the path, the course of German research, and America was able to avoid this entirely owing to plutonium. And we'll get into that briefly if there's time or if people are interested. But basically, like, when it came clear at the second comment, conference, what was being floated, is that, well, it's not a question of, do we build a bomb or do we build a reactor? Or not even do we, but like, what's the potential here? It's that if you want to do anything like the latter, you have to develop the former anyway. Okay. So I mean, this is just becoming, like, who's going to pay for all this when this may not even be possible? And we may not even have access to the uranium pile reserves that we need in order to accomplish it. the uh heisenberg enter heisenberg um he was commissioned specifically to investigate theoretically whether a chain reaction in uranium was possible given the known uh properties of of neutron fusion

and uranium fishing and the characteristics therein um over time um This is pre-1941. After 1941, things changed, reasons we'll get into. That kind of became the focus of such a thing to be said to be like a dedicated focus towards a directly military application. Okay, I think this is when discussions corral discreetly around the potential of an atomic bomb, okay, within German physics quarters generally and specifically within this ordinance department code. of great physics minds. Okay. And partly, yeah, obviously because partly, like, that's something that, you know, the Vermeck needed to know about if this was possible,

you know, owing to the fact that Germany was now at war. But also, I mean, if that's possible, if, you know, basically, like, it's, you know, if there's potential for, you know, energy release at all, you know, like the most kind of,

the most kind of concrete way, you know, to understand that in experimental terms is to determine if, you know, like an explosive chain reaction can be cultivated. Okay. I think that must be accounted for. And based upon Heisenberg's own notes, like I'm talking about like his personal, like opinion work product that was, you know, not for anybody else's eyes. This seems to be the case because he never once talks about, you know, I mean, first of all, there was his reactions when he was in captivity to the, you know, to the Hiroshima Nagasaki attacks. But also, like, in his own, I say opinion

of work products, it wasn't a proper diary. You know, like, never once does he write, you know, some of the effect of, you know, like, this, we're working towards the element of a bomb. I mean, he writes a lot, and he raised issues with, uh, with colleagues about, you know, the morality of, of, um, of this research for various, you know, in various capacities. but never once does want to get the idea that, you know, he saw himself as insinuated into some sort of like German Manhattan project.

The, around the same time, the world office somewhat abruptly, they took over the building on the campus the Kaiser-Vilhelm Institute of physics, okay, because it had it had the best equipment. for applied atomic research, probably in Europe, definitely within Germany. All scientists participating in, you know, the war office project were, they were asked to transfer this one central institute, you know, so that like basically like all hands would be on deck under one roof. This is absolutely necessary, okay, especially we're talking about this kind of advanced research. The problem is these men all had, you know, these weren't military men to a man. They were, you know, civilian researchers. They had egos. They were all, you know, kind of the kingfish of the pond they were situated at in their respective institutions.

but it's also you know some of these guys were young but a lot of them weren't you know it's like they people become very attached to their research particularly men i'd have to imagine of brilliant intellect you know they didn't want to they didn't want to be part of a team i mean who the hell does you know like in that capacity um so uh most almost most of them uh like almost all of them objected and many of them just declined uh they just declined what a amount to do a direct order, okay? But it's like the cachet that these men had was, you know, you cannot, you can't, you can't replace nuclear physicists, okay?

And like, it's, um, the, uh, who was corralled there, uh, at the Berlin Dahlum, uh, the Kaiser Bellum Institute, um, like Visiger, Vitz, Bob, Borman, Fisher, um, and Heisenberg, um, was often present. wasn't. So I mean, there was like a core, there was, there was, there was, there was, there was a core, like, working group that did exactly what was, um, what was directed. But it indicated a real, you know, it, it, it indicated a real lack of, of concrete focus and kind of top down discipline towards a directed goal. you know and that's that's I think that's more symptomatic than causative

I mean it's not you know it's not it's it's important understanding too is that you know we're not talking about you know a true German atomic bomb project but that was sabotaged by

outside egos and eccentricities it's and I want the second key takeaway too is that there's this idea that you know there was some like brain drain in germany because like you know all the brilliant physicists were Jewish like and got chased out that's not true at all um Heisenberg probably was like a leading physics mind like on this planet you know and uh you know visigur viz bob e sal Borman I mean all these guys like they were baggie

deepner like they they're at the top of their game um and frankly you know they weren't none of these guys were like party men or dedicated national socialists, but they weren't about to reject their fatherland, which frankly had done tremendous things for them in terms of facilitating their research in all kinds of ways and, you know, providing them with, you know, not just the material means, but the kind of social capital and structural resources to, you know, to practice their, you know, They're, you know, they're, they're, uh, their experiments and everything else. Or in Heisenberg's case, you know, like, there is really probably in, uh, probably in, probably in France and probably in, in, in, in, in, like, in Nordic countries. I mean, he would have been like a luminary, but it, you know, he, I mean, Germany was, um, Germany was, was, was, was, was, was, was, was, was, was, was, was, was, was, was, was, was the center.

me and it was the it was the actual pivot of a scientific research and endeavor in europe that can't be denied you know and like the that's also uh there was a disadvantage here because uh mouttsuch uh but his uh one of the you know one of the one of the one of the researchers he said i know in certain terms that um you know he was delighted to be assigned this project because you know he could continue um with atomic research and his young colleagues who he thought had great potential he said we could protect them from getting called up to the draft you know we could continue our scientific research in the manner which we were accustomed like whether other people had to tighten their belts you know other other young guys you know who had a a bright future in whatever career field you know we're having to go

fight, you know, for the fatherland. You know, he's like we were basically unmolested, you know. So, I mean, that's, that's totally different, that totally ever an idea or sensibility than was the case with the Manhattan product scientists. And in the UK, man, like, um, there was, uh, the, uh, you know, there was, like we talked about, you know, Churchill had very, uh, he, and his, in the, and his sponsors. I mean, they, they really effectively, you know, kind of, you know, kind of, kind of drown out dissident voices as respect to the war effort, you know, and it would, it'd become something of a career killer, and especially in university life, which frankly, you know, was, there was a lot of Jewish influence there. You know, these, these, these guys in the UK

were the counterparts, you know, to the, to the virus house team as well as the Manhattan project team, you know, they were very much, they were very much working to dedicate. gated capacity after 1941 um to weaponize atomic energy to be turned against germany and they had no qualms with this at all you know i mean it wasn't even a question of qualms with the with the germans this wasn't even on the radar you know i mean i can't emphasize that enough um and if this was in the military's mind um which i don't think it could have been because i mean they the men who could conceptualize these things were we're all you know in in academe i You know, if you're, if the men who can actually perform the experiments as required to facilitate the engineering of such devices as it would be coveted by the armed forces, I mean, if you can't make them do that, I mean, you're, you're pissing into the wind.

It, uh, no, what changed in 1941, um, for the Germans, everything changed in December, but before that, in July. in 1994, the Ministry of Aircraft Production, which has something of an outsized role in the, in what we can think of as kind of like the Churchill defense establishment, or like, you know, arms establishment. I mean, for obvious reasons, you know, I mean, it, um, I mean, the, the UK realized early on it had had to transition to a major, a major air power. Otherwise, you know, like the Royal Navy would only be as dominant as a as a as the Royal Air Force could be to defend it. So they so they do so the air ministry and all of its attendant kind of appendages, uh developed a lot of clout. Um,

there was a, uh, a special committee appointed, uh, to research, uh, the, uh, the potential of atomic energy. okay um it concluded that an effective uranium bomb and again uranium out until uh um until american research became kind of known to the world like after 45 um in a complete capacity everybody's you know uranium was what everybody thought of when they thought of weapons potential um the uh this uh The aircraft production committee's report was that about 25 pounds of uranium 235. The yield could be equivalent to about 1,800 tons of TNT.

And the committee's conclusion was that Germany having taken steps to cultivate heavy water, coupled with their increase in mining of uranium war within that they newly gained access to in what was Czechoslovakia that it's obvious that you know

the state of Germany's not they're the state of Germany's not they're not looking to utilize this for peaceful purposes You know, the only immediate benefit to the German Reich of finding ways to release the energy contained therein would be, you know, in a weaponized capacity. I think by this point, I think the British probably believe this. I mean, who the hell knows? I mean, like we talked about, these guys were zealots anyway. But considering that, you know,

there was far less known I mean, Brayne had some top scientists, but there was far less known there than it was known in America about what the kind of real world application to these things would look like. I think that they probably

believe like, you know, anything that the Germans were willing to dedicate this kind of effort to is going to be explicitly military. And probably, you know, some kind of massive force multiplier.

That's misguided for a lot of reasons, not ethically, factually. But in a fog of war kind of scenario with the state of science at the time that was available, even to an expert, I think they probably believed what they conveyed

the Churchill. They further said that the material for an atomic weapon at the earliest, at the very earliest, could be available to Britain by the end of 1943. But that also begs the question as to like, what would we do with it? And would it even work? But this, of course, led the British to try and see what I could find out about uranium. research program through their contacts in Norway. The primary German heavy water facility was at Rzukan, Norway. If I'm butchering that, forgive me.

Rajuken, I think. R-J-U-K-A-N. The problem is, as I think the subscribers know, if we got into it in our Churchill episodes, the Norwegian. Not a particularly warm feelings about the British, particularly when the British had intended to assault and invade and occupy Norway preemptively. So throughout the summer 941, as intelligence came in from Trondheim to London, you know, from their intelligence operatives that, you know, heavy water. production at Rajuka and you know was steadily increasing um the uh the uh the uh the priority of uh the priority of the priority of the prime minister you know as well as everybody in the intelligent into military

establishment was to uh you know bring the the Norwegian uh intelligent service on board um and uh you know essentially get somebody to, you know, kind of penetrate the Rizuka and facility or at least, you know, develop a way of conveying information back to London that might be usable in terms of how, you know, the facility could be compromised and derailed from its purpose. the Norwegians essentially told them to go to hell. You know, the official response from, there was a guy named Welsh. He was a lieutenant commander in the British Army. He went on to serve in the intelligence service.

He'd married a Norwegian woman, and he was chief of the Norwegian section of the intelligence service. he uh he contacted uh when he when he contacted his counterparty Norwegian intelligence apparently they literally said to him in a telegram uh blood is thicker than heavy water you know like basically we go fuck yourself you know like we're not we're not we want to be thrilled at the that that you know the the vermod is here and we don't know what the hell are doing you know um at this facility but you know we're not we're not going to help you and piggy churchill find ways to attack our country. You know, and I think that's very interesting, especially considering how in, particularly

in English history books, you know, like, Quisling is held out as just this, like, it's just this buffoon when in reality was a great man, but also they, it's pretended that, like, Norway was either fully on board with the allies with this, like, victim state, you know, like a lot, like, you know, there was a, about five, between five and ten thousand or like join the Wafn-SS and for a populationized in Norway that's substantial like nude Hamson um was kind of like the national scribe in Norway you know he literally wrote a eulogy to head off Hitler like they i mean the Norwegians are great people but i it um it's just an interesting kind of wrinkle um that uh you know they refuse to participate um in kind of these uh these designs

of of London um even at uh the height of the of the of the the early phase of the war. At the same time, the British approached, at least as we know from the record, the British approached the senior British scientific representative

in the in the Air Ministry Committee. He wrote he wrote to the chairman of Roosevelt's Scientific Advisory Committee, like when he was in Washington, I believe, like if I read that right.

You know, basically like, you know, kind of feeling out, you know, the, the Yanks about, you know, what the state of their research was. And of course, like they, nobody outside the Manhattan Project, you know, like, knew anything. Like, even if they had, I mean, it's debatable if they would have disclosed that. or not, but, you know, there was a, it was a, security was very, very tight, to say the least. But, um, he floated the, the question, you know, it proves possible to manufacture a uranium bomb, you know, should it in fact be used? You know, like, should we, should we, should, you know,

one of our respective general staffs are both, like, are they willing and should they sanction the total destruction of Berlin and the entire, you know, or like the entire country of Germany, you know, with, with a weapon such as this, you know, and it's, uh, that's really the only, the kind of, the kind of lame indirect reply, um, was from Stimson, uh, who had Stimson, like I mentioned earlier tonight, but also like in the past I've mentioned that Stimson was a, he's an outlier in the New Deal regime. But, you know, he said years after the fact that, you know, in 1942, in 1943, we believed based on, you know, intelligence derived,

that we consider reliable that, you know, the Germans were far ahead of us and weaponized atomic research. I think Stimson probably believed that. But it's interesting. I raised the issue of, um, the, uh, the UK scientific, representative, like, not only raising this moral quagmire, but, you know, kind of putting it to paper literally in a documentary record. That's the only, that's the only such moral qualm I've ever heard from a British source about, about the atomic bomb. From, you know, from the era before it was, it even, you know, had been devised into existence.

Bomber Harris spoke very candidly and intelligently on the morality of strategic bombing, you know, later on, but not of the nuclear question. But it's, I think this stuff's useful to kind of, it paints a picture of what was in the minds of the relevant players. And like I said, in reality, America was far ahead of everybody in terms of applied atomic weapons research. Plutonium was first synthesized, synthetically produced and isolated in late 1940. by a Duteron bombardment of uranium 238 and a cyclotron at University of California, Berkeley. Okay. And the, ultimately plutonium, plutonium pretty be a game changer. The Nagasaki bomb was a, was a plutonium bomb, okay?

But even, like aside from that, just at separating plutonium from a chain uranium, and uranium pile and then using that as an atomic explosive, just the fact that that possibility had been recognized that meant that, you know, from, you know, basically from inception the Manhattan Project was like on the path to like developing an atomic bomb, like in concrete terms, which is pretty remarkable. I mean, all kinds of ways.

I mean, like good and bad. But the, the, the, uh, the hell was going to say. Oh, the summer in 1941 in Germany, the Army, the Army Research Department had formally contracted Norwegian Hydro for a supply of 1,500 kilograms of heavy water between October and the end of the year. But from October 9th, the end of the year, only 361 kilograms have been delivered. it was a slow going in other words like if if this was in a um in a um like even if the process which was outlined at the second berlin conference would essentially amount of do you know the creation of a reactor um and subsequently you know the utilization of that reactor and the heavy water cooling to

to cultivate uranium 235, even if that was the objective and it was on track arguably in terms of both intent and capability, this seems far too slow a process to make any kind of

difference on the battlefield. We'll get into exactly what I mean in a minute. But what's important is that once this heavy water cultivation got underway. Heisenberg attested, he said it was from September 41. He's like, we saw an open a road ahead of us leading to an atomic bomb. Okay, he's like, this is when I became convinced this was at least possible.

And that's when, you know, just kind of a, what was what was gleaned from, you know, just these processes that were actively underway, things came into focus in a kind of conceptual capacity, if that makes sense. I'm not a scientist, so I take these guys' words for it in their testimony when they suggest that this is a real process, whatever the endeavor is. Niels Bohr, and this is important, the end of October, 1941, Heisman traveled in Denmark to seek out Niels Bohr, who was one of the preeminent physics minds on this planet. He was something of a mentor to Heisenberg. Heisenberg asked him at, at Boris home. He said, you know, and obviously Heisenberg wasn't being loose-lipped and telling him, like,

what he was working on. He asked for just, you know, basically, like, you know, what do you think of the, like, is there a moral obligation to not cultivate, you know, a weapon from atomic energy? Like, basically, like, what's the moral implications of working on an atomic bomb in wartime, if such a thing were possible. You know, Boer said that, you know, it, you know, well, you know, the responsibility to one's fatherland versus, you know, his duty to, you know, the scientific community as well as, you know, like human progress.

You know, these things all need to be weighed. Boer afterwards came away believing that it was like Heisenberg's kind of like, it was either Heisenberg sort of like thinly veiled confession or, It was him trying to convey to him in sort of like a culted language that he was building an atomic bomb quite literally. And he see he see later said boarded that he was deeply shocked. This I believe bore basically told all of his intimates within kind of the small fraternity of European physicists that, you know, Heisenberg came to see me and the Reich is building a bomb. okay and I think that's when the kind of myth of the German atomic bomb program like really kind of took off in earnest not in a propaganda capacity like I think people actually believe this and I think Borr actually believed this too but even if that were true and I'm going to wrap up here in a moment but as fall became winter in 1941 the Vermeck was stopped dead in its tracks at the gates of Moscow you know as we talked about many times in our series, you know, the Reich, the Soviet Union had to fall in December.

You know, the entire German state, its national economics, everything about it, was configured towards, quote, short wars with long respites. You know, like, that's why I always emphasize that the Third Reich was not some like mirror the Soviet Union. It was not mobilized for war from the top down. It did not even have a wartime mobilization scheme in place. you know, until 1983. You know, this was a,

the fact that, uh, the assault on Moscow failed. Um, I mean, this was a disaster. Like, ultimately this cost the war.

But immediately, uh, um, in December, uh, 41, um, Hitler issued the edict that the need to the German national economy are

to give away to the necessities, the armist economy. Um, and that, meant that, you know, Fritz Tote on December 3rd. And for those who don't know, Fritz Tote was the... Albert Speer succeeded Fritz Tote as arm and munitions minister after Toad was killed. Toad informed Hitler that the economy was literally at the breaking point.

And from then on, any expansion in one sector to meet military necessities had to be balanced by, you know, reduction in another. Um, you know, Hitler drafted a decree, um, essentially with like Tote's, uh, input, um, as to, uh, um, as to, uh, um, you know, what, what this would entail. You know, essentially, like, shedding all, like, non-essential projects, um, from, uh, like, any firms or institutions, like, engaged in applied research, um, of a non-military nature, like, essentially, like, that was over, you know, it's, uh, Um, Professor Schumann, um, one of the genetic conference attendees, um, he drafted an open letter to all institutes working on the arena project. And he said, he said, no uncertain terms that the, the quote, the work on the project undertaken by the research group is making demands, which can be justified in the current recruiting in raw materials prices, only if there's a certainty of getting some benefit from it in the near future. You know, and that, um, and that, um, and that and that that was that man it's um we can um there's more to the story of the virus house

as the war went on and particularly as you know um the tide truly turned I mean NSEG was no longer a possibility after December 41 but after Stalingrad um you know it can there's obviously like an open-ended question as like

why did the arena project continue, but that owed to a that owed to a that owed to kind of the nature of modern bureaucracy, particularly in a state of total war.

You know, like these things that are earmarked for funding of a way, even an emergency of this kind of continuing to go on. You know, um, were there were there some people too, like within, that's just the research group,

but within, the military establishment, who did understand the implications of this uranium research and did think that there was potential for a real viable device to be cultivated from it, you know, in a way that could, like, help Germany. Yeah, I think there were. David Irving certainly seems to think there were. We get into some of that next episode. And I promise, like, I'll wrap it up. But there is just a lot here, man, you know, and, like, I think the entire story needs to be told. But yeah, that's a, I'm getting uncomfortable from like sitting for the best hour.

So I don't want to bore people at death. But yeah, we'll take this up, man, for a part four and I'll wrap it up there, I promise. Yeah, I don't think it's boring. I think people are getting a lot out of this. So yeah, we'll do, we'll wrap it up with part four. Yeah, but do plugs real quick and we'll get it out. We'll get out of here. You can find me on Twitter still, or X, rather.

I hate all, like, porny that seems. I don't like, I was on my phone, like, on the fucking train. There was like some chick next to me. And like, when you only over the ad, it's like a big X, it's like, man, that just looks fucking, I just don't like it. But it's a real capital R-E-A-L underscore number seven, H-M-A-S-7777 on a bird app or X app, whatever. The home of my podcast and some of my like longer form stuff is on substack.

That's the primary place to hit me up. It's a real Thomas 777.com. You can find my website, which is still under construction, but there is stuff there. It's just Thomas 777.com, number 7-820s-777.com. My YouTube channel is Thomas TV. I'm leaving for Utah in a few days. issue dedicated content for it which I'm excited about. As time goes on, we're going to do more with that. But I got a lot going on right now. I'll be dropping more along for them, like books like in the spring. You know, season two of the pod is coming up in September.

Yeah, all kinds of stuff, man. I appreciate it. Safe travels. Until the next time.