Germans were the first with useable atomics?!?

[Kevin]

IIRC, the book, which was fairly old, written before the fall of Russia, back in the late 70s, early 80s.

Hazy memory recalls the book claiming that Hitler may have detonated a Plutonium bomb on some island. Roegner? Roeger? Damnit, my mind is not as sharp as it used to be.

The Russians did infact, come in and "clean up" not one, but several of Hitler's heavy water facilities. There was even a special on that some years ago on the History Channel. The Russians took everything. EVERYTHING out of these facilities. The turbines, the machines, the research labs, everything. And according to the book, all the A-bomb prototypes. Also took the special machines that extracted the heavy water. These facilities were thought to be hydro-electric plants, but America bombed one, and then attacked it with troops and according to some nameless source, found a scientific wonderland of research labs tucked away into the mountain.

The same book also talks about how German scientists were captured and brought to America to work on our rocketry programs.

I remember really liking the book, but can't remember enough of it now to save my life.
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I have recollections of that as well. There was some follow-up research that dealt with Heisenberg's journals and the Farm Hall transcripts that seem to indicate that Heisenberg and several other German physicists were doing what they could to hold things back, either by focusing research efforts elsewhere or introducing deliberate miscalculations. But so much of that is hard to prove and much of what could prove it is still classified.

It is known that the Germans were well ahead of anyone in the field before the war started which makes it somewhat surprising at how little the progressed during. Some of the Farm Hall transcripts point to the fact they never could have gotten government support to run a big enough project. The Manhattan project was huge and there were long term commitments that most likely would not have been made by the Germans that hurt the effort.

But I would not be surprised if they did get a bomb developed and tested. A lot of what America did was done by Germans who had defected before the war started or building on what Germany had already done. The space program was helped a lot by what we got out of German scientists after the war as well.

Anyway, I do hope more can be found out about it, but the truth is going to be harder to really determine the farther we stap away from it.