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> For example, one of the questions that people ask me again and again is how close the Germans were to getting an atomic bomb. The answer is, more or less, not
by herodotus 8y ago
> For example, one of the questions that people ask me again and again is how close the Germans were to getting an atomic bomb. The answer is, more or less, not very close at all. Why not? Because even if their scientific understanding was not too far away — which it was not, even though they were wrong about several things and behind on several others — they never came close to the stage that would be necessary to turn it into an industrial production program, as opposed to just a laboratory understanding. That sheer fact is much more important than whether Heisenberg fully understood the nature of chain reactions or anything like that.
I found this article to be very interesting. The point above in particular, for example, has parallels with the allied code-breaking efforts, which were similarly organized primarily as an industrial operation. (The Bletchley Park data base lists more that 10,000 people who were associated with work there during the war). As with the Manhattan project, much is written about key figures, like Turing and Flowers, whose contributions were of course crucial, but the true genius of the effort was the fact that the British, and later the Americans, created a large industrial organization for code breaking.
- epberry 8y agoThe industrial base, and the fact that production could continue unabated by bombings on the American continent for years, was a deciding factor in the war. As were the Russians repelling Hitler. My historical perspective on this has shifted massively since first learning about the war in school. It wasn't D-Day or the Battle of Britain or Midway. All of those battles were key wins but the war overall was really organized and executed by tens of thousands of typists and mid-level managers.
- herodotus 8y agoI wish I could remember the exact quote, but in the diary of a German soldier fighting on in France he said something like "For every Krupp shell we sent to the Americans, they sent a hundred Detroit shells back."
- avn2109 8y agoIn "The Rommel Papers," (which is incidentally a really splendid book that you should definitely read if you have any interest in tactics at all), Rommel himself claims that the ratio was in practice closer to 500:1 in the African theater.
- ethbro 8y agoExtend to many things. If Wikipedia is to be believed, the US produced more M4 chassis (all vehicle types) in 1943-alone (21,231, admittedly a huge surge in yoy production) [1] than Germany produced of any single chassis type during the whole war (most numerous: Pz III at 15,747 total) [2]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_armored_fighting_vehicle_production_during_World_War_II https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_armored_fighting_ve... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_armored_fighting_vehicle_production_during_World_War_II https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_armored_fighting_vehi...
- Animats 8y agoYes. Eisenhower was a logistics guy. D-Day was a triumph of logistics. The Allies built up enough resources to force a win before attempting the invasion. They were willing to wait because of the failures of Dunkirk and Dieppe. Those operations didn't have enough resources behind them. We're under fire! Yeah - under fire!! Those five thousand ships the Allies couldn't possibly have, as you say - they've got 'em! Yeah, they've got 'em!! - Major Werner Pluskat, June 6, 1944.
- joe_the_user 8y agoThe thing about the bomb in particular, that stands out in this discussion, is that it was/is a fairly simple physical device. It had to be constructed to some very exact standards but the main thing was that getting uranium 238 was extremely difficult. Most of the ingredients were relatively simple - the major single, cost overall was K-25/Oakridge. The process used was very crude, simple and inefficient so they needed to do it on a huge industrial scale. And only the US could do it on that scale. You could call it "the dumb luck of nature" that something like an atomic bomb couldn't have been produced with, say, 19th century technology but that it could, barely, be produced by the full industrial might of a mid-20th century nation. Which is to say that start-up producing amazing things in basements now certainly rely on the sum-total of previous industrial achievements, we don't how much some interesting bit of knowledge compared to those achievements could be leveraged.
- avar 8y agoI found this conference talk about WWII being at its heart a "battle of the factories" enlightening on this point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6xLMUifbxQ#t=26m20s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6xLMUifbxQ#t=26m20s
- iguy 8y agoWikipedia thinks that the V2 project cost 50% more than the Manhattan project. If this is credible (and it roughly matches what I remember) then the Germans' problem wasn't that they were unable to (afford to) build factories fast enough. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket#Assessment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket#Assessment I think what the article is saying is that there was an awful lot of technical knowledge between the scientific understanding (e.g. talking about what Heisenberg did or didn't know) and being able to build a factory. This knowledge the allies also didn't have at the beginning, of course.
- ethbro 8y agoAlso, as the article points out, it's really hard to write exciting books about achieving incredibly tight tolerances in manufacturing. And engineers tend to be less colorfully interesting than physicists. (No offense intended, I'd include myself in this characterization)
- Tsubasachan 8y agoKeep in mind that the Germans didn't have access to many resources. The allies had Africa, the Middle East and South America to supply them with all they needed.
- iguy 8y agoIndeed, there could have been some other critical shortage barring the way. (IIRC the soviet bomb-makers mined half their uranium in germany, but something else maybe.) But aggregate industrial capacity wasn't obviously a show-stopper, if they were able to fund another very high-tech high-cost project.