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Transcript of taped conversations among German nuclear physicists (1945)

• sdfghswe 3y ago
  > WEIZSÄCKER: I think it's dreadful of the Americans to have done it. I think it is madness on their part. > HEISENBERG: One can't say that. One could equally well say "That's the quickest way of ending the war.”
  • mikewarot 3y ago
    Without perspective, it's easy to say that the bomb shouldn't have been used. Once one learns of the other details of the war, and gains perspective, it's obvious that it was going to be used. We're still awarding the Purple Heart medals that were produced in vast quantities in WW2 in expectation of the invasion of Japan. (or so I've heard)
    • lloydatkinson 3y ago
      I might be misremembering but I think the ribbons are new but the medal itself is the original new ones
    • croes 3y ago
      But they used two bombs. Wouldn't one have been enough to end the war?
      • cduzz 3y ago
        Did the first one end the war? Did the second one end the war? Did the first and second ones prevent the next war? I'm not sure of the answer to these questions; they're obviously important and difficult to answer. The timing certainly hints to "no, yes, maybe" but we're not going to get a do-over.
        • jacquesm 3y ago
          The last one seems to be 'for now', but it may not hold.
          • pasc1878 3y ago
            But we have had nearly 80 years of peace between major powers and that has not happened since there were major powers. Ok you get many indirect wars e.g. Ukraine, Vietnam, Korea much in Africa but not ones that could escalate to World War levels.
            • jacquesm 3y ago
              If it doesn't hold we won't be able to continue the conversation so I hope that we can extend that 80 years. Proxy wars are still wars though, and proxy wars always have the possibility of escalation built in to them.
              • pasc1878 3y ago
                Historically cold war proxy wars were unlikely to escalate as even when a major power had troops on the ground it was on behalf of another country and also we seem to have had sensible leaders. Ukraine does differ as a major power is involved in its own name.
                • jacquesm 3y ago
                  And Russia seems to not have a sensible leader.
                  • radiator 3y ago
                    Ukraine definitely does not have a sensible leader. In 2021 he declared both that "he does not like the Minsk agreements" and that "Ukraine needs to obtain nuclear weapons". After the start of the war, he insists that Ukraine be allowed to join NATO, which would automatically mean World War. Alright, from his point of view, perhaps this is sensible: Ukraine stands to lose otherwise, so for him the World War might be preferable.
      • DiogenesKynikos 3y ago
        They used two because they had two different designs, and they wanted to test them both on real targets. They purposely chose purely civilian targets, in order to inflict maximal civilian casualties. If this is not morally wrong, then nothing is.
        • XorNot 3y ago
          Hiroshima and Nagasaki were both industrial centres involved in the production of war material. By the technology of the time (precision weapons were half a century away), they were absolutely valid targets.
          • DiogenesKynikos 3y ago
            First, by this argument, literally every urban center is a military target. Put another way, it's an argument for total war, in which nothing is off limits, and every "enemy" civilian is fair game. Is that the world you want to live in? Second, the US did not target any specific industrial areas of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In each case, it targeted the center of town, with the goal of inflicting maximum destruction on the city as a whole.
            • XorNot 3y ago
              > First, by this argument, literally every urban center is a military target. Put another way, it's an argument for total war, in which nothing is off limits, and every "enemy" civilian is fair game. Is that the world you want to live in? Industrial bases, military bases, centers of government: these are all legitimate targets in a time of war and all are built in and around cities. The difference today is we have precision weapons so they can be reasonably targeted accurately, and the side-benefit is that night-vision capability favors night-time strikes which minimizes the number of civilians around. But don't delude yourself into thinking that there's any such thing as a "clean war". It's a war.
        • gizajob 3y ago
          In your morals perhaps. If you were to run a utilitarian calculus, bombing such a target could deliver the most morally optimal solution. If the war had not have ended, the Japanese could have continued to potentially kill millions. The bomb was a clear and final “you cannot win if you continue to wage war” that they came to accept. The Americans could have as easily dropped it on Tokyo.
      • jnwatson 3y ago
        The idea was to show that the US had an endless supply. Of course we only built two, but the Japanese didn’t know that.
        • iforgotpassword 3y ago
          Three
          • cduzz 3y ago
            Didn't they have the goods for roughly four? Trinity, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the demon core.
            • iforgotpassword 3y ago
              Yep, I only counted the ones intended for Japan. The demon core was finished a few days before Japan's surrender, but never shipped to Tinian base for assembly. Iirc they would've been able of making three bombs per month.
        • bee_rider 3y ago
          It was just a matter of time, right? The US had the ocean by that point, so presumably we could have just bottled them up on their island and then take our time making more bombs. Grim stuff. As horrible as the war was already, glad it didn’t come to that.
          • ROTMetro 3y ago
            As someone whose grandfather was fighting in the Pacific, looking back sure seems easy to judge but there are no guarantees and in the horror that was WWII you don't really take risks 'because'. You ensure victory. My grandfather was forced to call in flamethrowers on other human beings that would not come out of tunnels. He never forgave himself for that. Was he a monster? Should he have told his supperiors to stall out their plans, maybe wait the guys out instead? He was part of the occupation and saw the damage the bombs did first hand, helped cleanup the damage, but he never doubted the need to end the war or the way it was done. But glad you looking back figured out a better way by volunteering to let my grandfather 'bottle them up'.
      • enkid 3y ago
        This is a question with no answer, but even with two parts of Japan's military tried to stave a couple to ensure the war would continue. Either way, even if dropping the second bomb only decreased the likelihood that an invasion of Japan was necessary or only shortened the war in China by a few months, it was worth it in human lives saved.
        • jacquesm 3y ago
          I don't know about that. It brought nuclear weapons into the world in a way that I'm not sure we could have done without. The answer that the question of whether or not that was ultimately beneficial will quite possibly not stop with the end of World War II, but may well carry over into the beginnings of World War III.
      • gumby 3y ago
        It's not even clear in retrospect; the minutes of the Imperial war cabinet show they were confused as to what was going on after the first bomb. Note that there was a third bomb scheduled and in preparation and it was decommissioned and returned to Los Alamos. Also note that the conventional bombing of Tokyo just a few months prior caused greater destruction and loss of life. Evaluations have to be made in context, which is very hard. There was a lot of anger and pain on both sides, which lead to irrational "momentum" in prosecution of war. Also there is the logic of industrial warfare: look at Europe: many smaller German cities were bombed for the first time just in the the last month of that war, because a huge machine had been switched on that just kept emitting planeloads of bombs which had to be dropped somewhere. There is a thoughtful discussion of this topic by Tooze from just a few days ago: https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-230-burning-hamburg-1943 https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-230-burning-hambu...
        • jacquesm 3y ago
          Dresden... The Germans did terrible things, but the allies definitely did not have the moral high ground on all fronts. This is for me the horror of war: that because of one side losing its humanity the other side will too.
          • nvy 3y ago
            Dresden was as legitimate a target as any other city. Its factories made, among other things, precision optics for bomb sights. Dresden being a purely civilian target is a myth.
            • jacquesm 3y ago
              Yes, and precisely the large industrial areas of Dresden were not targeted but the inner city with lots of civilians was. Note that I have no love for Nazi Germany, my family suffered tremendously at their hands and the results of that are still felt today. At the same time: I am categorically against indiscriminate firebombing of cities leading to 20K+ civilian deaths and if you feel that those civilians were a legitimate target because they happened to be in the city then you and I are probably not going to have a very productive discussion.
      • BurningFrog 3y ago
        Empirically no, since Japan didn't surrender after the first.
      • cykotic 3y ago
        From the wikipedia article on the surrender broadcast: As many as 1,000 officers and army soldiers raided the Imperial Palace on the evening of 14 August 1945 to destroy the recording. The rebels were confused by the layout of the palace and were unable to find the recordings, which had been hidden in a pile of documents. The two phonographs were labelled original and copy and successfully smuggled out of the palace, the original in a lacquer box and the copy in a lunch bag. Major Kenji Hatanaka attempted to halt the broadcast at the NHK station but was ordered to desist by the Eastern District Army.[2][3] Even after two were dropped members of the armed forces still wanted the war to continue.
        • AnimalMuppet 3y ago
          Even after two bombs were dropped, and the Russian declaration of war and invasion of Manchuria, and the decision of the Emperor!
          • matthewdgreen 3y ago
            After the coup failed, Hatanaka shot himself. Many others did the same, and some were hung following war crimes tribunals. These people knew exactly what Japan had done under their leadership, and presumably assumed that surrender meant death.
        • hef19898 3y ago
          Elememts of the armed forces. As elements of the German armed forces were willing to kill Hitler, but not all of them.
          • cykotic 3y ago
            One bomb may not have been enough evidenced by the fact that even junior level officers attempted to thwart the surrender. One bomb might have been enough. The decision to drop the second one was not entirely unjustified since the Japanese government was, apparently, in no hurry to end the war after the 1st one was dropped.
      • dboreham 3y ago
        Possibly but the idea was to demonstrate that the allies had more than one bomb. It might have been possible to just make enough fissile material for one weapon, then take another 2-3 years to make a second one. In that case if you're Japan you don't need to surrender.
      • euroderf 3y ago
        A book I read way back in the 70s quotes Groves as saying that one bomb could be seen as a one-off but two bombs would make the Japanese think there's more to come.
      • jcranmer 3y ago
        The question of the role of the atomic bombs in compelling Japanese surrender is one that is still debated among historians to this day, and will continue to be debated for as long as I live. The indisputable fact is that Japan had thoroughly lost the war at that point--it was either losing or had already completely lost in every theater. I tend to think that the atomic bombs played a big role in the decision to surrender in that it showed that the Americans were capable of devastating entire cities with a single bomber: air defenses are unlikely to score any hits against a single bomber unlike a large fleet of bombers carpet bombing cities into oblivion, robbing Japan even of the chance to die in a blaze of glory. But this also raises a tricky moral question. The decision to end a war is not made by the victor but by the loser. What should you do if the loser refuses to admit the loss?
        • jasonwatkinspdx 3y ago
          By the time the atom bombs were used the 60 or so major cities in Japan had been destroyed by the firebombing. Whether it was done with one bomber or dozens didn't really matter. Japan didn't have the capacity to stop either at that point. On the Japanese side there were multiple factions. Everyone in leadership understood the war was lost, but a large fraction still had hope of making things costly enough for the US to negotiate a conditional surrender that preserved the Emperor.
        • InTheArena 3y ago
          The only slight correction I would add here is that the Japanese were not playing to win the war at this point. They were simply playing to not lose. Their calculus was that they could inflict enough casualties on invading forces that any surrender would take into account them, continuing the whole China, Korea, and all of the other Pacific islands that they had seized. casualties were not a bug, they were a feature. This is what all of the constant debates on hacker news failed to take into regard. If you look at the correspondence and the commentary of the people making decisions, it is quite clear that prior to the atomic bombing, the only side that was trying to minimize casualties was in fact, the United States. In fact, even on the allied side, neither Russia nor the United Kingdom, were particularly concerned with minimizing casualties. Since Stalin felt that he would gladly trade Soviet lives in favor of land that he could hold after the war, and the United Kingdom government was determined to make an example to justify their occupation of Asia . It’s also worth noting that Nimitz and King, were proposing a path that would’ve led to an order of magnitude more death than either an invasion or the atomic bombs. A fleet blockade of Japan would’ve starved everyone in Japan.
    • wk_end 3y ago
      My feeling is that dropping the bomb was overall better than a land invasion, but I find the arguments against at least giving the Japanese a demonstration of the bomb - even just the footage of the Trinty test - beforehand fairly weak. Yes, it's likely - given the Imperial Japanese military's overall disposition - that it wouldn't have been enough to cause them to surrender, in which case using the bomb on a target would be the next step. And yes, advance notice might have made those operations more difficult. But given the horror it unleashed on innocent civilians, I think the Allies had a moral obligation to try it.
      • euroderf 3y ago
        > My feeling is that dropping the bomb was overall better than a land invasion. Years ago I asked my buddy what was his take on dropping the bomb. He answered that when the bombs dropped, his dad was in Florida training for the invasion of Japan. There's no snappy reply to that particular argument.
        • ant6n 3y ago
          Hiroshima still was a war crime.
          • mcpackieh 3y ago
            Uh huh, by which standard that Imperial Japan recognized and adhered to?
            • aaplok 3y ago
              Why does this affect whether it is a war crime or not? Imperial Japan committed numerous war crimes, whether or not they agreed that they were war crimes at the time. By the same token anything that was done to them should not be judged by what their own standard was.
              • mcpackieh 3y ago
    • throwaway290 3y ago
      It's still easy to say that the bombs shouldn't have been dropped, for one because it's a war crime and indiscriminate murder of civilians. Just ask what if a country that did it lost the war. People would probably be put to death just for this in Nuremberg.
      • Tao3300 3y ago
        > what if a country that did it lost the war That's not even a counterfactual. That's nonsense.
        • Tao3300 3y ago
          Salty downvotes are delicious. Tears from people who can't explain how a power could have developed and deployed the bomb first but not won the war.
          • vecter 3y ago
            I didn't downvote you, but in this very article itself that these comments are discussing, the German scientists talked about how it's possible that even if Germany had developed the bomb, perhaps all they would've been able to do is destroy London and a few other cities but still lose the war.
          • throwaway290 3y ago
            No one needs to explain it because it's irrelevant. It's about that winning does not make war crime or crime against humanity magically stop being war crime or crime against humanity. To reduce to absurd for the sake of example, if US develops a weapon that allows it to kill the entire population of China and uses it in a war then US can't possibly lose that war but it would still be an unthinkable crime against humanity and the punishment should be appropriately severe (it's an absurd example so I can't even think of what it could be, probably US should stop existing or the entire government be put in whatever the IRL equivalent of Azkaban for lifetime).
            • 3y ago
    • underlipton 3y ago
      >Once one learns of the other details of the war, and gains perspective, it's obvious that it was going to be used. That doesn't prove that it should have been used. It was also not a given even a year earlier. If Henry A. Wallace had remained Vice President, it's likely his lack of antagonism towards the Soviets would have led him to avoid the show-of-force that the bombings were. The moment separating 150,000 Japanese civilians from life and death is the one where the DNC went behind the backs of the American people and chose Truman, chip-on-his-shoulder and all, to be FDR's last running mate. We're still paying for that bit of hubris.
    • twirlip 3y ago
      I wonder if the horrific aftermath of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan prevented later usage of nuclear weapons.
      • comprev 3y ago
        Have there been any since? I'd say the devastation shocked even those who pulled the trigger
        • ubermonkey 3y ago
          I'm not sure you can differentiate the horror of what actually happened in Japan with the existential threat posed by the proliferation of thermonuclear devices immediately after the war. If the threat stayed in the small-kiloton range, I think we'd very likely have seen them used again -- especially if one nation had a monopoly on such weapons. But that's just a supposition; in the real world, we went from "there are two bombs, and we used 'em on Japan" to massive proliferation of weapons orders of magnitude stronger by opposing superpowers in a really really short period of time.
          • pests 3y ago
            The bombs we dropped were literally beta versions. It's been 80 years of development and testing - I don't want to imagine what's possible today.
            • ubermonkey 3y ago
              I was surprised to learn, in the wake of online discussion after the release of OPPENHEIMER, that the weapons on hand now in the US (and assumed in the former USSR) are actually much SMALLER in yield than what was on deck from the late 1950s through the mid-1970s. The Nagasaki bomb was ~ 22kt. We (the US) built a 500kt fission-only bomb (the Mk. 18), so 20x that power; that was thought of as the functional ceiling for a simple atomic bomb. But then came Teller-Ulam and the mk 17 thermonuclear bomb (no, I don't know why it's a lower number; maybe they started over with the thermonuclear devices?), which came in at 15,000 kt. A linear-scale graph showing Trinity, the Mk 18, and this bomb is hilariously inadequate; it's an object lesson in how warping it is to consider enormous numbers. But with more precise delivery, and a large shift to multi-warhead ICBMs, the actual individual device yield shifted downward. There wasn't a need to fudge your margins with huge bombs if you could be reasonably certain of hitting a given target. Further, hitting anything with 15,000 kt would be absurd overkill unless your whole point was to wipe out an entire population center. The biggest active US bomb is the B83, at about 1250 kt, or an order of magnitude less than the Mk 17. It's a gravity bomb, ie, requires a bomber. The bulk of the arsenal is, I believe, still tied to ICBM delivery, and hover under 500 kt per warhead (W88 in the Trident II; W78 and W87 in the Minuteman). At first blush, the idea that we aren't arming ourselves with 15,000 kt weapons anymore SOUNDS good -- except analysts worry that less terrifying yields makes them more likely to use. I'm paraphrasing from an excellent Twitter thread from nuclear weapons policy & history analyst Andrew Facini at https://twitter.com/andrewfacini/status/1683549901353787395 https://twitter.com/andrewfacini/status/1683549901353787395
    • ookdatnog 3y ago
      I listened to this >2h essay about the atomic bombing over a year ago. I'm writing mostly from memory, so there might be errors in my summary. I think the argument was that the reason for the atomic bombing was not really a military necessity (fleet admirals Leahy and Nimitz at least seemed to think so). The Japanese were already signaling they were willing to surrender well before the bomb dropped -- but not yet _unconditionally_. The one condition they had was that the emperor had to stay in place and should not be punished for the war. The US could have chosen to accept this condition and end the war, but didn't for a variety of reasons (none of them military). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCRTgtpC-Go https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCRTgtpC-Go
      • InTheArena 3y ago
        You are conflating two separate things. The Japanese were willing to stop hostilities before Nagasaki and Hiroshima, but only if they kept large chunks of China, the mandates, and Korea. In other words, only if their war gains and goals were recognized. After the bombing they were willing to surrender. Period. Contrary to popular myth, United States never made any formal guarantee that the emperor would stay in power. In fact, it was only because of MacArthur that he did so. All they committed to that allowed the Japanese to surrender with any minimal amount of face saving was re-iterating the long-held American position that people should choose their own government.
        • mcenedella 3y ago
          The Japanese were not willing to surrender even AFTER the 2nd bomb on Nagasaki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan#Discussions_of_surrender https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan#Discussions... The War Council would not approve surrender. After the Emperor made his decision, there was a serious coup attempt to prevent surrender: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyūjō_incident#:~:text=The%20Kyūjō%20incident%20(宮城事件,Japan's%20surrender%20to%20the%20Allies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyūjō_incident#:~:text=The%2....
        • ookdatnog 3y ago
          It is unknown, and will forever be unknown, exactly which terms the Japanese would have agreed to in the event of an earnest attempt at a negotiated peace, because there was no earnest attempt at a negotiated peace. Truman was dead-set on achieving an unconditional surrender, mostly because of US public opinion. But all in all, based on historical evidence and testimony, I find the case that, even without the bomb, Japan would have eventually surrendered on terms acceptable to the Allies the more convincing one. > The use of [the atomic bombs] at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons — Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy > The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan. — Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz > In 1945 Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly, because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. - Dwight D. Eisenhower > Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated. - 1946 United States Strategic Bombing Survey report
    • lo_zamoyski 3y ago
      Why the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were gravely immoral[0]. [0] https://catholicherald.co.uk/ch/weigels-terrible-arguments/ https://catholicherald.co.uk/ch/weigels-terrible-arguments/
      • rdevsrex 3y ago
        I don't see how it was any more immoral than anything else in WW2 that caused mass death and mayhem. Certainly if you are simply talking about casualties. What was more immoral about dropping the a-bomb than firebombing Tokyo?
        • deleted 3y ago
          [deleted]
        • hef19898 3y ago
          Both were war crimes, and as such unacceptable. Or rather should have been. I like when people say "but the enemy did this and that, so us doing something similar is totally fine", because it is just false. But going to "we already did it once, so no biggy if we do it again right?" is even better. It acknowledges, and defends, the evilness of killing civilians at large scale at the same time. Kind of like wanting to be a big, badass and still feeling the need to morally justify all the shit one does.
    • NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
      The US government didn't drop the bomb to avoid a violent invasion. They were half-sure they might get an easy surrender anyway. They needed to show the Soviets what they could do. It was 100% a demonstration. The Soviets knew about it of course, but no one had really seen what it could do. And if it helped end things early enough that the Soviets didn't invade themselves and partition Japan as they were already starting to do in Germany, then that was a bonus. Whether it was morally sound to use it to intimidate Stalin is another question entirely, and I don't know what the answer is. But let's not pretend that it was some balance sheet calculation about how many lives would be lost... it was never that.
      • krapp 3y ago
        This is a conspiracy theory people like to spout when they want to seem like they really understand realpolitik, or because they just can't comprehend the US not having an ulterior motive behind everything, but all of the actual documentary evidence from the time says otherwise.
        • NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
          > This is a conspiracy theory In what sense? It required no conspiracy at all. You might call it a political science theory... but only in the sense that the theory explains much more than others and is easily corroborated. Just because you find an explanation distasteful, it doesn't make it a "conspiracy theory", and jumping to that label shows how poorly you argue. > or because they just can't comprehend the US not having an ulterior motiv The United States isn't a person. It can't have a "motive". It's a large group of people, a group with ever-changing membership. Each of those people can actually have their own motive, and many of them will have multiple motives. But, at least in that era, you didn't have many people high up in the US government that had stupid motives. They were aware of overtures of surrender well before it was dropped. They were aware that it was unnecessary to force surrender, or at the very least that it wasn't their only option to force surrender without a ground invasion. The Soviets were already the real problem. Indispensable while Germany was curb-stomping its way through Europe, but disgusting enough that there were elements in the government and military that wanted to fight them next. It was necessary for the Soviets to see the bomb and what it could do. This was more necessary than it was to force the Japanese to surrender. > but all of the actual documentary evidence from the time says otherwise. What documentary evidence is that? Most of this shit wasn't written down. Sure, someone wrote down a narrative for the history books, after the fact. One that preserved the "we're the good guys" theme... can't exactly go murdering the unconscious bad guy that had already stopped fighting just to impress the other bad guys. Or rather, you can't admit that's what you were doing.
    • gettodachoppa 3y ago
      I used to believe the American feel-good propaganda that "we just had to nuke the Japanese, OK? We saved more lives.". Then I gained perspective, and learned that Japan's navy had been entirely wiped out (EDIT: and the air force) the Japanese were trying to negotiate a surrender, but the US wouldn't budge on something as minor as allowing to keep Hirohito as figurehead emperor (which they eventually did after they surrendered after the nukes). It was racism, plain and simple. Actually, it's more than racism, I'm not sure that word explains it. This isn't the relatively mild white-on-black racism of 1940s America. This is a much different level of racism, where Americans saw the Japanese as complete subhumans not even worth morally debating over. The Americans spent years building those bombs, so they must have thought it was anti-climactic not to try them. They didn't want to use them near the white people in Europe, so who best than a remote island of people you don't even view as humans, to the point where you put your own citizens in internment camps for sharing an ethnicity with them? But I see so many Americans clinging to the myth that the nukes were a utilitarian moral choice. Admitting the truth to themselves would raise some questions about their country which clash with the perception they have.
      • TulliusCicero 3y ago
        I'm part Japanese and still think dropping the bombs was the moral choice. Even after dropping two bombs, Japanese military leadership still didn't want to surrender, and attempted a coup because the Emperor surrendered. Plus, the firebombings of Tokyo killed more civilians, so aren't those worse? While there was plenty of racism to go around at the time, I don't see how racism played into it. Germany was firebombed just like Japan. It didn't get nuked because the war there ended before nukes were ready, that's it.
    • kleton 3y ago
      Japanese command conveyed surrender offers through Macarthur months before the battle of Okinawa. The terms they offered were substantially the same as what terms America set upon their final surrender- full surrender, but with the institution of emperor remaining intact as a puppet of the American occupation government.
• dr_dshiv 3y ago
  Amazing and well worth reading the whole thing.
• lqet 3y ago
  > HEISENBERG: [...] I believe this uranium business will give the Anglo–Saxons such tremendous power that EUROPE will become a bloc under Anglo–Saxon domination. If that is the case it will be a very good thing. I wonder whether STALIN will be able to stand up to the others as he has done in the past. [...] > WIRTZ: It seems to me that the political situation for STALIN has changed completely now. > WEIZSÄCKER: I hope so. STALIN certainly has not got it yet. If the Americans and the British were good Imperialists they would attack STALIN with the thing tomorrow, but they won't do that, they will use it as a political weapon. Of course that is good, but the result will be a peace which will last until the Russians have it, and then there is bound to be war.
  • jxramos 3y ago
    Wow, this Weizsacker fellow predicted the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potsdam_Conference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potsdam_Conference pretty much? Sounds like it was this individual https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_von_Weizs%C3%A4cker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_von_Weizs%C3%A4...
    • lqet 3y ago
      His brother was president of Germany from 1984 to 1994. It's quite an illustrious family [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weizs%C3%A4cker_family https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weizs%C3%A4cker_family
      • deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
  • hh3k0 3y ago
    > KORSCHING: "I would rather take Swedish nationality than stay in GERMANY and wait for the next war. On the other hand I would not make any effort to become British. If there is nothing more to be made out of GERMANY, one should at anyrate get away from RUSSIA."
    • deleted 3y ago
• dkarp 3y ago
  It's not clear to me if the full transcripts are available here but I found the book of transcripts at my college library during my studies and found it fascinating. Looks like you can now buy it on amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Operation-Epsilon-Farm-Hall-Transcripts/dp/0750302747 https://www.amazon.com/Operation-Epsilon-Farm-Hall-Transcrip...
  • cobaltoxide 3y ago
    Of note, these are the translations of the transcripts. The original transcripts unfortunately were not preserved.
• netsharc 3y ago
  Off-topic: I didn't like the serif font so opened Dev Tools to modify the CSS for more comfortable reading. I'm amazed, the page is a giant TABLE, it uses BODY BGCOLOR, so a 90's style web design. There's CSS being used though. I guess it's an institute dependant on grants, where they can't just blow money on a website redesign...
• myth_drannon 3y ago
  I wouldn't give any importance to those transcripts. They were all aware that the captors are bugging them and they were just playing the innocent scientists that worked for the sake of advancing science and they are not infact proud members of the Nazi Party.
  • Animats 3y ago
    HEISENBERG: "Microphones installed? (Laughing) Oh, no, they're not as cute as all that. I don't think they know the real Gestapo methods; they're a bit old fashioned in that respect." [1], p. 13. [1] https://pubs.aip.org/DocumentLibrary/files/publishers/pto/composer/assets/PT.6.4.20220519a/FH_p1-100.pdf https://pubs.aip.org/DocumentLibrary/files/publishers/pto/co...
    • jacquesm 3y ago
      Fascinating how the people that they were discussing were having their ear to the wall. It makes you wonder to what extent they were doing this because they were aware of being eavesdropped on or if they were really so naive as to discuss how best to influence the people that they were utterly dependent on. Edit: I've read some more of the transcript and what really is interesting is that they are so aloof from the realities of the situation they are in. Almost conceited.
    • bee_rider 3y ago
      Although, that is also exactly what you’d say if you were trying to manipulate the listeners.
      • yetanotherloser 3y ago
        It's a knowing jest, not a sincere statement - and a reminder to the others to keep the show going for their audience.
        • bee_rider 3y ago
          Someone posted a link to a more complete transcript in one of the sibling threads here. I think it is ambiguous whether or who thought they were being recorded. They do in a couple instances talk about some things (people they think or know have isotopes or something like that (I don’t know anything about the physics), and some patents) that they don’t want to reveal to their captors. So, I think I’m the very least they weren’t all on the page of “let’s do a big counterintelligence type ruse.” Of course there are also layers of intrigue going on; they are all colleagues but they must know that they’ll ultimately be interviewed to determine who was really loyal to the Nazi party, so to some extent they are probably trying to convince each other. Meanwhile the guy writing the transcript seems generally to have opinions about their personalities, and a genuine concern for their well-being to some extent, so I’m sure that colors his analysis too.
• Animats 3y ago
  Wasn't this on HN last year? This is just a summary from the day the Germans found out about the bomb. The full transcripts are available.[1][2][3] Unfortunately, the recordings were not kept. They were not on magnetic tape; they were recorded on shellac records. Only the interesting parts were transcribed. The conclusion of the US Alsos mission to investigate the German bomb program: "It was so obvious the whole German uranium set up was on a ludicrously small scale. Here was the central group of laboratories, and all it amounted to was a little cave, a wing of a small textile factory, a few rooms in an old brewery. To be sure, the laboratories were well equipped, but compared to what we were doing in the United States it was still small-time stuff. Sometimes we wondered if our government had not spent more money on our intelligence mission than the Germans had spent on their whole project." [1] https://pubs.aip.org/DocumentLibrary/files/publishers/pto/composer/assets/PT.6.4.20220519a/FH_p1-100.pdf https://pubs.aip.org/DocumentLibrary/files/publishers/pto/co... [2] https://pubs.aip.org/DocumentLibrary/files/publishers/pto/composer/assets/PT.6.4.20220519a/FH_p101-200.pdf https://pubs.aip.org/DocumentLibrary/files/publishers/pto/co... [3] https://pubs.aip.org/DocumentLibrary/files/publishers/pto/composer/assets/PT.6.4.20220519a/FH_p201-289.pdf https://pubs.aip.org/DocumentLibrary/files/publishers/pto/co...
  • bandrami 3y ago
    Oppenheimer hadn't just come out last year
  • dredmorbius 3y ago
    Not precisely this item AFAICT. Searching "German physicists" and "Farm Hall" turns up some earlier items. There was a Kottke post about this in 2019. One year, four, same thing. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20659607 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20659607> This looks to be the same transcript, also from 2019: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19113443 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19113443> And from 2016. You have several of the top comments: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12568250 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12568250> And a discussion about the event from July 2022: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32164657 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32164657> <https://pubs.aip.org/physicstoday/Online/5401/The-elusive-truth-of-Farm-Hall https://pubs.aip.org/physicstoday/Online/5401/The-elusive-tr...>
• pugworthy 3y ago
  I'm surprised to find little information online about Dr. Hans Bomke, whom I presume is the "BOMKE" referenced a few times. He was not well liked it seems. I have seen references about a US FBI file on him (Bomke, Hans 424771), also that he did do some co-research with Otto Hahn. Paul Lawrence Rose's book "Heisenberg and the Nazi Atomic Bomb Project" say that the others at Farm Hall considered him a Nazi plant.
• underlipton 3y ago
  This reads in some ways like American urbanists discussing Chinese infrastructure and the building boom.
• beebmam 3y ago
  > KORSHING: That shows at any rate that the Americans are capable of real cooperation on a tremendous scale. That would have been impossible in Germany. Each one said that the other was unimportant. Say what you will about the US, and it certainly has its faults, but the Americans, both the private sector and public sector, have certainly figured out how to coordinate with others towards a goal. The ability to coordinate with others seems like a more valuable quality than virtually any other in a serious project, in my experience.
  • oaktowner 3y ago
    I don't disagree with the sentiment, but I do believe that Americans ability to cooperate (both with each other in general and between the private and public sectors) is not now what it was in the mid-20th century.
    • afavour 3y ago
      I’d say the COVID vaccines are an example showing what’s still possible. Not to discount the Astra-Zeneca vaccine in the UK of course. Public acceptance of those vaccines is another story, of course…
      • krapp 3y ago
        COVID vaccines proved that if WW2 were happening today, during blackouts half the country would turn all of their lights on and set out spotlights because they believed the war was a CIA psyop.
        • moomoo11 3y ago
          Good at least I would be safe.
          • mecha_ghidorah 3y ago
            Probably not, if your neighbors have their lights on decent chance you get hit when they miss your neighbors
• bloak 3y ago
  A minor point of pedantry (sorry, I can't help my obsession with textual criticism): these are not transcripts; they are translations. I think I read somewhere that transcripts were made, but they were lost. I find it odd that the introduction says nothing about that. On the other hand, the introduction doesn't really say anything much at all about the provenance of the text. Or perhaps it does and I didn't look hard enough. If anyone knows more, please reply.
  • vibrio 3y ago
    I don’t think that is pedantry. Translations are interpretations by a third party that may or may not have an opinion on the topic.
  • kristianp 3y ago
    Surely more correctly, they would be translations of transcripts of recordings.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• graycat 3y ago
  WWII? The atom bombs on Japan? I tried to understand the history, causes, read the Richard Rhodes books, other books, watched documentaries and movies, etc. As I read this thread, I guess that it has more and better thinking about the issues of morality, ethics, various steps that could have been attempted with Japan, atomic weapons stopping wars, etc. than Truman considered when he decided to drop the bombs and conclude that Truman saw just two cases: (1) Drop atomic bombs, end the war within not many hours, and save lives of US soldiers. (2) Delay, attempt, look for alternatives and possibilities, negotiate, demonstrate, ..., and lose more US lives. So, he picked (1), and maybe he did it in less than 10 minutes.
  • TulliusCicero 3y ago
    Saving American lives was probably the dominant factor, but Americans expected that a land invasion would also kill millions of Japanese, far more than the atomic bombs.
    • whimsicalism 3y ago
      There are strong indications that a surrender would occur regardless and why would the only alternative to a land invasion of Japan be dropping two nuclear bombs on Japanese cities.
      • TulliusCicero 3y ago
        They didn't surrender after the first, and the military leadership didn't want to surrender after the second (the emperor did anyway and there was an attempted coup). Note that more people were killed by firebombing Tokyo than either nuke, Japan was completely at the mercy of US bombing raids before the atomic bombs and they still refused to surrender.
• credit_guy 3y ago
  > HEISENBERG: I don't believe a word of the whole thing. They must have spent the whole of their £500,000,000 in separating isotopes; and then it's possible. How did Heisenberg know with such an accuracy the budget of the Manhattan project? Wikipedia states that it was $2.2 billion, and the pound/dollar exchange rate during the war was $4.03 for £1, so Heisenberg was less than 10% off. Edit: I think all these discussions must have happened after they heard Truman's speech [1], where he quoted the pricetag of 2 billion dollars. [1] https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/august-6-1945-statement-president-announcing-use-bomb https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeche...
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • P_I_Staker 3y ago
    Interesting that the pound did so much better during such dire times for the UK, in the mist of a fight to the death, it was losing.
• cameron_b 3y ago
  > HEISENBERG said he could understand it because GERLACH was the only one of them who had really wanted a German victory, because although he realized the crimes of the Nazis and disapproved of them, he could not get away from the fact that he was working for GERMANY. HAHN replied that he too loved his country and that, strange as it might appear, it was for this reason that he had hoped for her defeat. This is the difference between Nationalism and Patriotism
  • tailspin2019 3y ago
    Yes the most fascinating part of this for me was the different ways that they each tried to reconcile their love of their country, of science, of the desire to further technological progress for its own sake, and the desire to do what’s “right” (with differing viewpoints about what “right” in this context actually meant).
  • whimsicalism 3y ago
    They all undoubtedly suspected they were being recorded at this point and the war was already lost. Would be curious what their opinions actually were during the peak war years.
• colinflane 3y ago
  I just finished reading McCarthy's 'Stella Marris' and 'The Passenger'. Anyone who enjoyed reading this linked transcript I imagine might also appreciate much of the themes treated in McCarthy's final works. I found the passages on Oppenheimer interesting especially in light of Nolan's new film. Funny timing.
• photochemsyn 3y ago
  Several points to consider: 1. While much has been made of the theoretical physical effort at Los Alamos, without the Oak Ridge, TN and Hanford, WA chemical-physical production lines for uranium-235 and plutonium, bomb production would not have been possible. 2. These efforts required vast inputs of energy, mostly provided by hydroelectric projects such as TVA for the Oak Ridge uranium effort. It's highly implausible that such efforts would have succeeded in wartime Germany no matter how many resources were diverted to them. One bombing run would have wiped out the whole enterprise - and of course, neither Oak Ridge nor Hanford were subjected to aerial bombardment. 3. The Germans apparently were more interested in a nuclear rocket engine or some such than a nuclear bomb, by most accounts I've read. Also, their heavy water project in Norway was effectively sabotaged. Note also, many scientists involved with the bomb project quit as soon as they learned Germany was defeated and so the rationale of beating the Germans to the bomb no longer made any sense. FDR, if he hadn't died early, would almost certainly have rejected the use of the bomb against Japan, for the same reasons that he rejected the use of poison gas against the Japanese holdouts on Iwo Jima and Okinawa. If the Japanese had simply been given the option to retain their figurehead Emperor, they'd have certainly surrendered rather than accept the occupation of northern Japan by Russian forces in a replay of East Germany. Isn't history fun?
  • ProjectArcturis 3y ago
    >Note also, many scientists involved with the bomb project quit as soon as they learned Germany was defeated and so the rationale of beating the Germans to the bomb no longer made any sense. Joseph Rotblat did. There weren't any others, let alone "many". >FDR, if he hadn't died early, would almost certainly have rejected the use of the bomb against Japan, for the same reasons that he rejected the use of poison gas against the Japanese holdouts on Iwo Jima and Okinawa. I think most historians would strongly disagree with this.
  • SonicScrub 3y ago
    > If the Japanese had simply been given the option to retain their figurehead Emperor, they'd have certainly surrendered rather than accept the occupation of northern Japan by Russian forces in a replay of East Germany. Do you have a source for a historian arguing this point? If so, I'd be curious to read it. My own (albeit, purely hobbyist level) understanding on this is that this would almost certainly not have been the case.
• fsckboy 3y ago
  interesting aside: "wiseacre", a word in English which I heard when I was a kid, don't hear it so much any more: wiseacre means "one who feigns knowledge or cleverness; one who is wisecracking; an insolent upstart." If you made a joke somebody might say "oh, a real wiseacre, eh?" seeing Weizsäcker's name I was struck by the similarity so I thought I'd look it up, and turns out the two words have the same etymology: soothsayer, wise man wiktionary From Middle Dutch wijssegger (“soothsayer”), from Old High German wīzzago, wīzago (“wise man, prophet, soothsayer”), from Proto-West Germanic *wītagō (“wise one; prophet”). Cognate with Old English wītga (“wise man, prophet”). See also German Weissager (“soothsayer, seer”). https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wiseacre https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wiseacre
  • ProjectArcturis 3y ago
    Interesting coincidence that the German Weissager arrived at a similar meaning and sound. Its etymology is wissen (to know) - Sager (sayer).
  • jtsuken 3y ago
    Sorry to disappoint you, mate. Weizsäcker is much more likely to be an equivalent of Wheatbagger. Weizen - wheat Sack - bag
    • fsckboy 3y ago
      i am disappoint! you're a good freund, bc you didn't choose this moment to teach me the meaning of schadenfreude.
• fishtockos 3y ago
  On the prospect of working on a "Uranium-Engine" > Every layman can see that these ideas are exceedingly important. Hence there won't be any money in it. You only make money on ideas which have escaped the general public. If you invent something like artificial rubies for the watch-making industry, you'll make more money than with the Uranium-Engine After hearing news of the bomb > That shows at any rate that the Americans are capable of real cooperation on a tremendous scale. That would have been impossible in Germany. Each one said that the other was unimportant.
• credit_guy 3y ago
  Very interesting read. I read it all, and it looks to me none of the German scientists had any clue that you can build a plutonium bomb. They kept talking about 235 (i.e. Uranium-235), about isotope separation, but not a single hint that you could transmute U-238 into Pu-239 and then make a plutonium bomb. What's not appreciated about the Manhattan project is that not only the US made a bomb, it made two, meaning two completely different designs. And they were aware of a third one: Glen Seaborg (the discoverer of plutonium) has investigated the feasibility of making a bomb from Uranium-233 [1] > Seaborg viewed uranium-233 as a potential backup to plutonium-239 So the US could have made bombs of three different designs, it just got confident enough that 2 will work out in the end. Of course, 10 years later (in 1955) it did build and test a U-233 bomb just to see that it's possible. [1] https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_gradthes/2758/ https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_gradthes/2758/
  • Animats 3y ago
    Right. They didn't even know plutonium existed. It was discovered in 1941, at U.C. Berkeley's cyclotron, and kept secret.
    • kstrauser 3y ago
      That’s nightmare fuel: finding out that your enemy is making physics bombs out of elements you weren’t aware of. It’s the plot of an X-Files or something.
• WalterBright 3y ago
  Some years ago I saw a documentary on TV that claimed that the Japanese had their own bomb program, and in the final days of the war actually detonated a small device. With the defeat they disbanded and destroyed the evidence of it. I've never seen any hint of this before or since. Has anyone else?
  • mattnewton 3y ago
    Wikipedia has a detailed description of the program https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_nuclear_weapons_program https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_nuclear_weapons_pro... Looks like they never got sufficient quantities of U-235 to attempt a detonation.
    • WalterBright 3y ago
      Ah, thanks! Also: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_nuclear_weapons_program#Reports_of_a_Japanese_weapon_test https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_nuclear_weapons_pro...
• Full_Clark 3y ago
  HARTECK: [...] we would have needed to employ 50 workmen continuously in order to produce two tons a year. If we wanted to make ten tons we would have had to employ 250 men. We couldn't do that. WEIZSÄCKER: How many people were working on V 1 and V 2? DIEBNER: Thousands worked on that. ---- Diebner is omitting HOW they got that workforce up into the thousands. Many who worked on V-1 and V-2 rockets were prisoners who were literally worked to death.
  • whimsicalism 3y ago
    Likely comparably humane to the US sourcing almost all of its WWII uranium from the Belgian Congo
• apexalpha 3y ago
  Very interesting post, thank you.