Hitler

[Masherbrum]

Originally posted by Boroda
Funny, I have this book on the shelf, time to finally read it after maybe 10 years after i'll run out of easy reading.

I am reading Gabriel Gorodetsky's "Myth of the Icebreaker" now. He has a whole chahter about Yugoslavia and European politics in 1941. He says that Barbarossa definetly was NOT delayed for such a long time. The whole operation in Balkans took one month, and only one division was actually sent there instead of going to Poland.

Prince Pavel was overthrown one month before Germans attacked Yugoslavia, and he was one of the Hitler's allies. I really need to read that book you mentioned.

It's an amazing book.  I had no idea of the involvment of the Allies "stalling" Operation Barbarossa until I read this book.   I ENCOURAGE you to read it.  

I haven't been trying to pick fights on this thread.  But I refuse to accept some people saying that Hitler was NOT Racist.   I'm sorry but I still won't.    

Karaya

[GRUNHERZ]

Originally posted by Masherbrum
Tito WAS MOST DEFINATELY involved in the delay of Barbarossa.   The whole Balkans Crusade did exactly what the allies wanted the Germans to do.  Stall the Germans in the Dead of winter, it did.  Germany IGNORES the Balkans.  The outcome of 5-6 months of "better weather" might have been enough to turn the tide.

Karaya

Tito and the parizans were a non factor in the April 1941 attack.  The Tito resistance movement only started fighting later and was not involved in the series of events that got Germany to attack Yugoslavia in the first place, let alone Greece...

So you are MOST DEFINITELY wrong here...

[Masherbrum]

Originally posted by GRUNHERZ
Tito and the parizans were a non factor in the April 1941 attack.  The Tito resistance movement only started fighting later and was not involved in the series of events that got Germany to attack Yugoslavia in the first place, let alone Greece...

So you are MOST DEFINITELY wrong here...

Okee-dokee.  

Karaya

[patrone]

Originally posted by GRUNHERZ
Tito and the parizans were a non factor in the April 1941 attack.  The Tito resistance movement only started fighting later and was not involved in the series of events that got Germany to attack Yugoslavia in the first place, let alone Greece...

So you are MOST DEFINITELY wrong here...

I wonder, GRUN, what make you think you are an expert in the history of "Yugoslavian" and Balkan? I bet you never saw a single James Bond movie...........
The death of Metaxa changed the scene a whole lot in balkan. And the delay that the Balkan meant to Barbarossa, would´nt have made any diffrence at all. They where stoped by a superior enemy, the Soviet. Many factors made the goal to reach Moscow a failure, not only the winter alone. Leningrad holding up a lot of manpower, etc, etc

(A jewish person, is a person that have a bloodline to the Person called "Israel", who had 12 sons.........)

[Angus]

Anyone there:
With enough heavy water,could the Germans have built the bomb?

[patrone]

Kataya, your are to funny to have on ignore. You are up there, right beside 412cobra and crumpp when it comes to "historical facts"

[rshubert]

Originally posted by lada

Is totaly off and prove that you know nothing about Czech, Moravian, Slovakian relationships with Austria.

You are the only one who didnt get my point and the only one, who speak about something w/o clue in this thread.

Lada, you are a boor.  Look it up, it is a person who has no manners.  That describes your petulant responses to legitimate questions and requests for proof of your points.

Back to the point.  Was not the area of Europe known now as the Czech Republic a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire?  As well as Moravia, Slovakia, etc.?  Yes, yes--there was a revolution in the 1840s, but it was put down, wasn't it?  Yes, again--many people didn't like the fact that they were ruled by the Dual Monarchy, but that doesn't change the facts.

[AWMac]

[rshubert]

Originally posted by Gh0stFT
civilized country? you mean what was left of germany after ww1?
Germany had lost everything, had nothing after ww1

Back to topic, lets asume germany had won ww2, this means
also Hitler would had the Atomic Bomb. A war with Japan would
not last long, i think he would bomb 2 citys to show the atomic power,
Japan then would surrender...umh somehow that sounds similar hmm

Admittedly Germany was in a bad way after the War, but things did improve significantly in the late 20's, right up to the time of the Great Depression, which affected EVERY Western nation.  Germany had problems, but was on the whole a civilized nation.  You can't blame all of Nazism on economic conditions and civil strife.

[bunch]

Originally posted by Angus
Anyone there:
With enough heavy water,could the Germans have built the bomb?

The gentleman in charge of the project, Werner Heisenberg, was reputedly sitting on the project (making it fail) out of a sense of patriotism.

[Angus]

The heavy water method is theoretically useable to build the bomb right?
And a stock of it did get sunk en route. Was that on a lake or Fjord, I cannot remember.

Anyway, the question of what if, relates a lot with the possibility of the bomb.

What if England would have made peace with Hitler in the Summer of 1940?
Or as Scholzie said:
"Hitler did not want war with Britain. He actually sued for peace with Britain after the battle of France, but Britain's resolve did not waver."
It has a point. Hitler considered Britain to be necessary for the stability of the colonies.
However, after the BoB, there was no dream of that no more....
Anyway, back to it.
If Britain had made a truce, I have no doubt that Hitler would have won the USSR. He could have used all his strenght there, also his trade with the USA would have been open.
(It actually was untill 1941, but the Brits blocked the possibility)
Comments?

[rshubert]

Originally posted by Angus
The heavy water method is theoretically useable to build the bomb right?
And a stock of it did get sunk en route. Was that on a lake or Fjord, I cannot remember.

Anyway, the question of what if, relates a lot with the possibility of the bomb.

What if England would have made peace with Hitler in the Summer of 1940?
Or as Scholzie said:
"Hitler did not want war with Britain. He actually sued for peace with Britain after the battle of France, but Britain's resolve did not waver."
It has a point. Hitler considered Britain to be necessary for the stability of the colonies.
However, after the BoB, there was no dream of that no more....
Anyway, back to it.
If Britain had made a truce, I have no doubt that Hitler would have won the USSR. He could have used all his strenght there, also his trade with the USA would have been open.
(It actually was untill 1941, but the Brits blocked the possibility)
Comments?

The heavy water method (I am a former USN nuke plant operator) used unenriched (.7% U235) uranium as a fuel, generates little power, and provides a fast neutron flux to transmute U-234 to Plutonium (P) 239.  The plutonium is then separated from the fuel rods, and chemically purified as a bomb fuel.  It took about 100 TONS of Uranium ore to produce 1 KG of plutonium.

The USA decided not to use that method of production.  We used an enriched uranium reactor (about 15% U-235) with a graphite moderator, producing plutonium in a "shell" of unenriched U-238.  The advantage was that no production of heavy water was needed for a moderator.

Germany's dependance on the Heavy Water method put a bottleneck in their plans, but the question must be asked--did they have the physics and electronics to produce a plutonium bomb?  A Plutonium bomb needs to use an implosion-explosion system, due to the fact that there is very small theoretical minimum critical mass.  In other words, with a correct geometry, a very small amount of Plutonium will fission critically.  The trick is to keep it in a geometry that won't support a sustained reaction.  As opposed to U-235, which will not go critical unless the mass is greater than 5.2 KG.

Basically, a Plutonium bomb uses a convoluted geometric figure that is imploded into a sphere using explosives.  Getting that to work took a year of experimentation in the US.  Did this take place in Germany?  I have never read that it did.

[Charon]

The gentleman in charge of the project, Werner Heisenberg, was reputedly sitting on the project (making it fail) out of a sense of patriotism.

That's what he says

There is also quite a bit of documentation, including bugged conversations of the German nuclear scientists when the atomic bombing was announced, that suggests he didn't have a clue. They seemed to actually be shocked. The general impression was that Heisenberg didn't think the bomb was practical, didn't really push for it, was barking up the wrong tree and was quite surprised that the Allies actually made it work. Given the constraints in Nazi Germany on pure science which requires creativity, an open environment, diverse, eccentric personalities, etc. (compared to an engineering heavy technology like rocket or jet engines) it is hardly surprising. In those cases the basic scientific principals were quite clear, the challenge was engineering a solution. Of course, those traits in the allied program certainly help make sure the Soviets got the bomb earlier than they would have otherwise.

Germany was a leader in physics before the Nazis's but you get the impression (I think it's documented as well) that Hitler though nuclear physics was a degenerate, Jewish science and the research effort reflected that.

[edit: not that the bomb didn't require some pretty sophisticated engineering as well. But the theoretical physics hurdles were perhaps the greatest challenge to overcome.]

Charon

[Boroda]

Originally posted by bunch
The gentleman in charge of the project, Werner Heisenberg, was reputedly sitting on the project (making it fail) out of a sense of patriotism.

General Groves has an interview with Heisenberg and other German scientists in his book IIRC. They simply didn't believe that Americans could make a bomb and didn't even think of a method Americans used to start a chain-reaction.

Groves book on Amazon. Very good read. I have a copy published in USSR in early-60s by Atomizdat.

[eskimo2]

Originally posted by rshubert
The heavy water method (I am a former USN nuke plant operator) used unenriched (.7% U235) uranium as a fuel, generates little power, and provides a fast neutron flux to transmute U-234 to Plutonium (P) 239.  The plutonium is then separated from the fuel rods, and chemically purified as a bomb fuel.  It took about 100 TONS of Uranium ore to produce 1 KG of plutonium.

The USA decided not to use that method of production.  We used an enriched uranium reactor (about 15% U-235) with a graphite moderator, producing plutonium in a "shell" of unenriched U-238.  The advantage was that no production of heavy water was needed for a moderator.

Germany's dependance on the Heavy Water method put a bottleneck in their plans, but the question must be asked--did they have the physics and electronics to produce a plutonium bomb?  A Plutonium bomb needs to use an implosion-explosion system, due to the fact that there is very small theoretical minimum critical mass.  In other words, with a correct geometry, a very small amount of Plutonium will fission critically.  The trick is to keep it in a geometry that won't support a sustained reaction.  As opposed to U-235, which will not go critical unless the mass is greater than 5.2 KG.

Basically, a Plutonium bomb uses a convoluted geometric figure that is imploded into a sphere using explosives.  Getting that to work took a year of experimentation in the US.  Did this take place in Germany?  I have never read that it did.

Thanks for the well presented explanation; that was a good little read.

As to the original question, I think that Hitler would have taken on Japan had he thought he could win, and had it been practical to rule Asia.  
I think that Germany would have beaten Japan had the Axis won WWII.  I think that they would have had a heck of a time ruling Asia, however.

eskimo