22. Hitler Never Came Close to Having a Nuke
Germany’s chief WWII nuclear physicist was Werner Heisenberg, who had nebulous ideas that a powerful weapon could be produced if the atom was split. However, he never figured out how to weaponize nuclear fission. In their last test in the spring of 1945, German scientists failed to achieve the preliminary first step of criticality – a self-sustaining chain reaction that the Manhattan Project had achieved in 1942. Criticality was the crucial foundation, without which an atomic weapon program could not have succeeded.
Additionally, Germany’s nuclear program lacked necessary support. After Manhattan Project scientists achieved criticality, it took America another three years, with a massive investment of resources and the personal support and attention of the head of state, to successfully test the first atomic bomb. The Germans had not accomplished the criticality breakthrough by the time the war ended, and their nuclear program never received the kind of support enjoyed by the Manhattan Project. Given that context of bad research and inadequate support, Hitler never came close to possessing an atomic bomb.
