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Friday, November 25, 2005

How Easily Hitler Could Have Subjugated the World

Lev Navrozov
NewsMax.com

Between 1901 and 1932 – that is, before Hitler came to power and launched anti-Semitism – Nobel Prizes in physics went to 10 citizens of Germany, and to only two native-born Americans and one naturalized citizen of the United States. From 1901 to 1932, Nobel Prizes in chemistry were awarded to 14 citizens of Germany, and to only two citizens of the United States.
In 1938 Otto Hahn, a German chemist, split the uranium atom, whence came the possibility of "the atom bomb" – nuclear weapons.

At this point anyone who does not know what took place after 1932 can say:

"I know what happened! Hahn's discovery was classified. The development of nuclear weapons began in Germany in 1938, and given the number of Nobel Prize-winning physicists and chemists in Germany, German nuclear weapons were ready by 1942, while nowhere else had they even begun to be developed, since no one outside Germany knew about Hahn's discovery! So the world surrendered unconditionally to Germany, which could annihilate any country with nuclear weapons, for no country except Germany had them."

Actually, it was completely different! Lise Meitner, a nuclear physicist from Austria, had been working with Hahn for 30 years. Before 1938 she was immune to Hitler's anti-Semitism as an Austrian citizen. But after Hitler's seizure of Austria, she was regarded by the Nazi authorities as Jewish, and at that time Jews were encouraged by the Nazis to flee from Germany. So she fled to Stockholm.

Puzzled by his discovery, Hahn sent a letter to Lise in Stockholm. Lise called upon another nuclear scientist for help: her nephew, Otto Frisch, a young emigre physicist working in Niels Bohr's laboratory in Copenhagen. The great Bohr was thus also involved. He was not Jewish, but he detested the German occupation of his Denmark in 1940, and in 1943 he fled with his family to Sweden and thence to the United States.

In a long-distance Stockholm-Copenhagen telephone conversation, Lise and her nephew composed a report on Otto Hahn's discovery and its meaning, and it appeared in the British magazine Nature on February 11, 1939. Moreover, Bohr had brought the news to a conference in Washington, D.C., even before the Nature issue was published. Thus, the most important geostrategic secret since the invention of gunpowder serenely floated out of Germany and became world public knowledge, in particular, in Washington, D.C.

What then? The U.S. administration did not budge. The years 1939, 1940, 1941, and part of 1942 were lost.

In his memoir published in 1962, Brigadier General Leslie Groves, who was put in charge of the U.S. atom bomb project ("Manhattan Project") in September 1942, writes:

"My initial reaction [even in September 1942!] was one of extreme disappointment." Edward Teller was a Hungarian Jew, who became a German scientist, then emigrated to the United States. He was involved in the development of the "atom bomb," and he says in his preface to the American general's memoir: "For Groves, the Manhattan Project seemed a minor assignment. ..."

That is, for the U.S. top military, and Groves was a fair sample of it, to be in charge of the most important geostrategic development of weapons since the advent of firearms was a minor assignment, and even in September 1942 Groves was extremely disappointed when he was put in charge of it. Emigre scientists like Edward Teller had not yet convinced him that should Germany obtain nuclear weapons ahead of the Untied States, all of the U.S. armed forces, along with the Pentagon and Brigadier General Groves, would become either radioactive dust or corpses, preserved in alcohol, in Hitler's personal museum of American military history.

As for "American-born physicists," Groves explains that they "were not originally concerned," because "they had not yet become accustomed to thinking of new scientific truths in terms of their military applications." Also, even without comparing the numbers of Nobel Prizes, it is clear that these American-born nuclear physicists were a weaker scientific force than the emigres from Europe: Einstein, Fermi (whose wife was Jewish), Teller, Wigner, Szillard ...

Perhaps today there is a Chinese scientist of the caliber of Einstein. But first, nationally famous Chinese scientists are completely unknown in the West. Second, Einstein emigrated because he was a Jew, while the Chinese Einstein may not have emigrated and may be working for the dictatorship of China.

Indeed, having escaped to the United States from anti-Semitism in Europe, the emigres dreaded Hitler's anti-Semitic world domination. It became known after the war, from the German nuclear physicists' research reports and papers, that they started on their nuclear project in 1939, and in the first half of 1942 they were the first physicists in the world to achieve a positive neutron production, a major step in the development of nuclear weapons. So the "Jewish emigres" were realistic in their fear that Germany might develop nuclear weapons ahead of the United States. What about the U.S. government, including the Pentagon?

If the Pentagon had not been geostrategically lobotomized – that is, if the Pentagon had been able not only to play with "the good old arms," but also to understand that even the most advanced weaponry may become at a single creative stroke in science as obsolete as swords or bows and arrows did upon the advent of firearms – then the Pentagon would have applied in 1939 to the government with a memo concerning a new likely superweapon, being developed in Hitler's Germany.

Actually, the Pentagon did not respond even when on March 16, 1939, a letter was sent (oh, those Jewish emigres, disturbing important officials!) to the Navy, requesting an appointment with Fermi (not a Jew, but an honest-to-goodness Gentile!) to explain the possibility of the atom bomb. The meeting accomplished nothing.

Unlike some of his colleagues involved in the nuclear project in Germany and unlike his American-born colleagues in the United States, the Jewish emigre Szilard was convinced that the atomic bomb was nigh, and the only question was which side would obtain it first. With the Jewish emigre Wigner, he persuaded Einstein, whom they had known in Berlin and who was now a world celebrity, to appeal directly to President Roosevelt. On August 2, 1939, Einstein's letter went to Roosevelt. No response.

Of course not! Imagine one of the three latest U.S. presidents receiving a letter from the Chinese Einstein who has emigrated to the United States, explaining what post-nuclear superweapons China has been developing. But China is a peaceful, friendly society! Well, Germany, before it declared war on the United States, right after Japan's Pearl Harbor attack, was for the United States an even more peaceful and friendlier society.

Even in Britain, Lloyd George, a former prime minister, said that he would be happy if a man like Hitler were at the head of the British government. At least in the United States today, none of the U.S. presidents has said that he would be happy if a man like Jiang Zemin or Hu Jintao were at the head of the U.S. government.

The emigres then found a White House insider, an "unofficial presidential adviser," Alexander Sachs, who persuaded Roosevelt to take notice of Einstein's letter two months after its receipt. In an impeccably bureaucratic style, Roosevelt set up a three-man committee to look into the matter, and over the next eight months a grand total of $6,000 ($778 a month) was made available for the development of the weapon that was to decide the destiny of the world.

However, the emigres continued to make a fuss, and in September 1942 – three years after Einstein's letter – Brigadier General Groves was placed in charge of what was called the Manhattan Project, but Groves was disappointed that his new post was insignificant.

Well, if Brigadier General Groves could not understand the danger of Superweapon No. 2 in the hands of Hitler, already at war with the United States, why should the present-day U.S. political-military establishment be expected to understand the danger of Superweapon No. 3 in the hands of the power holders of China, who are generally assumed in the West to be good guys bent on Sino-Western trade? Even after China officially became an ally of Putin's Russia, on December 12, 2004, no post-nuclear-weapon "Manhattan Project" was contemplated in the United States.

How did the development of the "atom bomb" fare in Hitler's Germany? In 1939, Erich Schumann (a descendant of the composer), head of the Berlin weapons research office of the German Army Ordnance, had a nuclear team, including Otto Hahn and Heisenberg, and the first nuclear conference of officials and scientists already had taken place in March. It seemed that Hitler's Germany would develop the "atom bomb" ahead of the United States.

The man who prevented it and thus saved "the democratic West" (and doomed himself to suicide) was Hitler.

Not that he underestimated the geostrategic importance of Superweapon No. 2. Quite the contrary, he compared the advent of nuclear weapons to that of gunpowder.

The advantages of the new superweapons as against the conventional war of firearms are obvious. Erich's nightmare was that Hitler would ask him when the nuclear weapons could be expected.

If Hitler had been given a promise, however vague and tentative, that the nuclear weapons could be expected not later than, say, 1943, Hitler probably would not have launched a conventional war, but instead concentrated his resources on the nuclear project. In this case, the United States would not have started the Manhattan Project at all, since Hitler would have continued to seem to the political establishment of the democratic West what he had seemed before 1939 – an able German statesman wishing to maintain "peace in our time," to quote Neville Chamberlain, who was quoting the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England after his "Munich agreement" with Hitler.

But without any promise as to when the nuclear weapons could be expected, the waiting seemed dangerous to Hitler. Stalin's Russia was developing her military might on the basis of her resources, which far exceeded those of Germany. Stalin's surprise attack on Germany could be devastating.

On the other hand, Hitler's rout of France, together with the British Expeditionary Force, was an unprecedented military success, as was clear to the commander in chief of the French forces on the third day of the invasion. To his undoing, Hitler turned out to be a military commander of genius in conventional (pre-nuclear) war.

So Hitler's geostrategy was clear, simple and certain: If France was routed so easily, imagine how Russia (surely more backward than France) can be routed (and the first four months of Hitler's invasion of Russia confirmed this optimistic prediction). Having Russia's natural resources at his disposal, Hitler would create military forces superior to those of Britain and the United States.

Having launched the conventional war, Hitler soon had no resources to spare for the development of nuclear weapons at the expense of production of conventional arms. On December 3, 1941, Munitions Minister Fritz Todt warned Hitler that the war economy "was at breaking point." Two days later, Schumann notified those in charge of the nuclear research that they could make demands on resources only if there was a certainly of getting some benefit from them in the near future.

Before the defeat at Moscow in the winter of 1941-1942, resources could not be spared for the nuclear project because Hitler needed all the available resources for his brilliant lightning campaigns, which promised him world domination, owing to his genius in the conventional war of firearms. Later, he needed all the resources for his war to prolong his survival.

Werner Heisenberg, in scientific charge of the German nuclear project, recalls in his memoir the situation as of June 1942: "The government decided that work on the reactor project must be continued, but only on a modest scale. No orders were given to build atomic bombs. ..."

Hitler's recourse to conventional war instead of superweapons led to his defeat and suicide. The Chinese dictators will not repeat his error, for they rely on the ancient Chinese strategy of the "shashou jian," "assassin's mace," to destroy the enemy at a blow rather than by years of war.

You can e-mail Lev Navrozov at mailto:navlev@cloud9.net, the link to his book online is
www.levnavrozov.com.
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