German Nuclear Energy Project - Comparison of The Manhattan Project and The Uranverein

Comparison of The Manhattan Project and The Uranverein

The joint American, British, and Canadian Manhattan Project developed the uranium and plutonium atomic bombs. Its success is attributable to meeting all four of the following conditions:

1. A strong initial drive, by a small group of scientists, to launch the project.
2. Unconditional government support from a certain point in time.
3. Essentially unlimited manpower and industrial resources.
4. A concentration of brilliant scientists devoted to the project.

Even with all four of these conditions in place the Manhattan Project succeeded only after the war in Europe had been brought to a conclusion. Mutual distrust existed between the German government and some scientists.

For the Manhattan Project, the second condition was met on 9 October 1941 or shortly thereafter. Germany fell short of what was required to make an atomic bomb. Significant here is that by the end of 1941 it was already apparent that the German nuclear energy project would not make a decisive contribution to ending the German war effort in the near term, and control of the project was relinquished by the Heereswaffenamt (HWA, Army Ordnance Office) to the Reichsforschungsrat (RFR, Reich Research Council) in July 1942.

Concerning condition three, the needs in materiel and manpower for a large-scale project necessary for the separation of isotopes for a uranium-based bomb and heavy water production for reactors for a plutonium-based bomb may have been possible in the early years of the war.

As to condition four, the high priority allocated to the Manhattan Project allowed for the recruitment and concentration of capable scientists on the project. In Germany, on the other hand, a great many young scientists and technicians who would have been of great use to such a project were conscripted into the German armed forces, while others had fled the country before the war due to antisemitism and political persecution.

Whereas Enrico Fermi, a scientific Manhattan leader, had an "unique double aptitude for theoretical and experimental work" in the 20th century, the successes at Leipzig until 1942 resulted from the cooperation between the theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg and the experimentalist Robert Döpel. Most important was their experimental proof of an effective neutron increase in April 1942. At the end of July of the same year, the group around Fermi also succeeded in the neutron increase within a reactor-like arrangement.

In June 1942, Döpels "Uran-Maschine" was destroyed by a chemical explosion introduced by hydrogen, which finished the work on this topic at Leipzig. Thereafter, despite increased expenditures the Berlin groups and their extern branches didn't succeed in getting a reactor critical until the end of World War II. However, this was realized by the Fermi group in December 1942, so that the German advantage was definitively lost, even with respect to research on energy production.