Let's say the 1919 German revolution succeeds, with the Entente too cash-strapped exhausted to stop both Germany and Russia from going communist. During the interwar period the Germans and Soviets intervene in Poland and Hungary, and by the late 30s another world war breaks out, with them overrunning the rest of Europe save Britain. Meanwhile, Germany and the Soviet Union work on an atomic bomb to force Britain and the US to the negotiating table. How quickly could a joint German/Soviet project lead to fruition? Since this Germany would be friendly to Jews, Jewish scientists won't flee the country like they did OTL, and they won't write off their work as 'Jewish physics'. They'd have the resources (if not the stolen US intelligence) of the Soviet project as well. Could they beat the WAllies to the bomb? By when?
When could a Red Germany build an atomic bomb?
- Thread starter jhuro
- Start date
There are no "jewish physics" that are required to build a nuclear bomb. Nuclear fission would have been discovered with or without Einstein and there are no relativistic effects in a nuclear bomb that are significant enough to require his theory and math to build a bomb. The main reasons why the OTL german nuclear program "failed" was due to lack of decent quality uranium ore and the fact that the scientists simply concluded that such a program would be too costly to be done during the war resulting in the Nazi officials shelving the idea of a nuclear bomb to post war (their budget was 1000x times lower than the manhattan project). In any case they would probably not have been able to produce a bomb before OTL surrender. A red german/soviet alliance may last longer and therefore get the bomb.
Ore was fine, that they captured from the Belgians(from Africa), and what was available in the Sudetenland, the Pitchblende Ore, high in UO2 was some of the richest in the World, not just Europe.
They didn't have the way to make cheap Uranium Metal, that was a US development
They didn't have the Industry to do Gaseous Diffusion, and even if they did, would crush the German Electrical Grid
They guessed wrong on Critical Mass
The guessed wrong on the role of the need for Control rods
They guessed wrong and went with the expensive Moderator, Heavy Water, rather than Graphite
They didn't have the Hungarian 'Martians' to figure out implosion, as even if 'Red' those guys wouldn't be going to Communist Germany either
As it was, even keeping the German Jews, their Theoretical area would be worse than Japan.
Blaming the Budget was just the easy way out
And the GDR, where the Soviet-German Wismut Joint Stock Company on the German side of the Ore Mountains made the country the 4th largest uranium ore producer in the world and Czechoslovakia on the Czech side of the Ore Mountains.