
WWII Hero Credits Luck and Chance in Foiling Hitler’s Nuclear Ambitions - aaronbrethorst
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/21/world/europe/wwii-hero-credits-luck-and-chance-in-foiling-hitlers-nuclear-ambitions.html
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devonharvey
For anyone interested in the history of nuclear physics and the atomic bomb,
there is an excellent book by Richard Rhodes called The Making of the Atomic
Bomb. He follows the scientists who made the discoveries leading up to nuclear
fission and development of the bomb. His research is thorough and his
storytelling engaging. The author does a great job of developing the
characters and getting the reader excited about what could otherwise be dry
descriptions of physics experiments.

~~~
lobster_johnson
Seconding the recommendation. One of the finest non-fiction books ever
written.

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ufmace
Cool story, but it seems like a bit much to credit that raid with foiling
Hitler's nuclear ambitions. From what history I've read of it, it seems more
important that not only were may Jewish scientists lost to the Allies due to
Nazi persecution, but even further, many of their ideas were discredited
because they came from Jews.

In order for a Nazi nuclear program to have any real potential, enough top
leaders had to take the idea of it seriously, and there was plenty going
against it - not only how radical the idea seemed and that it was seen as
having come from the Jews, but just how much work it would take to actually
carry out and how strained their resources were with all of the other wars
they started. It seems like, as far as getting a budget priority comparable to
the American project, they were way, way behind.

~~~
gaius
It wasn't just the Nazis that thought like this, the Communists did too
[http://history.stackexchange.com/q/14699/4449](http://history.stackexchange.com/q/14699/4449)

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oska
_> While long celebrated by foreign, particularly British, filmmakers, the
exploits of Mr. Ronneberg and nine other Norwegians involved in thwarting the
Nazi nuclear project became widely known in Norway only this year, when NRK,
the state broadcaster, ran “The Heavy Water War,” a six-episode mini-series
that became a national sensation._

* [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3280150/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3280150/)

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heavy_Water_War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heavy_Water_War)

* [http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/aug/06/the-sabo...](http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/aug/06/the-saboteurs-box-set-review-how-wartime-adventure-should-be-done)

* [http://nordicnoir.tv/news/the-saboteurs-arrive-this-friday-o...](http://nordicnoir.tv/news/the-saboteurs-arrive-this-friday-on-more-4/)

------
bootload
_" M.R.D. Foot, the official historian of Britain’s wartime sabotage and
intelligence service, the Special Operations Executive, which organized Mr.
Ronneberg’s mission, described the raid on a Norsk Hydro plant producing heavy
water in Nazi-occupied Norway as a “coup” that “changed the course of the war”
and deserved the “gratitude of humanity.”"_

Grouse team, tough mothers.

In 2003, Ray Mears and members of the Royal Marines [0] and Norway Winter
Warfare specialists, jumped, static line with a quarter of a tonne of full kit
into the Hardangervidda (Hardanger plateau) to re-create the key elements of
this raid. You can watch how difficult this feat was,[1] even by modern
standars.

[0] Royal Marine Mountain Leaders, Arctic & mountain warfare Cardre ~
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Leader_Training_Cadre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Leader_Training_Cadre)

[1] _" Ray Mears' Real Heroes Of Telemark S01 E01"_ ~
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDAh5bLOrtM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDAh5bLOrtM)

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danieltillett
The Nazi nuclear bomb project was always non-viable because of the cost -
Germany just didn't have the industrial resources to build a bomb. The Germans
knew this and so didn't really make much of an effort to build a bomb.

~~~
ZanyProgrammer
And not much of a delivery mechanism either.

~~~
rjsw
There were ideas for submarine launched V2 rockets as well as the Amerika
Bomber [1], the He-177 could have dropped a bomb on London.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerika_Bomber](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerika_Bomber)

~~~
ZanyProgrammer
Fantasy devices, never likely to have been built. The Nazis were good at
making designs on paper that would never have been produced.

~~~
rjsw
Sure. The V2 launcher wasn't too complicated, just a container that would be
towed behind a submarine.

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JamesCunamara
Off-Topic

Sorry for being a spoiler, but I scan every day through hacker news to find
some interesting stuff about programming, IT and startups. I'm tired of all
this nytimes.com spam and low carb diet stuff.

~~~
DanBC
I think you're wrong about this article.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes
> more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the
> answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

That's been in the guidelines for many years.

Here's a recent post from a mod:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10606151](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10606151)

> That's emphatically wrong, and the most important thing to understand about
> HN. Any subject is on topic as long as it is intellectually interesting. As
> pg pointed out when he created this site, good hackers are interested in
> more than startups and computing. There's a reason why the site guidelines
> lead with that.

