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Heisenberg and the Nazi Atomic Bomb Project, 1939-1945: A study in German Culture
 
 
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Heisenberg and the Nazi Atomic Bomb Project, 1939-1945: A study in German Culture (Hardcover)

by Paul Lawrence Rose (Author) "The claim of Heisenberg and others that he had understood completely the principle of an atomic bomb from early on in the war is rooted..." (more)
2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 391 pages
  • Publisher: University of California Press; illustrated edition edition (16 Oct 1998)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0520210778
  • ISBN-13: 978-0520210776
  • Product Dimensions: 23.7 x 16.1 x 3 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 2,647,023 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Review

"During the Second World War, the nightmare of a Nazi atomic bomb project under the leadership of Werner Heisenberg played a significant role in propelling the world into the nuclear age. After the war, German scientists including Heisenberg took credit for diverting the regime from pursuing a bomb, for moral as well as practical reasons. In this important and absorbing book, Paul Lawrence Rose meticulously documents a radically different view of what happened in Germany during the war. Rose has made an indispensable contribution to the literature of this important episode."--David Goodstein, California Institute of Technology


Product Description

No one better represents the plight and the conduct of German intellectuals under Hitler than Werner Heisenberg, whose task it was to build an atomic bomb for Nazi Germany. The controversy surrounding Heisenberg still rages, because of the nature of his work and the regime for which it was undertaken. What precisely did Heisenberg know about the physics of the atomic bomb? How deep was his loyalty to the German government during the Third Reich? Assuming that he had been able to build a bomb, would he have been willing? These questions, the moral and the scientific, are answered by Paul Lawrence Rose with greater accuracy and breadth of documentation than any other historian has yet achieved. Digging deep into the archival record among formerly secret technical reports, Rose establishes that Heisenberg never overcame certain misconceptions about nuclear fission, and as a result the German leaders never pushed for atomic weapons.In fact, Heisenberg never had to face the moral problem of whether he should design a bomb for the Nazi regime. Only when he and his colleagues were interned in England and heard about Hiroshima did Heisenberg realize that his calculations were wrong. He began at once to construct an image of himself as a "pure" scientist who could have built a bomb but chose to work on reactor design instead. This was fiction, as Rose demonstrates: in reality, Heisenberg blindly supported and justified the cause of German victory. The question of why he did, and why he misrepresented himself afterwards, is answered through Rose's subtle analysis of German mentality and the scientists' problems of delusion and self-delusion. This fascinating study is a profound effort to understand one of the twentieth century's great enigmas.
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First Sentence
The claim of Heisenberg and others that he had understood completely the principle of an atomic bomb from early on in the war is rooted in the rather fortunate ambiguity and vagueness of the wartime papers he prepared for the German uranium project. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Heisenberg and the Nazi Atomic Bomb Project, 1939-1945: A study in German Culture
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2.5 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars a waste of time and money, 31 Jul 2005
By G Pelloni "gpelloni" (Cottingham, East Yorkshire United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Heisenberg and the Nazi Atomic Bomb Project, 1939-1945: A Study in German Culture (Paperback)
this book is so deeply biased and prejudiced against its main subject (Werner Hesienberg) that it cannot be taken seriously even for the few relevant things it has to say. Moreover the author is so aggressive (almost violent)against what he calls "german culture" (this label already suggests a lot) that his criticism borders on cultural racism. I deeply regret the time and money I spent in reading and buying this book.
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7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Controversial and fascinating, 3 May 1999
By A Customer
Whether or not you agree with the author's conclusions, Rose's book provides a response to Powers's"Heisenberg's War," and provides material which was not available to Cassidy in "Uncertainty..." Some of the material, such as the supposed antisemitic rant by Heisenberg in the presence of Max Born, I found barely credible, due to a reliance on second hand sources.

Nevertheless, Bohr's post war coolness toward Heisenberg as well as Heisenberg's failure to honestly confront the evil of the Nazi regime after the war are evidence that Rose's negative view of Heisenberg is closer to the truth than Powers's mostly positive one. I would strongly urge those interested in Heisenberg and the other German physicists of that era to purchase both the Rose book and the Powers book, and then to decide for themselves.

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