The Prometheus Bomb by Neil J. Sullivan

Author:Neil J. Sullivan [Sullivan, Neil J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HIS027100 History / Military / World War Ii
ISBN: 9781612348902
Publisher: Potomac Books
Published: 2016-10-05T04:00:00+00:00

Since the threat of a German bomb was essential to triggering the Manhattan Project, why was that threat not seriously defined before the United States committed such enormous resources to countering it? The answer may be that determining whether or not the threat was credible would have required a major intelligence operation plus significant time. If the answer confirmed that a German bomb was on the way, it would have been too late for the Americans to catch up. If there were to be no Nazi bomb, then an American monopoly might force an earlier end to the war. In some respects, then, it didn’t matter if the Germans were building a bomb or not.

The likelihood of the nightmare being true was finally addressed in the fall of 1943. A new operation, called Alsos, was charged with finding out if the threat of a German bomb was real. Alsos is the Greek word for “grove,” an association the general did not appreciate.3

At this same time, the Fascist government in Italy was collapsing, so the scientists of that nation were the first targets for Alsos. If other physicists the quality of Enrico Fermi were still in the country, perhaps they had firsthand knowledge of German progress toward a bomb.

The march of the U.S. Army up the Italian boot was slower than expected, and that delayed the opportunities for Alsos operatives to accomplish their purpose. Groves was always aware that the qualities that made these men and women so valuable were the same qualities that made them attractive to the Axis. To interrogate the Italian physicists, this special unit had to train its people in the fundamentals of atomic fission. Thus informed, they would have some understanding of the American progress toward a bomb, so they themselves were potential targets for German kidnapping.

Even operating at this slow pace, Groves was delighted with the work. In his memoirs, he makes a point that is instructive about the nature of the assignment: “In spite of their disappointment over the inability to enter Rome, this first Alsos mission was most successful. Indeed, its accomplishment so far exceeded what we had considered possible that its conclusions were generally discounted, principally because its findings were essentially negative.” 4

The lack of evidence of progress toward a German bomb conceivably meant that the Germans had moved the research elsewhere. With the stakes so high, all that one could conclude was that no evidence of a bomb was found, not that it didn’t exist anywhere. Even the optimistic Groves understood the problem: “We could not be absolutely sure that we were not being misled by the general lack of positive information.”5

A year later, in the fall of 1944, Alsos targeted Werner Heisenberg, figuring that, if they removed him from the equation, any chance of a German bomb would be eliminated. At that point, Allied armies had been in France and the Low Countries for almost six months. They would cross the Rhine River into Germany at the end of the

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