U.S. Warns North Korea Of Overwhelming Response

[vorlon13]

Hitler didn't have nukes?

Of course, he did try, but between his point-blank refusal to use "Jewish Physics" (read: everything from Einstein on) to putting several groups in charge of figuring it out, which ended in a combination of these groups trying to sabotage each others' efforts and trying to focus on other, more pressing wartime defense matters, it was destined to fail. It's a shame Los Alamos didn't figure that out until it was too late...

There were physicists in Japan that recognized immediately what kind of bomb was used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (!)

Even doctors in a hospital in Hiroshima immediately after the attack realized the weapon was qualitatively different from anything they had ever encountered before because all their unused x-ray film was fogged.

In  the early days of the war in Japan a physicist requested a more powerful vacuum tube for the power supply on their cyclotron device.  With the war on, they couldn't get it.  Little details like that that were only found out about after the war ended by military types in the US is the sort of thing that leads to sleepless nights. People don't think much about Japan building a nuke in the 40s, but it wasn't beyond the last doubt sort of thing.  That they had scientists interested in such things and could suss out weapon effects when they were finally used is scary.

Watch Heroes of Telemark sometime.  Just keeping Norwegian heavy water out of NAZI hands was realized to be a very important task to do in the midst of a war that was pretty much filled to the brim with important tasks that needed done.

If I recall correctly, Heisenberg had chunks of refined uranium metal suspended by chains in tanks of what heavy water they could get.  Not quite a nuclear reactor, but close enough that perhaps the 'why' of it not working might have suggested to Werner something else that might have done something interesting . . .

Recall Edison and the light bulb, he tried 6000 ways that didn't work first.  I don't think Werner Heisenberg would have needed very many bites at the apple to have worked out something pretty unpleasant.