The Nazi Nuclear Program: A Turning Point in History

Alyssa West Joseph West Daniel West Junior Group Website

When we met in order to choose a topic, one of us remembered reading about Norwegian resistance fighters who destroyed a German atomic bomb facility. We did research and discovered the heavy water sabotage at Vemork. We decided that our topic should be how this sabotage halted the German nuclear program but soon realized that this sabotage was not the only reason the German nuclear program failed. We decided to include the other reasons that we found and eventually decided to focus on the entire German nuclear program as our topic.

Next, we conducted research in order to prove the turning point. We found internet articles and acquired books and documentaries from the public library and the UNM library. We also interviewed Dr. Noel Pugach, an expert on the Manhattan Project, and Dr. Anil Prinja, a nuclear engineer, both at the University of New Mexico. We made video clips from these interviews. We also visited the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History in Albuquerque. We conducted an e-mail interview with Dr. Mark Walker from Union College, NY who is a leading expert on physics in Nazi Germany.

We chose the website category because part of our group has considerable experience creating websites. First we put together the visuals of the website. Next we arranged the website to tell the story of how the German nuclear program failed. We created a Turning Point page which fully analyzes the turning point in history. We explained how the topic is relevant today. We included a Science section that analyzes new ideas and we focused on important people that were involved with the topic. We added pictures, music, media clips, primary source quotes, and clips of Dr. Pugach and Dr. Prinja.

Our topic fits with the theme Turning Points in History because the German nuclear program led to the creation and use of the first atomic bombs. The turning point of the German nuclear program itself was in 1942 when Albert Speer decided to invest in weapons that could be produced over the short-term instead of investing in nuclear weapons. At the same time, Heisenbergs nuclear reactor

exploded which destroyed most of Germany's rare stock of heavy water. This made the failure of the German nuclear program almost certain. However, the fear of the German nuclear program inspired the United States to start the Manhattan Project. The Allies accelerated their efforts to develop a nuclear bomb and succeeded in 1945. The Nazi nuclear program was a turning point in history. Its failure saved the world from facing Hitler with the ultimate weapon of mass destruction, and its existence inspired and accelerated nuclear development in the United States, resulting in the Allies creation and use of the first nuclear bomb, thus starting the nuclear era. Since 1945, when the first atomic bomb was used, large scale wars between superpowers became less likely because of the fear of the destructive power of the atomic bomb, indicating a further turning point in history.