Did Germany really come close to making an atomic bomb?

In the final weeks of the Second World War, a team of Germany’s most gifted scientists threw itself into a last-ditch effort to make an atomic weapon.

It was known as the B8 pile – a landmark experiment informed by years of research under the direction of none other than the renowned Nobel Laureate, Werner Heisenberg.

Heisenberg claimed in a 1947 Nature paper that B8’s uranium and heavy water reactor was merely “insufficient”, failing to ignite in a self-sustaining chain reaction for want of a little more uranium.

A study led by University of Maryland materials scientist Timothy Koeth now claims Heisenberg’s project had virtually no hope of success, requiring 20% more uranium and 80% more heavy water than was available to Germany at the time.

Short of developing a god-like level of coordination and oversight, Hitler would have been far from making the weapon of weapons during the conflict.

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