Who was WWII Germany going to nuke?

[Independent voter]

London, Moscow, New York or somewhere else?




http://articles.latimes.com/1997-06-..._1_atomic-bomb

LOS ALAMOS, N.M. — When a captured Nazi U-boat arrived at Portsmouth, N.H., toward the end of World War II, the American public was never told the significance of what was on board.

The German submarine was carrying 1,200 pounds of uranium oxide, ingredients for an atomic bomb, bound for Japan. Two Japanese officers on board were allowed to commit suicide.

Two months later, in the New Mexico desert, the United States detonated the first atomic bomb, a prelude to the obliteration of two Japanese cities.

Unknown to many of the people who built those bombs, not to mention the public, Japan was scrambling to build its own nuclear weapon.

Some of the evidence was the uranium aboard the U-boat that surrendered in the North Atlantic on May 19, 1945, shortly after Adolf Hitler committed suicide on April 30.

Documents now declassified, including the sub's manifest, show there were 560 kilograms of uranium oxide in 10 cases destined for the Japanese army and two Japanese officers were aboard, accompanying the cargo.

"Germany was collapsing. They had a lot of good uranium. Somebody got this crazy idea of taking it to Japan," says physicist Herbert York, director emeritus of the University of California's Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation.

"The Japanese officers insisted on being given the right to commit suicide."

German television, Zeit-TV, has aired interviews with crewmen recalling the Japanese officers who killed themselves and were buried at sea.

The uranium oxide is believed to have gone to Oak Ridge, Tenn., bolstering supplies for the Manhattan Project, the U.S. bomb program.

It was even possible--but not probable--that some of the uranium headed for Japan reached there aboard the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, says U.S. Energy Department archivist Skip Gosling. But the bomb dropped on Nagasaki on Aug. 9 used plutonium, not uranium.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_submarine_U-234



The cargo to be carried was determined by a special commission, the Marine Sonderdienst Ausland, established towards the end of 1944, at which time the submarine's officers were informed that they were to make a special voyage to Japan. When loading was completed, the submarine's officers estimated that they were carrying 240 tons of cargo plus sufficient diesel fuel and provisions for a six- to nine-month voyage.[3]

The cargo included technical drawings, examples of the newest electric torpedoes, one crated Me 262 jet aircraft, a Henschel Hs 293 glide bomb and what was later listed on the US Unloading Manifest as 550 kg (1,210 lb) of uranium oxide. In the 1997 book Hirschfeld, Wolfgang Hirschfeld reported that he saw about 50 lead cubes with 23 centimetres (9.1 in) sides, and "U-235" painted on each, loaded into the boat's cylindrical mine shafts. According to cable messages sent from the dockyard, these containers held "U-powder".[4][5]

When the cargo was loaded, U-234 carried out additional trials near Kiel, then returned to the northern German city where her passengers came aboard.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_submarine_U-234

[Deleted]

is this really relevant?

[Deleted]

Too bad Stalin didn't have nukes much earlier in the war, would have saved millions of lives in eastern Europe if he made Nazi-Germany glow green. Also, China could have saved millions of lives too had they had it vs Japan.

[looorg]

Isn't the question here who was Japan going to a-bomb and not who was Germany going to bomb.

[Puupi]

The answer to the question: its' enemies.

[CptEgo]

They would certainly have nuked London and Moscow. And any American city in reach.

[Grimbold21]

Why does your tittle contradict the contents of the article? It says the uranium was bound for Japan.

[Forogil]

They would certainly have nuked London and Moscow. And any American city in reach.

Unlikely - they couldn't fly bombing missions to those cities at that point; and it doesn't seem as if their V2-rockets could have carried those nukes. I am unsure if a sub-launch against London would be possible.

[Underverse]

Why does your tittle contradict the contents of the article? It says the uranium was bound for Japan.

Why did Germany have all of that material? Just for funsies?

[Deleted]

Most likely NY, Moscow and Stalingrad. Not London because it was already beaten to a pulp at that time.

[Flutterguy]

Hitler would have burned Russia to the ground if he had the ability to do it.

[Deleted]

Probably manchester, the greatest city in the world and last bastion of freedom against the enemies of democracy.

[Coffeh]

Too bad Stalin didn't have nukes much earlier in the war, would have saved millions of lives in eastern Europe if he made Nazi-Germany glow green. Also, China could have saved millions of lives too had they had it vs Japan.

Stalin killed more people than Hitler.

[Jayburner]

totally makes you wonder doesn't it

[Deleted]

They would nuke Spain because Franco didn't join up with the other big boys!

[gyrados]

not antarctica cause thats where new berlin is but in all seriousness probably russia

[Jayburner]

it would have to be in bombing range...so i don't know.

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this scenario is the only thing that scares me when i'm thinking of my family.

[Puupi]

it would have to be in bombing range...so i don't know.

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this scenario is the only thing that scares me when i'm thinking of my family.

There is literally nothing in the world that scares you about compromising the safety of your family except German nukes?

[Adolecent]

Too bad Stalin didn't have nukes much earlier in the war, would have saved millions of lives in eastern Europe if he made Nazi-Germany glow green. Also, China could have saved millions of lives too had they had it vs Japan.

And it would have killed millions in Germany's neighboring countries too. (hope you don't have any family ties with Trump, now do you?)

[Auxora]

The uranium oxide isn't new information, it's been public info for many years. Germany wasn't going to nuke anyone per se. The situation was pretty common sense. Germany was collapsing, they weren't really that close to having an atomic bomb but they had been working on it and had made some progress. So rather than let it fall into enemy hands the idea was to put the uranium on a sub and send it to Japan to continue research and eventually get a bomb that might turn the tide of the war. A massive last-ditch longshot, but given the very dire situation at the time for Germany in 1945, understandable.

Showing how bad things had gotten for Germany, they couldn't even get a sub to Japan. In fact records show they actually sent 2 subs with uranium headed to Japan in case 1 one was lost, and the other made it much further. That one made it as far as the Indian ocean before being found and sunk. It wasn't until some time later that records of the manifest for that sunk sub were found and the Allies realized what cargo had been on it. Plus, uranium oxide (yellowcake) is just raw mined uranium and not even enriched yet, much less taking that all the way to enrichment and then figuring out how to make a bomb. Iran has more uranium oxide that they've mined domestically than they know what to do with (there just happens to be a lot of it naturally in Iran), but they don't have a bomb.