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Flawed Nuclear Physics and Atomic Intelligence in the Campaign to deny Norwegian Heavy Water to Germany, 1942–1944

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Abstract

The military campaign to deny Norwegian heavy water to Germany in World War II did not diminish as the threat posed by heavy water in German hands dwindled, mainly because of excessive security among the Allies. Signs that Albert Speer (1905–1981) had decided in 1942 to stop the German atomic-bomb project were kept secret and ignored. Prominent Allied advisers like Leif Tronstad (1903–1945) and even Niels Bohr (1885–1962) were not told about the plutonium path to a German atomic bomb. Physicists did not brief advisers, decision makers, and Allied officers on how many years Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976) would need to accumulate enough heavy water (deuterium oxide, D2O) for an Uranmachine and then to extract and process plutonium for an atomic bomb. Had the flow of information been better, the military raids on the Norwegian heavy-water plant at Vemork could have been timed better, and the more costly of them could have been averted altogether.

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Acknowledgments

I thank Professor Sven Oluf Sorensen, Jan Herman Reimers, and Leif Tronstad, Jr., for valuable input and discussions, and Roger H. Stuewer for generous and expert editing.

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    Hans Christofer Børresen

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Correspondence to Hans Christofer Børresen.

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Hans Christofer Børresen received his M.D. degree in 1960 and Ph.D. degree in 1968 at the University of Oslo. He is Professor Emeritus in Medical Biochemistry and Nuclear Medicine at Oslo University Hospital and Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Science.

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Børresen, H.C. Flawed Nuclear Physics and Atomic Intelligence in the Campaign to deny Norwegian Heavy Water to Germany, 1942–1944. Phys. Perspect. 14, 471–497 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00016-012-0094-9

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