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Nazi Germany had no hope of making an atomic bomb, uranium cubes reveal

137 points · 121 comments · xqcgrek2

expedition32 · 1790925650 · focus · HN ↗
This was already known. The British put the German scientists into a big country house after the war and bugged all the rooms. After the US dropped the atomic bombs the German scientists spent weeks discussing with eachother how the Americans could have done it. They never got it right.
1. amsully · 1790960324 · focus · HN ↗
  It’s a great read from beginning to end <a href="https://germanhistorydocs.org/en/nazi-germany-1933-1945/transcript-of-surreptitiously-taped-conversations-among-german-nuclear-physicists-at-farm-hall-august-6-7-1945" rel="nofollow">https://germanhistorydocs.org/en/nazi-germany-1933-1945/tran...
  1. throwaway219450 · 1790965343 · focus · HN ↗
    Is this the same mansion that the war office put a bunch of high ranking PoWs in? Same idea - butter up the generals, bug the entire building and wait for them to spill secrets (which they did so often, and with such value, that military intelligence ignored Churchill’s request to shut it down).
    <a href="https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20260811-the-uk-stately-home-where-nazis-were-bugged" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20260811-the-uk-stately-...
    tempestn · 1790966410 · focus · HN ↗
    Why did Churchill want it shut down?
    throwaway219450 · 1790967481 · focus · HN ↗
    <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-20698098" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-20698098
    The Beeb has run this a couple of times.
    > Mrs Fry also says Winston Churchill was outraged when he learned the generals had been bussed into the lavish Simpson's-in-the-Strand in central London for lunch. He ordered what he called "the pampering of the generals" to be stopped.
    > But spoiling the generals and boosting their egos was providing so much useful information that the British intelligence officers decided to carry on, and simply stopped telling Churchill about it.
    [deleted] · 1790967553 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]

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