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Heisenberg's War: The Secret History of the German Bomb

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The story of the German atomic bomb project has inspired controversy and invited investigation for over half a century. In his book, Thomas Powers has combined his experience as a writer with years of exhaustive research to form a fresh and in-depth interpretation of these events. Powers' focus is Werner Heisenberg, one of the world's foremost physicists in the 1920s and `30s, who elected to remain in Nazi Germany even after most of his colleagues had fled.

Heisenberg, the most famous physicist in wartime Germany, was chosen to head Germany's nuclear research program. Yet, in his own version of events after the war, Heisenberg stated that there was never a danger of a German atomic bomb, despite fear in the U.S. at the time, because the German nuclear research program never focused on weapons and most of the project's scientists had no interest in making such a weapon for the National Socialists. Heisenberg's story, however, was treated with intense skepticism after the war by his friends and colleagues outside Germany, who forever saw Heisenberg as guilty by association. Powers, however, has challenged this accepted belief through intensive research into both new and old documents, and through a number of interviews with those who were in some way involved with the events. Powers conducts a thorough investigation and uses his expertise in writing about secret activities to expose the prejudices that have condemned Heisenberg. Powers addresses the issue from a different starting point and relies on the evidence to generate a new conclusion which ultimately exonerates Heisenberg from the guilt by association judgment.

Powers' conclusions about Heisenberg and the German bomb may not satisfy everyone, especially since the subject has always been emotionally and politically charged, and the record incomplete. However, his book is intellectually stimulating because it addresses so many gray areas, not only in this particular subject but also in what constitutes accurate history. On the first note, Powers' reinterpretation of the events is compelling because he also simultaneously addresses how the condemnation of Heisenberg was created and perpetuated: by people who were most immediately traumatized by the Nazis, or somehow connected to the American bomb program. Secondly, Powers has treated the subject with about as much energy and time as any one person can, approaching the truth of the matter more closely than any other work to date. Yet, despite such considerable effort, the history is still incomplete and will likely remain so, which gives credence to the idea that history is only a representation of truth, and that hopefully all historians will approach history with as much hard work, honesty and objectivity as possible, setting aside their purposeful judgments in the pursuit of more accurate conclusions.

Here we see why Thomas Powers is a Pulitzer class writer. This is an excellent investigation of a very charged, complex but immensly interesting topic and the tragic life of maybe one of the brightest men in history of science. Powers takes us through the golden years of physics, birth of quantum mechanics, key figures surrounding this unique period, the international brotherhood and the total darkness and bitterness that shattered it in the wake of WWII. Having grown up in the aftermath of the Great War, Heisenberg, the smartest pupil of the "Great Dane", Niels Bohr, finds himself suddenly on the "other" side again in 1939. In spite of the fact that he never joins the Nazi party, an arrogance that he can afford due to his immmense popularity and fame, he was still considered to be a very dangerous tool of Hitler's ambitions by almost all of his old freinds. There was good reason to fear, for he had the means and the knowledge to put fission into the service of his country for peaceful and non-peaceful purposes. Worst of all, he had refused to jump ship and leave Germany, his country, at the beginning of hostilities. Powers goes into great detail of so called the German Atomic Bomb project, which turns out to be non-existent. Heisenberg cleverly plays the establishment to put war in the service of physics not the other way around as he puts it. Incredibly detailed and solid research Powers has done supports this view of Heisenberg's war activities. His detractors, old friends, many of them jews who have lost family in concentration camps, hold the view that Heisenberg was asked by Hitler to build a bomb but he simply did not know how to do it. The subject is very rich, full of giants of science and world history, characters small and large who cross from physics, math, chemistry, to military to politics and sometimes to very personal levels but all played out in a global theater. Thomas Powers shows that it is possible to write decent history even from a victor's point of view. It is worth noting the recent Broadway play by Michael Frayn, Copenhagen, which was motivated by this very book. The play is daring but still captures only a fraction of the real drama chronicled in the book. "Heisenberg's War" is well written. One gets a good feel of the time period. Very important Farm Hall records have been finally included which was missing from Cassidy's biography. It may have too much detail for casual reader but a gold mine for the interested. The irony of the men, who actually built the bombs and dropped them on non-combatant populations, refusing to shake hands with Heisenberg, who contributed absolutley nothing to the Nazi war effort, is just overwhelming. It is even more ironic that Heisenberg himself witnessed the total destruction of his homeland by the indiscriminant and incessant Allied carpet bombings. Imagine the fear his intelligence and understanding of nuclear physics caused on the Allied side at the time, when a quasi-attempt was made on his life while he lectured in neutral Switzerland. Like all greats, Heisenberg also had an ego to match his intellect. After a failed attempt or two, he removed himself from the position of having to "explain" himself and kept his silence, only deepening the mystery surrounding himself and the German "Bomb" project. "But the price of silence was steep. It buried by common consent the question all should have tried to answer: what should a man do when asked to build an atomic bomb?"

Powers makes a compelling argument that one of the main reasons Germany failed to develop the atom bomb was because many German scientists --- especially the best ones --- just weren't very keen about the idea of Hitler having such a weapon. The account is painful, complex, and heavily documented. (By the way, it's hard to imagine how a feminist perspective would be relevant to this topic.)

The title Hesienberg's war is slightly misleading, since the book not only covers the German bomb effort but also the climate that lead to and the ensuing effort in the allied bomb effort. I have read books about the allied effort, and it seems this book has much of factual information they contained, as well as the German effort, which they do not discuss. But most importantly, I think the pre-war chapters about the history of Quantum Mechanics and the friendships that blossomed between the founders during this revolution, then followed by chapters on how politics, anti-Semitism (Jewish physics, verses Duetche physics) and the NAZI atrocities that forever tarnished these friendships forged in during the most creative period in modern physics. The meeting of Bohr and Heseinberg in Copenhagen is presented in a fair mater, and even though the author offers an opinion on the role of Hesienberg the German effort, I believe he presents the material in a fair manner leaving it up to the reader to decide for themselves.

This book is amazing on so many different levels I am not really sure where to begin. It is an amazingly well written, compelling, insightful, and utterly fascinating book on it's own. Fortunately, it is so much more than just a really well written book, it is TRUE story that everyone needs to read. It is book about a true hero, a courageous man who risked his life and his reputation to save tens of millions of lives. I don't really want to give too much away, but it answers a question that many World War 2 historians want to know: WHY didn't the Germans create the Atomic Bomb? Well, there is one word for why, Heisenberg. This man stayed in Germany and deliberately sabotaged the Nazi's attempts to make the bomb.
In a world where people struggle to find heroes and gather up courage it is a shame not many people know this story. I think many people would be amazed at the sacrafices one very proud man would endure to save the world. Please read this book, you will not be disappointed.

This is a solid, well-researched book that presents Heisenberg in a fair light, for once.

One of the problems with reader/reviewer bias is that many people are pre-disposed to finding fault with any suggestions that conflict with what they want to hear or believe. Regarding the Farm Hall recordings, some people have latched onto the idea that Heisenberg and others knew of the build up of the Holocaust, but continued to work for the Bomb project.

What they are usually referring to is a section in which Heisenberg talked about five Jewish scientists, whom he obviously cared about, who had been arrested and later killed; and even though Heisenberg was talking openly about putting out feelers to see if they could be helped or saved (which alone could have put him at great risk), this somehow translates into guilt in some people's eyes.

As for him 'not co-operating with Hitler'... nobody in their right mind could possibly think that was an option. As I believe the book shows, Heisenberg did the next best thing, which was to work half-heartedly on the German Bomb. He basically killed it in 1942.

The fact that Heisenberg could come up with the correct basic bomb structure - path and critical mass analysis, in very short order almost certainly means that he could have brainstormed the right methodology years earlier if the German scientists had been 100% committed to producing a bomb for Hitler. If they had been Nazis.

To me, this fine book is one more step in the right direction, in underscoring the very fact that not all Germans were Nazis.

Hitler may have been a charismatic leader, but he made so many catastrophic errors, such as the insane decision to declare war on the USA in the hope that the Japanese would help him against the Russians - they never lifted a finger - that it is as true to say that Hitler lost the War as to say that the Allies won it.

A fair and highly recommended book.

Life is not simple, nor should it be or it would be boring, this you can infere from reading this book. Life is not simple, nor should it be or it would be boring, you can infer this from reading this book. Where the Manhattan project had as their German counterparts their own misgivings about releasing atomic Pandora's box into the world this book shows that even in the cold realm of quantum physics, human emotions and specifically the scientists personalities plays as much a large role as that of their scientific knowledge. This book did not convince me that Heisenberg was an innocent pawn in a big machine, nor that he was the evil Dr. Frankenstein that he was portrayed as by his contemporaries. What you get is the impression is that sometimes the love of science and the quest for knowledge are hindered by a moral core. Would you do everything for your country?

This book should be read in conjunction with the book on Ettore Majorana, Brilliant Darkness, if you want a complete picture of what Heisenburg did and why he did it. Majorana and Heisenburg were friends and intellectual equals who both had grave doubts about the coming uses physics would be put to by politicians. Majorana simply disappeared- I believe in his own way Heisenburg was hiding also, hiding in plain sight in his case. I'm convinced Heisenburg did deliberately sabotage the German bomb effort, as Majorana with even more foresight did in his own way for Fascist Italy. For both men physics was a pursuit for the mind and not to be corrupted. This book is well-written and researched so you can check the references and make up your own mind. But Heisenburg after WW II faced an impossible situation. If he had sabotaged the bomb effort on purpose then he bore responsibility in the eyes of fellow Germans for the death & destruction he could have helped prevent. The allies saw such claims as excuses and many Germans would have seen them as treason. Better to just keep silent, as he did. But this is far from a historical issue only. Scientists all over the planet are being paid by and working for war criminals of various sorts, all convinced they are doing good of course, and the moral dilemmas faced in WW II are ongoing.

A very readable and thrilling book. Thomas Powers made a good and subtle research. My congratulations!

I read this in hardcover soon after it was published in 1993. It was a promising subject (did Nazi Germany get close to making an atomic bomb?). After laboring through a dry 434-page text that seemed to have more to do with espionage, I finished the volume, put it back in my shelves, was greatful to have survived the experience. Yes, Germany hadn't produced a bomb, and there was a lot of contemporary interest on their progress.

I only recently finished Richard Rhodes `Making of the Atomic Bomb' (published 1986) and urge interested parties to read it first. Rhodes lucidly documents the scientific principles and all contemporary development efforts (Germany, Japan, Britain, and the USA) up to and including Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and beyond.

Oddly, Rhodes produced an advance quote for Power's back cover ("Important and original, another chapter in the epic story of how humankind achieved the means of its own destruction"). One wonders how much of this was professional courtesy from one Pulitzer winner to another. In any case, if you want to read remarkable book on the whole subject (not just a lengthy chapter saddled with minutia), read Rhodes.