Customer Reviews

The Last Great Secret of the Third Reich

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This book is an interesting intriguing story about he might have been of a U-Boat sent on a mission to deliver plans for the atom bomb to Japan. The author surmises what `might have been' if the Japanese had actually built the bomb before the Americans could drop one. This conclusion has several serious flaws.

First the Japanese did not have the technical expertise that the Germans had at their heavy Water plant in Norway. The Japanese, even with the `secret' plans could not have built an atom bomb.

Second if the Japanese had been able to build an atom bomb they would have had no where to test it and therefore the bomb they would have created most likely would have never worked.

Third the Japanese had no delivery system to drop the bomb on L.A(as is concluded in the book). Japan had short range bombers and no Japanese aircraft carriers were serviceable in 1944/45 when U-234 was sent on its mission. The best the Japanese could have down with an atom bomb is drop it on the Philippines, maybe India, China and if they were lucky Australia. By 1944 Japanese air capabilities consisted of kamikaze pilots, not sophisticated bombers.

So the logic in this book is all wrong although its an interesting story the author should have left off the conclusion.

I am a college student in history, and this is the second book on U-234 I have read. There has also been an excellent History Channel episode on U-234 and the possible use of enriched uranium captured from the German submarine, by the Manhattan Project.

The information in this book is lacking. It seems that there is a lot left out, and little data to support the authors conclusions.

Who ever postulated that the Japanese might have dropped a bomb on LA or San Francisco is not a historian. It would have been virtually impossible for Japan to deliver a nuclear weapon to the West Coast in 1945. In "Japan's Secret Weapon" it is well documented that if Japan had been able to construct a nuclear weapon, its delivery target would have been invading U.S. forces. That is why the ME-262 was on board the U-234. Anyone who believes that Japan would ever have invaded California during WW II neads to re-read Alfred Thayer Mahan. The lines of communication required to sustain an invasion force on the U.S. West Coast by Japanese Forces would have been impossible to maintain. The same wisdom needs to be used in suggesting a nuclear attack after May of 1945. That dog just ain't gonna hunt.

Looks like we have an historian and a novel writter for authors. Tear away the fiction, beef up more historical data, and you would have a great book.

Also . . . DNA extracts from a skull fragment in Moscow identify it as Hitler . . . . this is old news. Leave the escape of Hitler to South America to the novel writers.