Nations Close
How was the US able to be the first nation to develop nuclear weapons? Were any other nations close during WW2?
I mean, it's great that things turned out the way they did....but can you imagine if say, Germany or Japan got the bombs first???? And possibly used it against the US, in Europe? what would the world be like today?
So my question is. 1. Were any other nations close? 2. How did the US become the first one to develop nuclear weapons? (since many nations have many superb scientists, research, etc, but why the US? did the US have something that other nations didn't have at the time?)
thanks for your answers
What the US had at the time was political freedom, opportunity. So immigrants from several European nations came here during the 1930s, especially from Germany. And not just Jewish scientists.
So we had more top physicists at the beginning of the war.
Others close? Britain had a shot, but didn't have the resources during the war - too many other war priorities. So they had their scientists work with US, or in US.
When you study the Manhattan project, you realize the enormous cost and resources it took, with very large facilities. Next to impossible to do in a country being bombed severely, like Germany and Japan. This lets you more accurately evaluate the claims of whether Germany or Japan were close.
Germany wasn't really close for several factors. Hitler gave it low priority because no guarantee it would work, and it would take a long time to develop, need huge resources. Germany had many more pressing war priorities. And Nazi-ism had driven many top scientists out of country. The German effort was real and substantial, but no where near large enough to succeed. And the Allies did destroy plants, resources in Norway. Also a crucial submarine cargo. Germany was too vulnerable to bombing, etc, to have gotten any closer. If they had a bigger program, they would have had bigger targets. The Allies did give a priority to stopping their program.
Japan had a smaller program, most of it hardly bigger than college campus research. They were far, far from having a weapon. A couple of authors lately have exaggerated Japan's program, but are just sensationalistic. No real historian finds them credible. The claim that Japan managed a test explosion of any kind is based on very flimsy statements, conflated by willfully credulous author(s). It does not jibe with anything, everything else known about Japan's capabilities.
Russia caught up quickly because of a spy or two that gave them the crucial research findings of the US. The knowledge that had cost years, many millions, and many best brains combined - all theirs for free! I'm not positive, but I think German captured scientists were a very small factor in the Russian bomb. There were a lot of very good Russian physicists, and the program had top priority after the war, so it wasn't all just the stolen secrets.
(That is one spy story that is true. Pretty sure it's Klaus Fuchs. It's what drove the US crazy and paranoid about spying by Communists for the 1950s and 60s, spawning many false stories and worries.)
So yes, the US had money, space, a concentration of scientists, and freedom from bombing, attacks on facilities.
Additional: Helen of Troy is misinformed. The US had the hydrogen bomb first, also. Russia had one soon afterward, though - surprised the US they were that close.
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