Nazis tested nuclear bomb near war's end - claim
Nazi Germany tested a crude nuclear device, killing hundreds of people in a massive explosion south of Berlin in the dying days of the Second World War, a researcher claims in a new book.
That the Nazis conducted nuclear experiments has been known for decades, but Hitler’s Bomb by Berlin academic Rainer Karlsch, published today, suggests they may have been closer to building a bomb for military use than previously thought.
No independent corroboration of the claims was available.
“German physicians did not lag behind their colleagues in the US and Britain in their understanding of theory,” Karlsch said in Berlin. “They knew what a plutonium bomb was and what a uranium-235 bomb was.”
What Nazi Germany lacked was enough fissile material – such as enriched uranium – to make a full-size, functioning nuclear bomb, he said.
The book cites post-war witness accounts and Soviet military intelligence reports to back up its theory of a March 3, 1945, experimental nuclear test blast at the Nazis’ Ohrdruf military testing area, but offers no direct documentary proof.
Karlsch acknowledged that he has no positive proof the Nazis conducted a nuclear test blast, but hopes that his book will provoke more research.
Witnesses reported a bright flash of light and a column of smoke over the area that day, and residents said they had nausea and nosebleeds for days afterward, Karlsch says.
One witness said he helped burn heaps of corpses inside the military area the next day. They were hairless and some had blisters and “raw, red flesh.”
Karlsch concludes that the blast killed several hundred prisoners of war and Nazi inmates forced to work at the site. Two months later, on May 8, 1945, Nazi Germany surrendered after the Soviets captured Berlin.
Ohrdruf, located in the south-eastern state of Thuringia, was a Soviet military base after the war.
Soil samples that Karlsch had analysed for his book found the presence of radioactive isotopes, he said.
