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

Rating:
Summary: How History should be written
Review: Heisenberg's War shouldn't be called just Heisenberg's war: it should be called Physics During World War 2 or something of that nature. This book does not concentrate solely on Werner Heisenberg, the great theoretical physicist, but also on the Los Alsos mission of America, specific characters within that mission and other important physicists throughout the world. Knowing little about Physics before reading this book (having only completed an AP course in high school) Powers educates the reader on the basis of Physics that needs to be known to fully understand the book and it's subject. In fact, this book took me 3 months to read, the longest it has ever taken me to read a book, because I would attempt to learn the physics being taught. It was a thoroughly rewarding experience. Nonetheless, if you have no interest in physics, I suggest you skip this book. This was a complete history and Powers managed to get many first hand accounts, most surprisingly, in my opinion, from Carl Friedrich von Weiszacker, Heisenberg's most brilliant pupil and fellow member of the Uranverein (read the book and you'll understand). A new conclusion is drawn about why Heisenberg and his fellow German physicists didn't build an atomic bomb, in contrast to the old conclusion which suggested it was due to, in short, 'bumbling Nazis'. Powers suggests the Heisenberg and his cohorts didn't want to build a bomb for Hitler. Though he does respect the fact that perhaps there were also several important flaws in their thinking; for example, Heisenberg thought a bomb could run with slow molecules, which, apparently, it couldn't (I'm no scientists). Overall, this is a complete history which is, at points, a page turner and I suggest anyone with an interest in the politics behind World War 2 of Physics purchase it.

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Summary: Hey, Thomas Powers, could you please find a brain.
Review: 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 silnce 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?"

Rating:
Summary: Somewhat dull / Unconvincing Theme
Review: My first criticism is that the book has way too much minutia which made it dull. I had to really plough through some of it and my reading was interruped by many naps.

The second criticism is of the main thesis: That Werner Heisenberg sabotaged the German bomb effort deliberately. I believe his comment at Farm Hall ("How could the Americans have separated two tons of U235?") was a spontaneous statement made by a man who had, until that moment, believed that he was the leader of the pack, and suddenly realized he was the Captain of the Bavarian Little League. It was a reflection of his confusion, shock and ego deflation, not a calculated deception of his fellow scientists. I just looked at the design specs of his Uranium machine in Haigerloch and it has no control rods. More confusion! It is difficult to recapture the total gestalt of the German scientist's predicament. Some of the parts of it were fear of failure. Associated with this is a lack of boldness on any of their parts. There was no Groves in Germany (as in Leslie R. Groves). If you work for Franklin Roosevelt and spend 2 billion dollars and fail, you would get fired and spend the rest of your life testifying before Congress. Do that with Hitler and you wouldn't get fired, you would get fired upon! There was a belief on the part of the nazi gov. that the war would be won soon. The held from 1930 until 1942. No sense of urgency! But Heisenberg was not an engineering physicist. He was no Fermi. That is part of it too. To say he sabotaged the German program as part of a heroic effort is simple historical revisionism for the purpose of presenting a new twist.

If you read this, read "Hitler's Uranium Club" by Jeremy Bernstein to get the right balance on this.

Rating:
Summary: engrossing history
Review: 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.)

Rating:
Summary: Compelling
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Solid and timely historical research
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best written books I have ever read!
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Well worth reading
Review: This book is kind of poorly organized, but it visits the events which are so vividly related in Richard Rhodes' classic The Making of the Atomic Bomb. Powers concludes that Heisenberg did not want to make a bomb for Hitler, and did not want to state so too plainly after the war. The thesis is well-supported and I accept it. This is a book well worth reading, tho not as good as Richard Rhodes' book, which well deserved the Pulitzer Prize it won in 1988.

Rating:
Summary: Scholarly but unpersuasive -- and heavy with details
Review: While I found this book interesting and informative when it dwelled upon the personalities and contributions of the physicists who discovered and explored the field of quantum mechanics prior to WW2, I found two problems with the book as it entered the war. First, it spent too much time, at least for me, on the details of minor episodes and players. In this sense, I might have appreciated the treatment had I been a scholar researching the field - but I wasn't. Hence, I often found the reading dull. Second, I found Powers' ultimate thesis - that Heisenberg purposefully delayed the German atomic bomb program - unpersuasive. It appeared to me that Powers often strained his interpretation of the facts to make them conform to his thesis. For example, when reviewing Heisenberg's "Farm Hall" statement in August 1945 that two tons of U235 was required to make an atomic bomb, Powers suggests that because Heisenberg articulated the appropriate lesser amount a week later, and because he purportedly suggested at an earlier date that a bomb could be the size of a football, his "two ton" statement was a purposeful "error." Equally persuasive, if not more, is the simple thought that Heisenberg did indeed grossly overestimate what was required, thereby prompting him to tell Speer in 1942 that a bomb was impractical. This is not to say that Powers is necessarily wrong. I simply believe that based on the facts he presents, the issue remains debatable.