01.05.2007 - 1907 – 2007 | Manfred von Ardenne | Episode 5: Von Ardenne and the German atomic bomb

White lie of the physicists, this is how DIE WELT called the dilemma of leading scientists during the Third Reich. Contemporaries are mostly in agreement that Manfred von Ardenne, with his extraordinary experimental abilities and his scientific intuition would have been in a position to launch a German atomic bomb programme.

Ethical compunction, a growing awareness that it was no longer warfare but holocaust, and scientific conflicts of competence inhibited the German atomic bomb. Mercifully, the Nazi command, secure of victory, renounced this development in the end.

From: G. Barkleit: "Manfred von Ardenne - Selbstverwirklichung im Jahrhundert der Diktaturen" (Manfred von Ardenne - Self-fulfilment in the Century of the Dictatorships), Publisher: Duncker & Humblot, Berlin (2006)

Photo: Max Planck (left) during his visit at the Lichtenfeld Institute on 2 February 1940