Death-Rays as Life-Savers in the Third Reich - Pedro Waloschek ...

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unambiguous (albeit secret) reports were submitted to the authorities in writing. But in other cases suggestions were raised only orally, and the paperwork that was presented merely served to hide the military purpose of these projects behind a smokescreen of civilian intent. To some extent the scientists were able to play this game thanks to the Nazi leadership’s lack of technical and scientific understanding. Furthermore, it was unlikely that experts with opposing viewpoints would raise any objections to a project considered essential to the war effort since this would have been considered in general as rank defeatism. Nevertheless the world was afraid of Hitler’s miracle weapons and particularly his death rays. What was the truth behind these death rays? And how had the German Luftwaffe and other authorities been convinced of the case for making substantial research and development efforts to produce such death rays? This is the area under discussion. The subject began to fascinate me in my youth. My aim is to present the collection of data I have accumulated over many years, and make it accessible to others in a way that I hope will be interesting and easy to understand. I have been particularly interested in the lives and problems of the people involved in the ‘death ray’ projects, and I hope that the information I present will contribute to the elimination of some of the myths and prejudices that arose after the war, mainly as a result of the (sometime justified) silence of the participants. This particularly affected the excellent scientists Ernst Schiebold and Rolf Wideröe. I have tried to fill some of the gaps in their curriculum vitae with factual and objective information. I have generally limited myself to presenting verifiable data on devices which were actually built. Some of the proposals that have come to my attention over the years were quite serious but never rose above the level projects or were immediately rejected and I do not describe them here. I have reduced technical details to a minimum, although I have provided references whereby the interested reader can obtain additional information. Some drawings with short explanations should help understanding the texts. 6
As is naturally the case for any type of historic research, the work can continue ad infinitum; some questions will always remain unanswered and some new ones might come up. In this respect I would like to remark that access to documents and information about the time of World War II has improved in recent years and that new sources are therefore available. It would be a great pleasure to me if the information I have presented here also serves as basis or encouragement for further investigation. For this reason I have mentioned as accurately as possible all references used and the names and facts contained in my documentation. And I welcome any comments and suggestions. Note on the English version. Pedro Waloschek Hamburg, August 2004 After the publication of the last German version of the present report [Wa04a] I had to translate several parts of it into English and Spanish for particularly interested readers and friends. So it became soon clear that a complete translation would be quite useful and work was started by my daughter Karen, a professional translator in GB, in her spear time. She had already successfully translated my book on Wideröe´s autobiography [Wa93]. Up to now Karen was able to provide English versions of the texts of the first four (of seven) chapters. The remaining parts are now available in my so called “brenglish”, that is, the “broken English” often used by physicists in their publications. It is a not very elegant but understandable language. I hope that one day an improved version will be available and in the meantime the status of the present version can be consulted and downloaded as a compact (screen version) pdf-file from the DESY-Library (www-library.desy.de/elbook.html) and from my homepage (www.waloschek.de). And I welcome any corrections, comments and suggestions which can be sent to me through the “Kontakt” facility of my homepage. 7
Page 1 and 2: Pedro Waloschek Death-Rays as Life-
Page 3: Pedro Waloschek Death-Rays as Life-
Page 8 and 9: Recently some new and interesting d
Page 10 and 11: German troops in Stalingrad, who co
Page 12 and 13: my father for deserting the ‘Reic
Page 14 and 15: ancestry in order to qualify for se
Page 16 and 17: far as to claim that it was typical
Page 18 and 19: With the hindsight afforded by the
Page 20 and 21: contact brushes) is one of his most
Page 22 and 23: ecognised the value of his early wo
Page 24 and 25: nature’, although this is not spe
Page 26 and 27: ultraviolet radiation. He remarks t
Page 28 and 29: article, to which he added his own
Page 31 and 32: 3 Richard Gans and Heinz Schmellenm
Page 33 and 34: ‘Einführung in die Theorie des M
Page 35 and 36: were classified as ‘first-degree
Page 37 and 38: senior assistants at the Institute
Page 39 and 40: Heinz Schmellenmeier in May 1944 [G
Page 41 and 42: The matter was discussed with a few
Page 43 and 44: gram - and equally dangerous! At th
Page 45 and 46: Schmellenmeier explained the reason
Page 47 and 48: deal with aircraft approaching from
Page 49 and 50: any experts been asked, therefore,
Page 51 and 52: Rheotron could never have had the c
Page 53 and 54: work being done in America must als
Page 55 and 56: special permission by the Gestapo),
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we were only able to eat a fraction
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Board of the Reich’s Air Travel M
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liked to regale us with tales about
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44 Ernst Schiebold and his ‘X-Ray
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proposal’s title, he again came t
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storing energy in adequate capacito
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Box 3 The Van-de-Graaff-Generator P
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It is important to remember at this
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irradiation above about 600 roentge
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This was the situation of Schiebold
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We may assume that Schiebold began
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4. An order worth 150,000 RM placed
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Seifert & Co’, a company that had
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Box 5b Hall and Bunker for Accelera
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‘Mobile X-Ray Station for Materia
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instruments needed by the aircraft
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Prof. Fritz Günther made some inte
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5. Rolf Wideröe’s “Beam- Trans
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BBC (CH) the construction of betatr
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für Elektrotechnik” and all the
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got a small room in the seller of t
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Kerst had also elaborated with his
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Friedrich Geist was at the time dir
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owners of the factory. It was the
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school (Piaristen Gymnasium) after
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Berlin. And it was in August 1943 w
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were from the beginning registered
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The 15-MeV-Beam-Transformer Vacuum-
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see his family and write reports in
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colleague and director of research,
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6 The End of the X-Ray-Guns On Dece
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was occasionally visited during the
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Spengler, Rößler und Wideröe. Th
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voltage generator which Gerlach per
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traversed material. After 2 radiati
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also on the Airing meeting. He star
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night-flight squadron of the Luftwa
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Egerer also mentions that he sugges
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expertise on the scandalous hygieni
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concentrated on the biography of se
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“Rheotron”-project and even off
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and Gentner were both working on su
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his results in an 18 pages long qui
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During the detailed design work Wid
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7 The Luftwaffe´s Last ‘Betatron
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Overbeek spent Xmas 1944 still in D
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Luftwaffe) with the obvious agreeme
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cleaning and lice searching. I was
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had taken over (she was a lawyer) t
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they had already invested a lot of
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un [Go46]. This was the first exper
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But after some time Lind did not fe
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Erlangen. Senior physicist Hans Kop
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collisions of electrons with electr
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and finally six return yokes, inste
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authority proposes, is accepted as
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called “linacs”) came up and do
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Appendix: Max Steenbeck and Konrad
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London. As it was done for many oth
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completely all activities for the e
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as it was planned by the Siemens ma
Page 181 and 182:
original details. The vacuum tube c
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GDR and of the Committee for Europe
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Chronology Some historic events are
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1938 six volumes with reports of me
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1938-02-04 Rüdenberg and Steenbeck
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1941-12-06 Siemens and General Elec
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official research commission, respo
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activities in Groß Ostheim. Schie-
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1945-01 Design-work for Wideröe´s
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V2-rockets in Germany. In jail he w
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is transported to Göt-tingen. Ther
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References Comments: Accurate sourc
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[Am78] Amaldi, E.(?): “The advent
Page 207 and 208:
GmbH, Ham-burg, 87 p. (1981). Copy
Page 209 and 210:
Untersuchung von Parawissenschaften
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[Ke42] Kerst, D.W.: “20 MeV Betat
Page 213 and 214:
143-144 (1945) (Issue Nr. 5 and 6,
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[SE40] Schiebold, E.: Prospectus on
Page 217 and 218:
[SJ94c] Schiebold, Joachim: Several
Page 219 and 220:
[Sw92] Swinne, E.: „Richard Gans
Page 221 and 222:
Soc. 25, 469-481 (1929). Submitted
Page 223 and 224:
asche Durchführung von Konstruktio
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Death-Rays as Life-Savers in the Third Reich - Pedro Waloschek ...

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