pdf - WHALE

German uranium enrichment project behind it - and thus he has
shielded the Nazi near-success from the view of the world. 15
Did Germany have isotope enrichment technology available And
could it have employed that technology in sufficient quantity to
make significant amounts of enriched uranium available for a bomb
program
There can be no doubt that Germany certainly had a sufficient
supply of uranium ore, for the region of the Sudetenland - annexed
by Germany after the infamous Munich conference in 1938 - is a
region known for its rich deposits of some of the highest grade
uranium ore in the world. The region, coincidentally, lies close to
the "Three Corners" region of Thuringia in south central Germany,
and therefore close to Silesia and the various installations that will
be examined in parts two and three. So the Farben directors may
have had another reason for choosing Auschwitz as the site for an
enrichment facility. Auschwitz was close not only to water, an
adequate transportation network, and abundant labor, it was
conveniently close to the uranium fields of the German-Czech
Sudentenland.
These facts raise a speculative possibility. It is well-known that
the announcement by nuclear chemist Otto Hahn of his discovery of
nuclear fission did not occur until after the Munich conference and
the surrender of the Sudetenland to the Third Reich by Chamberlain
and Daladier. But might the reality have been something different
Might, in fact, the discovery of fission taken place before the
conference, and its results withheld by the Reich until after
Europe's only uranium supply was firmly in Nazi hands It is
perhaps significant that Adolf Hitler was prepared to go to war
over the matter.
In any case, before we investigate the question of the
technology available to the Germans, we must first answer the
question of why they apparently concentrated almost exclusively on
15 Hydrick, op. cit., p. 3. Obviously, Hydrick himself does not appear ready
to go all the way and acknowledge that the Germans actually successfully tested
an atom bomb before its American Manhattan project counterpart produced and
tested one.
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