The Rise of the Fourth Reich - ThereAreNoSunglasses

60 THE RISE OF THE FOURTH REICHR.A.F. [Royal Air Force] offcers said today that the Germans hadnearly completed preparations for bombing New York from a “colossalair field” near Oslo when the war ended.Forty giant bombers with a 7,000-mile range were found on thisbase—“the largest Luftwaffe field I have ever seen,” one offcer said.They were a new type bomber developed by Heinkel. They now arebeing dismantled for study. German ground crews said the planeswere held in readiness for a mission to New York.It should also be noted that the Nazis had two prototypes of theJunkers-390, a massive six-engine modification of the Junkers-290, knownto have made flights to Japanese bases in Manchuria.In late 1944, one JU-390 was flown from a base in Bordeaux, France, towithin twelve miles of New York City, snapped photographs of the skyline,and returned—a nonstop flight of thirty-two hours.What weapon was to be transported by these massive bombers? Afterthe war, authorities discovered a feasibility study by the German Luftwaffedetailing the blast effects of an atomic bomb over New York’s ManhattanIsland. The Nazi study was based on an atomic bomb in thefi ft een- to seventeen-kiloton range, approximately the same yield as theLittle Boy uranium bomb dropped on Hiroshima.If Nazi Germany had a nuclear weapon, they surely must have tested it,and a collection of disparate sources seems to indicate this was accomplished.Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, in a “Political Testament” writtenshortly before his death at the hands of partisans in April 1945, stated,“The wonder weapons are the hope. It is laughable and senseless for us tothreaten at this moment, without a basis in reality for these threats. Thewell-known mass destruction bombs are nearly ready. In only a few days,with the utmost meticulous intelligence, Hitler will probably execute thisfearful blow, because he will have full confidence. . . . It appears there arethree bombs—and each has an astonishing operation. The constructionof each is fearfully complex and of a lengthy time of completion.”Mussolini’s mention of three bombs is intriguing because of a statementof a former Russian military translator who served on the staff ofMarshal Rodion Malinovsky, the offcer who took Japan’s surrender to