42
Bremen, Germany: Wednesday 28 October
7:25 P.M. local time
The Mumbrauer turned out to be a rustic old Gasthaus on the outskirts of a sleepy half-timbered village. Inside, it was all dark aged oak and an atmosphere scented by wood smoke and beer.
They found Wolfgang Palmer waiting for them in a paneled booth overlooking the tree-lined parking lot. A big, hairy bear of a man somewhere in his late fifties, he stood up to grasp first Tobie, then Jax in a hearty handshake. “Call me Wolfgang,” he said in an accent that sounded more like Texas Panhandle than the Black Forest. “Please. Sit.”
Sliding in beside Jax, Tobie studied the man’s ruddy-cheeked, open face and plaid shirt. He was wearing jeans with cowboy boots and a big brass belt buckle in the shape of the Lone Star State. She was still trying to push aside every assumption she’d made about this man when Jax said, “Marie Oldenburg tells us you’re a journalist.”
Wolfgang nodded. “I used to be with the AP, but I’m semi-retired now. I’m working on a book.”
“On the Nazi atomic program?”
“You guessed it.”
“You don’t sound nearly as German as your name.”
He laughed. “My daddy’s from Lubuck, and my mama’s from Wichita Falls. My dad was a career Army man. Warrant officer. They were stationed at Wiesbaden back in the fifties, when I was born, which is how I ended up being called Wolfgang.”
A waitress came to take their order. After she left, Jax settled back into a corner of the booth and said, “What can you tell us about the German atomic program in World War II?”
Wolfgang hunched his shoulders and laid his hands together, edgewise, on the scarred wooden surface of the old table. “The first thing you need to understand is that the Germans never had a military industrial complex like we developed at Los Alamos. The U.S. had literally thousands of scientists working on the Manhattan Project, with billions of dollars in funding pouring into it.”
“So what did Germany have?”
Wolfgang paused while their waitress set three enormous beer steins in front of them. “Initially they called it the Uranium Club,” he said, wrapping his big hands around his stein. “Uranverein. It was just a small group of no more than a few dozen scientists-mainly physicists, but also a few chemists and mathematicians. When the war broke out, they ended up under the German Army Ordnance Office. Basically they were looking into three things: uranium isotope separation, uranium and heavy water production, and building what they called a Uranmaschine, or a nuclear reactor.”
“How far did they get?”
“We-ell,” he said, drawing the word out into two syllables, “that depends on who you talk to. By 1942, the German high command came to the conclusion that their nuclear energy project was unlikely to advance fast enough to make a decisive contribution to the war effort.”
“So they moved away from it?”
“In a sense. At that point, the research became more fragmented. There were something like nine different institutes working on it. The main center for everything was at Berlin, of course, but toward the end of the war even those people were scattered all over, because of the heavy Allied bombing runs. The scientists from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics-men like Werner Heisenberg-moved to Hechin-gen and Haigerloch, near the Black Forest, while Nikolaus Riehl shifted his operations to Oranienburg.”
“What was he working on?”
“Riehl? He tended to concentrate on the large scale production of high-purity uranium oxide.”
Wolfgang leaned back in his seat and waited while their waitress set their plates on the table before them. “Up until recently, there were basically two schools of historical thought on the subject. Some writers, like Thomas Powers, came to the conclusion that German scientists like Heisenberg and Riehl were deliberately dragging their feet-that they didn’t believe an atomic bomb should ever be built by anyone.”
“Do you think Powers got that right?”
The Texan had ordered bratwurst and potatoes. Picking up his knife and fork, he cut a big chunk of sausage. “It’s certainly true that Heisenberg was no Nazi. He was good friends with Jewish scientists like Einstein and Niels Bohr, and he refused to join the Party, even at first when it looked like Germany had won the war. He always remained firmly against the war with the West, although he didn’t oppose the war with Russia.”
Wolfgang chewed for a moment in silence, then said, “Heisenberg was a complex man. He hated Hitler and the Nazis, but he was a patriot. You have to remember that most of the men who fought for Germany in the War fought for Germany, not for Hitler. Not for the Nazis.”
Tobie picked at her own omelet and salad. “So was he dragging his feet, or not?”
“I honestly don’t know. We know he warned his colleagues that the Americans were working on an atom bomb. If the war hadn’t ended when it did, the Allies would have dropped their two bombs on Berlin and Hamburg, rather than on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. How could any man knowing what his country faced not work to avert that?”
Tobie said, “So what’s the other school of historical thought?”
Wolfgang raised his beer stein and drank deeply, then swiped the back of one meaty hand across his mouth. “In the late nineties, another historian came out with a book arguing that the only reason the Germans failed to develop an atom bomb was because they didn’t understand how it could work. Basically, he said Heisenberg was a bumbling idiot.”
“Was he?”
“Werner Heisenberg? Are you kidding? You’ve heard of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, right? That’s him. The guy won the 1932 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in quantum mechanics. Yeah, he made some mistakes, but they all did-even Oppenheimer.” Wolfgang leaned forward. “Among other things, the author of this new book claimed the Germans failed to appreciate the potential of plutonium to be a nuclear explosive.”
“You don’t think he got that right?”
“Hardly. We’ve since found a preliminary patent application for a plutonium bomb written in 1941 by Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker.”
Jax frowned. “Where did that come from?”
“The Russian archives.” Wolfgang laid down his knife and fork. “You’ve heard the expression, “What’s not in the files didn’t happen’?”
“Yes.”
“Well, up until ten years ago, most of the historical research into the German nuclear project was limited to the Uranium Club, mainly because they’re the only ones whose documents we had. But you see, under the Reich Research Council, the Army was also involved in atomic research-as was the Navy and the Air Force. Like I said, it was all very diversified.”
“So what happened to their documents?”
“All the files from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics were grabbed by the Soviets when they took over Berlin in April and May of 1945.”
“They took them back to Moscow?”
Wolfgang nodded, his mouth full. “That’s right,” he said, swallowing hard. “They weren’t made accessible to the West until 2002.”
“Have you seen them?” asked Tobie.
“I have.” Wolfgang drained his beer stein and set it down with a thump.
“And?”
“And I believe that a team led by Kurt Diebner actually tested a nuclear device in Germany, in Thuringia, right before the end of the war.”
Tobie dropped her fork, the handle clattering loudly against the side of her plate.
“When?” said Jax. “When was this?”
“On the third of March, 1945.”
43
Jax quietly ordered three more Beck’s beers, although Tobie had barely touched hers. “What kind of nuclear device?” he asked, his gaze on the Texan’s hairy face.