General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: No Choice: Why Harry Truman Dropped the Atomic Bomb on Japan [View all]VMA131Marine
(4,135 posts)The Germans got their heavy water from the Norske Hydro plant in Norway, which was effectively sabotaged by 1944. Their technical approach, to use the heavy water as a neutron moderator in a plutonium breeder reactor was theoretically viable, but the Germans had done none of the engineering work required to design such a reactor. They would have needed to invent the Chemical process to separate the plutonium from the spent nuclear fuel and they had done no work on the design of a practical bomb itself. When you compare the scale of the German effort with that of the Manhattan Project it's clear that it would have taken years to develop a bomb without a massive increase in manpower and resources. These, of course, were not available due to the deteriorating was situation.