Heisenberg's War: The Secret History Of The German Bomb

by ThomasPowers (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  2000

  $31.12

  One of the last secrets of World War II is why the Germans failed to build an atomic bomb. Germany was the birthplace of modern physics it possessed the raw materials and the industrial base and it commanded key intellectual resources. What happened?In Heisenberg's War , Thomas Powers tells of the interplay between science and espionage, morality and military necessity, and paranoia and cool logic that marked the German bomb program and the Allied response to it. On the basis of dozens of interviews and years of intensive research, Powers concludes that Werner Heisenberg, who was the leading figure in the German atomic effort, consciously obstructed the development of the bomb and in a famous 1941 meeting in Copenhagen with his former mentor Neils Bohr in effect sought to dissuade the Allies from their pursuit of the bomb. Heisenberg's War is a superbly researched and well-written book ( Time ) whose extraordinary story engrosses- and haunts.

• Used

  Paperback
  1994

  $3.44

  The story of the interplay between science and espionage, morality and military necessity, which marked the German-bomb programme and the Allied response to it. It revolves round Werner Heisenberg, one of the century's greatest physicists and the only one of real stature to stay on during the war. The Allies knew the Germans had the materials to construct the bomb; in Heisenberg they also had the intellectual know-how. What role did he in fact play, and what were his aims and motives?