- In 1938, Germany was under an embargo for its persecution of Jews in Hitler's international-financier paid-paid for effort to dis-assimilate Jewish Germans and motivate their emigration, "driven out," to Israel, the growing foetus conceived by the Balfour declaration during World War One that would be delivered in 1948. The embargo was severe and not unlike those against Saddam Hussein designed to thward that "Putin-style" leaders attempts to prosper his nation without international usury or predatory investment capital from the IMF or mandates to economic suicide from the world bank -- and not unlike, also, the embargo sanctions against Japan as it attempted to set up an East Asian co-prosperity sphere free from the manipulations of finance capitalism and from the murderous totalitarianism then offered by the Soviet-led communists.
-
- So much you know.
-
- But here is something you may never have considered.
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- In 1938 pysicists Otto Han and Fritz Strassman split the atom in Germany -- first generating fission-released energy. The implications were not lost on the best minds of the world -- only four years later Enrico Fermi, brought to the United States from Italy by American capital produced the first atomic pile -- taking things more than half-way to the first functioning powerplant.
-
- Now think about that.
-
- Embargo. Financiers whose investment portfolios are mighty with oil stock. A new source of energy that does not require oil, and in the hands of a nationalistic Government built on -- in addition to the crude appeal to Hitler-fanned racial chauvinism -- built on a populist reaction to World War One and the treaty framed by the big corporations "big four" puppets (with Bernard Baruch and Edward House actually negotiating terms on behalf of the United States -- albeit later the American Senate would not ratify it , because of the League of Nations rider) -- AND SO THE POSSIBILITY PRESENTED ITSELF OF A NATIONALIST (I.E. "FOR THE PEOPLE") GOVERNMENT CUTTING ITS DEMAND FOR OIL FROM THE WORLD OIL-MONOPOLIZING PIRATE FINANCIERS AND PRODUCING CHEAP ATOMIC ENERGY.
-
- AND WHAT HAPPENED. RUSSIA AND GERMANY INVADED POLAND TOGETHER -- I.E. THERE WAS OUTSIDE INFLUENCE UPON HITLER TO INVADE AND BREAK THE MUNICH AGREEMENT -- WITH THE CHOICE OF EITHER
- GAINING HALF OF POLAND FOR GERMANY OR HAVING STALIN AT HIS BOARDERS.
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- THIS OF COURSE TRIPPED THE WAR --- BUT WHY WAS THE WAR TRIPPED (BESIDES THE USUAL REASON OF WAR PROFITS AND GOVERNMENT WAR BORROWING FROM INTERNATIONAL LENDERS ETC.?) -- VERY SIMPLY BECAUSE THEY WANTED TO STOP GERMANY FROM DEVELOPING ATOMIC POWER AND SMASHING THE MONOPOLISTIC DOMINATION OF THE WORLD BY THE GLOBAL OIL PIRATES. THEY DID NOT WANT ANY PART OF HUMANITY GETTING LARGE AMOUNTS OF PRODUCTIVE ELECTRICAL POWER UNLESS THEY HAD THERE RATE METERS $$$ INSINUATED BETWEEN SOURCE AND END USERS.
-
- The atomic scientists were captured and taken (along with the rocket scientists) to the US. (I should note that the German scientists were unwilling to help Hitler develop atomic weapons and so kept the potential to themselves -- whereas Einstein Oppenheimer etc. had no such humanitarian reservations -- but let's save that for another time perhaps )
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- Baruch got the scientists.
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- Baruch in 1946 put forth his plan for US atomic weapons world domination -- the Baruch Plan for World Peace -- which nations refused to submit to -- (wisely too, insofar as submitting would have ushered in the Zionist "anti-terrorist" world governance by the US Pentagon that we are seeing near attaining Baruch's original conception -- as horrible as the world of 1946 suspected it would be when they turned it down way back then.
-
- AND WHAT DID BARUCH DO WITH ATOMIC POWER AS HEAD OF THE ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISSION.
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- HE DID NOT WANT ATOMIC POWER REPLACING OIL -- BUT HE WANTED IT DEVELOPED -- AND SO THE COLD WAR ARMS RACE WAS CREATED TO ACCOMPLISH EXACTLY THAT GOAL. Small nuclear reactors were developed, but only missile carrying submarines and power-projecting aircraft carriers. A few atomic plants were developed -- BUT THE ANTI-NUKE MOVEMENT (WHICH WENT BEYOND RATIONAL RESISTANCE AND REASONABLE CAUTION -- BECAUSE THE DANGERS WERE VERY GREAT -- BUT NOTE THAT THE INSURANCE COMPANIES WERE WILLING TO TAKE THE RISK -- AND MORE MEASURES COULD HAVE BEEN TAKEN INSTEAD OF SHUTDOWN -- BUT ALSO THERE WAS THE DELIBERATE SABOTAGE OF THREE -MILE ISLAND AND OF CHERNOBYL TO GET THE PROFESSIONALLY AGITATED "GREENS" TO APPLY POLITICAL PRESSURE TO DESTROY ATOMIC POWER IN FAVOR OF PINWHEELS AND POCKET-CALCULATOR SOLAR CELLS -- AND UNTIL THOSE GOT UP TO SPEED, CONTINUED RELIANCE ON THE GLOBAL OIL PIRATES' OIL MONOPOLY. (Remember, the Sheiks controlling Mideast oil are merely fronts for the oil corporations -- a shell to escape US corporation regulation by the US government (although the US government is no so "defanged" by the corporations that that could not happen.)
-
- I stop here.
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- Conclusion: World War Two I am now suspecting was a war against German atomic power for civilian use -- and it was initiated by the oil companies who got Stalin to get Hitler to break the Munich treaty, so they could destroy Germany before atomic power could be realized and so they could grab the German scientists and put them on less harmful projects, like nuclear weapons carried by intercontinental ballistic missiles to deliver thermonuclear war.
-
- Sounds reasonable to me. How about you?
-
- Dick Eastman
- Yakima, Washington
- Every man is responsible to every other man.
- http://www.geocities.com/oldickeastman/Dick_Eastman_page.html
-
- =============
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- I describe the role of financier Bernard Baruch as mastermind operative of the big London and Wall Street banks, the man who, more than any other hundred men, shaped the defense-industry-debt-financing warplex that ruined the entire 20th century and still is ruining lives of the masses of every nation today. Here is an audio link to a broadcast of Radio Free America (Tom Valentine) from 2002 in which is covered Baruch's handiwork, providing at the same time quoted historical references substantiating every claim made:
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- I am guest of Tom Valentine, Radio Free America, discussing Bernard Baruch and the reign of for-profit evil throughout the 20th Century.
-
- "Oct. 6, 2002 - Bernard Baruch - Dick Eastman talks about this famous figure. (Streaming) <http://arc3.m2ktalk.com/val1002/6.ram>http://arc3.m2ktalk.com/val1002/6.ram
-
- "Quoted references: Bernard Baruch master war-profiteer and architect of depressions, world wars, cold war and the nuclear arms race my quoted references -- 104 pages of research findings (adobe acrobat reader will work)
- <http://www.rfausa.com/Bernard_Baruch.pdf>http://www.rfausa.com/Bernard_Baruch.pdf
ScienceThe Universe is out there, waiting for you to discover it.
Public domain image of an underwater nuclear weapons detonation test during the Cold War.
In the 1930s, as Europe stood on the precipice of World War II, a slew of nature's secrets were being revealed to scientists everywhere. The atomic nucleus was discovered to have multiple components -- protons and neutrons -- with different binding energies inside. Some atoms were naturally radioactive, either spitting out helium nuclei (α decay) or electrons (β decay) as they decayed into different, more stable elements, but others could have nuclear reactions induced in them by coaxing them into capturing neutrons. While the Sun took the lightest elements and fused them into heavier ones, releasing energy, the heaviest elements could be split apart, through the process of nuclear fission, into lighter ones, also releasing a tremendous amount of energy. When the first fissile element (Uranium-235) was discovered, it was immediately recognized that the reaction each Uranium atom undergoes gives off more than 100,000 times the energy of an equivalent mass of TNT exploding.
The Uranium-235 chain reaction that leads to a nuclear fission bomb. Image credit: E. Siegel, based on the original public domain work by Wikimedia Commons user Fastfission.
The way to get a fission reaction to occur was simple: bombard your fissile material with neutrons. Want to make the fission reaction more efficient? There are many things you can do:
- Increase the percentage of your fissile material in your sample.
- Slow down the neutrons you're bombarding them with, making them easier to absorb.
- Remove any neutron-absorbing material inside, meaning that a higher percentage of your neutrons trigger fission reactions.
- And to use a reaction that's self sustaining: it produces additional free neutrons for each fission reaction that occurs.
In the United States, the Manhattan project scientists recognized all of this, and went down a number of avenues to ensure the success of their fission bombs.
The explosion from the first experimental atomic bomb, in the desert near Alamogordo, N.M., 1945.
Enriched samples of Uranium-235 and Plutonium-239 were produced: fissile materials that released tremendous amounts of energy when activated by neutrons, yet that also produced additional neutrons to continue a chain reaction. Both water and graphite were excellent mediums for slowing down neutrons, as the collisions between neutrons and those nuclei exchanged energy, slowing the neutrons down. Normal water (H2O), however, was no good, as the free protons in the hydrogen nuclei readily absorbed neutrons, creating deuterium. But if you used "heavy water," made out of deuterium (HDO) or even "double heavy water" (D2O) in lieu of water, the neutron absorption would be greatly reduced, enabling you to build a fission bomb of tremendous efficiency. In the 1940s, American scientists led by J. Robert Oppenheimer, Edward Teller and others figured all of this out, eventually succeeding in their endeavor. But at the same time in Nazi Germany, relative unknown Kurt Diebner and the theoretical titan Werner Heisenberg had figured out the exact same physics, and were working to build an atomic bomb of their own.
Natural Uranium is <1% U-235. Reactor-enriched Uranium rises to ~3-4%. But weapons-grade requires ~90% U-235, which the U.S. achieves by a cascade of gas centrifuges, as shown here in this 1984 photo. Image credit: U.S. Department of Energy.
By the early 1940s, the Germans were well ahead of the allies in their efforts, having procured all of the ingredients necessary for the bomb save one: the heavy water, which was only available in Norway in one particular plant: Vemork. More than any other reason, this was the impetus for the 1940 Nazi invasion of Norway, forcing the Norsk Hydro scientists to accelerate production of this mysterious substance which -- it was joked -- was only good for improved ice rinks (since it froze at 4º C instead of normal water's 0º C); by 1942, more than a ton of it had been shipped to Germany. According to the calculations of Heisenberg and others, three-to-six metric tons were needed for a working fission bomb.
The three isotopes of hydrogen; the ideal "double heavy" water (D2O) consists of two deuteriums and one oxygen. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons user Dirk Hünniger, translated by Erwin85, under a c.c.a.-s.a.-3.0 license.
Yet the Nazis never completed their bomb, thanks to the combined efforts of the Norwegian resistance and the allied help of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) to sabotage the heavy water production at Vemork. Led by Leif Tronstad, the Norwegian scientist who figured the Nazi plan out and escaped his occupied country to warn the allies, the journey involved everything from contaminating the heavy water with cod liver oil to trekking over 500 pounds of equipment through the frozen Norwegian winter, only to fall through the ice and fight with a dead battery. A brilliant attempt was made towards the end of 1942 to blow up the plant, but a glider crash resulted in the capture and execution of the saboteurs by the Gestapo in Nazi-occupied Norway. Yet in February of 1943, a second attempt, known as Operation Gunnerside, sent in an SOE-trained team of Norwegian commandos, and they succeeded in destroying the plant. Coincident with the Nazi defeat at Stalingrad, this truly marked a decisive turning point in the war. The destruction of the plant at Vemork became known as the most successful act of sabotage in all of World War II.
The Hydro ferry that operated between Rollag and Mæl in 1925. Image credit: Anders Beer Wilse, in the public domain.
Yet the story didn't end there; in 1944, the Nazis attempted to use the steam powered railway ferry, SF Hydro (or DF Hydro), to send the remaining heavy water to Germany in a last-ditch attempt to obtain the heavy water needed for an atomic bomb. The sinking of that ferry -- to the bottom of a 400 meter (1,400 feet) lake -- was perhaps the most critical victory in preventing Nazi Germany from obtaining the materials they needed for the atomic bomb. If not for the Norwegian resistance, Leif Tronstad and the British SOE, the entire rest of World War II (not to mention the future of the world since) may have unfolded very differently. As it stands, the fight over the world's largest production plant of heavy water is one of the most important, and yet one of the most under-told, stories in all of World War II.
Vemork Hydroelectric Plant at Rjukan, Norway in 1935. The heavy water was produced in the front building. Image credit: Anders Beer Wilse, in the public domain.
I'm pleased to report that the full story of the plan to sabotage Hitler's atomic bomb is now told with both historical and scientific accuracy in Neal Bascomb's new book: The Winter Fortress. As someone who's thoroughly enjoyed a number of books about World War II history, this book has rocketed into my pantheon of the top suspense-filled stories about that era, along with Harrison Salisbury's The 900 Days, about the story of survival during the siege of Leningrad, and The Colditz Story, about the most successful P.O.W. prison break where over 300 men escaped from the highest security Nazi prison of all.
General Alfred Jodl signs the German surrender document on May 7, 1945, ending World War II in Europe.Image credit: STF/AFP/Getty Images.
There's perhaps no better legacy to the history of this planet that Heisenberg is remembered for his uncertainty principle -- about the inherently indeterminate relationship between variables like position and momentum or energy and time -- rather than for his design of the weapon that allowed the Nazis to conquer the world. Instead, just four months after the sinking of the SF Hydro, the D-Day invasion took place. 11 months later, Germany surrendered. It's a rare case when the link between science, war and history are so clear, and yet it's quite arguable that we're only here today, living in relative peace and freedom on Earth, because of the brave actions taken in the 1940s by a group of saboteurs who saved the world.
Astrophysicist and author Ethan Siegel is the founder and primary writer of Starts With A Bang! His books, Treknology and Beyond The Galaxy, are available wherever books are sold.
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