Heisenberg's War; The Secret History of the German Bomb

New York: Da Capo Press, 2000. First Da Capo Press edition [stated]. First printing [stated]. Trade paperback. Very good. xi, [3], 607, [3] pages. Illustrations. Notes. Selected Bibliography. Index. Cover has slight wear, soiling, and sticker residue on back. Stickers inside front and back covers. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 1971 together with Lucinda Franks for his articles on Weatherman member Diana Oughton (1942-1970). He was also the recipient of the Olive Branch award in 1984 for a cover story on the Cold War that appeared in The Atlantic, a 2007 Berlin Prize, and for his 2010 book on Crazy Horse the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History. Powers is the author of six works of non-fiction and one novel. His The Man who Kept Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA (1979) is "widely regarded as one of the best books ever written on the subject of intelligence." His work on Werner Heisenberg tracks secret developments in nuclear physics during the 1930s and early 1940s. The revised edition of his Intelligence Wars contains twenty-eight articles previously published in the New York Review of Books and the New York Times Book Review from 1983 to 2004. His most recent book follows the life of Crazy Horse (died Nebraska 1877). Evan Thomas in The New York Times, while reviewing this book, also commented broadly on Powers as an author and a previous work on Richard Helms: Powers is "a great journalistic anthropologist. In possibly the best book ever written about the C.I.A, The Man Who Kept the Secrets, Powers took the reader on a fascinating journey into the world of secret intelligence gathering and covert action. 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 Niels 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. Derived from a Kirkus review: Why did the Third Reich, for all its industrial might and technological resources, fail to create a nuclear bomb? That's the central concern of this masterful, wide-angle reckoning by Powers At the heart of the panoramic narrative is Werner Heisenberg, whose work on quantum mechanics and the so-called uncertainty principle earned him considerable fame during the 1920's. Heisenberg was fascinated by fission's potential. But unlike many colleagues who had emigrated because of Hitler's institutionalized anti-Semitism, he remained in Germany throughout the war. Love of country partially explained this difficult decision, which also involved a desire to preserve and protect Germany's scientific future. Heisenberg--who early on had convinced Albert Speer and the Wehrmacht that A-bombs were a mission impossible--``was free to do what he could to guide the German atomic research effort into a broom closet.'' Fellow scientists--in particular, those assigned to the Manhattan Project--were generally reluctant to accept Heisenberg's subsequent apologia. Nor at the time did Allied intelligence believe that he was trying to develop reactors rather than bombs. Powers nonetheless determines that the unwillingness of Heisenberg and other German physicists to put a superweapon at the disposal of a military/police state was indeed a root cause of Hitler's failure to become a charter member of the nuclear club. In reaching this conclusion, the author provides vivid vignettes on Heisenberg's peers--Hans Bethe, Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi, Otto Hahn, Robert Oppenheimer, Leo Szilard, etc. Covered as well are the counterespionage campaigns mounted by Anglo-American agents, who at one point seriously considered abducting or assassinating Heisenberg. A comprehensive and resonant overview, notable for its compassionate perspectives on the moral dilemmas faced by men of genius caught up in a global conflict.