Hitler’s Limited Intellect Helped Allies Dodge Atomic Bullet

How close did Nazi Germany come to building the world’s first workable nuclear weapon?

With this month’s opening of the film “Oppenheimer,” a biopic about American theoretical physicist Robert Oppenheimer and the U.S. Manhattan Project’s race to beat Adolf Hitler to a viable atomic bomb, that’s a question that will be posed time and again over the next few weeks.

Typically, in such discussions, all roads lead to Vemork and a massive hydroelectric plant in a remote and rugged Norwegian mountain valley some 80km due West of Oslo. It was here in World War II-era Nazi-occupied Norway that the Germans were producing heavy water (D2O) in high enough concentrations to use in their quest to create the first crude nuclear weapon.

But now researchers openly question whether Hitler’s limited intellect also helped stymie the Nazis own efforts in such research.

Today, heavy water is used in medical and biological research since it slows down cellular processes and inhibits cell division, not unlike the way it can also be used to slow nuclear fission.

Fission occurs when a neutron slams into a larger atom, forcing it to excite and split into two smaller atoms—also known as fission products, notes the U.S. Dept. of Energy.

In normal water, there are two atoms of hydrogen coupled with one of oxygen. But heavy water contains two deuterium isotopes of hydrogen (meaning that unlike hydrogen which doesn’t contain a neutron in its nucleus, deuterium contains both a proton and a neutron).

By substituting deuterium (D2) for ordinary hydrogen in water (H2O) and producing heavy water (D2O) with the deuterium isotope of hydrogen, its larger hydrogen atom could be useful in creating a so-called ‘moderator’ to slow and control a nuclear fission reaction, Arthur Herman writes in his 2021 book “The Viking Heart.” The moderating factor induced by D2O in heavy water is what prevents a runaway nuclear reaction in any intended weapon of mass destruction.

Heavy water can naturally occur in a very tiny proportion of water molecules. But as millions of gallons of water passed through the Norsk Hydro’s systems over the decades, deuterium would build up in the plant’s spillwater at a proportion of about 2% heavy water, Richard Godstadt, a historian at the Norwegian Industrial Workers (NIA) Museum, told me during a recent sit-down interview at the plant. This is what enabled the construction of the World War II-era heavy water cellar and the extraction of the heavy water with higher and higher concentrations using electrolysis and distillation, he says.

Electrolysis breaks down water (H2O) into its components of two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen. But when using an heavy water enrichment scheme, electrolysis can be used to up the concentrations of heavy water to as much as 99 percent D2O. This is what the Germans were aiming for at Vemork.

Heavy water was initially primarily used in medical research, until French and German nuclear physicists approached Norsk Hydro about purchasing large quantities of heavy water in 1939, says Gogstad.

But Hitler didn’t really understand the scientific significance of it, says Gogstad.

And Hitler’s early indecision about using nuclear physics to create a weapon of mass destruction likely cost him the war.

Yet Hitler didn’t want to support any project that he found difficult to understand intellectually, Jan Arnulf, a Norwegian industrial psychologist and author of the 2021 book, “Norway’s Atomic Village,” recently told me by phone and email. Hitler’s mind was strangely primitive; he was streetwise, but very suspicious of people who could get the upper hand on him intellectually, he says. He wanted to be the smartest guy in the room, says Arnulf.

As Richard Rhodes notes in his 1986 book, “The Making of the Atomic Bomb,” Albert Speer, the Nazi Minister for Armaments and War Production, is quoted as saying that Hitler had sometimes spoken about the possibility of an atom bomb, but the idea quite obviously strained his intellectual capacity. Speer notes that Hitler was unable to grasp the revolutionary nature of nuclear physics. In fact, Rhodes notes that in Speer’s conferences with Hitler, “nuclear fission comes up only once, and then is mentioned with extreme brevity.”

Even so, Germany occupied the neighboring town of Rjukan in May 1940. Their mission was to investigate the possibility of creating nuclear reactors using Uranium 238, says Gogstad. The initial intent, he says, was to find ways to power the German naval vessels, especially submarines. But the Nazis also wanted to see if they could create a reactor that could extract the rare isotope uranium 235 from “regular” uranium 238, with the intention of creating a weapon of mass destruction, says Gogstad.

When it opened in 1911, the massive Norsk Hydro plant was the world’s largest hydroelectric power plant. The Germans expressed an interest in its heavy water production as early as 1939.

And once the Allies knew what the Germans were up to with their heavy water designs, it took six military missions to rid the Nazis source of Vemork heavy water.

As for why?

For one reason, it’s hard to overstate the ruggedness of this hydro plant’s location. Perched on a steep, heavily wooded hillside, once the place was fortified, how anyone would attempt to attack it via sabotage or a bombing run in a fixed wing aircraft is beyond description.

But on February 16, 1943, six saboteurs —- all members of Norway’s Special Forces in exile in Britain —- were parachuted onto a frozen lake northwest of Vemork. They were all very familiar with the region and heavily equipped with skis, white jumpsuits and supplies. Rhodes writes that they were also carrying a shortwave radio and eighteen sets of plastic explosives, one for each of the eighteen stainless-steel electrolysis cells of the high concentration plant at Vemork. Their operation was a success. All the heavy water extraction cells were blown open, spilling nearly half a ton of heavy water down the drain.

Then in February 1944, a final Allied operation destroyed what remained of the Nazis’ heavy water cache when a ferry was blown up before it could make its way to Germany.

As a result, the Germans abandoned their heavy water operations in Norway and tried to move the Vemork electrolysis operations to Germany. But it was too late. The Nazis were already losing on the battlefield and the Manhattan Project would soon see fruition.

But even here on a bright June morning many decades later, the thought of what occurred inside these walls is chilling.

Vemork’s rugged mountain beauty is a culmination of billions of years of geological and biological processes juxtaposed next to a giant hydroelectric plant that once manufactured Nazi heavy water. Indeed, humanity dodged a bullet. And it only makes one want to preserve everything we hold dear.

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