Why Did Germany Succeed In Ww2

In the early years of World War II the fear existed that Germany was going to succeed in developing a powerful new weapon. As the success of the Allied war effort against Germany hung in the balance, America raced to develop the same weapon in response to the new threat. In August of 1943, the Manhattan Project’s scientific director, J. Robert Oppenheimer, wrote of the circumstances, “It’s possible that the Germans will have, by the end of this year, enough material accumulated to make a large number of gadgets which they will release” (Ford 212). They reasoned that “the Anglo-American effort lagged behind Germany’s, perhaps by as much as two-and-a-half years… if the Germans developed it first, the Allied cause was lost” (Sherwin 9). However, Germany never did produce an atomic bomb. The reasoning behind Germany’s failure to produce an atom bomb continues to be disputed. Many, including famed German physicist Werner Heisenberg, argue that German scientists morally opposed the bomb and worked in secret to sabotage the effort. Even so, Germany, at the time, was unable to mobilize the resources needed to undertake the project. One …show more content…
Weizsacker was even quoted as saying “If we had put the same energy into it as the Americans and had wanted it as they did, it is quite certain that we would still not have succeeded as they did because they bombed all our factories” (Frank 78). The Americans were willing to go to extraordinary measures and risk countless casualties in order to halt the German effort. Considering the fear and high priority placed on German atomic bomb research, had they managed to progress beyond the testing stage into development, the Allies would have certainly launched determined attacks and attempted to destroy any production facility involved in their