this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2025
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Explanation: In WW2, Nazi Germany, near the end of the war, was constantly searching for wunderwaffen - 'wonder weapons' - that would FINALLY TURN THE TIDE OF THE WAR for them. They made all sorts of experiments - from early jet fighters, to piloted missiles (lethal to the pilot), to bigger and deadlier tanks, to ultra-optimized guns that could be stamped out of scrap.
None of this was enough to change the course of the war, of course. It was grasping at straws from a brutal regime that had lodged itself in an unwinnable fight with no way out.
Meanwhile, the US was working on fucking nuclear weapons, which, if the Allies were not already winning the war, sure as hell would've changed the balance of power. Germany surrendered before the atomic bomb was finished, but Japan held out for several months after Germany's surrender - unfortunately for Hiroshima and Nagasaki - until the bombs were ready.
Er, well, there actually was a German nuclear project during WWII (nuclear fission was discovered in Berlin in 1938), which is why the Einstein-Szilard letter was written to FDR. Germany was actually ahead in nuclear physics research, but fascism destroyed the scientific community.
Actually, the OSS (The CIA's precursor) did set a spy upon Werner Heisenberg, the head of Nazi Germany's nuclear research programme, with the mission to assassinate him if there was any indication the Nazis were close to building a nuclear weapon.
He found out that the Nazis were nowhere close, so Heisenberg got to live.
For a while there his survival was uncertain.