Germany started working on developing an atomic bomb before the U.S. entered World War II. The program went through a number of changes of name and personnel. The Nazis were using heavy water as a moderator which is not as effective graphite control rods that were used in the early reactors constructed bin the U.S. which retarded Nazi nuclear development efforts. During the war, Norwegian saboteurs were sent into occupied Norway by the Allies to destroy a plant being used to produce heavy water for the Nazi nuclear research program. The destruction of the plant also slowed their development. A lot of Jewish mathematicians and scientists either left Germany during Hitler's reign left or were persecuted.
Ultimately, the Nazis invested much more in the development of their rocket program than their nuclear weapons program which was ultimately unsuccessful. Following the war, the Allies scrambled to recruit German nuclear scientists.
In a book published in 2005 titled Hitlers Bombe it was claimed by the author that the Nazi scientists actually successfully tested some sort of nuclear device in Ohrdruf in Thuringia state in Germany in March of 1945. The author quotes an eyewitness who supposedly saw the test. He also cites references which claim that there was another test on the island of Rugen in the Baltic Sea in 1944. However, the author admits that he has no proof of any of these claims. Later, there were tests of the soil at the sites where the tests were supposed to have taken place and no radioactive materials consistent with nuclear explosions were found. The bottom line is that there is no evidence that the Nazi's nuclear scientists ever successfully constructed and tested working atomic bombs.
Now a German pensioner named Peter Lohr claims that he used ground penetrating radar with 3-D technology to locate five large metal objects buried in a cave in the Jonas in Thuringia state in Germany. He says that the radar traces of two of the objects are consistent with primitive atomic bombs. Lohr believes that the five objects were constructed and buried by the Nazis during World War II. He is concerned that if he is right, there might be a danger of a nuclear disaster from the buried objects because they are metal objects that have been rusting and corroding for seventy years.
It is known that the Jonas valley was the site of secret Nazi military construction. Thousands of slaves from concentration camps were used to dig extensive tunnels with thousands of caves, bunkers and storerooms. It is not known exactly what the Nazis were doing in the Jonas valley but it is believed that they did not finish what they were working on. Some say that the Nazi leadership intended to stage their last stand there. Allied trooped entered and liberated the Jonas Valley in April of 1945. All documents relating to the valley were classified for a hundred years.
Last year, a documentary titled The Search for Hitler's Atom Bomb was released. In the documentary, there are quotes from sealed Russian and U.S. sources which suggest that the Nazis were very close to perfecting nuclear weapons when World War II ended. If they had succeeded, the world would be very different today.
Nazi experimental nuclear pile at Haigerloch:
