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Dear Ed,
I bought the first book, "Hitler's Miracle Weapons: Secret Nuclear Weapons of the Third Reich and their Carrier Systems", and was duly unimpressed. Georg has 5-1/4 pages of notes and sources, but the high majority of sources cited are published works, not primary documentation.
The book is written in a very annoying style. Here's a random excerpt from page 5:
"Without specifying an exact date, Speer states in his memoirs that in the autumn of 1942 he had another discussion with the nuclear experts. When they informed him that no decisive results could be expected sooner than 'within three or four years', that 'we discontinued the atomic bomb project'. According to reports which all agreed, had they not already discontinued the project in June.
Hitler, the Supreme Commander, certainly saw things very differently. At the end of September 1942, he informed Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel about the new weapons. Hitler said that such weapons would soon 'relieve his position' in North Africa. Hitler also told him about a secret new explosive that had such explosive power that it would 'throw a man from his horse at a distance of over two kilometres'. That was nothing other than a reference to the atomic bomb."
There's no specifics, no sources, primary or otherwise, to make attribution, save for a generalized reference to Speer's memoirs. There has been a growing frenzy for information on Germany's nuclear ambitions and I think this is one of a number of books intended to salivate, but not anything of substantive research, nor written in a style that an historian could respect.
Regards,
Richard
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