German WW2 uranium found in Holland

[Nick Beale]

One for Ed West, perhaps:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02...tch_scrapyard/

[Jaap Woortman]

Nick,

That story is 100% bullshit.
No German uranium has been found in Dutch scrapyard!
Story checked at the Dutch EOC.

Jaap

[edwest]

Thank you, Nick. I wonder why The Register would fabricate such a story but that's a separate issue.

There were many more individuals involved in the German atomic program. The cubes and plates are confirmed in the book Atomversuche in Deutschland by Guenter Nagel. They were made by the Auer company which the Americans made it a point to bomb. In the late 1990s, a number of secret documents were provided to the Deutsches Museum by the Americans. Among them, a report dated 2 May 1945 from the ALSOS Mission.

"A new edition of 'Forschungsberichte' was planned containing articles on successful pile experiments. Five articles in all were contemplated, and Gerlach wrote an introductory summary. We found this introductory summary in rough pencilled form, which gives the status of the project as of January 1945."

January 1945?

Anyone who cares to look can go to the Deutsches Museum.



Regards,
Ed

[Propellerhead]

When Belgium was overrun Nazi Germany captured 3,500 tonnes of uranium oxide from mines in the Belgian Congo. It was stored at salt mines in Strassfurt. By 1945 the Allies recovered only 1,100 tonnes of that Belgian uranium, but 2,370 tonnes remains unaccounted for to this day.

In the years immediately after the war there was a significant black market in stolen Uranium and Radium across Europe.

[edwest]

I would appreciate some reference that confirms that. The American Counter-Interintelligence Corps and the British T-Force made it a point to collect all the uranium and radium they could get their hands on and to keep an accurate accounting. They were both well aware of the amount held in Belgium. I have seen a photograph of Russian mining equipment at Joachimsthal digging for uranium shortly after the war. The espionage situation between East and West was such that any sort of black market activity seems highly questionable based on my research.




Regards,
Ed

[Propellerhead]

Hi Ed regards the smuggling I was thinking of the book "Nazi Gold, The story of the World's Greatest Robbery And it's Aftermath," by Ian Sayer & Douglas Botting. 1985

ISBN 10: 0586055940 / 0-586-05594-0
ISBN 13: 9780586055946
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Publication Date: 1985

My own book is packed away in storage but the relevant info comes from the rear of the book and if you check the index for Uranium it will lead you to the relevant pages. I also came across some other mentions that the East German authorities were paying up to $56 per kilogram for Uranium ore immediately after the war to german citizens who handed any in. They recovered about 760 tons this way. Also Peron hired Nazi nuclear scientist Ronald Richter in 1950 to head Argentina's nuclear effort. Argentina was offering hard curreny to Germans in post war Germany for Uranium.

As for the Belgian Uranium this comes from Carter Hydrick.

From June of 1940 to the end of the war, Germany seized 3,500 tons of uranium compounds from Belgium - almost three times the amount Groves had purchased.... and stored it in salt mines in Strassfurt, Germany. Groves brags that on 17 April, 1945, as the war was winding down, Alsos recovered some 1,100 tons of uranium ore from Strassfurt and an additional 31 tons in Toulouse, France ..... And he claims that the amount recovered was all that Germany had ever held, asserting, therefore, that Germany had never had enough raw material.*

*Carter Hydrick, Critical Mass: the Real Story of the Atomic Bomb and the Birth of the Nuclear Age, Internet published manuscript, 1998 P13.

My personal response to Groves boasting that this was the only source of Uranium which Germany had is that the Czech mines at Joachimsthal produced roughly 45-50 tons of uranium ore annually throughout the war and then there was also the Erzebirge mines in Silesia of roughly similar production.

Historian Margaret Gowing, Bohr's biographer also drew attention that Germany refined 600 tons of uranium ore by summer 1941. This is more Uranium ore than could ever have been procured from Joachimsthal from 1938 to July 1941 under German occupation.

Former Auer Gesellschaft chief scientist for Uranium refining Dr Reihl disputed Gower's figures and said the Uranium refined was far higher. I have seen figures for Uranium refining year by year during the war and particularly in 1943 and 1944 the figure far exceeded 600 tons. Total uranium refined during the war was about 2,700 tons IIRC, however I can't at the moment recall the sorce where I read this. I believe it was either from an online book or from a PDF.