Author fuels row over Hitler's bomb

[emad]

Author fuels row over Hitler's bomb

¡¤ Germany 'came close to nuclear device in 1944'
¡¤ Last living witness saw Baltic test explosion

John Hooper in Rome
Friday September 30, 2005
The Guardian


A book published in Italy today is set to reignite a smouldering controversy over how close the Nazis came to manufacturing a nuclear device in the closing stages of the second world war.

The 88 year-old author, Luigi Romersa, is the last known witness to what he and some historians believe was the experimental detonation of a rudimentary weapon on an island in the Baltic in 1944.

Hitler's nuclear programme has become a subject of intense dispute in recent months, particularly in Germany. An independent historian, Rainer Karlsch, met with a barrage of hostility when he published a study containing evidence that the Nazis had got much further than previously believed.

Mr Romersa, a supporter of Mr Karlsch's thesis, lives today in an elegant flat in the Parioli district of Rome. His study walls are covered with photographs from a career during which he interviewed many of the major figures of the 20th century, from Chiang Kai-shek to Lyndon Johnson. Though he suffers from some ill-health these days, he is still lucid and articulate.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/secondworldwar/story/0,14058,1581691,00.html

[Felix Mala]

1. Fortunately for the world, Hitler did not possess the imagination

necessary to understand the feasibility of splitting the atom. I'm sure even the most Aryan of physicists would have gotten one or two sentences into the explanation before Der Fuhrer's eyes glazed over. The same thing always happens when nations elect unimaginative people.