The Race for the Bomb

Before World War II, the international physics community was small, a clubby group of scientists who were all friends. Werner Heisenberg’s attendance at the 1939 Summer School of Theoretical Physics in Ann Arbor, Michigan, illustrates this. He stayed with his good friend Samuel Goudsmit, a Dutch Jew who came to the US in 1927. Heisenberg also met two other friends on that trip, Enrico Fermi and Robert Oppenheimer. The next month, World War II began, sundering these friendships forever.

In The Greatest Scientific Gamble: A Story of Impossible Odds, Rival Scientists, and the Atomic Bomb, Michael Joseloff explores the mid-century physics community and the race to develop the atomic bomb. It examines both the US and German efforts.

Over the next four years those at the Summer School joined different efforts to develop a bomb. Heisenberg for the Germans, the others for the US. Fermi developed the first self-sustaining nuclear reaction. Oppenheimer headed the Manhattan Project, developing two different types of atomic bombs. Goudsmit joined Alsos, devoted to determining how far Germany’s atomic program had gotten. Joseloff shows that much of the US effort was motivated by fear that Nazi Germany would develop a nuclear bomb first.

This is one of the rare recent books that examines German efforts in detail. It shows that German failure was not due solely to Hitler’s driving the Jews out of Germany, although that contributed. But Heisenberg’s errors and arrogance exacerbated the problem.

Heisenberg started with the assumption that a bomb had to be made from U-238, with a critical mass in tons. By the time he realized his error, the US had moved ahead. When asked in 1942 by Albert Speer, Germany’s production minister, how long it would take to develop a bomb, Heisenberg stated it would take three to four years, turning down an offer of two million Reichsmarks to develop it. Instead, Heisenberg asked for 350,000 Reichsmarks to develop a uranium engine for submarines.

He also chose heavy water as a moderator, instead of graphite, which was superior. When Kurt Diebner started using uranium cubes instead of the sheets Heisenberg was unsuccessfully using, Heisenberg refused to believe Diebner’s results. He considered his rival Diebner as incompetent, though in this case Diebner was right.

The Greatest Scientific Gamble is a real-life thriller, a book worthy of the best tales of Alan Furst. The difference is that this book is history, not fiction.

“The Greatest Scientific Gamble: A Story of Impossible Odds, Rival Scientists, and the Atomic Bomb,” by Michael Joseloff, Michigan State University Press, March 2026, 284 pages, $79.95 (Hardcover), $34.59 (Paperback), $34.59 (E-book)

This review was written by Mark Lardas, who writes at Ricochet as Seawriter. Mark Lardas, an engineer, freelance writer, historian, and model-maker, lives in League City, TX. His website is marklardas.com.