Over the past few weeks, a story about a recently discovered “Nazi nuclear bunker” has been circulating in various newspapers. An Austrian filmmaker, Andreas Sulzer, wants to make a film about a bunker he claims was used in nuclear research. Historian Alex Wellerstein, a professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology, debunks the bunker’s nuclear connection in an article,When bad history meets bad journalism.
Wellerstein notes, “Public understanding of the German nuclear program is indeed a confused and often incorrect thing, owing to a history of the politicization of the topic.” He explains that while the German scientists did make significant progress in atomic bomb theory, they were not close to developing an atomic bomb during the war.
How close the Germans were to successfully developing the bomb – and whether some German physicists really tried to sabotage the program – are questions that have long intrigued historians. Wellerstein points out, “As historians, we need to be open to the idea that there are still mysteries to be solved, secrets to be unearthed, even about ground that superficially looks well-trodden.” Scholarly debate over the German atomic bomb project will likely continue for many decades to come.