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Author discusses Nazi Germany role in U.S. atomic bomb at talk

Carter Hydrick, author of “Critical Mass: How Nazi Germany Surrendered Enriched Uranium for the United States’ Atomic Bomb,” will speak at Los Alamos’ Bradbury Science Museum at 7 p.m., Tuesday (Nov. 9). A book-signing at Otowi Station Bookstore next door will immediately follow.

Hydrick will present documentation demonstrating that, 11 days after Nazi Germany’s surrender, and more than a month before final assembly of the U.S. atomic bomb’s uranium slugs, Marine guards escorted a Nazi submarine, or U-boat, into a New Hampshire naval yard.

According to Hydrick, the U-boat contained 560 kilograms of enriched uranium oxide, as well as other atomic-bomb components. Hydrick contends that the Manhattan Project commandeered these materials to complete both the Hiroshima uranium bomb and the Nagasaki plutonium bomb, winning World War II and ushering in the nuclear age.

Hydrick’s presentation will position the contents of Nazi submarine U-234 as vital to the Manhattan Project’s efforts. Was its arrival on American shores a pivotal event in atomic history, as Hydrick argues, or an unimportant footnote, as most traditional historians suggest? Hydrick will discuss this issue at Tuesday’s talk.

The Bradbury Science Museum is located at 15th Street and Central Avenue in downtown Los Alamos. Museum hours apart from special events are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday.

The Bradbury Science Museum is part of Los Alamos’ Public Affairs Office.

For more information, contact Pat Berger at 665-0896.

--Brooke Kent

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