Did Hitler have an atomic weapon? German documentary claims Nazis were developing a 'flying saucer' to deliver bomb and had already started tests on Russian POWs
- TV documentary claims Nazis were close to developing an atomic bomb
- Had developed a 'flying saucer' device to drop the nuclear weapon
- Tested it on Russian prisoners of war at Thuringia, eastern Germany
- Quoted German scientists, eyewitness accounts and records left behind
Hitler and the Nazis may have been close to creating an atomic bomb at the end of the Second World War
The Nazis may have been close to creating an atomic bomb and a 'flying saucer' to deliver it in the final days of the war.
Tests of the device were even said to have been carried out on Russian prisoners of war, according to a new German TV documentary.
'The Search for Hitler's Atom Bomb,' which aired on the ZDF channel this week, quotes sealed records from Russia and America that are said to prove the Third Reich were close to creating a weapon of mass destruction.
The programme quotes interrogation reports of Nazi scientists, eyewitness account and the records left behind by researchers, many of which were shipped to America after the war.
Historian Matthia Uhl said the race to develop a Nazi A-bomb went into overdrive in the final year of the war.
The programme focused on Hans Kammler, an S.S. general, who was given 175,000 concentration camp inmates to work in the V-weapons factories, tank production lines and building secret bunkers for the Nazi elite.
Kammler was one of a very few who answered only to Hitler and was put in charge of the race for nuclear fission.
One of the projects he worked on was at Jonas Valley in Thuringia, eastern Germany, and said to be the site of the Nazis' nuclear and space programmes.
The USA has placed a 100 year secrecy order on the files concerning the valley and what went on in the secret tunnels the Nazis carved into it.
Tests of the device were even said to have been carried out on Russian prisoners of war, according to the documentary by German channel ZDF
Russian intelligence reports claimed Nazi Germany was 'in the throes of making and testing a new secret weapon, which has a large destructive force'
Now officially sealed off, authorities play a cat-and-mouse game with conspiracy theorists every weekend at the site who believe the Americans found two things in the tunnels - a nuclear bomb and flying saucers meant to deliver it.
ZDF quoted from reports by Russian military intelligence agents who said there were two nuclear tests in Thuringia.
One read: 'The Germans are in the throes of making and testing a new secret weapon, which has a large destructive force.
Had the Nazi project overseen by SS general Hans Kammler (right) succeeded, it could have changed the course of history. Left: The mushroom cloud after an atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan
The Jonas Valley in Thuringia, eastern Germany, was said to be the site of the Nazis' nuclear and space programmes
A ventilation shaft in the hills at Thuringia: The Nazis carved miles of underground tunnels using a workforce of prisoners of war
ZDF quoted Russian agents as saying that two nuclear tests had taken place in Thuringia
'The available bomb has a diameter of 1.5 meters. It consists of interlocking hollow balls.'
Another Russian report said: 'Communicated by our reliable source from Germany: the Germans have conducted two explosions in Thuringia with great force.'
Declassified American intelligence reports showed that America's supreme commander in Europe, Dwight Eisenhower, ordered reconnaissance flights over the valley but they proved inconclusive.
But the programme was unable to find where the weaponised uranium the Nazi scientists would have needed for the bomb came from.
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