Walter Herrmann (physicist)

Walter Herrmann was a German nuclear physicist who worked on the German nuclear energy project during World War II. After the war, he headed a laboratory for special issues of nuclear disintegration at Laboratory V in the Soviet Union.

Career

In Germany

On 22 April 1939, after hearing a paper by Wilhelm Hanle on the use of uranium fission in a "Uranmaschine" (uranium machine, i.e., nuclear reactor), Georg Joos, along with Hanle, notified Wilhelm Dames, at the "Reichserziehungsministerium" (REM, Reich Ministry of Education), of potential military applications of nuclear energy. Just seven days later, a group, organized by Dames, met at the REM to discuss the potential of a sustained nuclear chain reaction. The group included the physicists Walther Bothe, Robert Döpel, Hans Geiger, Wolfgang Gentner, Wilhelm Hanle, Gerhard Hoffmann, and Joos. After this, informal work began at the Georg-August University of Göttingen, and the group of physicists was known informally as the first "Uranverein" (Uranium Club) and formally as "Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Kernphysik". The second "Uranverein" began after the "Heereswaffenamt" (HWA, Army Ordnance Office) squeezed out the "Reichsforschungsrat" (RFR, Reich Research Council) of the REM and started the formal German nuclear energy project. The second "Uranverein" had its first meeting on 16 September 1939; the meeting was organized by Kurt Diebner and held in Berlin. It was then that "Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut für Physik" (KWIP, after World War II reorganized and renamed the Max Planck Institute for Physics), in Berlin-Dahlem, was placed under HWA authority, with Diebner as the administrative director, and the military control of the nuclear research commenced. Some of the research was carried out at the "Versuchsstelle" (testing station) of the HWA in Gottow; Diebner, was director of the facility. When it was apparent that the nuclear energy project would not make a decisive contribution to ending the war effort in the near term, control of the KWIP was returned to the its umbrella organization, the "Kaiser-Wilhelm Gesellschaft" (KWG, after World War II renamed the Max-Planck Gesellschaft) in January 1942 and control of the project was relinquished to the RFR that year. However, the HWA did maintain its testing station in Gottow and continue research there until the end of the war. [ Kant, 2002, Reference 8 on p. 3.] [ Hentschel and Hentschel, 1996, 363-364 and Appendix F; see the entries for Diebner, Döpel, and Joos. See also the entry fro the KWIP in Appendix A and the entry for the HWA in Appendix B.] [ Macrakis, 1993, 164.]

It was at the Gottow facility that Herrmann participated in nuclear fission experiments designated G-I [ F. Berkei, W. Borrmann, W. Czulius, Kurt Diebner, Georg Hartwig, K. H. Höcker, W. Herrmann, H. Pose, and Ernst Rexer "Bericht über einen Würfelversuch mit Uranoxyd und Paraffin" G-125 (dated before 26 November 1942).] and G-III. [ Kurt Diebner, Werner Czulius, W. Herrmann, Georg Hartwig, F. Berkei and E. Kamin "Über die Neutronenvermehrung einer Anordnung aus Uranwürfeln und schwerem Wasser (G III)" G-210.] The G-1 experiment had lattices of 6,800 uranium oxide cubes (about 25 tons) in the nuclear moderator paraffin. The work verified Karl Heinz Höcker’s calculations that cubes were better than rods, and rods were better than plates. The G-III experiment was a small-scale design, but it generated an exceptionally high rate of neutron production. The G-III model was superior to nuclear fission chain reaction experiments that had been conducted at the KWIP in Berlin-Dahem, the University of Heidelberg, or the University of Leipzig. [ Walker, 1993, 94-104.] Herrmann also participated in work to explore the initiation of a nuclear reaction through the detonation of explosives. [ W. Herrmann, Georg Hartwig, H. Rockwitz, W. Trinks, and H. Schaub "Versuche über die Einleitung von Kernreaktionen durch die Wirkung explodierender Stoffe" G-303 (1944).]

In Russia

Near the close of World War II, the Soviet Union sent special search teams into Germany to locate and deport German nuclear scientists or any others who could be of use to the Soviet atomic bomb project. The Russian Alsos teams were headed by NKVD Colonel General A. P. Zavenyagin and staffed with numerous scientists, from their only nuclear laboratory, attired in NKVD officer’s uniforms. In the autumn of 1945, Heinz Pose was offered the opportunity to work in the Soviet Union, which he accepted. He arrived in the Soviet Union, with his family, in February 1946. He was to establish and head Laboratory V (also known by the code name Malojaroslavets-10, after the nearby town by the same name) in Obninsk. The scientific staff at Laboratory V was to be both Soviet and German, the former being mostly political prisoners from the Gulag or exiles; this type of facility is known as a sharashka. ( Laboratory B in Sungul’ was also a sharashka and working on the Soviet atomic bomb project. Notable Germans at Laboratory B were Hans-Joachim Born, Alexander Catsch, Nikolaus Riehl, and Karl Zimmer. Notable Russians from the Gulag were N. V. Timofeev-Resovskij and S. A. Voznesenskij.) [ Oleynikov, 2000, 14.] [Polunin, V. V. and V. A. Staroverov "Personnel of Special Services in the Soviet Atomic Project 1945 – 1953" [In Russian] [http://www.fsb.ru/history/autors/polunin.html (FSB, 2004)] .]

On 5 March 1946, in order to staff his laboratory, Pose and NKVD General Kravchenko, along with two other officers, went to Germany for six months to hire scientists. Additionally, Pose procured equipment from the companies AEG, Zeiss, Schott Jena, and Mansfeld, which were in the Russian occupation zone. [ Oleynikov, 2000, 14.]

Pose planned 16 laboratories for his institute, which was to include a chemistry laboratory and eight laboratories. Three heads of laboratories, Czulius, Herrmann, and Rexer, were Pose’s colleagues who worked with him at the German Army’s testing station in Gottow, under the "Uranverein" project. (See below: Internal Reports.) Eight laboratories in the institute were: [ Oleynikov, 2000, 14.]
*Heinz Pose’s laboratory for nuclear processes.
*Werner Czulius’s laboratory for uranium reactors.
*Walter Herrmann’s laboratory for special issues of nuclear disintegration.
*Westmayer’s laboratory for systematic nuclear reactions.
*Professor Carl Friedrich Weiss’s laboratory for the study of natural and artificial radioactivity.
*Schmidt’s laboratory to study methodologies for nuclear measurement.
*Professor Ernst Rexer’s laboratory for applied nuclear physics.
*Hans Jürgen von Oertzen’s laboratory to study cyclotrons and high voltage.

Internal Reports

The following reports were published in "Kernphysikalische Forschungsberichte" ("Research Reports in Nuclear Physics"), an internal publication of the German "Uranverein". The reports were classified Top Secret, they had very limited distribution, and the authors were not allowed to keep copies. The reports were confiscated under the Allied Operation Alsos and sent to the United States Atomic Energy Commission for evaluation. In 1971, the reports were declassified and returned to Germany. The reports are available at the Karlsruhe Nuclear Research Center and the American Institute of Physics. [ Hentschel and Hentschel, 1996, Appendix E; see the entry for "Kernphysikalische Forschungsberichte".] [ Walker, 1993, 268.]

*F. Berkei, W. Borrmann, W. Czulius, Kurt Diebner, Georg Hartwig, K. H. Höcker, W. Herrmann, H. Pose, and Ernst Rexer "Bericht über einen Würfelversuch mit Uranoxyd und Paraffin" G-125 (dated before 26 November 1942)

*Kurt Diebner, Werner Czulius, W. Herrmann, Georg Hartwig, F. Berkei and E. Kamin "Über die Neutronenvermehrung einer Anordnung aus Uranwürfeln und schwerem Wasser (G III)" G-210

*Kurt Diebner, Georg Hartwig, W. Herrmann, H. Westmeyer, Werner Czulius, F. Berkei, and Karl-Heinz Höcker "Vorläufige Mitteilung über einen Versuch mit Uranwüfeln und schwerem Eis als Bremssubstanz" G-211 (April 1943)

*Kurt Diebner, Georg Hartwig, W. Herrmann, H. Westmeyer, Werner Czulius, F. Gerkei, and Karl-Heinz Höcker "Bericht über einen Versuch mit Würfeln aus Uran-Metall und schwerem Eis" G-212 (July 1943)

*W. Herrmann, Georg Hartwig, H. Rockwitz, W. Trinks, and H. Schaub "Versuche über die Einleitung von Kernreaktionen durch die Wirkung explodierender Stoffe" G-303 (1944)

Bibliography

*Hentschel, Klaus (editor) and Ann M. Hentschel (editorial assistant and translator) "Physics and National Socialism: An Anthology of Primary Sources" (Birkhäuser, 1996) ISBN 0-8176-5312-0

*Kant, Horst "Werner Heisenberg and the German Uranium Project / Otto Hahn and the Declarations of Mainau and Göttingen", Preprint 203 (Max-Planck Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, [http://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/Preprints/P203.PDF 2002] )

*Macrakis, Kristie "Surviving the Swastika: Scientific Research in Nazi Germany" (Oxford, 1993)

*Oleynikov, Pavel V. "German Scientists in the Soviet Atomic Project", "The Nonproliferation Review" Volume 7, Number 2, 1 – 30 [http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/npr/vol07/72/72pavel.pdf (2000)] . The author has been a group leader at the Institute of Technical Physics of the Russian Federal Nuclear Center in Snezhinsk (Chelyabinsk-70).

*Walker, Mark "German National Socialism and the Quest for Nuclear Power 1939–1949" (Cambridge, 1993) ISBN 0-521-43804-7

Notes