Curiously, while the United States and Britain were moving ahead, Germany dropped out of the race. In the autumn of 1942 Albert Speer, the Third Reich’s armaments minister, after conferring with scientists Otto Hahn and Werner Heisenberg, decided the construction of an atomic bomb was too uncertain and too expensive. “It would have meant giving up all other projects.” The decision to cancel the effort came easily for Speer. Hitler was uninterested in an atomic weapon and disparaged nuclear science as “Jewish physics.”34* Japan also discontinued its efforts in 1943, scientists telling the
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