Diebner, Kurt

The Harteck letter reached Kurt Diebner, a competent nuclear physicist stuck unhappily in the Wehrmacht s ordnance department studying high explosives. Diebner carried it to Hans Geiger. Geiger recommended pursuing the research. The War Office agreed. 

Kurt Diebner of German Army Ordnance counted the full effect on German fission research of the Vemork bombing and the sinking of the Hydro in a postwar interview ... 

The barrels of heavy water rolled into the lake and were lost to the Nazi atomic weapons program. Fifty-three people were also aboard the ferry twenty-six died in the explosion. Later Kurt Diebner, the head of the Nazi atomic weapons program, attributed the failure of his program mostly to sabotage committed by Haukelid. He said, It was the elimination of German heavy-water production in Norway that was the main factor in our failure to achieve a self-sustaining atomic [reaction] before the war ended. ... 

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