A new book has unleashed a small furor over whether or not the Fuhrer had functional atomic weapons before the close of World War 2. Rainer Karlsch has supposedly unearthed Soviet and classified Western documents that say the Nazis successfully carried out a series of nuclear tests and had an atomic reactor running outside Berlin.

The weapons were never used because they were not yet ready for mass production. There were also problems with delivery and detonation systems.

“We haven’t heard about this before because only small groups of scientists were involved, and a lot of the documents were classified after they were captured by the Allies,” said Karlsch.

Conspiracy theorists know this as Operation Paperclip, in which the US government captured and put to work Nazi scientists, resulting in all kinds of supposed horrors perpetrated by the US government. Rigorous Intuition has a great quote about that from a book, The Hunt for Zero Point:

When the Americans tripped over this mutant strain of nonlinear physics and took it back home with them, they were astute enough to realize that their home-grown scientific talent couldn’t handle it. That it was beyond their cultural term of reference. That’s why they recruited so many Germans. The Nazis developed a unique approach to science and engineering quite separate from the rest of the world, because their ideology, unrestrained as it was, supported a wholly different way of doing things. Von Braun’s V-2s are a case in point, but so was their understanding of physics. The trouble was, when the Americans took it all home with them they found out, too late, that it came infected with a virus. You take the science on, you take on aspects of the ideology, as well.

For anybody interested, Rigorous Intuition has all kinds of great stuff about crypto-Nazis infiltrating the American government. Also, following George W. Bush’s family ties to the Nazis is always great for a few laughs.