Berlin
The Nazis successfully tested nuclear weapons in 1945, a German historian claims in a book released this week. Rainer Karlsch said his research into Soviet archives in the former East Germany uncovered new evidence of success in the Nazi nuclear program. The final test, he says in Hitler’s Bomb, was in March 1945, when an atomic weapon wiped out several hundred concentration camp inmates in Thuringen. The weapons were never used in battle, because they still had detonation and other problems. German scientists and historians were skeptical of the claims, although several said the book had convinced them that the Nazis did have a functioning nuclear reactor.
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