2 August 1939: Einstein-Szilárd letter to Roosevelt advocates for setting up a Manhattan Project. [...]
June 1942: Hitler decides against an atomic program for practical reasons.
Is it accurate to say that the US and Germans were in a nuclear weapons race until 1942? So perhaps the takeaway is “if you’re in a race, make sure to keep checking that the race is still on”.
It was only by October 1941 (after substantial nudging from the British) that Roosevelt approved serious funding. As a reminder, I’m particularly interested in ‘sprint’ projects with substantial funding: for example those in which the peak year funding reached 0.4% of GDP (Stine, 2009, see also Grace, 2015).
So to some extent they were in a race 1939-1942, but I would suggest it wasn’t particularly intense, it wasn’t a sprint race.
Is it accurate to say that the US and Germans were in a nuclear weapons race until 1942? So perhaps the takeaway is “if you’re in a race, make sure to keep checking that the race is still on”.
I think the crucial thing is funding levels.
It was only by October 1941 (after substantial nudging from the British) that Roosevelt approved serious funding. As a reminder, I’m particularly interested in ‘sprint’ projects with substantial funding: for example those in which the peak year funding reached 0.4% of GDP (Stine, 2009, see also Grace, 2015).
So to some extent they were in a race 1939-1942, but I would suggest it wasn’t particularly intense, it wasn’t a sprint race.
I suppose sprints start out as jogs.