Wartime nuclear weapons research in Germany and Japan.

This article compares military research projects during the Second World War to develop nuclear weapons in Germany and Japan, two countries who lost the war and failed to create nuclear weapons. The performance and motivations of the scientists, as well as the institutional support given the work, is examined, explaining why, in each case, the project went as far as it did-but no further. The story is carried over into the postwar period, when the two cultures and their scientists had to deal with the buildup of nuclear weapons during the cold war and the new nuclear power industry.

Laying the foundation for wartime research: a comparative overview of science mobilization in National Socialist Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union.

This chapter surveys wartime science mobilization within National Socialist Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union to understand how each nation mobilized science resources for the war, how their approaches to mobilization differed, and how these approaches might be evaluated historically. Science mobilization in National Socialist Germany, in particular, has heretofore been characterized as a failure; however, such a view appears too simplistic and cannot account for the numerous advanced weapons and technological artifacts produced by the nation during the war. Both Germany and Japan operated under decentralized systems for science mobilization, whereas the Soviet Union imposed a highly-centralized authoritarian structure.