Albert Einstein was a German Jew, driven from Germany by Hitler. Had Hitler not been such an anti-Semite, Germany could have been first to have the atomic bomb. Then what?
Prior to 1938 Einstein did not think an atomic bomb was possible. He was using protons to split the nucleus and it didn’t work. The Germans figured out that neutrons could be used to split the nucleus and this moved them way ahead in the development.
Einstein is quoted as saying that the chances of splitting the atom were similar to “shooting a bird flying at night in a country with very few birds!”
To make certain the U.S. was aware of the danger, in July 1939, a few months before the beginning of World War II in Europe, Szilárd and Wigner visited Einstein to explain the possibility of atomic bombs, which Einstein, a pacifist, said he had never considered.
He was asked to lend his support by writing a letter, with Szilárd, to President Roosevelt, recommending the U.S. pay attention and engage in its own nuclear weapons research. One of those feared secret German nuclear facilities, apparently the largest of the Third Reich, covering 75 acres in an underground complex, was discovered in Austria in December 2014.
The letter is believed to be “arguably the key stimulus for the U.S. adoption of serious investigations into nuclear weapons on the eve of the U.S. entry into World War II”.
In addition to the letter, Einstein used his connections with the Belgian Royal Family and the Belgian queen mother to get access with a personal envoy to the White House’s Oval Office.
President Roosevelt could not take the risk of allowing Hitler to possess atomic bombs first. As a result of Einstein’s letter and his meetings with Roosevelt, the U.S. entered the “race” to develop the bomb, drawing on its “immense material, financial, and scientific resources” to initiate the Manhattan Project. It became the only country to successfully develop an atomic bomb during World War II.
We'd be either sprechen Deutsch or part of the resistance, sneaking down from the hills at night to off some Nazis.