The Puzzle of Podmokly

Had the atomic armaments race begun? In Moscow a writer for The New Times declared that reactionary forces in the U.S. were bent on "blackmailing humanity" by trying to keep the atomic bomb a U.S. property.

From western Czechoslovakia, where the Elbe river bursts through the Sudeten mountains into the flat meadow lands bordering Germany, came a different story.

Nestled in the mountains six miles from Podmokly was a vast underground factory, the Weser Works. In the first three months of liberation the Weser Works were quiet, deserted. Now they hummed with hidden activity. Czech and Russian security police kept close watch on the difficult mountain approaches.

The underground factory was a product of the war. When the Germans came to Podmokly (which they called Bodenbach) they seized the Krizek Works, Czechoslovakia's largest producer of copper wire, the area was rich in coal and hydroelectric power, and had excellent communication facilities. Later they imported French, Belgian and Russian laborers, and set them to work expanding the Krizek plants. Laboratories were built, buildings enlarged, new units erected. One of the new units was put underground, and was supersecret. It was known simply as "the Weser."

The Losing Race. In time the first secret of the Weser became apparent. Its parent plant was producing V-weapons. But it also manufactured cyclotrons for atomic experimentation. As the Allies bombed German laboratories, the Weser shipped new cyclotrons to secret destinations in the Reich where Hitler's scientists were running a losing race with history. At least three cyclotrons were shipped in the last year and a half of war.

The retreating Germans left the Weser grounds littered with the fuselages, fins and working parts of V-bombs. In iron safes were plans for Vergeltungswaffe-4, said to be a giant, radio-controlled rocket capable of being fired from Prague to the Americas. The Germans also left parts of cyclotrons and other equipment for research in nuclear physics.

For a time the Russians showed no particular interest in the underground factory. Strangers wandered in & out at will. But the explosions over Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought a quick change. The security police moved in, and Germans who had worked in the factory were rounded up, put back to work. Former officials of the Krizek Works were kept out. In northern Bohemia the Russians took over the Jachymov mine, famed for its uranium deposits.

If the Weser's cyclotrons were what interested the Russians, Moscow was still in the experimental stage of atomic development. The U.S. had entered the production stage in 1943.

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