>>>Although I cannot provide a link to it, I have read on multiple occasions of an above-ground nuclear test conducted by the Germans that was witnessed in the Baltic. Also, there were sketchy accounts of one or two small nuclear weapons being used on the Eastern front. From what I read — and for whatever it is worth, being unconfirmed and apocryphal — the Germans were not too impressed with a fission weapon, but were trying to build a fusion bomb instead.<<<
Reading history I am unimpressed with our own atomic program. All the resources spent on it only provided enough for three bombs. The resources were vast and not a trivial sum. What we got for that was the test bomb and then the two we dropped on Japan. It would have been some time before we would have enriched enough uranium or plutonium for yet another bomb. OTOH, the firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo, just to name two cities, indicate the atomic bombs were not the only way to destroy a city.
Of course I am only talking about the fission bombs. The current fusion weapons are in a league of their own.
BJI you wrote: “Of course I am only talking about the fission bombs. The current fusion weapons are in a league of their own.”
The Schumann-Trinks boosted fusion weapons developed by the Nazis in 1942 were technically what we now call Third Generation nuclear weapons and it was the Nazi nuclear scientists under Operation Overcastwho taught American scientists how to replicate it.
In fact USA did not perfect 3rd Gen nukes until 1956.
Under operation Hexenkessel the SS wehrmacht developed a hybrid thermonuclear weapon using Tritium and Uranium. On 4 April 1945 the British 8th Army discovered a 3.8 ton thermonuclear device codenamed 76-Zentner. That discovery is still kept classified by the British even to this day.