Actually, not that close:
http://alsos.wlu.edu/mission.aspx
http://www.mphpa.org/classic/HISTORY/H-06f.htm
The remains of the German effort can be viewed in Haigerloch:
http://www.haigerloch.de/stadt/atomkeller.html
Well, one can easily argue that the Nazis lost because of their hatred of the Jews. From Einstein to Oppenheimer. The Manhattan Project was distinctly, almost uniquely, a Jewish endeavor.
Haigerloch is a very picturesque little town, in the valleys just east of the Black Forest. A part of it is high on a hill, the rest down in the valley on the river.
At the base of the hill, there’s an old wine cellar that was fashioned out of a cave some time in the Middle Ages.
Late in the European war, when the German nuclear scientists had to vacate Berlin, they sought refuge in the western part of the country; part of their thinking was that they’d rather be captured by the Americans, English, and French, than the Russians.
So that cave in Haigerloch was the locus of their final reactor experiments. When the Alsos project scientists came through, they found the experimenters’ stash of Uranium buried not far away. The scientists too. (Not buried, mind you!)
The reactor had not yet reached criticality, by the way, and they were quite far from making a bomb.
I looked high and low for the roll of film I took there. It also held some shots of the headwaters of the Danube (actually, the Breg river). I think it was the only roll lost out of the 50 or so my ladyfriend and I took in Germany that year.