Hitler never really cared for his atomic program, but that is not what crippled it. The scientists who were working on it used data from an old test (if I recall correctly, it was for the macroscopic cross section of absorption of uranium), that led them to believe that a nuclear weapon would have to be much larger that what is true, and that the only way to construct a nuclear reactor that used natural uranium (to make plutonium) was by using deuterium as a moderator. The plutonium solution was the only realistic solution because there was no doubt that allied bombers would have annihilated any massive plant to enrich uranium. This made the German atomic program dependent on the acquisition of large quantities of deuterium in order to make nuclear reactors to create plutonium. If they would have acquired the deuterium and started testing reactors, they probably would have found the error and started using other designs for their plutonium production reactors. But it would have been far too late. I can see no way that their delayed nuclear program could have produced enough bomb-making plutonium before the end of the war (especially with allied bombers annihilating every industrial facility). A good discussion on this is in the book The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes (he got the Pulitzer Prize for this definitive history of the US atomic bomb program).
Rhodes just scratches the surface....Operation Alsos and Paperclip...were desparate attempts to stop nuclear technology we knew existed in the Sudetenland from falling into Soviet hands...there are numerous fringe studies about what really took place from 1942-45 in Germany and Japan....as well as the Soviet Union.
We don't know about the actualities of our nuclear capabilities today because of national security...what makes you think we have been told the real story of what happened back then...Rhodes assumes that Heisenberg was the center of Nazi atomic research...he wasn't.
The top nazi echelons who were in charge of the U-235 efforts not only tried to export the technology to the Japanese half-way across the globe -- a rather difficult task given the prevalence of Allied air and sea forces -- but realized that their choice to survive was to bribe the Allies with the promise of turning over the technology if they would go free -- or threatening to turn it over to the Soviets.
There is a London Times article published in August, 1945, right after the dropping of the bombs on Japan, that claims the British gov't had London on a full nuclear alert in October, 1944, anticipating an Nazi atomic bomb hitting London. What did they know ? Or think they knew ?
There is a lot of "loose ends" like this regarding the end of the war....I get the overwhelming feeling we as a people ( and globally as a species) came much closer to atomic warfare on European and American soil than we have been told. A lot of Manhattan Project and related material remains classified...a result of the immediate transition after VE-Day to the Cold War.
Not to mention the Japanese efforts at Hunam in developing and testing a crude small ineffiecient gun-type atomic device at war's end....and area which quickly after the war became Soviet-controlled North Korea (I think for a short period liberated by UN forces during the Korean War.)
Hold on...gotta adjust my tin-foil hat...