I discovered the newspaper article below, “Scientists Doing Secret Defense Work,” on the back of an article on a different subject in some family letters

It was only in 1938 that
German physicists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman discovered nuclear fission. On
August 2, 1939, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt received the “Einstein Letter” warning of Nazi Germany’s efforts to create an atomic weapon. On October 21, 1939, the first
meeting of the Advisory Committee on Uranium was held in Washington, DC.
Officially, the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb was not established until June 18, 1942.

However, based on the article dated December 22, 1940, nearly a year before Pearl Harbor, there was a “number of missing professors at the great universities,” presumably starting to work on
atomic energy applications for defense.

Knowing the secrecy that eventually surrounded the Manhattan project, the revelations in this article are astounding.       

Interestingly, the article concludes,” The probabilities that uranium 235 will be of use in this war are about as remote as the chance that Churchill and Hitler will shake hands tomorrow. Yet
the search for something that may be useful is real, because some day U-235 will lead to practical things.”

Less than five years later, the atom bomb ended World War II!                                                                                                             

Could Germany have beaten the U.S. in developing an atomic bomb? Scientifically, the Germans were probably ahead of the U.S. going into WWII, but the resources the U.S. put into the “Home Front” not only
overwhelmed its enemies on the ground, sea and air, but also forged ahead far beyond Germany in developing a nuclear bomb. The German nuclear program was significantly underfunded compared to the American Manhattan Project that ultimately involved half a million
people and costs billions of dollars. The German nuclear research was spread across various ministries and institutions, leading to a lack of coordination and focus. Hitler’s interest in nuclear weapons was limited, and he prioritized other "Wunderwaffen"
(wonder weapons). The program was deprioritized in 1942, leading to further cuts in funding and resources. Nazi policies led to the persecution and emigration of many brilliant scientists, including Jewish scientists, who could have contributed to the program,
and the American program benefited from scientists who had fled Nazi Germany. 

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