I finished re-reading "Heisenberg's War" by Thomas Powers. This big (~500pp.) book tells in great detail the story of German scientists' efforts (or non-efforts) in working on nuclear fission for the Nazis. Powers' premise is that the German scientists deliberately led the effort "into a clothes closet" to prevent Hitler from getting and using atomic bombs. He cites Heisenberg, possibly Germany's greatest physicist at the time, as having used his prestige to discourage the Nazis from pursuing nuclear weapons.

I don't necessarily agree. Scientists believe science is knowledge, and they follow science wherever it leads them. Although Heisenberg and his colleagues weren't Nazis, I belive they would have built atomic bombs if they knew how and if Germany had the resources and the security to produce enough fissionable material for weapons. They would have done it for science, and for the Fatherland. But, they didn't really know how; there was no way they could have wheedled enough money and manpower from Hitler's wunderwaffen (rockets and jets), and even if they built the huge plants necessary to produce U-235 and plutonium, there was no way Germany could protect them against Allied bombing and sabotage.

I don't believe that Heisenberg and the other German scientists were conducting their own Resistance movement against the Nazis--they were simply being realistic when they told Albert Speer and other party and military officials that atomic weapons could not be produced by Germany until after the war.