Kurt Diebner (13 May 1905 – 13 July 1964) was a German nuclear physicist who is well known for directing and administrating the German nuclear energy project, a secretive program aiming to build nuclear weapons for Nazi Germany during World War II. He was appointed the project's administrative director after Adolf Hitler authorized it. Diebner was also the director of the Nuclear Research Council and a Reich Planning Officer for the German Army until its surrender to Allied Powers in 1945. After the war, he was incarcerated in the United Kingdom and repatriated back to West Germany in early 1946. Shortly after his return, he became director and joint owner of DURAG-Apparatebau GmbH, and was a member of the supervisory board of the Gesellschaft zur Kernenergieverwertung in Schiffbau und Schiffahrt m.b.H Education Diebner was born in 1905 in Obernessa, Weißenfels in German Empire. From 1925, Diebner went on to study Physics at the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg where he gained B.S. in 1928, and M.S. in Physics from Leopold Franzens University of Innsbruck in 1930. He completed his doctorate in 1932 under Gerhard Hoffmann in Halle. His thesis was on column ionization of alpha particles. Academic career From 1931 to 1934, Diebner was Gerhard Hoffmann's teaching assistant at Halle University. From 1934, Diebner was a part-time employee of the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt (PTR, Reich Physical and Technical Institute; today, the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt); he was also an advisor to the Reichswehrministerium (RWM, Reich Ministry of Defense; after 1939, the Reichskriegsministerium, RWK, Reich Ministry of War) and the Heereswaffenamt (HWA, Army Ordnance Office) on nuclear physics. German nuclear program On 22 April 1939, after hearing a paper by Wilhelm Hanle on the use of uranium fission in a Uranmaschine (uranium machine, i.e., nuclear reactor), Georg Joos, along with Hanle, notified Wilhelm Dames, at the Reichserziehungsministerium (REM, Reich Ministry of Education), of potential military applications of nuclear energy. Just seven days later, a group, organized by Dames, met at the REM to discuss the potential of a sustained nuclear chain reaction. The group included the physicists Walther Bothe, Robert Döpel, Hans Geiger, Wolfgang Gentner, Wilhelm Hanle, Gerhard Hoffmann, and Joos. After this, informal work began at the Georg-August University of Göttingen, and the group of physicists was known informally as the first Uranverein (Uranium Club) and formally as Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Kernphysik. The second Uranverein began after the Heereswaffenamt (HWA, Army Ordnance Office) squeezed