How close was Hitler to the atomic bomb? Ten prominent German nuclear physicists, including Werner Heisenberg and Otto Hahn, were interned and bugged in 1945 in the English country estate Farm Hall. The protocols of the eavesdropping campaign have now been republished.
The myth and reality surrounding the development of an atomic bomb for the criminal Hitler regime touch on one of the most exciting questions about the moral limits of scientific work. It is about that group of highly competent German researchers who apparently worked willingly and with full intention for Nazi Germany on nuclear weapons of mass destruction. Did they put their scientific careers first, regardless of how devastating the impact would be and what their country’s goals were? Or, on the contrary, did they successfully resist, slowing down their research in order to deny Hitler the atomic bomb, as they claimed after the war? It’s about the honor and credibility of German science during the war.
A particularly controversial part of this story is the eavesdropping operation that became famous under the alias “Operation Epsilon”. The location was Farm Hall, an English country estate north-west of Cambridge. During World War II, the British Secret Service used the building to train agents. However, it became famous primarily because ten German nuclear physicists were interned here from July 3, 1945 to January 3, 1946. Since they had no military rank, they were not classified as prisoners of war, but as “His Majesty’s guests”. Were they on “vacation” so to speak? A US special force had rushed to pick up the ten in April 1945 before they fell into the hands of the advancing French units.
2023-07-30 15:35:57
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