This book contains the first expertly annotated transcripts of the Farm Hall conversations, and brings insights into the progress of the German bomb project during World War II, the thoughts of German scientists during that time, and their attempts to grapple with what they had done (and not done) as participants in the Reich's war effort.

Klappentext

From April through December of 1945, ten of Nazi Germany's greatest nuclear physicists were detained by Allied military and intelligence services in a kind of gilded cage at Farm Hall, an English country manor near Cambridge. The physicists knew the Reich had failed to develop an atomic bomb, and they soon learned, from a BBC radio report on August 6, that the Allies had succeeded in their own efforts to create such a weapon. But what they did not know was that many of their meetings and private conversations were being monitored and recorded by British agents. This book contains the complete collection of transcripts that were made from these secret recordings, providing an unprecedented view of how the German scientists, including two Nobel Laureates, thought and spoke about their roles during the war.

Inhalt

Prologue: The Uranium Club.- I: Settling in.- II: The Bomb Drops.- III: Putting the Pieces Together.- IV: Looking to the Future.- V: Looking toward Home.- VI: A Nobel for Otto Hahn.- Epilogue: Aftermaths.- Appendix A: Heisenberg's Lecture, February 26, 1942.- Translation by William Sweet.- Original German Text.- Appendix B: Von Laue's Letters to Paul Rosbaud, 1959.- Appendix C: BBC Report, August 6, 1945.- Appendix D: Biographical Sketches of the Ten Detainees.- Selected Bibliography.