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Eavesdropping on Hitler’s Reich
KORSCHING: I was once talking to Wirtz and Heisenberg and I
said, “It would certainly be a clever move for anyone who is thinking
of working in England to acquire British nationality as otherwise he
would be shot if he fell into Russian hands.” If one is taken to England,
one may have to stay here. I would rather take Swedish nationality
. . . I would not make any effort to become British. If there is nothing
more to be made out of Germany, one should at any rate get away from
Russia. Von Weizsäcker is more or less resigned to the idea of becoming
Russian one day.
“Suppose,” reflected Korsching weiter, “the English were to
come and say: ’You can carry on with your work, We will take you
all back to Hechingen, but you must sign a paper.’ . . ?”
Bagge replied that he would ask whether he could continue to
carry on his scientific work as freely as during the war in Germany.
“Then of course, “ pointed out Korsching, “they may say: ’The
Uranmaschine people are to go back, but the isotope-separators
[Harteck, Bagge und Korsching] must carry on working at separating
isotopes under American control.”
A few days later both Bagge and Diebner decided that becoming
British would not be a bad idea after all. “It would be a wonderful
thing,” sighed Bagge, and Diebner seconded him: “Then have nothing
more to do with the Party [NSDAP] again. I would willingly
take an oath never to have anything to do with the Party again.”
He had only stayed in the Party, he later explained, because if
Germany had won the war Party members would have been given
the best jobs (mit anderem Vorzeichen, this held true even though
Germany lost the war.) Von Weizsäcker was now heard confiding to
Dr. Wirtz that he had no objection to fraternising with the English
– though he felt a certain reluctance in doing so in 1945, the year of
Dresden, Pforzheim and the mass-expulsions, “this year,” as he put
it, “when so many of our women and children have been killed.”
A whispered conversation on July 18, 1945:
WIRTZ: Why don’t they want [us] to send letters? . . . For some
reason or other no one must know that Professor Heisenberg etc. are