An unprocessed draft manuscript being reconstructed ... - WNLibrary

david irving Secretly Overheard:
here.
HEISENBERG: Everyone in Hechingen knows that I have been
arrested, but the moment a note gets through, they will know: ’Ha!
They are still alive.’ . . . Some clever journalist would then turn up, he
would have a look at the place from outside, see us all playing all sorts
of games in the garden, sun bathing etc. The next day there would be a
terrific article in the newspaper just like it was with Göring. ’German
Nazi scientists enjoying life in England. For lunch they have – ’
Wirtz said that Samuel Goudsmit, the chief of the ALSOS mission
whom they had met at Hechingen, would not want to help
them. “He has lost his parents” – they died in Auschwitz.
HARTECK: Of course Goudsmit can’t forget that we murdered his
parents. That’s true too and it doesn’t make it easy for him. . .
WIRTZ: If I were ever to invade England with airborne troops I
would have all the men arrested straight away and they would be separated
from their wives for two years just to show them what it’s like.
HEISENBERG: I think there is a 90% chance of our getting back to
Germany.
A few days later, on July 21, the odds on survival were again discussed.
Dr. Wirtz thought they had a 25% chance of getting home before
December 1, and 70% odds of getting home in the year after that. “I
think there is a 15% chance that we will never see our wives again.”
Heisenberg thought that estimate unduly pessimistic – a one percent
chance of never seeing their wives again would be more like it,
though they might never return to Germany. “Of course,” he conceded,
“one can never know. Something astounding may suddenly
happen.”
On July 26 the captured German scientists were still speculating
on why they were being held.
HEISENBERG: The Americans fear nothing so much as the possibility
of the French getting even an inkling of the Uranium business. .
HARTECK: They are probably not really frightened of the French
Peter Kapitza, 1894-1984, Russian physicist.
this is a copyright manuscript © david irving 2007