An unprocessed draft manuscript being reconstructed ... - WNLibrary

david irving Secretly Overheard:
deflected, literally atom by atom, around a different curved track
and collected for the bomb, a few micrograms per day. Over one
hundred thousand Japanese died in the split-second fireball that
erupted over Hiroshima, and tens of thousands more died lingering
deaths from the poisonous nuclear radiation.
The B.B.C. broadcast the shocking news at nine p.m. Though
thousands of miles from Germany or England, it was a disturbing
climax to the peaceful fission experiments that Professor Otto
Hahn had conducted in Berlin in December 1938. Major Rittner
called him in shortly before dinner, and broke the news to him:
Hahn [reported Rittner] was completely shattered by the news and
said that he felt personally responsible for the deaths of hundreds of
thousands of people, as it was his original discovery which had made
the bomb possible. He told me that he had originally contemplated
suicide when he realised the terrible potentialities of his discovery and
he felt that now these had been realised he was to blame.
He announced the news to his colleagues who had assembled for
dinner. A long incredulous discussion followed, which is worth
printing almost in full:
HAHN: They can only have done that if they have uranium isotope
separation.
WIRTZ: They have it too. . .
HARTECK: That’s not absolutely necessary. If they let a uranium
engine run, they separate [element] “93”
HAHN: An extremely complicated business. For “93” they must
have an engine which will run for a long time. If the Americans have a
uranium bomb then you’re all second-raters. Poor old Heisenberg.
LAUE: The innocent!
HEISENBERG: Did they use the word uranium in connection with
this atomic bomb?
ALL: No. . .
HEISENBERG: Then it’s got nothing to do with atoms, but the
Die »Forschungsstelle D« des schweizer Ingenieurs Walter Dällenbach war
als Anhängsel der Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft (KWG) angegliedert,
this is a copyright manuscript © david irving 2007