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Eavesdropping on Hitler’s Reich
we should do everything possible to develop Hahn’s discovery for
our country.” Heisenberg blamed their failure to make an atomic
pile on the Allied raids on the heavy water plant in Norway, and he
blamed Hitler too, for the fact that Hahn’s invention had now been
taken away from Germany. “You shouldn’t take remarks like the
one Korsching made too seriously,” pleaded Heisenberg. “He now
thinks that because the Americans have done it, he could have succeeded
in separating isotopes if he had had more means at his disposal.
That is of course sheer and utter nonsense. His experiment
was interesting, that’s why we carried it out, but I am convinced
that the Americans have done it by completely other methods.”
“If Germany had had a weapon which won the war,” predicted
Gerlach cynically, “then Germany would have been in the right and
the others in the wrong, and whether conditions in Germany are
better now than they would have been after a Hitler victory –”
“I don’t think so,” interrupted Heisenberg.
They talked more. “I went to my downfall with open eyes,” said
Gerlach wearily. “But I thought I would try and save German physics
and German physicists” – he meant, from the Front – “and in
that I succeeded.”
MEANWHILE, WIRTZ and Weizsäcker discussed the shocking
news of Hiroshima in their bedroom. Weizsäcker accused Gerlach
and Diebner of sabotage, then talked about the Russians. “If the
Americans and the British were good Imperialists they would attack
Russia with the thing tomorrow, but they won’t do that, they
will use it as a political weapon.”
Heisenberg joined them. “It appears,” Weizsäcker told him,
“that they [the Americans] can get along perfectly well by themselves.”
Heisenberg agreed: “They know everything.”
“Our strength,” said Weizsäcker, “is now the fact that we are
’un-Nazi’ . . . I admit that after this business I am more ready to go
back to Germany, in spite of the Russian advance.”
His colleagues saw the future in more complicated terms, and
in their room Diebner told Bagge:
“They won’t let us go back to Germany. Otherwise the Russians