pdf - WHALE

American counterpart, as well as one less reliant on skilled
labor,
for the labor at Auschwitz, was "inexhaustible", and unfortunately,
suspendable.
In any case, if all this is so, then it is a strong indicator that
Harteck's and possibly some or all of the other interred scientists'
remarks in the Farm Hall transcripts are careful stage-acting, a
script that reveals just enough engineering savvy to indicate that the
scientists knew at least the broad outlines of how an atom bomb
could be achieved without a nuclear reactor (or "uranium engine"
as they called it), and yet interlarded with just enough ignorance on
specifics to indicate either that they were not involved at the highest
levels, or that they were deliberately dissembling. In Harteck's case,
at least, we must opt for deliberate dissembling to a certain degree,
for what he saw - if he was not completely involved with it - was a
vast enrichment program proceeding on the emaciated backs of
concentration camp laborers.
As if this were not enough, Weizsacker later corroborates the
broad outlines of the top secret SS program we have outlined
previously:
WEIZSACKER: If you had wanted to make a bomb we would
probably have concentrated more of the separation of isotopes and less
on heavy water.... If we had started this business soon enough we
could have got somewhere. If they were able to complete it in the
summer of 1945, we might have had the luck to complete it in the
winter 1944-45. 33
Note that he not only corroborates the broad time frame we have
aleady found for the alleged German atom bomb test at Rugen, but
more importantly, his statement comes after Harteck's clear
allusion to the existence of just such a program in Nazi Germany.
A little later, the British military intelligence summary of the
conversation that ensues interjects the following cryptic summary of
comments made by Walter Gerlach, without any further
commentary: "Gerlach goes on to explain that the Nazi party
seemed to think that they were working on a bomb and relates how
the Party people in Munich were going round from house to house
33 Bernstein, op. cit., p. 123.
151