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Heisenberg and the Nazi Atomic Bomb Project, 1939-1945: a Study in German Culture

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Heisenberg and the Nazi Atomic Bomb Project, 1939-1945: a Study in German Culture Heisenberg and the Nazi Atomic Bomb Project http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=ft838nb56t&chunk.id=0&doc.v... Preferred Citation: Rose, Paul Lawrence. Heisenberg and the Nazi Atomic Bomb Project, 1939-1945: A Study in German Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, c1998 1998. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft838nb56t/ Heisenberg and the Nazi Atomic Bomb Project A Study in German Culture Paul Lawrence Rose UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley · Los Angeles · Oxford © 1998 The Regents of the University of California In affectionate memory of Brian Dalton (1924–1996), Scholar, gentleman, leader, friend And in honor of my father's 80th birthday Preferred Citation: Rose, Paul Lawrence. Heisenberg and the Nazi Atomic Bomb Project, 1939-1945: A Study in German Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, c1998 1998. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft838nb56t/ In affectionate memory of Brian Dalton (1924–1996), Scholar, gentleman, leader, friend And in honor of my father's 80th birthday ― ix ― ACKNOWLEDGMENTS For hospitality during various phases of work on this book I am grateful to Aryeh Dvoretzky, Director of the Institute of Advanced Studies of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, whose invitation there allowed me to begin work on the book while on sabbatical leave from James Cook University of North Queensland, Australia, in 1983; and to those colleagues whose good offices made it possible for me to resume research on the subject while a visiting professor at York University and the University of Toronto, Canada, in 1990–92. Grants from the College of the Liberal Arts and the Institute for the Arts and Humanistic Studies of The Pennsylvania State University enabled me to complete the research and writing of the book. I am indebted to a great many scientists and other colleagues who kindly supplied information at various points, including R. Peierls, H. Bethe, R. Serber, I. Unna, Y. Wagschall, R. V. Jones, G. Born, 1 of 266 7/11/2006 1:12 AM Heisenberg and the Nazi Atomic Bomb Project http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=ft838nb56t&chunk.id=0&doc.v... F.H. Hinsley, M. Gowing, W. Williams, C. Fraser, G. Holton, D. C. Cassidy, M. Beller, K. Macrakis, R. L. Sime, H. Henisch, R. Anshen, A. Pais, R. H. March, C. Dilworth-Occhialini, N. Dawidoff, J. Dippel, T. H. von Laue, S. Rozental, T. Powers, D. Irving, C.-F von Weizsäcker, M. von Ardenne, E. Bagge, K. Wirtz, K.-H. Höcker, and D. Hoffmann. Several fellow historians also supplied encouragement, particularly B. Z. Kedar, Roy Porter, John Maguire, Conor Cruise O'Brien, and the late Sir Geoffrey Elton. To P.O. Kristeller, my teacher in another field, I am also deeply indebted. Among those archivists who helpfully answered inquiries and procured copies of documentation are E. Meese, W. Mahoney, B. Crystal, K. Molholm, M. Blakeslee, S. Weart, Z. Rosenkranz, F. Aaserud, F. Pors, H. Rechenberg, M. Rasch, C. Tietz, A. Kerkmann, R. Heinrich, E. Henning, M. Kazemi, and H. Bachmann. My son Alexander—a historian in his own right—also obtained various materials for me. ― x ― I owe a special debt of thanks to three scientists who have given critical readings to portions or all of the manuscript and have been generous with advice and information. They are Arnold Kramish,Jonothan Logan, and Sir Charles Frank. My wife, Susan, also read the manuscript and suggested numerous improvements (as ever). In writing of the experiences of German professors during the 1930s I have drawn on my observation of how former colleagues of the University of Newcastle, Australia—David Frost, Tony Guttmann, and Don Parkes—reacted honorably to injustice in their midst. The late Brian Dalton, to whom the book is dedicated, was an inspiration in every way, personally and professionally, to all those who were fortunate enough to work with him in building a genuinely first-rate research and teaching department at James Cook University. His response to bullying assertion of managerial authority, of a kind slightly reminiscent of that which reigned unchecked in German universities in the 1930s, is illustrated by an anecdote whose veracity I can attest. Late for a meeting one day, Brian was obliged to park for a few minutes in a space designated for an overbearing senior administrator who was rarely present. That day, the official did come in and he telephoned Brian, shouting with rage and menace down the line. Brian hung up, and then called him back, saying urbanely, "My dear ———, I think you ought to know that someone has just been impersonating you on the telephone. He appeared to be drunk." This story has a certain relevance to some aspects of the subject of this book. PAUL LAWRENCE ROSE 6 FEBRUARY 1997 ― xi ― ABBREVIATIONS AIP Niels Bohr Library, American Institute of Physics, College Park, Md. BA Bundesarchiv, Koblenz BAS Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists BSC Bohr Scientific Correspondence, microfilms in Archive for History of Quantum Physics, Berkeley; AIP; and elsewhere 2 of 266 7/11/2006 1:12 AM Heisenberg and the Nazi Atomic Bomb Project http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=ft838nb56t&chunk.id=0&doc.v... Cassidy D. C. Cassidy, Uncertainty: The Life and Science of Werner Heisenberg (New York, 1992) FHT Farm Hall transcripts (Public Record Office, London, WO208/5019; also in U.S. National Archives, College Park, Md., RG 77, entry 22, box 163) G-x German Atomic Research Reports, U.S. National Archives, College Park, Md., RG 242, Captured German Records, microfiche (also in AIP); x = document number GWH x y W. Heisenberg, Gesammelte Werke/Collected Works , ed. W. Blum, H.-P. Duerr, and H. Rechenberg (Berlin, Munich, and New York, 1984–); x = series, y = part HPNS K. Hentschel and A. Hentschel, eds., Physics and National Socialism: An Anthology of Primary Sources (Basel, Boston, and Berlin, 1996) HWA Heereswaffenamt (Army Weapons Department) HWA WaF Heereswaffenamt, Waffenforschung (HWA Weapons Research Office) HWA WaF/1a Heereswaffenamt, Waffenforschung: Kernphysik (HWA Weapons Research Office/Ia: Nuclear Physics) IMF D. Irving, comp. Records and Documents Relating to the Third Reich , group II, German Atomic Research (Wakefield, Yorks., 1973), microfilms 29–32 KWG Kaiser-Wilhelm-Society/Kaiser-Wilhelm Gesellschaft KWIP Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut for Physics, Berlin LC Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. MPG Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Berlin NA National Archives, Archives II, College Park, Md. ― xii ― 3 of 266 7/11/2006 1:12 AM Heisenberg and the Nazi Atomic Bomb Project http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=ft838nb56t&chunk.id=0&doc.v... OE Operation Epsilon: The Farm Hall Transcripts, ed. Sir Charles Frank (Berkeley, 1993) OHI Oral History Interviews, Neils Bohr Library, American Institute of Physics, College Park, Md. PRO Public Record Office, Kew, London PRO, AB Public Record Office, Atomic Energy Series PRO, CAB Public Record Office, Cabinet Office Series PRO, FO Public Record Office, Foreign Office Series ― xiii ― A NOTE ON THREE NEW SOURCES Three important books were published after the completion of the present work. Several of the German documents, particularly those bearing on the politics of Heisenberg and other German physicists during the Nazi period, are now available in English translation in K. Hentschel and A. Hentschel, Physics and National Socialism: An Anthology of Primary Sources (Basel, Boston, and Berlin, 1996). Further material on the compromises of Otto Hahn and others is to be found in R. L. Sime, Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics (Berkeley, 1996). And a running critical commentary on the Farm Hall transcripts has been provided by J. Bernstein, Hitler's Uranium Club (Woodbury, N.Y., 1996). Attention should also be drawn to the reissue of S. Goudsmit's ALSOS , with a new introduction by D. C. Cassidy (Woodbury, N.Y., 1996). Though unable to have made full use of these new sources, I have added a few references to them in the footnotes, which may prove useful to readers wishing to have access to certain documents in translation. ― xiv ― ― xv ― PREFACE: WHY HEISENBERG? Why Heisenberg? Werner Heisenberg (1901–76) is at once an emblem of twentieth-century physics and of the crisis of German culture and society during the Hitler period. Heisenberg's invention and development of matrix mechanics in 1925 in rivalry with Erwin Schrödinger's wave mechanics rescued traditional quantum theory from its various impasses and opened the way to the quantum mechanics that has dominated physical thinking in the last three-quarters of a century. This breakthrough, along with his formulation of the Uncertainty Principle in 1927, has assured Heisenberg a permanent place among the great physicists—an achievement recognized by the award of the Nobel Prize in 1933. But in that same year Hitler came to power, and though Heisenberg might well have preferred not 4 of 266 7/11/2006 1:12 AM Heisenberg and the Nazi Atomic Bomb Project http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=ft838nb56t&chunk.id=0&doc.v... to think about him, Hitler opened the door to a crise de conscience for German physicists, as well as for the rest of the German cultural elite: Should we stay on (some asked themselves) and keep quiet, waiting for the storm to pass? Or was open protest, accompanied or not by actual political resistance, a viable alternative? Or again, was the only proper course of action to pack up and leave Germany and resist from outside? Heisenberg made a firm decision, reaffirmed during the six years before the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, to stay on. The extent to which he agreed or disagreed politically with the Nazi regime has been a matter of bitter controversy for the last sixty years. But the point on which recrimination—and apology too—have focused has been Heisenberg's participation in the Nazi atomic bomb project.
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