As the Third Reich collapsed, American intelligence agents from the Alsos Mission captured “Hitler’s Uranium Club,” the masterminds of the German nuclear program. This included geniuses like the politically ambiguous Werner Heisenberg, as well as less brilliant and openly Nazi scientists like Kurt Diebner. Intelligence interned them at Farm Hall, a delightful country house near Cambridge, England, where they were treated as guests rather than prisoners. Yet that romantic English home did not reassure Diebner at all. “I wonder if there are hidden microphones here,” he had said to Heisenberg shortly after arriving. And Heisenberg laughed: “Hidden microphones? No! They’re not that clever. And I don’t think they know the Gestapo’s methods.” It was at Farm Hall that German physicists learned of the bombing of Hiroshima. They learned about it from the BBC and initially dismissed the news as Allied propaganda. Then, however, they realize it’s true, and at that point their immediate reaction is one of horror. Horror is followed by reflections, acknowledgements of Nazi crimes, and recriminations over the failure of their nuclear program.
