LONDON (UPI) -- Secret recordings of Hitler's top scientists when they
were prisoners of war in 1945 reveal their horror at the Hiroshima
devastation caused by atom bombs they had raced to invent, The Times
The German scientists were so appalled that the leader of the Nazi
project to develop the bomb wanted to commit suicide, the report said,
citing transcripts released Friday at the request of the Royal Society
and the British Academy.
The scientists first dismissed as incredible the news that the Allies
had dropped the bomb on Japan in August 1945. One suggested that ``some
dilettante in America who knows little about it has bluffed them.''
Several of the Germans expressed relief that the Nazis lost the race
to build the ``uranium bomb,'' the report said, quoting prisoner Karl-
Friedrich von Weizacker.
``One can say that it might have been a much greater tragedy for the
world if Germany had had the uranium bomb. Just imagine if we had
destroyed London with uranium bombs,'' he said. ``It would not have
ended the war and when the war did end, it is doubtful if it would have
been a good thing.''
The report named five German scientists secretly recorded during
their captivity at Farm Hall near Cambridge, 40 miles north of London.
Maj. Hugh Rittner, the British intelligence officer who told the
prisoners about the Hiroshima bombing, said the first one he informed
was Otto Hahn, the co-discoverer of nuclear fission, The Times said.
``He was completely shattered and said that he felt personally
responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people,'' Rittner
said of Hahn, noting he then plied Hahn with alcohol to calm him down
enough to go tell the others.
But Rittner said the German who took the news the hardest was Walther
Gerlach, who led the Nazi research effort to build an atom bomb, The
Gerlach went to his room and lay on the bed, sobbing, saying he saw
suicide as the only honorable course. But he lacked a gun to kill
himself with, and Rittner eventually discouraged him from attempting
suicide, the report said.
Von Weizacker said he thought the bombing was madness but Hahn and
Werner Heisenberg agreed it was the ``quickest way of ending the war.''
``That's what consoles me,'' Hahn said.
Discussing whether the Nazis could have invented the atom bomb if
they had tried harder, Heisenberg said he never thought they could and
``at the bottom of my heart I was really glad.''
But von Weizacker said Hitler may have gotten his bomb if not for bad
timing and bad luck. ``If we had started this business soon enough, we
could have got somewhere. We might have had the luck to complete it in
the winter of 1944-45,'' he said.
The report said Britain's Public Records Office finally released the
transcripts in response to pressure from researchers studying Hitler's
failed efforts to develop the bomb. The tapes had been quoted by the
head of the Manhattan Project that created the Allied bomb, but British
officials had denied their existence, the report said.
The tapes also recorded speculation by the German prisoners on
whether their rooms were fitted with secret microphones, the report
``Microphones installed?'' Heisenberg said, laughing. ``Oh, no,
they're not as cute as all that. I don't think they know the real
Gestapo methods. They're a bit old-fashioned in that respect.''