Thursday, February 7, 2002

Release of Documents Relating to 1941 Bohr-Heisenberg Meeting

Dear Heisenberg.I have long been meaning to write to you on a matter about which I am constantly being asked from many different quarters. It concerns the visit by you and Weizsäcker to Copenhagen in the autumn of 1941. As you know from our conversations in the first years after the war, we here got quite a different impression of what happened during this visit than the one you expressed in Jungk?s book. The particular reason that I write to you is that the whole question of the atomic energy projects during the war has been made the subject of thorough studies in England based on access to government archives, including material held by the intelligence service. In this connection, I have had detailed conversations about my affiliation with the whole project, during which questions about your visit in 1941 were also brought up. I have therefore thought it most proper to try to give you as accurate an impression as possible of how we perceived the visit here.Although we realized that behind the visit there was a wish to see how we were faring in Copenhagen in dangerous situation during the German occupation, who lived only on the hope of defeat for German Nazism, a difficult situation to meet and talk to someone who expressed as strongly as you and Weizsäcker your certain conviction of a German victory and confidence in what it would bring . Naturally, we understand that it may be difficult for you to keep track of how you thought and expressed yourselves at the various stages of the war, the course of which changed as time passed so that the conviction of German victory gradually had to weaken and finally end with the certainty of defeat.
http://www.nba.nbi.dk/papers/introduction.htm

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