Article ID: CBB069199273

The Farm Hall Transcripts: The Smoking Gun That Wasn't (2022)

unapi

Dahn, Ryan (Author)


Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte
Volume: 45
Issue: 1-2
Pages: 202-218


Publication Date: 2022
Edition Details: Issue Theme: The Farm Hall Manuscripts
Language: English

Over 75 years after their creation, the Farm Hall transcripts remain a tantalizing source from the dawn of the atomic age in 1945. Declassified in 1992, the transcripts document ten prominent German nuclear physicists, including Werner Heisenberg, Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, and Otto Hahn, contemplating the Nazi defeat, their complicity in the German war machine, and – after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima – whether they truly intended to build a nuclear weapon for Adolf Hitler. As a written record of conversations, one might expect the transcripts to be the proverbial smoking gun that determines, once and for all, whether German physicists intended to build a nuclear weapon for the Nazi regime. Yet the Farm Hall transcripts have been used to support starkly divergent arguments. Some have used them to assert that the Germans would have willingly provided Hitler with a bomb if only they could; others view them as evidence of scientific resistance inside the Nazi regime. This article explores why the Farm Hall transcripts are not the smoking gun they appear to be.

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Associated with

Article Hoffmann, Dieter (2022) Farm Hall—Another Look. Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte. unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB069199273/

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Authors & Contributors
Walker, Mark
Hoffmann, Dieter
Gadioli, Ettore
Hoerlin, Bettina
Wolff, Stefan L.
Sime, Ruth Lewin
Concepts
Science and politics
Science and war; science and the military
Physics
World War II
National Socialism
Nuclear weapons; atomic weapons
Time Periods
20th century
20th century, early
19th century
Places
Germany
United States
England
Italy
Europe
Great Britain
Institutions
Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft (DPG)
Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Physik, Berlin
Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Chemie
Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften
Interessengemeinschaft Farbenindustrie Aktiengesellschaft
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