London — Werner Heisenberg, the scientific genius behind Adolf Hitler's secret atomic bomb program, revealed the program's existence in 1941 to Niels Bohr, the Danish scientist who later became part of the Manhattan Project, according to secret documents cited in a London newspaper.
The documents indicate Heisenberg did not express moral doubts to his counterpart during the meeting with Bohr in Nazi-occupied Denmark about building a bomb for Hitler. Neither did Heisenberg hint he might be willing to sabotage the project, the documents reveal.
The information contradicts several historical accounts of the meeting and an award-winning West End and Broadway play, "Copenhagen," in which British playwright Michael Frayn speculated on its significance regarding the eventual failure of the Nazi atomic project.
During the meeting, Heisenberg alerted Bohr, his former mentor, to the existence of Hitler's "uranium club," according to the documents. Two years later, Bohr went to America to join the Manhattan Project, which built the atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan in 1945 to end World War II.
The new documents, including a letter Bohr wrote but never sent, were reported in The Sunday Times, which quoted Dr. Finn Aaserud, director of the Niels Bohr Archive in Copenhagen.
"Essentially, the letter shows that Heisenberg told Bohr it was possible that the war would be won with atomic weapons, indicating that he was involved in such work," Aaserud told The Associated Press Monday in Copenhagen.
Next month the archives will release 11 documents written or dictated by Bohr before his death in 1962, including his unposted letter to Heisenberg, which was completed in 1958.
They are currently being translated into English and also will be made available on the archive's home page www.nbi.dk, he said.
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