Dear Heisenberg
In recent years I have had many requests from many quarters for
information regarding my experiences. Thus, like so many others, I have been
invited to take part in the efforts to provide and preserve material that will
shed light on the development of physics in our time and to which end the
Academy in Washington has chosen a special commission. Similarly, I have [had
requests] from committees that have been established in many countries to
investigate all archival material that can shed light on the preparation and
discussion of the application of the results of atomic physics for military
purposes, and in particular I have had many enquiries about the circumstances
of the visit by you and Weizsäcker to Copenhagen in 1941.
[NEW PAGE]
the extent
to which such an account can be published in the near future is quite another
matter. In this connection I am frequently asked about the background and
purpose of the visit by you and Weizsäcker to Copenhagen in 1941. It is very
difficult for me to give an answer because, as you know from our conversations
in Tisvilde, both shortly after the war and during you and your family’s summer
stay in Liseleje, [I] got a completely different impression of the visit than
the one you have described in Jungk’s book. I remember quite definitely the
course of these conversations, during which I naturally took a very cautious
position, when <without preparation, immediately> you informed me that it
was your conviction that the war, if it lasted sufficiently long, would be
decided with atomic weapons, and <I did> not sense even the slightest
hint that you and your friends were making efforts in another direction. At
that time I was completely cut off from any connection with England and the U.S.A.
and had no idea of the great efforts that had already been started there and,
before I escaped from Denmark, had no idea of the great efforts that had been
started there.
[NEW PAGE]
how all this really fits together. It is obvious that during the
course of the war such a wise person as yourself must gradually lose faith in a
German victory and end with the conviction of defeat, and I can therefore
understand that perhaps at the end you may no longer have recalled what you had
thought and what you had said during the first years of the war. But I cannot
imagine that, during a meeting so boldly arranged as that in 1941, you should
have forgotten what arrangements had been made in this regard with the German
government authorities, and it is on that point that all the interest of other
governments focuses. I therefore very much hope that, by telling me a little
about this, you can contribute to the clarification of what is a most awkward
matter for us all.
<this whole matter>