'We ourselves were almost awestruck, not so much at the power of the
Bomb, for this we had expected, but because the Americans had used it
with so little notice.' R. V. Jones, head of wartime British Scientific
Intelligence Marcial Echenique, a Cambridge professor, recently became
curious when he found wiring concealed under the floorboards of his
country mansion, Farm Hall. The manor had an astonishing past as an MI6
staging post for some of the most secret operations of the Second World
War. But in April 1945, Farm Hall was to play an even more astounding
role, housing ten of Germany's top nuclear physicists captured in daring
raids. Amid the chaos of the disintegrating Third Reich they were flown
to England covertly in a mission code-named Operation Big. Every word
they uttered was bugged by MI6 eavesdroppers using the wires found by
the professor. After the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, these men
would claim they could have developed A-bombs for the Third Reich, but
did not 'for the greater good of mankind'. Most believe this to have
been a lie. But was there an even greater deception? Were they captured
not to stop Hitler, but to stop Stalin? Did the US drop the Bomb as a
show of power not to the Japanese, but to the Soviets? Colin Brown
guides us through a world of espionage, scientific discovery and
questions of morality as he reveals the extraordinary truth surrounding
Hitler's atomic bomb.
