Farm Hill

The scientists at Farm Hill were for the most part not dedicated supports of the Nazi party or for the most parts the tenets of national Socialism, yet some of the more basic assumptions of these ideologies seem to have rubbed off on them. Bagge's concern that Moroccan soldiers were in his home and his attempts to label the atrocities in concentration camps as a result of the "stress of war" are excellent examples of this. Wirtz' at least realized how terrible the things done were. He was able to simply place himself in the shoes of the victims, something simple, but due in part to the racial ideology of Nazi Germany was not common enough.

This ties in with the apparent denial that the scientists at farm hill felt. They were prisoners from defeated country, yet they acted as if they would continue to hold the reins of power in science after they were released. Indeed they went further than that, until the learned of Hiroshima and the British gave them the White Paper they continued to believe that they possessed knowledge about atomic physics that the allies did not.

I find the debate over whether the Germans could have developed the atomic bomb to be an interesting one. This issue is a good example of how in history different interpretations of evidence can lead to drastically different conclusions. The various historians writing about the issue for the most part have had access to the same evidence, and yet their conclusions have been quite different.