The Genius of Farm Hall

During World War II, scientific research was beginning to focus on nuclear technology, something that was new, unknown, and exciting. This field of research was full of opportunities and promise of publication, which in the scientific community is crucial to success. A main misconception, however, involving Germany and their nuclear research was their end goal. Many believe that Germany was like America racing to build the bomb to end the war. Germany was actually more focused on the industrial prospects of nuclear technology and government officials did not believe that “the wonder weapon” could be completed before the end of the war. Their ideology was that, the weapons they were using were proving quite effective, so why change? This lasted until Germany began to lose, then they began to allot generous funding to nuclear research in attempt to create “the wonder weapon”. History is quite clear on the fact that German scientist were unsuccessful in building the bomb, what is not clear, however, is why.
Operation Epsilon was the code name of an allied operation at the end of World War II, where they arrested and detained ten German scientist who were suspected of working Nazi nuclear weapons, from May 1 to December 1945. The scientists were detained in Farm Hall a house in Godsmanchester, England that was wiretapped. The main objective was to determine how close Germany had been to constructing the atomic bomb. The genius behind this operation was the simplicity of it all. These scientists weren’t Gestapo or the SS, they were just scientist, they’re specialty was physics not interrogation techniques. Their primary concerns were simple, what had become of their families and what was to become of them. Over time they became focused on internal conflicts such as “Was I a Nazi?” and “Did We Want to Make Atomic Bombs?” Although the results from Operation Epsilon are on the whole inconclusive on the issue of why exactly German failed to make the atomic bomb; the impact of America’s success with nuclear research was devastatingly clear. Germany had assumed they were leading the nuclear research race; much of their time post Hiroshima was spent trying to figure out how. Pure brilliance, give a group of German scientist news that they had lost the nuclear race the therefore could be considered inferior to America; and then not tell them how it was done. They were able to listen to these scientists desperately attempt to figure out where they had gone wrong and thus conclude how close Germany was to acquiring nuclear technology; or rather how far Germany had been from successfully building an atomic bomb