Farm Hall

From www.childrenofthemanhattanproject.org:

After the Nazi defeat, ten physicists, including Heisenberg, Von Weizsacker and Otto Hahn (who later won the Nobel prize as the co-discoverer of nuclear fission) were interned for six months at an English estate known as Farm Hall, located near Cambridge. By collecting the major players in German nuclear physics, the British and Americans kept them out of the hands of the Russians. They also made sure that until the atomic bomb was used, atomic information would be kept largely in American hands. While at Farm Hall the German scientists were well treated and probably ate better than their families back in Germany.

At Farm Hall each of them was assigned a prisoner-of-war batman to look after his needs. There was a tennis court and a piano for Heisenberg. the bedrooms were paneled and the food was good. What none of them seem to have realized, at least initially, was that the estate had been wired to record conversations.

Selected conversations were transcribed and circulated to British and American officials, including General Leslie Groves, who headed the Manhattan Project. Although the existence of the Farm Hall transcripts had been known of for some time, it was not until early 1992 that they were finally made available to the public.