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As part of Operation Epsilon, captured German nuclear physicists were secretly recorded at Farm Hall, a house in England where they were interned. Here's how the German scientists reacted to the news (on August 6th, 1945) that an atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima, taken from the now-declassified transcripts (pp. 116-122 of this copy):
Otto Hahn (co-discoverer of nuclear fission): I don't believe it... They are 50 years further advanced than we.
Werner Heisenberg (leading figure of the German atomic bomb effort): I don't believe a word of the whole thing. They must have spent the whole of their £500,000,000 in separating isotopes: and then it is possible.
It's interesting to read how the German scientists reacted, and how some of them seemed to have not wanted to succeed in doing the same thing for the Nazis.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2016, @01:21PM
> There is no point in lying about your capabilities after your surrender, and after your enemy already has the technology and all of your research.
Surrender doesn't necessarily mean total capitulation. If you have the opportunity to keep something in the bank you are probably going to take it. The downside of keeping secrets is practically zero, but if you give up everything and the victors decide to be crazy punitive then you've got nothing to fall back on.