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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: 3, Insightful) by tfried on Saturday October 29 2016, @07:53PM
I don't think the point was lying (or not) about their nation's nuclear capabilities, perhaps more about their own feelings towards their research.
These were top-notch physicists, potentially very valuable to their hosts, but coming from a hostile nation. The point of spying on these guys conversations wasn't to gain military intelligence, either, but to understand how far they could be trusted. And whether or not that comment about microphones was naive or tongue-in-cheek, I do think those guys were absolutely smart enough to understand this basic situation. So for them this wasn't about "winning the war" (for whichever side), but about their personal prospects.