Paul Rosbaud - Work Under The Nazi Regime and During The War

Work Under The Nazi Regime and During The War

Through his work at Springer Verlag, Rosbaud knew much of the scientific community in Germany, and as a presumed Nazi he had sources of vital intelligence relating to weaponry.

In 1938 he had his Jewish wife Hilde and their only daughter Angela sent to the UK to keep them safe from Nazi harassment. Rosbaud was also invited to stay in the UK, but he decided to keep working in Germany to undermine the Nazi regime. In addition to his own, Rosbaud helped a number of other families flee the Nazis, including that of the well known Jewish physicist Lise Meitner. He was assisted in his work saving Jews by the fact that he was run as a British agent by Frank Foley, the MI6 station chief in Berlin.

Before the outbreak of war, Rosbaud hurried into print Otto Hahn's work on nuclear fission in the German physics magazine Naturwissenschaften in January 1939. Paul Rosbaud

realized the vast destructive potential of what Hahn, Strassmann, and Meitner had discovered, and he was acutely conscious that the fundamental research had been done in Germany. He wanted the rest of the world to know of the significance of the work at least as soon as the Nazi planners did. By rushing into print with Hahn’s manuscript he was able to alert the world community of physicists.

Among the reports he supplied to the British was that Germany produced rockets (V2) and that the German project for a nuclear bomb was not successful. Rosbaud has also been connected to the "Oslo report", a detailed list of new German weapons systems, but this seems to be the work of Hans Ferdinand Mayer, technical director at Siemens.

Many of his reports were smuggled out of Germany by couriers working for the Norwegian intelligence organisation XU. Norwegians that were studying at technical schools in Germany, such as Sverre Bergh, linked up with Rosbaud and transported the intelligence to occupied Norway, and from there it was sent to neutral Sweden. One daring route involved a flight from Berlin to Oslo, with airport mechanics at each end helping to hide microfilms on the plane.