Ende der Unschuld (1991)

At Farm Hall in England, the ten German atomic scientists interned there as part of Operation Epsilon learn in August 1945 that the first atomic bomb has been dropped on Hiroshima. In flashback, the development of the uranium project is recounted chronologically, from the discovery of nuclear fission by Otto Hahn and Fritz Straßmann in December 1938, through Kurt Diebner’s work at the Army Ordnance Office, to the experiments conducted by the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics under Werner Heisenberg and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker at the Haigerloch research reactor in the spring of 1945. International connections are also depicted, including Albert Einstein’s 1939 petition to President Roosevelt and the 1941 meeting between Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr in occupied Copenhagen. Time jumps show the researchers’ reactions and discussions at Farm Hall after the two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan.