A Man Called Intrepid

by William Stevenson

  Stephenson’s only comment, in the BSC Papers, was: “If it had not been for Haukelid’s resolve, the Germans would have had the opportunity to devastate the civilized world. We would be either dead or living under Hitler’s zealots.”

  * Bohr’s conviction that nuclear physicists should share all secrets was expressed in his appeal for an “Open World . . . where each nation can assert itself solely by the extent to which it can help others with experience and resources . . . [with] free access to information and unhampered opportunity for exchange of ideas.” It was addressed to the United Nations in 1950, long after Bohr had contributed to the development of atomic weapons. His philosophy had not changed.

  * Bohr denied any such “ban-the-bomb” plan, although Robert Jungk, in Brighter Than a Thousand Suns, later asserted that Heisenberg and Weizsäcker submitted a proposal that German and British scientists should agree to ban the bomb’s development. German physicist Hans Jensen was said to have made a similar proposal, but this, too, was denied by Bohr.

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  Dr. Bohr plugged away in Copenhagen, watched by Danish secret-army chiefs. King Christian X and his philosopher-scientist still hoped to save their people by avoiding an open confrontation with the Gestapo. But Bohr’s zeal was carrying him toward a success that must benefit Germany’s search for an atomic bomb. His labs at the Institute for Theoretical Physics grew by a sort of gemmation, putting forth new buds as space was acquired for new experiments and as new sources of finance mysteriously appeared. Underneath the labs, in the sewers binding the heavy-water cyclotron, Danish saboteurs quietly laid explosive charges, just in case.

  “Barren Mountain and other Norwegian operations divert the enemy from what worries us more than anything—Niels Bohr, whose work is dangerously like atomic projects underway in the United States,” Stephenson told Roosevelt. “The risk of atomic information falling into German hands has to be weighed against the danger of reprisals following destruction of Bohr’s cyclotron.”

  Best able to weigh the dangers was Sven Truelsen, a Danish military intelligence chief who shuttled between Nazi Europe and London. His couriers carried an explosive correspondence between Baker Street and Bohr.

  From that most eminent and unflappable of physicists Sir James Chadwick went a veiled appeal, preceded by these instructions:

  To: ‘Peter’

  From: Jarlen

  We intend sending to JUSTITSRAADEN in the near future a bunch of keys which contain a very important message from the British Government to Professor Niels Bohr. We would be very grateful if you could see that Professor BOHR gets the keys and also if you or someone appointed by you would explain to him how to find the message.

  The following diagram shows the position in keys A. and A.1. of the message which has to be extracted. Key A.1. is the one with number 229 on it and Key A. is the long key next to it.

  A small hole to a depth of 4 mm has been bored in the two keys. The holes were plugged up and concealed after the message was inserted. Professor Bohr should gently file the keys at the point indicated until the hole appears. The message can then be syringed or floated out on to a micro-slide. The message is a very very small micro film and is repeated in duplicate in each key. It should be handled very delicately.

  I do not myself know the contents of the message except that I do know it is very important. Will you kindly warn JUSTITSRAADEN and tell him to expect the bunch of keys. We will send the keys through to him by separate courier as soon as we know that this sending has reached you and that you have had time to warn JUSTITSRAADEN.

  The keys arrived while the SWALLOWS were actually destroying the Norsk Hydro heavy-water plant in that harsh winter of 1942. Bohr locked himself in his lab and floated out the pinhead communications. His reply was read by BSC in New York with dismay: “I feel it my duty in our desperate situation to help resist the threat against freedom of our institutions and to assist in the protection of the exiled scientists who sought refuge here. . . . Any immediate use of the latest marvellous discoveries of atomic physics is impracticable.”

  He was rejecting the delicately phrased invitation to stop work, and declining to continue his research in England. Chadwick did not dare mention that Bohr was needed for Anglo-American work on the bomb. Bohr disapproved of violence. In Denmark he had immense prestige. He was president of the Royal Danish Academy and close to the King, who was seventy-three years old and ailing. Both men were handled with kid gloves by the Nazis in the early days. The King sat in his castle, trying to protect his people. The Professor discharged his responsibility, as he saw it, to science and humanity. He continued his dangerous correspondence with Chadwick in England and early in the spring of 1943 he warned that the Germans were looking for more of the metallic uranium and heavy water that could be used to produce atomic bombs.

  There were urgent conferences in London and New York. BSC had profiles in Rockefeller Center on Bohr and the refugee scientists he was trying to protect.

  Stephenson understood Niels Bohr and the ticklish problem of persuading him to escape. Churchill was impatient of scientists like Bohr and thought he came “very near the edge of mortal crimes.” Professor Lindemann, pursuing an almost personal vendetta against the Germans, thought in the last resort that Danish saboteurs should trigger the explosive devices under Bohr’s Institute, for Germany “already increases its demands for heavy water and metallic uranium and German scientists now submit proposals for the use of chain reactions with slow neutrons for producing bombs.”

  Stephenson flew over for discussions and argued for getting Bohr out. “Germany is getting immense profit from an avoidance of conflict between occupiers and occupied in Denmark, but it cannot last. The Fuehrer’s Special Plenipotentiary in Denmark is Dr. Werner Best who puts his faith in talking softly and carrying a big stick. But once terror is let loose in Copenhagen, we can rely on Bohr to do the right thing. What’s important now is to organise his escape.”*

  The Germans deliberately confused those they conquered. The paramilitary force of dedicated Nazis, the Schutzstaffeln, or SS, operated in Denmark alongside the Reich Commissar. Local officials were unsure about who was the real master, and tended to co-operate with the soft-spoken German administrators and close their eyes to the purpose of the SS until the paramilitary emerged as the iron fist inside the velvet glove. The showdown came in August with King Christian, who suddenly resolved the conflicts of his friend Niels Bohr.

  “There are no Danish Nazis,” the King once told Berlin, replying to a suggestion that local Nazi party leaders should help govern the country. Hitler missed the veiled insult but SS Ober-Führer Werner Best did not. Now he suggested to Berlin that the King be neutered and Professor Bohr’s project brought under German direction. SS kangaroo courts began summary trials of “terrorists.” The King was forced into a corner by a request that the Danish police help the Gestapo. The King replied: “Never.” A few days later the palace was stormed by German troops led by a general who was received by Christian X with the sarcastic words: “Good morning, my brave general. You have won a splendid victory.” It had taken a thousand storm troopers armed with machine guns and grenades to overpower the fifty-man Royal Guards, whose weapons were swords and staves. The General, angered by this sudden display of royal contempt, clattered back to his armored car, which was what the King wanted. He scribbled a note advising Bohr to go; nothing more could be done to stave off disaster. Bohr should instruct Princess Ingeborg in Sweden to plead with King Gustaf to intervene on behalf of thousands of Danish citizens.

  The first roundup of Jews began. The protection of scientists like Stefan Rozental, a former colleague of Stephenson’s friend Steinmetz, now working with Bohr on atomic research, was no longer an issue. “Bohr called me to his home at Carlsberg,” said Rozental later. “He told me what I must do to escape to England and gave me all his papers on the passage of charged particles through matter, a manuscript that must not fall into Nazi hands. He gave me money and said we should
meet again soon. He was privately convinced he would be sent to Germany before he could himself escape, and gave me messages for King Christian’s sister and the King of Sweden.”

  Copies of all Bohr’s communications with the free world, including his messages regarding German preparations for expanding production of uranium and heavy water, were sealed into a metal tube and buried in the garden of his residence at Carlsberg as proof of his true loyalties. Some trace of civilized German behavior, Bohr had always argued, might be maintained if one conducted oneself as though other human beings were rational in their behavior. He had been proved wrong.

  Escape routes were established to Sweden, refugees crossing the narrow waters of the Øresund between Copenhagen and the neutral Swedish port of Landskrona. It was now mid-September, the order for Bohr’s arrest sat on a desk at Gestapo headquarters, and Rozental was making his way by rowboat to safety. In the confusion of leaving the Danish shore, he lost the manuscript containing Bohr’s theories. The papers were never found.

  A wave of terror swept Denmark in the days that followed, beginning with the mass deportation of Jews. It seemed to Stephenson that Niels Bohr had left things too late. It was five months since Stephenson had asked if Washington could supply three fast ships for clandestine operations between Scandinavia and Britain. The specifications had been spelled out in precise terms: minimum range of 3,000 miles, maximum speed of sixteen knots, four tons of cargo space and adequate guns. By September, three sub-chasers were delivered by the U.S. Navy through Bill Donovan, who said nothing about their ultimate destination. The vessels were to carry strategic materials and VIPs from Sweden; one of the passengers was expected to be Professor Bohr.

  On the last day of September, shortly before the Gestapo launched a series of widespread arrests, Bohr landed on the Swedish coast. During the night he sought out Princess Ingeborg, King Christian’s sister, a fascinating woman who had joined Stephenson’s service.

  Bohr pleaded with the Princess for swift action on behalf of the Jews left in Denmark, who that morning were being scooped up and put aboard cattle ships for Germany. She took him to King Gustaf, who seemed dubious. Bohr wanted the King to have Germany redirect the shiploads of Jewish prisoners to Sweden. King Gustaf replied that he had made such a proposal when the deportation of Jews from Norway began. He was humiliatingly rejected. Bohr pressed his arguments. The King agreed to try a personal appeal to Hitler.

  “You are very much out of touch with reality,” Princess Ingeborg told Bohr sadly. “You lived in the Third Reich but you never understood it.”

  They were on their way out of the royal palace. Bohr glanced at her in astonishment. “Surely an appeal to Hitler—?”

  “Dear God!” the Princess burst out. “An appeal to Hitler is an appeal to the Devil. If we draw attention to those Jews, he could kill every one of them just to spite us. . . . Your laboratory has been a fool’s paradise.”

  Without knowing it, Bohr had enjoyed special dispensation. Even when the first order was signed for his arrest, higher authority in Berlin intervened. He had been insulated against the daily practice of evil. Now that he was truly free, he was tortured by what he learned.

  The Swedish King finally broadcast an offer to Denmark to give refuge to fugitives. Swedish ships were sent to the limit of territorial waters to embark those who could escape. As a result, among the countries under SS control, Denmark suffered fewer casualties in the death camps.

  Bohr was asked by Baker Street bodyguards if he would undertake the dangerous journey through the winter blockade to London. He guessed now that the British were building the bomb as part of some vast American project. He shrank from the thought of atomic arms but it was becoming obvious that if one side should end the war with a vast incineration, it had better be the side opposed to the dictators. Yes, he would go. But how?

  Baker Street decided against sub-chasers slipping through the long northern nights, missing German interception by inches. It seemed too risky a method of extracting the Dane. Would Bohr ride in the bomb bay of an unarmed Moon aircraft of a Special Duties Squadron?

  The flight at great altitude was dangerous. So were the alternatives. Bohr asked only one question: What kind of aircraft?

  Great secrecy surrounded these Moon flights. It still does. The planes used neutral fields with the help of government officials whose action had no formal sanction. Countries like Sweden were on a tightrope. The smallest sign of favoring the Allies would invite Nazi reprisal.

  Professor Bohr’s question about the type of plane could be answered only by taking him to an apparently abandoned airstrip near Stockholm. There he saw what was known as the “Termite’s Delight” or the “Wooden Wonder,” a plywood aircraft, brutish engines still grumbling from the long, frightening flight from Britain, piloted by an anonymous black-suited figure from a Moon squadron.

  Moon squadrons were now running the enemy gantlet as far afield as northern Russia. The favored aircraft was the twin-engined Mosquito, made mostly of wood to baffle enemy radar. These fighter-bombers had been modified to carry agents instead of bombs. No flight was ever wasted; this one had brought a girl, who stood mummified in hooded coveralls.

  Bohr understood the implications of being carried in a Mosquito’s belly. He listened politely to the briefing given him by the young woman who had just come out from England. Her code name was TRUDI. A former telegraphist with the FANY communications section, she was a cousin of King George VI. There were serious objections to her being exposed to possible capture by the enemy, since it was thought she might be used as a hostage. Nobody was happy about the political repercussions if she were tortured and the facts became known later. Her true identity remains secret. She was caught in Denmark, a country she knew well, and was last seen in Gestapo headquarters at Copenhagen, where she presumably killed herself with the regulation-issue L pill while under interrogation.

  TRUDI was blunt with the atomic scientist. He would be cut off from the Mosquito’s skipper and could expect no help if the unarmed and unprotected plane were attacked. If he should be wounded, he would have to hang on until the Mosquito reached Britain. He would have morphine and pain-killing tablets in a small hand-held kit, but his quarters would allow him practically no room to move, being molded to fit the human body. If the plane ditched in the North Sea he would be trapped in water so cold that pilots expected no more than ninety seconds’ grace before dying from exposure.

  Bohr glanced at the Mosquito, painted entirely black and without identification markings of any sort. “My wife and children?”

  “They’ll be taken care of—here, in Sweden. . . . We—someone will always be watching them. There is no danger.”

  “Can they follow me later?”

  The girl shook her head. “That is dangerous. Their movements will be known to the enemy. Here we can keep a tight guard. Between here and England, we are naked.”

  Bohr followed her gesture toward the northern sky. TRUDI peeled off the padded suit in which she had traveled. “This is yours now.” She paused. “If you still want to go.”

  “Yes,” said Bohr. “I have no choice.”

  Thus, a few days after his fifty-eighth birthday, on October 7, 1943, Professor Niels Bohr, one of the world’s great nuclear physicists, was fitted into a kind of snowsuit still warm from the body of a young woman agent, was helmeted, masked, and strapped into the bomb bay between two massive Rolls-Royce engines hanging from a plywood air frame, to begin the long journey to the birth of the atomic age.

  The bomb-bay doors hissed shut like clamshells. The ground party ducked out of the way and retreated to the hedgerows. They waited long enough to hear the shattering roar of engines being run up and the final squeal of brakes as the Moon plane jockeyed for position. They watched the great blue sheets of flame flung back as it pulled into the night sky, and then they ran to the baker’s van that would take them to Stockholm and other problems. Professor Bohr was in the lap of the gods. So, possibly, was the future of at
omic science.

  The Mosquito climbed beyond the height where oxygen is needed. The pilot spoke over the intercom: “You should be getting oxygen now.”

  There was no response. The pilot checked instruments that told him if oxygen was flowing into the passenger’s mask. The black-and-white-checkerboard dial showed no response. He tried the intercom again. Still no reply.

  Two hours’ flying still lay ahead. The Mosquito’s only protection was extremely high altitude, where enemy interception was difficult. If they stayed at that height, Bohr would die. Already he seemed to have lost consciousness. If they dropped height, he might recover only to be killed by night fighters.

  Turning back would mean internment. The base from which they had taken off was already once again abandoned. If Bohr was to get medical aid in a hurry, they should land at Stockholm. The Swedes, under Nazi pressure, would never let him out of their sight again.