The discovery by a Cambridge university professor of a network of listening cables hidden beneath his floorboards has lifted the lid on one of the most remarkable secret chapters in the Second World War. Marcial Echenique, former head of the university’s department of architecture, was renovating Farm Hall, Godmanchester, when he found a network of fine wires in concealed channels. He had no idea that the Georgian mansion had been used to house the Nazis’ nuclear scientists rounded up in a secret operation at the end of the conflict. They included three Nobel prize winners, and every word they uttered during six months in captivity was recorded on microphones hidden by the security services. A new book has revealed details of Operation Big, the secret mission to capture Hitler’s “Uranium Club” and take them to Cambridgeshire, which was led by a US army colonel, Boris T Pash.
Times 11th April 2016 read more »