munich

Formerly secret documents relating to Germany's nuclear programme between 1938 and 1945 were transferred to Munich's Deutsches Museum last week. The documents include research reports and experimental protocols written by Germany's Nobel prizewinners Werner Heisenberg and Otto Hahn, as well as their correspondence with the government.

In 1938 Hahn, Lise Meitner and Fritz Strassmann discovered the first evidence of the products of uranium nuclear fission. After the beginning of the Second World War, the Nazis increased support for the nuclear research programme. The documents show that until the early 1940s Germany and the United States were almost equally advanced in nuclear research.

Immediately after the war the Americans confiscated the documents, but they were returned to Germany in the 1970s and kept at the Karlsruhe National Research Centre. The museum will make the documents freely available to historians.