Throughout the European campaign, as far as atomic efforts were
concerned, Alsos members had the tremendous advantage of knowing where they were going and whom and what they were seeking. When they landed on the Continent, they had in hand the fruits of Calvert's labors, in the form of a comprehensive list of intelligence �targets�—the names of key individuals, where they worked and where they lived ; and the location of the laboratories, workshops and storage points, and other items of interest to us. At the head of the list was the famous French atomic scientist, Frédéric Joliot-Curie (later High Commissioner of Atomic Energy for France), and his equally famous wife, Irène Curie, the daughter of Madame Curie, discoverer of radium.
On August 9, 1944, advanced elements of the Alsos mission landed in France and entered Rennes. In going through the laboratories of the university there, they discovered a number of catalogues and other papers that provided information pointing to possible future targets.
Pash�s first efforts in France were unproductive. (Etc.)
Alsos�s work on the Continent began in earnest on August 23 (etc).
They reached Joliot�s house in the suburbs of Paris on the twenty-fourth. Servants there informed them that the professor was in Paris,
probably at his laboratory. So, without further ado, they telephoned the laboratory and, finding Joliot away at the time, told one of his assistants that they would like to see Joliot, they hoped, in a day or two.
On August 25, they reached Paris, (etc). ( . . ) . . . toward evening . . . they . . . . succeeded in reaching Joliot�s laboratory. There, on the steps of the university, they found Joliot and some of his staff, all wearing FFI arm bands. That evening they celebrated the liberation with Joliot by drinking some champagne he had reserved for the occasion. (Etc.)
In the course of their conversation with Joliot, the names of two of his former colleagues came up : Hans von Halban, born an Austrian in Leipzig and later naturalized as a French citizen, and Lew Kowarski. Both men had left France for England in June of 1940 and had been working in the British Tube Alloys Project in Canada. Joliot immediately surmised that there was some connection between them, Pash and Calvert, and the uranium problem. They did not openly tell him at first what they wanted of him. However, after an hour�s conversation, Joliot willingly told them just what they wanted to hear : that it was his sincere belief that the Germans had made very little progress on uranium and they were not remotely close making an atomic bomb. (Etc.)
(pages 210-212)
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The German scientists whom we had assembled at Rheims—Hahn, von Laue, von Weizsäcker, Wertz, Bagge and Korshing—seemed fairly content with their lot and, having given their parole not to leave the house in which they were billeted, settled down quickly to their new routine. But on May 7, there were moved to Versailles, where they were subjected to treatment that I considered entirely unacceptable in that they were not segregated from other prisoners of war. The scientists themselves were most indignant at being considered war criminals and repeatedly asked to see Joliot. A couple of days later this group was joined by Heisenberg and Diebner, and discontent continued to grow until we found it necessary to do something about it. The principal trouble stemmed from a[n] order that prohibited preferential treatment for any German national.