More ominously, two initiatives originated simultaneously in Germany as a result of the French report.1139 A physicist at Göttingen alerted the Reich Ministry of Education. That led to a secret conference in Berlin on April 29, which led in turn to a research program, a ban on uranium exports and provision for supplies of radium from the Czechoslovakian mines at Joachimsthal. (Otto Hahn was invited to the conference but arranged to be elsewhere.) The same week a young physicist working at Hamburg, Paul Harteck, wrote a letter jointly with his assistant to the German War Office: We take the
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