Talk:Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker

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Some of this entry came to my attention by being repeated in newspaper obituaries of the recently-deceased Weizsacker.

The discussion in the article of "die Lesart" is unbalanced and misleading.

To begin with, the "die Lesart" was not what "it was called among themselves" but was von Laue's disparaging description in correspondence written many years later - see Cornwell p398.

The assertion, in the quoted passage from Sweet, that "everything said ... [by Heisenberg and Weizsacker] has been flatly untrue" is a great exaggeration which the balance of Sweet's article does not attempt to make good.

The various other references in the text to deliberate falsity, untruthfulness etc, fall into the same category.

A more accurate description of the criticisms which have been made in the Cornwell book and by the various writers who are relied on by Sweet would be that, in their accounts of events Heisenberg and Weizsacker told a selective part of the truth, so as to paint themselves in a better light than a more complete account of events would show. Thus, footnote reference 5 to p398 of Cornwell, includes nothing to the effect that the article claims ... "exposure as a deliberate falsehood".

The Wikipedia article on Heisenberg is a far more balanced account of the controversy surrounding the Nazi atomic research project.

Tyrah

Tyrah 09:26, 15 May 2007 (UTC)