[9][11] During World War II, Pose was delegated to various organizations to carry on nuclear research and development activities.

Some of the research was carried out at the Versuchsstelle (testing station) of the Heereswaffenamt (HWA, Army Ordnance Office) in Gottow; Kurt Diebner, was director of the facility.

The testing station is where Pose and Ernst Rexer compared the effectiveness of neutron production in a paraffin-moderated reactor using uranium plates, rods, and cubes.

The G-1 experiment performed at the HWA testing station had lattices of 6,800 uranium oxide cubes (about 25 tons) in the neutron moderator paraffin.

The scientific staff at Laboratory V was to be both Russian and German, the former being mostly political prisoners from the Gulag or exiles; this type of facility is known as a sharashka.

[14][15] On 5 March 1946, in order to staff his laboratory, Pose and NKVD General Kravchenko, along with two other officers, went to Germany for six months to hire scientists.

Additionally, Pose procured equipment from the companies AEG, Zeiss, Schott Jena, and Mansfeld, which were in the Soviet occupation zone.

Three heads of laboratories, Czulius, Herrmann, and Rexer, were Pose's colleagues who worked with him at the German Army's testing station in Gottow, under the Uranverein project.

Eight laboratories in the institute were:[14] Although many eminent German scientists went willingly to the Soviet Union, including Manfred von Ardenne, Heinz Barwich, Gustav Hertz, Nikolaus Riehl, Peter Adolf Thiessen, and Max Volmer, the Russians were not above intimidation and heavy-handed techniques.

It must have been highly intimidating to be invited to work in the Soviet Union by a uniformed (NKVD) officer of a conquering military force, especially in the wake of the devastation and brutality of the Battle of Berlin, one of the bloodiest conflicts in the closing months of the war and history itself.

This included personnel such as Rexer, Herrmann, and Czulius, who worked with Pose at the German Army's testing station in Gottow, under the Uranverein project, and had co-authored a classified nuclear energy report (see below) with him.

Czulius, long after the war, remembered how an armed guard invited him to meet with an important Russian general in Berlin.

[17] While in Germany on his recruiting trip, Pose wrote a letter to the Physics Nobel Laureate Werner Heisenberg inviting him to work in Russia.

[14] Other personnel in Pose's Laboratory V were Wolfgang Burkhardt, Dr. Baroni, Dr. Ernst Busse, Dr. Hans Keppel, Dr. Willi Haupt, Dr. Karl-Heinrich Riewe, Dr. Eng.

12 in Ehlektrostal'[19]), Dr. Hans Gerhard Krüger (formerly with Gustav Hertz at Institute G), Dr. Helene Külz, Dr. Hellmut Scheffers, and Dr.

There, the Scientific and Technical Intelligence Branch (STIB) of the Control Commission for Germany - British Element (CCG/BE), recognized his potential and took an interest in him.

Unfortunately for Werner, the chemist had been recruited by the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS, Ministry for State Security) of East Germany.