Wilhelm Groth

Paul Harteck was director of the physical chemistry department at the University of Hamburg and an advisor to the Heereswaffenamt (HWA, Army Ordnance Office).

On 24 April 1939, along with his teaching assistant Wilhelm Groth, Harteck made contact with the Reichskriegsministerium (RKM, Reich Ministry of War) to alert them to the potential of military applications of nuclear chain reactions and point out its political significance.

Two days earlier, on 22 April 1939, after hearing a colloquium paper by Wilhelm Hanle on the use of uranium fission in a Uranmaschine (uranium machine, i.e., nuclear reactor), Georg Joos, along with Hanle, notified Wilhelm Dames, at the Reichserziehungsministerium (REM, Reich Ministry of Education), of potential military applications of nuclear energy.

The communication was given to Abraham Esau, head of the physics section of the Reichsforschungsrat (RFR, Reich Research Council) at the REM.

On 29 April, a group, organized by Esau, met at the REM to discuss the potential of a sustained nuclear chain reaction.

[4][5][6][7][8] The second Uranverein began after the Heereswaffenamt squeezed out the Reichsforschungsrat of the Reichserziehungsministerium and started the formal German nuclear energy project under military auspices.

The invitees included Walther Bothe, Siegfried Flügge, Hans Geiger, Otto Hahn, Paul Harteck, Gerhard Hoffmann, Josef Mattauch, and Georg Stetter.

A second meeting was held soon thereafter and included Klaus Clusius, Robert Döpel, Werner Heisenberg, and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker.

At the end of 1939, Groth tested simultaneously with Rudolf Fleischmann the Clusius-Dickel isotope separation process on uranium hexafluoride, with negative results.

[14] In 1953, Admiral Alvaro Alberto, the first president of Brazil's National Research Council, met with Wilhelm Groth, Otto Hahn, and Paul Harteck, at the Institute of Physics in Hamburg.