After interrogating locals, Pash found the scientist and his family in a mountain cabin on May 2, 1945. He was not interested in surrendering soldiers-he was there for Heisenberg. Through a bit of chicanery, Pash led the Germans to believe his force was larger than it was and bluffed his way out of the precarious situation. When they came to the town of Urfeld near the alpine lake of Walchen, they found Germans surrendering to them en masse-about 700 SS troops giving way to his paltry passel of soldiers. A week prior, he had fled by train and bicycle to join his family in the mountains of Bavaria, almost 200 miles away. They even located Heisenberg’s office-but the scientist was long gone.
He also found the Nazi uranium pile and heavy water (a form of water that contains a larger than normal amount of the hydrogen) buried in a nearby field.
Pash delegated the disgusting job of retrieving the documents to subordinates who, after wrangling through human waste, managed to recover the drum. Through interrogations, they learned that the German research files had not been destroyed as the scientists had previously claimed, but were sealed inside a watertight drum they had sunk into a cesspool. On April 24, Pash’s team made another major find: a textile mill and surrounding buildings that had been converted into a laboratory for German nuclear-research efforts. READ MORE: How the Hitler Youth Turned a Generation of Kids into Nazis Dredging a cesspool for nuclear secrets
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