special issues of nuclear disintegration Westmayer's laboratory for systematic nuclear reactions Professor Carl Friedrich Weiss's laboratory for the study of natural and artificial radioactivity Schmidt's laboratory to study methodologies for nuclear measurement Professor Ernst Rexer's laboratory for applied nuclear physics Hans Jürgen von Oertzen's laboratory to study cyclotrons and high voltage 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. On the other end of the spectrum, the heavy-handed techniques were clearly demonstrated on a large scale, such as in Operation Osoaviakhim in late 1946. Since Pose was on the staff of the German nuclear energy project Uranverein, he had intimate knowledge of scientists who would be useful as staff and laboratory heads in his facility in Obninsk. 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. When he got to Berlin, Czulius was told that the general was in Moscow, and he was sent there. When he got to Moscow, Czulius was informed that the general was busy, so he should get to work immediately, which he did. While in Germany on his recruiting trip, Pose wrote a letter to the Physics Nobel Laureate Werner Heisenberg inviting him to work in Russia. The letter lauded the working conditions in Russian and the available resources, as well as the favorable attitude of the Russians towards German scientists. A courier hand delivered the recruitment letter to Heisenberg; Heisenberg politely declined in a return letter to Pose. In 1947, Alexander Leipunski, scientific liaison of the Ninth Chief Directorate of the NKVD since 1946, was assigned to Laboratory V. He eventually became the scientific director of the Institute of Power and Power Engineering,