Operation Epsilon presents the true story of Germany's top nuclear scientists held at Farm Hall, England from July 1945 to January 1946. The play opens as the physicists arrive at their luxurious prison - a Georgian estate complete with gardens, fine food, and hidden microphones recording their every word for Allied intelligence.

The scientists initially focus on their scientific work, holding colloquia and debating technical problems while anxiously awaiting news of their families and futures. Their world shatters when Major Rittner informs Otto Hahn that America has dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The revelation devastates Hahn, who discovered nuclear fission in 1938 and now feels responsible for enabling mass destruction.

As the group processes this news, deep fractures emerge. Some, like Werner Heisenberg, insist they never seriously pursued a bomb and were only developing a uranium reactor for peaceful energy production. Others admit that a bomb was always a possibility they chose not to pursue with full resources. The eldest physicist, Max von Laue - who refused all war work - becomes the moral conscience of the group, forcing his colleagues to confront their complicity in the Nazi regime.

The scientists draft a memorandum attempting to rehabilitate their reputations by claiming they only worked on peaceful atomic energy, not weapons. But their efforts to control the historical narrative fail as newspapers worldwide report them as "Hitler's uranium club" who lost the atomic race to Allied scientists.

Personal tensions explode as the men blame each other for their scientific failures and moral compromises. Heisenberg, the group's leader, struggles to maintain unity while protecting his own legacy. The younger scientists worry their careers are ruined, while party members like Diebner and Bagge face potential retribution from their own countrymen.

The play climaxes with the arrival of a letter from Lise Meitner, Hahn's former Jewish colleague who escaped Nazi Germany. Her devastating rebuke forces the scientists to confront the full scope of their moral failure - not just their scientific work, but their willful blindness to the Holocaust and their passive collaboration with a genocidal regime.

Operation Epsilon explores how brilliant minds can rationalize moral compromise, the relationship between scientific discovery and political responsibility, and the way intellectuals justify their complicity with evil through claims of political neutrality and professional duty.