Stockholm was a brief but perilous refuge in Niels Bohr’s 1943 escape from German-occupied Denmark. The city marked a transition in his journey: he had reached safety in Sweden, yet German agents were plotting his assassination there, before British airmen carried him onward to Britain.

Refuge and Threat

After being smuggled out of Copenhagen by motor launch on the night of September 29, 1943, Bohr reached the Swedish coast and was taken to Stockholm. His arrival did not end the danger: German agents plotted to assassinate him while he was in the city. The account gives no further details of the plot or of Bohr’s movements within Stockholm, making the city’s significance one of precarious refuge rather than secure sanctuary.

A Brief Stop on the Escape Route

On October 5, British airmen sent to rescue Bohr helped him into the bomb bay of an unmarked British Mosquito bomber. The aircraft carried him from Sweden toward Scotland. At about 20,000 feet, Bohr failed to hear the pilot’s instruction to put on the oxygen mask built into his leather helmet; he later explained that the helmet was too small for his large head, and he soon fainted from lack of oxygen. He survived the flight and, after landing in Scotland, described it as a pleasant nap.

Narrative Significance

Stockholm occupies a narrow interval between escape and rescue: Bohr had escaped Copenhagen, but remained a target until the British airmen took him out of Sweden. The contrast makes the city more than a waypoint in his journey. It is the moment when apparent safety coexists with a continuing threat, before his passage to Britain brings him into contact with the Allied atomic-bomb project.