After the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, Peierls started working on nuclear weapons research with Otto Robert Frisch, a fellow refugee from Germany. Ironically, they were excluded from the work on radar at the University of Birmingham because it was considered too secret for scientists who were enemy aliens. Peierls was naturalised as a British subject on 27 March 1940. He was eager to participate in the fight against fascism and militarism, but the only organisation that would accept him was the Auxiliary Fire Service. He accepted an offer from the University of Toronto to send his two children to live with a family in Canada.
