Klaus Fuchs | The 'Atomic Spy' on Oppenheimer's Manhattan Project

'Klaus Fuchs | The 'Atomic Spy' on Oppenheimer's Manhattan Project'

While Robert Oppenheimer and his team of scientists were developing the first atomic bomb in the Los Alamos desert, there was a spy among them, passing vital atomic secrets to the Soviet Union.

Mark Dunton, Contemporary Records Specialist at The National Archives, explores some of the detailed MI5 files on Klaus Fuchs that we hold in our collection. Fuchs was a brilliant physicist, who played a significant role in the Manhattan Project, but all the while passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. With Christopher Nolan’s new film ‘Oppenheimer’ in cinemas, we’ve taken the opportunity to tell the real story of Klaus Fuchs, the ‘atomic spy.’

Documents used:

Images:
Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, atomic physicist and head of the Manhattan Project, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration / Wikimedia Commons
Berlin, Karl-Liebknecht-Haus am Tag der Reichstagswahl, Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-09424-0006 / CC-BY-SA 3.0 / Wikimedia Commons
The gadget in the Trinity Test Site tower (1945), Los Alamos National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy / Wikimedia Commons
Fuller Lodge at Los Alamos / U.S. Department of Energy / Wikimedia Commons
Trinity Test – 100 Ton Test / U.S. Department of Energy / Wikimedia Commons
'Trinity' explosion at Los Alamos, Alamogordo, New Mexico. July 16, 1945. Photograph taken 9 seconds after the initial Trinity detonation shows the Mushroom cloud. / The Official CTBTO Photostream / Wikimedia Commons

#oppenheimer #history #ww2 #spy

[sirstiffpilchard]

Problem was Russia and the US were allies during wartime. The people Oppenheimer mingled with before the war were communists, including his brother, so Fuchs was always seen as a friend

[katilynalmeida]

Thanks for sharing this video. I have a natural appetite for studying all eras of History especially revolving around the 1940s and 1950s and 1960s too. Hope you keep the videos rolling! Peace.

[hypercomms]

Although Klaus Fuchs was passing secrets to the Russians, as he was working on the British atomic bomb project he also passed what he learnt on the Manhattan project to the British Atomic bomb project…

[brianmatthews]

[in the] book, “Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West, ” other spies at Los Alamos included a prodigious scientist, Theodore “Ted” Hall (code name MLAD, or “Young”); Julius Rosenberg (code name ANTENNA, later LIBERAL); David Greenglass (BUMBLEBEE, CALIBER). Other Soviet spies, like the British scientist Alan Nunn May, worked in other parts of the Manhattan Project.

[qstrian]

Coined the expression, ‘he Fuchs up.’

[tommytwotacos]

The spying that went on between East and West, and in particular the nexus in post-war Brittain, is a remarkably fascinating subject of study for those who consider themselves as a student of the human condition. Kim Philby, in particular, has provided years of interesting research for me. Having been a living rabbit hole, it takes a particularly thorough onion peeling before even beginning to feel as though one has any grasp of what truly motivated the man.

[MarkArandjus]

"Nobody Fuchs with MI5 for long, son."
-Jim Skardon, probably

[ghostmanscores]

Fuchs was such a nice guy he let inquisitive Richard Feynman use his car on the weekends. What a guy.

[JohnMotamed]

The secrets of nuclear fission was public as early as 1938 after Otto Hahn's paper. The rest was an engineering endeavor to enrich Uranium, process Plutonium, and build an ignition mechanism to detonate the device. It was very challenging in 1940s, but history has shown us that no one can prevent others from pursuing the engineering processes that once had been successfully completed.
When something is in the hands of engineers it should be considered common knowledge.

[PatrickPannunzio]

Simon ‘s point is well taken but with spies so well intertwined into the societies in which they work it seems an impossible task to make them and their political feelings open to the masses. How do we assess whether they are right or wrong? It’s a very daunting task. Can we say without question whether they are right or wrong?

[Thunder_Dome]

There's something wrong with the UK. There can only be one way to deal with espionage. You know what I mean too.

[georgesmelki]

For the best account on Fuchs' life and activities, I suggest reading the book Trinity by Frank Close(Penguin)

[joemondy]

British gave him a slap on the wrist and sent him to East Germany.

[europaeuropa]

What was the difference between him and the Rosenbergs?

[fixento]

He should have been disposed of quietly regardless if he was in East Germany

[brooklynbummer]

Fucks has been considered the biggest suspect. Oppenheimer was blamed unfortunately for the leaks.

[Schlipperschlopper]

Soviets got their bomb from German scientists (Manfred von Ardenne, Nicolaus Riehl and Gustav Hertz) and did not need Klaus Fuchs...After the first successful American nuclear tests and bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945, Stalin felt the need to act and urged Soviet scientists to develop an atomic bomb as well. But the project stalled. When a Chinese delegation visited Moscow in July 1949, Stalin showed them a film allegedly depicting the first Soviet nuclear test a few weeks before it took place. But where did this film come from? Where did the test take place?
"Atomic Film"
Delays in creating the bomb disrupted Stalin's foreign policy plans. A few months earlier, Stalin had received from his personal envoy to Mao Zedong, Ivan Kovalev, that the Chinese communists had discovered a secret American plan at Chiang Kai-shei headquarters. Accordingly, the Americans were preparing for World War III. Together with the national Chinese and Japanese, they intend to use atomic bombs to crush the People's Liberation Army of China. Stalin made it clear to Kovalev that the United States was not yet ready for a great war.

On July 9, the first reception of the Chinese delegation led by the second highest party figure Liu Shaochi was held at Stalin's dacha. The second conversation, which is of particular interest to us, began on the evening of July 11 in the Kremlin. Liu Shaochi asked Stalin if he wanted to help the People's Liberation Army land in Taiwan. Stalin denied it. Liu then raised the question of how great Stalin considered the danger of World War III. The dictator acted calmly. The “imperialists” are not yet sufficiently armed to resist the Soviet Union at any moment.

Liu then asked permission to visit Soviet nuclear laboratories. This request was no doubt agreed with Mao, who was familiar with and interested in nuclear weapons. Mao kept his intentions secret from the public, calling the atomic bombs "paper tigers". However, Stalin did not want to show the guests the nuclear laboratories and instead invited them to watch the film. An atomic bomb exploded. The tests, as Stalin Liu said, took place in the far north of the Soviet Union, in a deserted area near the Arctic Circle.

Strangely enough, the screening of the film took place a few weeks before August 29, 1949, the first successful Soviet atomic bomb test in Semipalatinsk. Two key actors independently confirmed the fact of the film: Kovalev, Stalin's expert on China, reported it in his memoirs, as did Shi Zhe, Mao's translator.

What drove Stalin to this bluff? His attempt to oust the Western Powers from West Berlin failed. Worse, the Berlin crisis contributed to the merger of many Western European countries and the United States into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in April 1949. America's nuclear arsenal, though small, was growing, and the Soviet Union did not yet have an atomic bomb. In Europe, Stalin was on the defensive. His attention, therefore, more than ever, was focused on Asia, where the centre of the world’s revolutionary movement had moved. Despite some reservations about Mao, Stalin saw the Chinese Communists as strategic allies. It must therefore be important for him to look as strong as possible. Nothing could illustrate this better than possessing an atomic bomb.

German film?

My guess is going in a different direction. Perhaps the film was found somewhere in Germany after the end of the war. What at first sounds like a wild conspiracy thesis is confirmed by documents I found in the inventory of sources of the archive of modern Russian history in Moscow, which lists hundreds of files of German mining. In addition to the files, films were also recorded. Most of them were rocket launches. The contents of one roll of film are described as follows: "The film about the launch of Fau-2 and the detonation of an atomic bomb". This designation of the name appears to have been literally translated from the German film into Russian.

The film was handed over to the vice-chairman of the Special Committee on Missile Construction (Committee No. 2) Ivan Grigorievich Zubovich in May 1946. There is no way to prove whether these are indeed recordings of a nuclear fission bomb test. They are more likely to test a hybrid bomb consisting of a large amount of explosives and a small amount of fissionable and thermonuclear material. Only the original films or other archival materials that have not yet been discovered can provide information about this.

[traveller]

Mr. Fuchs saved world. If America only having nuclear bomb then we would be witnessed of more Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

[michaelwhalen]

"Fuchs" is German for "fox." Just sayin'.

[henriomoeje]

Why was he sentenced to prison and the Rosenbergs executed?