A Brief History
On October 18, 1945, the Soviet nuclear program received American atomic bomb (plutonium implosion type) plans from scientist, Klaus Fuchs, a German refugee from the Third Reich. Fuchs had been passing nuclear secrets to the USSR in Britain prior to his involvement in the US-British-Canadian Manhattan Project.
Digging Deeper
Born in Germany the son of a Lutheran minister, the Fuchs family had communist leanings and opposed the rise of the Nazi state. Fuchs went to Britain in 1933 to study physics, and was awarded a PhD and a DSc (doctor of science) degree. In 1939 at the outbreak of war, he was at first detained, until vouched for as an anti-Nazi.
While working on the British nuclear program, Klaus began passing secrets to Soviet agents via courier, and upon being sent to the United States (with a stop along the way to internment in Canada) he continued providing atomic secrets to the Soviets. Oddly enough, he also illegally supplied the British with American nuclear secrets.
Returning to Britain after the war, Fuchs continued to spy for the Soviets until he was caught in 1949 and convicted in a 90 minute trial in 1950. Given a sentence of only 14 years, he ended up serving only 9 years and then moved to East Germany, where he schooled Chinese scientists in nuclear weaponry, greatly accelerating the Chinese nuclear program. He continued to work in the nuclear field for the communist government of East Germany until retiring in 1979, and died in 1988, a communist hero to a communist country that would only exist another 2 years.
Fuchs had apparently cooperated with Western authorities to supply information about his spying, his contacts, and what information he delivered, some of which assisted in the prosecution of atomic spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. It is unknown to researchers exactly how much of an impact his delivery of information had in accelerating or enhancing Soviet nuclear weapon development, due to much information about him remaining classified, especially by the British. In fact, when the US found out Fuchs had also illegally supplied American secrets to Britain, a program designed to supply the UK with US built nuclear bombs was cancelled.
Fuchs had also passed along information from the US development of the hydrogen (fusion) type of nuclear bomb, but again, it is unknown how much this information actually helped the Soviets.
Question for students (and subscribers): How did a researcher with lifelong communist ties manage to pass background checks and avoid detection as a spy for several years? Is it a good thing or a bad thing that spies such as Fuchs, the Rosenbergs, and others ensured the Soviets would also be nuclear armed, creating a nuclear stalemate? Let us know your opinion in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Moss, Norman. Klaus Fuchs: The Man Who Stole the Atom Bomb. St Martins Pr, 1987.
Rossiter, Mike. The Spy Who Changed The World. Headline, 2015.
