Who actually created the atomic bomb?
The fathers of the atomic bomb are usually called American Robert Oppenheimer and Soviet scientist Igor Kurchatov. But given that the work on the deadly weapons were conducted in parallel in four countries, and in addition to the scientists of these countries, people from Italy, Hungary, Denmark, etc. took part in them, a bomb born as a result can be called a brainchild of various nations.
The Germans were the first to take the case. In December, their physicists Otto Gan and Fritz Strassmann, 1938, for the first time in the world, artificially split the nucleus of a uranium atom. In April, 1939 of the year, the military leadership of Germany received a letter from the professors of the University of Hamburg, P. Hartek and V. Groth, which indicated the fundamental possibility of creating a new type of high-performance explosive. Scientists wrote: “The country that is the first to be able to practically master the achievements of nuclear physics will gain absolute superiority over others.” And now, in the imperial Ministry of Science and Education, a meeting is being held on the theme “On a self-propagating (that is, a chain) nuclear reaction”. Among the participants are Professor E. Schumann, head of the research department of the Third Reich Arms Administration. Without delay, they moved from words to deeds. Already in June, the construction of the first German reactor plant at the Kummersdorf site near Berlin began in June of 1939. A law was passed banning the export of uranium outside Germany, and in the Belgian Congo urgently purchased a large amount of uranium ore.
Germany starts and ... loses
26 September 1939, when war was already raging in Europe, it was decided to classify all work related to the uranium problem and the implementation of the program, called the “Uranium Project”. The scientists involved in the project were initially quite optimistic: they considered it possible to create nuclear weapons within a year. Wrong, as life has shown.
22 organizations were involved in the project, including such renowned research centers as the Kaiser Wilhelm Society of Physics, the Hamburg University Institute for Physical Chemistry, the Berlin University of Physics and Technology, the Physics and Chemistry Institute of the University of Leipzig, and many others. The project was personally overseen by the imperial arms minister Albert Speer. IG Farbenindustry was charged with the production of uranium hexafluoride, from which it is possible to extract the uranium-235 isotope capable of maintaining a chain reaction. The same company was also charged with the construction of an isotope separation facility. Such venerable scientists as Heisenberg, Weizsäcker, von Ardenne, Riel, Pose, the Nobel Prize winner Gustav Hertz and others took part in the work directly.
Over the course of two years, the Heisenberg group conducted the research necessary to build an atomic reactor using uranium and heavy water. It was confirmed that only one of the isotopes can serve as an explosive, namely uranium-235, which is contained in a very small concentration in ordinary uranium ore. The first problem was how to isolate it from there. The starting point of the bomb creation program was an atomic reactor, for which - as a moderator of reaction - graphite or heavy water was required. German physicists chose water, thus creating a serious problem for themselves. After the occupation of Norway in the hands of the Nazis passed at the time the world's only plant for the production of heavy water. But there the stock of necessary product physicists was only tens of kilograms by the beginning of the war, and the Germans didn’t get them either - the French had increased their valuable products literally from under the nose of the Nazis. And in February, the British commandos abandoned in Norway by 1943, with the help of local resistance fighters, put the plant down. The implementation of the German nuclear program was under threat. The Germans did not end their misadventures: an experienced nuclear reactor exploded in Leipzig. The uranium project was supported by Hitler only as long as there was hope of obtaining super-powerful weapons until the end of the war he unleashed. Heisenberg invited Speer and asked directly: “When can we expect to create a bomb capable of hanging from a bomber?” The German leadership rationally considered that it does not make sense to force events. Let the scientists work calmly - they will have time for the next war. As a result, Hitler decided to focus scientific, industrial and financial resources only on projects that give the fastest return in creating new types of weapons. State funding for the uranium project has been minimized. Nevertheless, the work of scientists continued.
In 1944, Heisenberg received cast uranium plates for a large reactor facility, under which a special bunker had already been built in Berlin. The latest experiment to achieve a chain reaction was scheduled for January 1945, but on January 31, all equipment was quickly dismantled and sent from Berlin to the village of Haygerloch near the Swiss border, where it was deployed only in late February. The reactor contained 664 uranium cubes with a total weight of 1525 kg, surrounded by a graphite neutron reflector with a weight of 10 tons. In March, 1945 tons of heavy water were added to the active zone in March 1,5. 23 March to Berlin reported that the reactor has earned. But the joy was premature - the reactor did not reach a critical point, the chain reaction did not go. After recalculations, it turned out that the amount of uranium needs to be increased by at least 750 kg, proportionally increasing the mass of heavy water. But stocks of neither one nor the other no longer exists. The end of the Third Reich was inexorably approaching. April 23 American forces entered Higerloch. The reactor was dismantled and exported to the United States.
Meanwhile overseas
In parallel with the Germans (with only a slight lag), the development of atomic weapons was undertaken in England and in the USA. They began with a letter sent in September 1939 by Albert Einstein to US President Franklin Roosevelt. The initiators of the letter and the authors of most of the text were Hungarian physicists Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner and Edward Teller. The letter drew the President’s attention to the fact that Nazi Germany was conducting active research, as a result of which it could soon acquire an atomic bomb.
In the USSR, the first information about the work carried out both by the allies and by the enemy was reported to Stalin by intelligence as early as 1943. It was immediately decided to deploy such work in the Union. So began the Soviet atomic project. Tasks were received not only by scientists, but also by intelligence officers, for whom the extraction of nuclear secrets became the most important task.
Intelligence's most valuable information about the work on the atomic bomb in the United States has greatly helped the advancement of the Soviet nuclear project. Scientists participating in it managed to avoid dead-end search paths, thereby significantly accelerating the achievement of the final goal.
Experience of recent enemies and allies
Naturally, the Soviet leadership could not remain indifferent to the German nuclear developments. At the end of the war, a group of Soviet physicists was sent to Germany, among whom were future academicians Artsimovich, Kikoin, Khariton, Shchelkin. All were camouflaged in the form of colonels of the Red Army. The operation was led by First Deputy Commissar of Internal Affairs Ivan Serov, which opened any doors. In addition to the necessary German scientists, the "colonels" sought out tons of uranium metal, which, according to Kurchatov, reduced the work on the Soviet bomb by at least a year. Americans also took a lot of uranium from Germany, taking the specialists who worked on the project. And in the USSR, in addition to physicists and chemists, they sent mechanics, electrical engineers, glass blowers. Some were found in prisoner of war camps. For example, Max Steinbek, the future Soviet academic and vice-president of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR, was taken away when, at the whim of the camp commander, he was making a sundial. In total, at least 1000 German specialists worked on the atomic project in the USSR. The von Ardenne laboratory with a uranium centrifuge, the equipment of the Kaiser Institute of Physics, documentation, reagents were completely exported from Berlin. Within the framework of the atomic project, laboratories "A", "B", "C" and "G" were created, the scientists from which scientists from Germany became supervisors.
Laboratory A was headed by Baron Manfred von Ardenne, a talented physicist who developed the gas diffusion cleaning and uranium isotope separation method in a centrifuge. At first, his laboratory was located on the October Field in Moscow. Five to six Soviet engineers were assigned to each German specialist. Later, the laboratory moved to Sukhumi, and the famous Kurchatov Institute eventually grew on the October Field. In Sukhumi, a Sukhumi Institute of Physics and Technology was established on the basis of the von Ardenne laboratory. In 1947, the Ardenne was awarded the Stalin Prize for creating an industrial scale centrifuge for purifying uranium isotopes. Six years later, the Ardenne was twice the Stalinist laureate. He lived with his wife in a comfortable mansion, his wife played music on a piano brought from Germany. Other German experts were not offended: they came with their families, brought with them furniture, books, paintings, were provided with good salaries and food. Were they captives? Academician A.P. Aleksandrov, himself an active participant in the atomic project, remarked: "Of course, the German experts were prisoners, but we ourselves were prisoners."
Nikolaus Riel, a native of St. Petersburg who moved to Germany in the 1920s, became the head of the “B” laboratory, which conducted research in the field of radiation chemistry and biology in the Urals (now the city of Snezhinsk). Here, an old Russian acquaintance from Germany, the eminent Russian genetic biologist Timofeev-Resovsky (“Bison” after D. Granin’s novel) worked with Rile.
Having been recognized in the USSR as a researcher and talented organizer who knows how to find effective solutions to the most complicated problems, Dr. Riel became one of the key figures in the Soviet atomic project. After the successful test of the Soviet bomb, he became a Hero of Socialist Labor and a Stalin Prize laureate.
The work of the laboratory "B", organized in Obninsk, was headed by Professor Rudolf Pose, one of the pioneers in the field of nuclear research. Under his leadership, fast neutron reactors were created, the first in the Union of Nuclear Power Plants, the design of reactors for submarines began. The Obninsk facility became the basis for the organization of the A.I. Leipunsky. Pose worked until 1957 in Sukhumi, then at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna.
Gustav Hertz, the nephew of the famous 19th century physicist, himself a famous scientist, became the head of the laboratory “G” located in the Agudzy sanatorium in Sukhumi. He received recognition for a series of experiments that have confirmed the theory of the atom of Niels Bohr and quantum mechanics. The results of his very successful activity in Sukhumi were later used on an industrial plant built in Novouralsk, where in 1949 a filling for the first Soviet atomic bomb RDS-1 was developed. For his achievements in the atomic project, Gustav Hertz in 1951 was awarded the Stalin Prize.
German specialists who received permission to return home (of course, in the GDR), gave a non-disclosure subscription for 25 years of information about their participation in the Soviet atomic project. In Germany, they continued to work in their field. Thus, Manfred von Ardenne, twice awarded the National Prize of the GDR, served as director of the Physics Institute in Dresden, established under the auspices of the Scientific Council on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, led by Gustav Hertz. Hertz received the national award as the author of a three-volume work-textbook on nuclear physics. There, in Dresden, at the Technical University, worked and Rudolf Pose.
The participation of German scientists in the atomic project, as well as the successes of the intelligence officers, do not in the least detract from the merits of Soviet scientists, who by their selfless labor ensured the creation of domestic atomic weapons. However, it must be admitted that without the contribution of those and others, the creation of the atomic industry and atomic weapons in the USSR would stretch for many years.
Little Boy
The American uranium bomb that destroyed Hiroshima had a cannon structure. The Soviet nuclear scientists, creating RDS-1, focused on the "Nagasaki bomb" - Fat Boy, made of plutonium according to the implosion scheme.
Manfred von Ardenne, who developed a method of gas diffusion purification and separation of uranium isotopes in a centrifuge.
Operation Crossroads is a series of atomic bomb tests conducted by the United States on the Bikini Atoll in the summer of 1946. The goal was to experience the effect of atomic weapons on ships.
Help from overseas
In 1933, the German Communist Klaus Fuchs fled to England. After receiving a diploma in physics from the University of Bristol, he continued to work. In 1941, Fuchs announced his participation in atomic research to Soviet intelligence agent Jürgen Kuchinsky, who informed the Soviet ambassador Ivan Maisky. He instructed the military attache to urgently establish contact with Fuchs, whom they were going to ship as part of a group of scientists to the United States. Fuchs agreed to work for Soviet intelligence. Many soviet illegal immigrants were involved in the work with him: the spouses of Zarubins, Eitingon, Vasilevsky, Semenov and others. As a result of their vigorous activity, as early as January 1945, the USSR had a description of the construction of the first atomic bomb. At the same time, Soviet residency in the United States reported that Americans would need at least one year, but not more than five years, to create a substantial arsenal of atomic weapons. The report also said that the explosion of the first two bombs may be made in a few months.
Pioneers of nuclear fission
K.A. Petrzhak and G.N. Flerov
In 1940, in the laboratory of Igor Kurchatov, two young physicists discovered a new, very peculiar kind of radioactive decay of atomic nuclei - spontaneous fission.
Otto Gan
In December 1938, the German physicists Otto Gan and Fritz Strassmann, for the first time in the world, artificially split the nucleus of a uranium atom.
The Germans were the first to take the case. In December, their physicists Otto Gan and Fritz Strassmann, 1938, for the first time in the world, artificially split the nucleus of a uranium atom. In April, 1939 of the year, the military leadership of Germany received a letter from the professors of the University of Hamburg, P. Hartek and V. Groth, which indicated the fundamental possibility of creating a new type of high-performance explosive. Scientists wrote: “The country that is the first to be able to practically master the achievements of nuclear physics will gain absolute superiority over others.” And now, in the imperial Ministry of Science and Education, a meeting is being held on the theme “On a self-propagating (that is, a chain) nuclear reaction”. Among the participants are Professor E. Schumann, head of the research department of the Third Reich Arms Administration. Without delay, they moved from words to deeds. Already in June, the construction of the first German reactor plant at the Kummersdorf site near Berlin began in June of 1939. A law was passed banning the export of uranium outside Germany, and in the Belgian Congo urgently purchased a large amount of uranium ore.
Germany starts and ... loses
26 September 1939, when war was already raging in Europe, it was decided to classify all work related to the uranium problem and the implementation of the program, called the “Uranium Project”. The scientists involved in the project were initially quite optimistic: they considered it possible to create nuclear weapons within a year. Wrong, as life has shown.
22 organizations were involved in the project, including such renowned research centers as the Kaiser Wilhelm Society of Physics, the Hamburg University Institute for Physical Chemistry, the Berlin University of Physics and Technology, the Physics and Chemistry Institute of the University of Leipzig, and many others. The project was personally overseen by the imperial arms minister Albert Speer. IG Farbenindustry was charged with the production of uranium hexafluoride, from which it is possible to extract the uranium-235 isotope capable of maintaining a chain reaction. The same company was also charged with the construction of an isotope separation facility. Such venerable scientists as Heisenberg, Weizsäcker, von Ardenne, Riel, Pose, the Nobel Prize winner Gustav Hertz and others took part in the work directly.
Over the course of two years, the Heisenberg group conducted the research necessary to build an atomic reactor using uranium and heavy water. It was confirmed that only one of the isotopes can serve as an explosive, namely uranium-235, which is contained in a very small concentration in ordinary uranium ore. The first problem was how to isolate it from there. The starting point of the bomb creation program was an atomic reactor, for which - as a moderator of reaction - graphite or heavy water was required. German physicists chose water, thus creating a serious problem for themselves. After the occupation of Norway in the hands of the Nazis passed at the time the world's only plant for the production of heavy water. But there the stock of necessary product physicists was only tens of kilograms by the beginning of the war, and the Germans didn’t get them either - the French had increased their valuable products literally from under the nose of the Nazis. And in February, the British commandos abandoned in Norway by 1943, with the help of local resistance fighters, put the plant down. The implementation of the German nuclear program was under threat. The Germans did not end their misadventures: an experienced nuclear reactor exploded in Leipzig. The uranium project was supported by Hitler only as long as there was hope of obtaining super-powerful weapons until the end of the war he unleashed. Heisenberg invited Speer and asked directly: “When can we expect to create a bomb capable of hanging from a bomber?” The German leadership rationally considered that it does not make sense to force events. Let the scientists work calmly - they will have time for the next war. As a result, Hitler decided to focus scientific, industrial and financial resources only on projects that give the fastest return in creating new types of weapons. State funding for the uranium project has been minimized. Nevertheless, the work of scientists continued.
In 1944, Heisenberg received cast uranium plates for a large reactor facility, under which a special bunker had already been built in Berlin. The latest experiment to achieve a chain reaction was scheduled for January 1945, but on January 31, all equipment was quickly dismantled and sent from Berlin to the village of Haygerloch near the Swiss border, where it was deployed only in late February. The reactor contained 664 uranium cubes with a total weight of 1525 kg, surrounded by a graphite neutron reflector with a weight of 10 tons. In March, 1945 tons of heavy water were added to the active zone in March 1,5. 23 March to Berlin reported that the reactor has earned. But the joy was premature - the reactor did not reach a critical point, the chain reaction did not go. After recalculations, it turned out that the amount of uranium needs to be increased by at least 750 kg, proportionally increasing the mass of heavy water. But stocks of neither one nor the other no longer exists. The end of the Third Reich was inexorably approaching. April 23 American forces entered Higerloch. The reactor was dismantled and exported to the United States.
Meanwhile overseas
In parallel with the Germans (with only a slight lag), the development of atomic weapons was undertaken in England and in the USA. They began with a letter sent in September 1939 by Albert Einstein to US President Franklin Roosevelt. The initiators of the letter and the authors of most of the text were Hungarian physicists Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner and Edward Teller. The letter drew the President’s attention to the fact that Nazi Germany was conducting active research, as a result of which it could soon acquire an atomic bomb.
In the USSR, the first information about the work carried out both by the allies and by the enemy was reported to Stalin by intelligence as early as 1943. It was immediately decided to deploy such work in the Union. So began the Soviet atomic project. Tasks were received not only by scientists, but also by intelligence officers, for whom the extraction of nuclear secrets became the most important task.
Intelligence's most valuable information about the work on the atomic bomb in the United States has greatly helped the advancement of the Soviet nuclear project. Scientists participating in it managed to avoid dead-end search paths, thereby significantly accelerating the achievement of the final goal.
Experience of recent enemies and allies
Naturally, the Soviet leadership could not remain indifferent to the German nuclear developments. At the end of the war, a group of Soviet physicists was sent to Germany, among whom were future academicians Artsimovich, Kikoin, Khariton, Shchelkin. All were camouflaged in the form of colonels of the Red Army. The operation was led by First Deputy Commissar of Internal Affairs Ivan Serov, which opened any doors. In addition to the necessary German scientists, the "colonels" sought out tons of uranium metal, which, according to Kurchatov, reduced the work on the Soviet bomb by at least a year. Americans also took a lot of uranium from Germany, taking the specialists who worked on the project. And in the USSR, in addition to physicists and chemists, they sent mechanics, electrical engineers, glass blowers. Some were found in prisoner of war camps. For example, Max Steinbek, the future Soviet academic and vice-president of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR, was taken away when, at the whim of the camp commander, he was making a sundial. In total, at least 1000 German specialists worked on the atomic project in the USSR. The von Ardenne laboratory with a uranium centrifuge, the equipment of the Kaiser Institute of Physics, documentation, reagents were completely exported from Berlin. Within the framework of the atomic project, laboratories "A", "B", "C" and "G" were created, the scientists from which scientists from Germany became supervisors.
Laboratory A was headed by Baron Manfred von Ardenne, a talented physicist who developed the gas diffusion cleaning and uranium isotope separation method in a centrifuge. At first, his laboratory was located on the October Field in Moscow. Five to six Soviet engineers were assigned to each German specialist. Later, the laboratory moved to Sukhumi, and the famous Kurchatov Institute eventually grew on the October Field. In Sukhumi, a Sukhumi Institute of Physics and Technology was established on the basis of the von Ardenne laboratory. In 1947, the Ardenne was awarded the Stalin Prize for creating an industrial scale centrifuge for purifying uranium isotopes. Six years later, the Ardenne was twice the Stalinist laureate. He lived with his wife in a comfortable mansion, his wife played music on a piano brought from Germany. Other German experts were not offended: they came with their families, brought with them furniture, books, paintings, were provided with good salaries and food. Were they captives? Academician A.P. Aleksandrov, himself an active participant in the atomic project, remarked: "Of course, the German experts were prisoners, but we ourselves were prisoners."
Nikolaus Riel, a native of St. Petersburg who moved to Germany in the 1920s, became the head of the “B” laboratory, which conducted research in the field of radiation chemistry and biology in the Urals (now the city of Snezhinsk). Here, an old Russian acquaintance from Germany, the eminent Russian genetic biologist Timofeev-Resovsky (“Bison” after D. Granin’s novel) worked with Rile.
Having been recognized in the USSR as a researcher and talented organizer who knows how to find effective solutions to the most complicated problems, Dr. Riel became one of the key figures in the Soviet atomic project. After the successful test of the Soviet bomb, he became a Hero of Socialist Labor and a Stalin Prize laureate.
The work of the laboratory "B", organized in Obninsk, was headed by Professor Rudolf Pose, one of the pioneers in the field of nuclear research. Under his leadership, fast neutron reactors were created, the first in the Union of Nuclear Power Plants, the design of reactors for submarines began. The Obninsk facility became the basis for the organization of the A.I. Leipunsky. Pose worked until 1957 in Sukhumi, then at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna.
Gustav Hertz, the nephew of the famous 19th century physicist, himself a famous scientist, became the head of the laboratory “G” located in the Agudzy sanatorium in Sukhumi. He received recognition for a series of experiments that have confirmed the theory of the atom of Niels Bohr and quantum mechanics. The results of his very successful activity in Sukhumi were later used on an industrial plant built in Novouralsk, where in 1949 a filling for the first Soviet atomic bomb RDS-1 was developed. For his achievements in the atomic project, Gustav Hertz in 1951 was awarded the Stalin Prize.
German specialists who received permission to return home (of course, in the GDR), gave a non-disclosure subscription for 25 years of information about their participation in the Soviet atomic project. In Germany, they continued to work in their field. Thus, Manfred von Ardenne, twice awarded the National Prize of the GDR, served as director of the Physics Institute in Dresden, established under the auspices of the Scientific Council on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, led by Gustav Hertz. Hertz received the national award as the author of a three-volume work-textbook on nuclear physics. There, in Dresden, at the Technical University, worked and Rudolf Pose.
The participation of German scientists in the atomic project, as well as the successes of the intelligence officers, do not in the least detract from the merits of Soviet scientists, who by their selfless labor ensured the creation of domestic atomic weapons. However, it must be admitted that without the contribution of those and others, the creation of the atomic industry and atomic weapons in the USSR would stretch for many years.
Little Boy
The American uranium bomb that destroyed Hiroshima had a cannon structure. The Soviet nuclear scientists, creating RDS-1, focused on the "Nagasaki bomb" - Fat Boy, made of plutonium according to the implosion scheme.
Manfred von Ardenne, who developed a method of gas diffusion purification and separation of uranium isotopes in a centrifuge.
Operation Crossroads is a series of atomic bomb tests conducted by the United States on the Bikini Atoll in the summer of 1946. The goal was to experience the effect of atomic weapons on ships.
Help from overseas
In 1933, the German Communist Klaus Fuchs fled to England. After receiving a diploma in physics from the University of Bristol, he continued to work. In 1941, Fuchs announced his participation in atomic research to Soviet intelligence agent Jürgen Kuchinsky, who informed the Soviet ambassador Ivan Maisky. He instructed the military attache to urgently establish contact with Fuchs, whom they were going to ship as part of a group of scientists to the United States. Fuchs agreed to work for Soviet intelligence. Many soviet illegal immigrants were involved in the work with him: the spouses of Zarubins, Eitingon, Vasilevsky, Semenov and others. As a result of their vigorous activity, as early as January 1945, the USSR had a description of the construction of the first atomic bomb. At the same time, Soviet residency in the United States reported that Americans would need at least one year, but not more than five years, to create a substantial arsenal of atomic weapons. The report also said that the explosion of the first two bombs may be made in a few months.
Pioneers of nuclear fission
K.A. Petrzhak and G.N. Flerov
In 1940, in the laboratory of Igor Kurchatov, two young physicists discovered a new, very peculiar kind of radioactive decay of atomic nuclei - spontaneous fission.
Otto Gan
In December 1938, the German physicists Otto Gan and Fritz Strassmann, for the first time in the world, artificially split the nucleus of a uranium atom.
Information