Klaus Fuchs And The Atomic Bomb

was Klaus Fuchs.
Klaus Fuchs was responsible for providing the Soviet Union with crucial information about the Manhattan project and the development of the atom bomb, the importance and value of the information that he gave the Russians is unfathomable. “By handing over the secret of the plutonium bomb and implosion to the Soviets, Fuchs allowed the Soviet bomb project to skip the length and astounding expensive development stage that had led the Manhattan project to that solution.” Fuchs alone sped the Soviet Union’s atomic bomb program up by months allowing them to skip months of expensive, tedious, and resource consuming work. “With the great deal of information stolen by Soviet spies, the question of its usefulness and applicability
still remains. It has already been pointed out that the Soviet plutonium reactor mirrored the U.S. reactor at Hanford.
Another crucial factor in the development of the bomb was developing a method for isotope separation and diffusion. The United States tried three methods of diffusion before settling on gaseous diffusion. This process cost the U.S. four hundred million dollars, used up 86,000 tons of silver, and occupied 24,000 skilled men; 128 carloads of electrical equipment arrived at Oak Ridge every two weeks during the effort. The U.S.S.R. simply lacked the electric power for such an undertaking, yet had the information on gaseous diffusion delivered to its scientists by Klaus Fuchs, thus saving significant time in their bomb developments.” The information that Klaus Fuchs provided was by itself enough to tremendously help the Soviets atomic bomb program, saving them months of expensive work. However, Fuchs was not the only one to provide valuable information about the atomic bomb to the Soviets. Ted Hall and David Greenglass were also passing on a large amount of information and secrets to the Soviets. Most of the information provided by Hall and Greenglass had already been provided by Fucks. But with the information provided by Hall and Greenglass the Soviets created a system by which they could double check the information that they were receiving to
ensure it accuracy.
There is no doubt that spies and the secret information that they stole about the Manhattan project played an extremely vital role in the development of the Soviet Union’s atom bomb. “Regardless of these meticulous experiments and calculations, it is evident that the atom bomb spies played an extremely vital role in the Soviet project. This war-ravaged nation, which suffered approximately 13,600,000 military and 7,720,000 civilian casualties in World War II, whose industrial base, and country for that matter, was devastated by the war, was able to complete one of the greatest undertakings in the history of science in only four years. Its own premier scientists, such as Abram Ioffe, believed that the U.S.S.R. “did not have the expertise of the top-flight scientists working for the Western allies” and would not be able to finish the project in the near future. But this nation was provided with information on the development of the Allied bomb that Ioffe noted was “precise and complete.” At the time, Ioffe stated that the “information reduces the volume of work by many months, facilitates the choice of direction, and frees the Soviets from extended searches.” The Soviet Union was devastated after fighting WWII, their economy and their industrial bases were both suffering from the war, had it not been for the stolen information that they received there is a good chance that the Soviet Union would not have been able to build the atom bomb in the time frame that they did. But with the help of stolen secret information the almost crippled Soviet Union was able to build an atom bomb with in four years’ agents all odds. Espionage reduced the volume of work that was needed by months, saving Russia from countless hours of research and trial and ear. The Soviet Union was able to bypass months of special research and possibly years of laborious phases of the project were bypassed due to the information provide to the scientist.
Soviet Russia had the scientist needed to build the atom bomb, most of which were world-class physicist, but their ability to develop the atom bomb in four years must be attributed to Espionage and the spies at Los Alamos. “There is no doubt that the Soviet Union would eventually have developed an atomic bomb on its own. The issue is how much time and effort they saved by having the stolen secrets from Los Alamos. No one knows for sure (at least no one in the U.S.). However, it is generally believed that these thefts saved the Soviet Union somewhere between three and five years of development time.” The undoubtable truth is that the Soviet Union would have been able to build an atomic bomb of their own but not by 1949 without the help of espionage. The first Soviet atomic bomb made was undoubtable an American bomb, coped and stolen with the help of soviet spies. Espionage played a critical role in the Soviet Union’s development of the atomic bomb and successfully changed the cores of history.