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RT explores the relics of the Soviet push for atomic supremacy
Published: 17 July, 2010, 02:00
Edited: 20 July, 2010, 17:57
TAGS: Arms, Nuclear, Russia, History, USA
Sixty years after the beginning of the nuclear era a place, hidden among the bamboo trees, still has holds many secrets. The story of Germans behind the Soviet Union’s very own Manhattan Project is just one of them.
It was an event that would mark the beginning of the atomic age. 65-years ago a test, code-named Trinity, would see the US win the race to produce a nuclear weapon.
America spent the modern-day equivalent of more than $20 billion on the project, in a bid to beat off international rivals.
It was the culmination of the Manhattan Project. The first American nuclear explosive device, nicknamed “The Gadget,” went off in New Mexico just weeks before devastating the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
Many, including the godfather of the Atomic Bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer, were terrified by the power of the deadly mushroom cloud.
“We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent,” Oppenheimer has famously said.
The echo of that blast carried far beyond the Atlantic.In the Soviet Union, experiments with nuclear energy were underway, too. But just like the US, in a research institute on the Black Sea coast the main roles were played by German scientists.
There used to be a top-secret nuclear facility, and aside from these lions, the entrance was guarded by Soviet soldiers. The lab was hidden deep in Abkhazia’s subtropical paradise.
Some 300 Germans – top nuclear physicists, their assistants, family members and even personal chefs-- were brought to this closed compound in Abkhazia by the order of Joseph Stalin in 1945.
The Nazis were famous for their highly developed nuclear research programs, so after World War II most German physics and chemistry professors had almost no other option but to work for either Moscow or Washington. A fierce competition between the USSR and America to develop nuclear weapons was on. And even though the US was the first to successfully carry out a nuclear test, their rivals caught up pretty quickly.
“The Germans here thoroughly analyzed the US media reports about the blasts, and even from that they were able to say what had to be done next,” Yury Matveev from the Sukhum Physics and Technology Research Institute says.
Aleksander Chachakov is a veteran of the Sukhumi research institute. He says many people here remember the time the Germans successfully accomplished their mission, and were let go by Soviet authorities in the 1950s. He’s showing us the 4,000-book library with rare physics digests in German, the office where the head professor used to work, and the equipment he left for Russian scientists.
“This machine is called the spectrograph. It’s a high-definition device, a very precise one. Even when the Germans left, our scientists used to get great results with this equipment,” Chachakov explains.
But the rest of the building where German physicists used to work on the Soviet A-bomb are totally deserted, all lines are disconnected, and nowadays people rarely visit these dark hallways.
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15 comments
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Bogdanov I did not mean to imply that Fermi was not involved in the development of the Atomic bomb .... poor sentence structure on my part, only that he was part of the US development before the US got into WW2. Physics is international and universal. Yes, Europe and Germany were the center of nuclear Physics at the time. There was no Physics known in the USA that was not known, or could have been known, in the USSR. The key to the development of the Atomic bomb in my view was organization, focus, the right choice of the use of enriched Uranium and Plutonium, and the development/production of enriched Uranium and Plutonium. The European scientist contributed mostly to the choice of Uranium and Plutonium. ( In fact Leo Szilard, Hungarian immigrant , probably contributed more theoretical physics to this part that any other single individual-in fact he applied for a patent.) The enrichment processes were designed by Harold C. Urey born in Walkerton, Indiana(Oak Ridge diffusion process), and Ernest Lawrence ,born Canton, South Dakota( magnetic separation ), in my opinion, one of the most significant contributions to the development. The original Uranium ore came from a stockpile in the US that was acquired from the Belgium Congo, too. General Graves and Robert Oppenheimer are responsible for the organization and focus. So, yes, I would agree that the theoretical physics for the Atomic Bomb came more from European scientist, whereas the engineering and development was mostly from American scientist and engineers.
GaryMax, It is the first time I hear that Fermi "did not work on the Atomic Bomb"?! If fact, as far as I know, he (together with Edward Teller) was the actual brain behind the creation of the first functional bomb. Einstein was not directly involved in the Manhattan project. That is true. Though, I brought his name just to show that the top German scientists were in the US and not in the Soviet Union as the article claims. Also, I didn't say that Germans were driving the American nuclear weapon program. I just said that the top German scientists (directly or not) were behind such program. This includes their knowledge and previous research they conducted (including the knowledge what doesn't work) Though, I stressed that the Project was driven by the international (foreign) team of scientists. Lets take some key scientists from the Manhattan Project: Enrico Fermi -- Italian, Niels Bohr -- Danish, Edward Teller -- Hungarian, Otto Frisch -- Austrian, Rudolf Peierls -- German, Felix Bloch -- Swiss, ... Of course, I am, in no way, trying to diminish role of American scientists, such as Oppenheimer or Seaborg. But, my point was -- the Americans couldn't create the Nuclear Weapon relying only on that knowledge they had at that time. Not without help of the European scientists. And, don't forget, that between WW1 and WW2, Germany was practically a world center when it comes to Physics and science, for that matter. So, one way or another the majority of physicists working on the Manhattan Project were influenced by Germans.
GaryMax, Now we are in agreement. :-)