In Nazi Germany, the development of nuclear weapons was never as ambitious as in the United States and the USSR. According to the American historian, Pulitzer Prize laureate Richard Rhodes, the reasons for this could be the German leader's interest in missiles and the errors in the calculations of scientists. In an interview with the host of the SophieCo program, Sofiko Shevardnadze, he told how the allies took advantage of this and how Stalin was aware of their developments.
Mr. Rhodes, the process of fission of an atomic nucleus, which formed the basis of the most deadly weapon on earth, was discovered by accident by two German radiochemists a few months before the outbreak of World War II. However, Nazi Germany did not rush to develop nuclear weapons immediately. Moreover, its program in this area has never been as ambitious as the projects of other world powers. Why? Didn't Hitler want such a weapon?
- At that time, bureaucratic chaos reigned in Germany. Attempts have been made to start a variety of programs. But in the end it all boils down to the fact that Hitler was well versed in matters related to nuclear energy, but he was much more interested in missiles.
They were designed for him. In addition, it was difficult to convince scientists to take on a large-scale project. They wanted to start small and continue in that spirit for a while. Thus, the development of the German nuclear weapons program was hampered by many factors.
Is it possible that German scientists, like Nobel Prize winner in physics Werner Heisenberg, deliberately misled the German government about the complexity of creating a bomb? Could they thus resist Nazism, arrange a kind of sabotage?
- That's what they said after the war. However, there is ample evidence that in reality they just made some pretty dumb mistakes. In 1945, Heisenberg and other German scientists were interned in England. Upon hearing the news of the bombing of Hiroshima, they asked Heisenberg how much uranium would be required for such a bomb. And he replied that several tons. This indicates that Heisenberg never made any further progress in developing a nuclear reactor and did not know that uranium-235 was used to create the bombs, which required only a few kilograms, not tons. All indications are that they were not trying to design a bomb, but were mainly working on a nuclear reactor.
By the end of the war, they had a reactor half the size they needed, and they used heavy water as a moderator. But to build a full-scale reactor, they lacked either uranium or heavy water. It is obvious that mistakes and other problems prevented the creation of the German atomic bomb.
Be that as it may, German and Japanese officials estimated the volume of work on the creation of the bomb and concluded that no one could carry out such a project. Perhaps arrogance is to blame? How did it happen that they underestimated the countries of the Anti-Hitler coalition so much?
Promotional video:
“There was no doubt arrogance, especially from Germany. But in Japan, they assessed the scale of the work and realized that the allocation of a special isotope of uranium would not be enough for all the electricity available in the country and all the copper obtained per year for the production of wire.
“Nevertheless, America and Great Britain were confident that Germany was working on the bomb and was ahead of them in this regard by several years. Perhaps it was the fear of Germany's scientific might that forced the coalition to give the project all its strength?
“I think that's why first of all England and then the United States started working on the bomb. They knew that those scientists who remained in Germany after the Jews were driven out of there were professionals of the highest level, and assumed that the government would probably be interested in the possibility of creating a nuclear bomb. But it turned out differently. I think it was only at the end of 1944 that we learned that Germany was not working on the bomb. This is what prompted America to develop the project.
The creation of a bomb requires colossal financial investments, which the countries participating in the Second World War could hardly afford, at least until they were sure that they would end up with a bomb. Who pushed whom to work on it - the government of scientists or vice versa?
- In 1992, I had a chance to talk with the Soviet and Russian physicist Viktor Adamskiy, who participated in the development of the Soviet hydrogen bomb. So, he owns very wise words: in order to ultimately create a bomb, the government must trust the scientists, and the scientists must trust the government. After all, here it was required first to build huge installations for uranium enrichment. Another option was quickly thought up - to produce weapons-grade plutonium using a nuclear reactor. In any case, a colossal amount of investment was required, which might not have resulted in the creation of a bomb. So trust is indispensable here. In Nazi Germany, such trust was not established, but in the United States it was.
That's it! So how did the American government decide to throw all industry efforts on a project that could well fail? Where did this trust come from?
- Do not forget that the then President Franklin Roosevelt was a deeply educated man, he kept in touch with the American scientific establishment for many years. Thanks to this, scientists were able to explain to him, even schematically, how much the creation of the bomb would affect the war. Robert Oppenheimer himself, who led the top-secret bomb development project, told the scientists he was recruiting to work on it:
“I cannot tell you what you will be doing, but I can say for sure that if successful, the Second World War may end. And maybe all the wars."
So all the same: did the scientists aspire to quickly get down to work on the creation of weapons of mass destruction, or did they simply believe that they were helping to end the war? What were they guided by?
- They wanted to create an atomic bomb faster than Germany, because they understood that such a weapon could bring victory to the side that comes to this goal first. In addition, they believed that their work would be a step towards a world without wars, as Oppenheimer outlined his vision for them. Such weapons will be so destructive that the countries that possess them will never dare to go to war against each other. This was the idea behind the work of these scientists. They knew perfectly well that they were working to create weapons of incredible destructive power. I'm not sure, however, that it was fully thought out how it will be applied.
Subsequent use, yes. According to a declassified US Army report, in 1945, Nazi agents attempted to damage power generators at one of the Manhattan Project facilities. Have there been other attacks on the infrastructure of the nuclear weapons program in an attempt to derail America's efforts?
- I did not know about the case you mentioned. But it is known that the Japanese launched unmanned balloons with explosives across the Pacific Ocean in the hope that a powerful wind stream would carry them to the United States and there they would destroy something. Indeed, one of these balls damaged the power line that supplied electricity to the plutonium production plant on the Pacific coast of Washington state. The work of the plant stopped for 24 hours until a new line was connected. It was pure coincidence, but at the same time the most successful attempt at sabotage.
Less than a month passed from the moment of testing to the drop of bombs on Japan. Did the United States know what catastrophic consequences the atomic bombing of Hiroshima would lead to when they made this decision?
- Yes and no. There was one test, but it took place in the desert in the southeastern United States. And despite the fact that the explosion was colossal, one of the witnesses to the test later said that no one thought that such a weapon would be detonated over the city. In addition, the people at the Los Alamos Science Laboratory, where the bombs were created, assumed that the Japanese would take cover in bomb shelters, as they did every time they saw a squadron of planes flying to bomb the city.
But there was only one plane, and the residents of Hiroshima decided that it was intelligence, which checks the weather before a possible arrival of bombers. I don’t want to justify the American policy, which included mass attacks on Japanese cities with incendiary bombs. All these cities with a population of more than 50 thousand people have already been destroyed to the ground. The only reason Hiroshima and Nagasaki remained untouched was because the US Air Force had reserved them for the coming atomic bombing. There is no doubt that the military command was fully aware of its actions. Before that, the Americans had been carrying out routine incendiary raids for ten months.
Why did the Americans bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki with a difference of several days?
- When it became known about the catastrophic destruction as a result of the nuclear attack on Hiroshima, the United States warned the Japanese about the possibility of a new strike.
From 6 to 9 August - the day of the bombing of Nagasaki - millions of leaflets were dropped over Japanese territory with the words "Ask your leadership what happened to Hiroshima."
So the Americans tried, albeit with very limited methods, with the help of aviation, to warn the Japanese population and avoid the use of a second bomb. Yet she was dropped as soon as it became possible.
If Japan did not surrender, would Truman continue to drop atomic bombs on the country?
- Truman was shocked by the destructive power of this weapon, and he told the vice president his famous phrase: "I want to stop this if possible, I do not like the idea of killing all the children there." On the other hand, Los Alamos was ready. I saw a memo from Robert Oppenheimer to the military leader of the nuclear weapons program. It said: "If we start making composite uranium-plutonium bombs, then by October we will be able to produce six such bombs a month."
Therefore, it is obvious that with such weapons, the United States would continue to use them. By that time, there was practically nothing to destroy in Japan. The next target, the bomb for which was prepared around August 10, was to be the Japanese rail network. A new bombing would be a terrible blow to the starving population of the country.
Truman's thoughts at that moment are interesting. When he was informed that the bomb was ready, he wrote in his diary that it would be used against military targets, not women and children, and that the United States, as the leader of the free world, could not do otherwise. Why, after only a few days, he changed his position and still dropped a bomb on women and children? Why did he give up high moral principles?
- In 1943, the United States decided to start bombing European cities. In part, we took this step because we could not yet land in Europe, and this worried Stalin very much, who wondered if we were trying to contribute to his defeat and destruction. America, in turn, was worried that the Soviet Union could sign a peace agreement with the Germans without her participation and make her life difficult. Therefore, while we did not have the opportunity to send troops into Europe, we resorted to the only option available to us - bombing. And when it turned out that US strikes were not capable of hitting targets requiring high precision, for example, specific factories and plants, we did the same as the British did before us - switched to carpet bombing.
The logic was simple: if we bomb the factory anyway and kill the workers inside, then why not blow up their houses in the vicinity at the same time? Then you can be sure that the workers did not survive. But in fact, the basis for carpet bombing was that bombs sometimes fell as much as five kilometers from a given target - such were the technical capabilities at that time. Therefore, when we started bombing European cities, and then even more deliberately began to throw incendiary bombs on Japanese cities, in which houses were mostly built of wood and paper, the moral issue was already resolved. Most likely, Truman made such an entry in his diary simply for complacency.
In the United States, the atomic bombing of Japan is officially justified by the fact that it forced the Japanese to surrender and thus helped to save many lives. But maybe, in fact, the reason for the surrender was not the bombs, but the impending invasion of the Soviet Union?
- In 2005, an American historian of Japanese origin published a work on this topic, which, in my opinion, deserves the greatest confidence. He studied Soviet, Japanese and American documents of that time and came to the conclusion that it was precisely the Soviet offensive against Manchuria, which began on August 9, that pushed Japan to such a decision. When Stalin learned about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, he was finally convinced that this new bomb was not disinformation at all, but a real weapon.
Initially, Stalin planned to start the Manchurian operation on August 15, but realized that it would be too late and the war in the East would end without the participation of the USSR. Therefore, he decided to act faster and ordered the offensive to begin on the ninth. This, it seems, pushed the Japanese authorities to the decision to surrender, since now they risked being caught between the two armies. On the other hand, it was the atomic bombs that forced the emperor of Japan for the first time in the country's history to intervene in the political system and call for surrender. Therefore, it can be considered that the atomic bombing was an indirect reason for Japan's acceptance of the terms of the Potsdam Declaration. I suppose otherwise the events would not have developed according to the same scenario.
When Truman told Stalin that the United States had created a bomb of incredible power, the Soviet leader only smiled, as if informing the Americans that he had no idea what it was about. Of course, he knew that the Allies were constructing a bomb. Why bluff?
- It is hard to say. It is known that Stalin received detailed reports on the progress of Project Manhattan, where many Soviet intelligence officers were deployed. So by the time Truman informed Stalin about the bomb, the USSR already had, if not plans, then at least a very good idea of what kind of weapon it was, what its principle of operation was, and so on. Perhaps Stalin did not particularly trust this information, but he certainly had it. Most likely, he did not react in any way to Truman's words because he did not want to show the American president how much he really knows.
How informed was Stalin? You said there were Soviet intelligence agents in the Manhattan Project. How much did they learn about US efforts to build the atomic bomb?
- Everything, including even the design of the weapon.
The information was transmitted mainly by Americans and British, who were engaged in espionage for idealistic reasons. After the collapse of the USSR, in 1992, I saw in Russia copies of the drawings of the bomb, which indicated the dimensions of its various parts.
True, Russian scientists soon prudently decided to remove these documents from public access. So the USSR had all the necessary data. I have already quoted Adamsky's words that if the government does not trust its scientists - and Stalin did not trust them, then there will be no conditions for the development of a serious nuclear program. In the Soviet Union, large-scale work on the creation of the atomic bomb was launched only after the war.
When Stalin found out about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he gathered Soviet scientists and said: “Make me a bomb, comrades. All the resources of the country are at your disposal”. It took Soviet scientists about the same amount of time to develop the first bomb as ours.
Nobel laureate Niels Bohr met in Copenhagen with Soviet specialists and revealed some secrets to them. How was this allowed? Weren't the scientists closely monitored?
- After the war, Bohr returned to Denmark, and there the control was not as strict as in the United States. In addition, Bohr only told Soviet agents what was not officially classified. Admittedly, though unintentionally, he did give them important information, which was also revealed in a book published by the Manhattan Project, which outlined the entire bomb program. This book also contained important information about the problem associated with a particular type of reactor that was used to produce plutonium.
In the late 1940s, America even had to shut down all such reactors for a couple of years to sort out this problem. Bohr told the Soviet agents about this. He himself, however, was not a spy. Remember his famous meeting with Werner Heisenberg in Copenhagen at the height of the war. Then Heisenberg seriously angered Bohr by trying to find out what the Americans were doing. This forever ruined their long-standing friendship.
In the 1940s, physicists tried to achieve greater independence from the authorities supporting their research, and sometimes even conflicted with them. Scientists had their own ideas about war and peace. Was it genuine independence or was it just an illusion designed to appease them?
- I think the scientists were really independent. After all, they could calculate everything, and therefore they understood how destructive the new weapon would be, and knew that if another country took possession of it, the world would be on the verge of a terrible war. All of them, especially Bohr, hoped that if they could convince statesmen of the excessive danger of nuclear weapons, then it might be possible to avoid a catastrophe.
Scientists foresaw an arms race and hoped for a post-war international agreement to prevent it. But the authorities, in turn, were not ready to listen to such arguments and did not understand how the new weapon would change the idea of ultimate destructive power. As a result, we now have parity, but it was not achieved before the creation of nuclear weapons, but after, when both the weapons themselves and the dangers associated with them became quite real. And, in my opinion, it is not very wise on the part of humanity: it was possible to achieve parity without nuclear weapons and all the dangers that they pose.