Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Soviet Bomb

Starting point is 00:00:00 On August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union successfully tested its first atomic bomb. The announcement shocked the world, especially the United States, which predicted the Soviets wouldn't have nuclear weapons until the mid-1950s. The big question was, how did the Soviets make the bomb so fast? Well, the Americans inadvertently helped them, as did the resources they captured during the war. Learn more about how the Soviets got the bomb on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed.

Starting point is 00:00:53 It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. One of the biggest advances in physics in the first half of the 20th century was the discovery of the structure of the atom and a nucleus. The discoveries of the nucleus, radiation, and the identification of radioactive elements were some of the greatest discoveries of this period. While the Russians were heavily involved in the physics community at this time, they weren't among the most prominent names, nor were they the ones making the most significant discoveries. And that's not to say that Russian physicists

Starting point is 00:01:36 weren't good, just that Russia wasn't the epicenter of the physics world at this point. The culmination of these discoveries, at least for the purpose of this episode, was the discovery of nuclear fission in December of 1938 by a German team that included Otto Hahn, Fritz Strassman, Lisa Meintner, and Otto Frisch. The discovery was exciting for physicists, and many researchers around the world began their own independent research into nuclear fission. Most focus on generating power via controlled fission reactions, but several governments had a different idea. they realized that the splitting of the atom could be done in an uncontrolled reaction, which could, in theory, result in a massive explosion. Russian physicists such as Yaakov Zeldovich, Georgi Flairov, and Igor Kurchadov, understood the physics well enough to see its military potential.

Starting point is 00:02:30 However, for the Soviet Union, its fission research had to be halted due to the start of the Second World War and the German invasion in 1941. By 1942, Georgie Flerov noticed that the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom had all stopped publishing research on nuclear fission. He realized that this meant that other countries had to be working on creating an atomic bomb. He reported this information to Joseph Stalin, who approved the Soviet atomic bomb project in 1942. While the Soviets did have an atomic bomb program on paper, it wasn't really feasible at this, this time, given they were in the middle of a life or death struggle with the Germans.

Starting point is 00:03:11 Even before the war, there had been issues with conducting nuclear physics research in the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union had almost none of the infrastructure needed to extract uranium more, and at that time had not found any deposits of uranium within their borders. As uranium was needed for research, in particular enriched uranium, it essentially halted all scientific experimentation. The Soviet program at this time was also much smaller than. than the American program with approximately just 20 physicists working on the project. Their research primarily focused on general atomic fission that could support both nuclear reactors and possibly weapons. However, the Soviet program gained a new urgency in 1945 when the

Starting point is 00:03:54 Trinity test was conducted in New Mexico and two atomic bombs were dropped over Japan. Knowing that the Americans now had a working atom bomb and with the war with Germany now behind them, the Soviet atomic program became its top priority. Despite all the money and attention the program received, in 1945, the Soviets were far behind, not just the Americans, but also the British. Yet within four years, they managed to detonate their own atomic bomb. So how were they able to do this with relatively limited resources and a post-war economic infrastructure that was all but depleted?

Starting point is 00:04:32 Well, for starters, they were able to create a solid research program. The Soviet atomic program's architecture fused a scientific core inside the shell of the state security apparatus. In September of 1945, Stalin created the special committee under Lovrenti Beria to drive the bomb effort with emergency powers over resources, personnel, and security. Beria was the chief henchman of Joseph Stalin and the man who oversaw many of his purges and killings. And he will be the subject of his own episode in the future, as his story is both fascinating and hard. horrific. The first chief directorate led by Boris Vanikoff managed the sprawling new industry, and Igor Kurchadov, the talented experimentalist with a gift for organizing teams, became its scientific leader. Khradov and Yulia Karitin built a research institute known as KB11 in Sara of Russia,

Starting point is 00:05:24 and around them they gathered a formidable cadre of scientists that included the elite of the Soviet scientific community. The state poured money and manpower into mines, reactors, chemical plants, Richmond facilities. Gulag labor was used heavily in uranium mining and construction. Even in a devastated post-war economy, nuclear work received absolute priority in materials and transportation. Another big reason for the success of the Soviet program was espionage. Within the Manhattan Project, the American Atomic Program, there were multiple cases of atomic spies who would provide the Soviets information on the development of the American bomb. The Soviets had infiltrated. the Manhattan Project from the very beginning.

Starting point is 00:06:09 The majority of the research took place at a secret facility in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and was led by Robert Oppenheimer. Two bomb designs were developed during the Manhattan Project, a uranium bomb, which was used over Hiroshima, and a plutonium bomb which was used over Nagasaki. While the Soviets had multiple spies who infiltrated the Manhattan Project, for the sake of time, I will only discuss three of the confirmed spies. The most well-known spy was Klaus Fuchs. Fuchs was a German scientist who was originally working on the British bomb program.

Starting point is 00:06:41 He was brought on because of his staunchly anti-Nazi views, but the program leaders weren't aware that he was also rabidly pro-Soviet. Fuchs supplied a steady stream of technical reports on bomb theory, implosion hydrodynamics, and design parameters. He also provided the Soviet Union with a technical report and specifications needed for fission bombs of both the plutonium and uranium designs. His motivations to aid the Soviet Union are typically attributed to two reasons. The first was that he was simply a communist. And the second was his belief that nuclear weapons should not be held by a single country. He thought the best way to guarantee global security was for multiple countries to hold the bomb, as if more than one country had the weapon, there was the potential for retaliation if it was ever used.

Starting point is 00:07:28 Another spy was Harry Gold. Gold was from Switzerland, but worked in the United States. as a laboratory chemist. Notably, he did not work at Los Alamos, so he was used as a communications liaison for the spies who were working on the project. He got caught passing information gathered from fuchs that was given to the Soviets. Gold's arrest led to other Soviet spies getting arrested who were also involved in the Manhattan Project. And one of these spies was David Greenglass, who was an American machinist who worked on the Manhattan Project. Greengrass was arrested and admitted to having past sketches of lens geometries

Starting point is 00:08:03 that help Soviet analysts avoid fruitless designs. Another key spy was the physicist Theodore Hall. Hall was one of the youngest scientists recruited to work on the Manhattan Project. By 1944, Hall felt it was impossible for the Germans to make the atomic bomb and was worried about an American monopoly on nuclear weapons. He was also fearful that a nuclear monopoly would lead to fascism in the United States. That, coupled with General Leslie Gross, the director of the Manhattan Project, stating that the real target of the bomb was the Soviet Union,

Starting point is 00:08:36 resulted in Hall reporting on scientists, conditions, and basic science that was being conducted in Los Alamos. Hall, Green Glass, and Fuchs were the only confirmed spies working in Los Alamos until a fourth, Oscar Seabor, was identified in 2019. It's believed that there were probably more informants for the Soviets working on the Manhattan Project who were never discovered. The spying efforts certainly were helpful to the Soviet Union, as they were able to altogether avoid some tests that would have been needed to determine such things as the critical mass of uranium or plutonium required. In general, spying accelerated the process because they didn't have to go through all of the testing and theoretical debates that the Americans had to go through.

Starting point is 00:09:21 They basically had the equivalent of a cheat sheet with many of the answers to basic questions. Even though spies were helping the Soviets get information, the Soviets were that the reports they were getting from the American agents were false. And for that reason, the Soviets didn't simply copy and reverse engineer the American bomb, but instead just used it as a guide for their own scientists. Another thing that spurred the Soviet program was the use of captured scientists and resources from the war to advance their program. The Soviets recruited or compelled German specialists to help them.

Starting point is 00:09:57 Manfred von Ardenn, Gustav Hertz, Peter Theson, and Nicholas R. real contributed to isotope separation concepts, vacuum technology, and uranium metallurgy. Their work didn't replace the Soviet scientific core. Instead, it accelerated specific industrial bottlenecks such as high vacuum pumps, cascade control, and reactor-grade uranium metal. They also didn't trust the German scientists working with them, which is why the Germans were relegated to lower priority projects and not the core of the program. All of the the things I've mentioned so far were important to the development of the Soviet bomb program. However, all the physicists in the world and all of America's atomic secrets would be for nothing

Starting point is 00:10:40 if they couldn't get their hands on uranium and develop the ability to enrich it. While the work at Los Alamos gets most of the attention from the Manhattan Project, it was the enrichment of uranium and the creation of plutonium where the vast majority of the money was spent. So too was the case in the Soviet Union. The war's end gave the Soviet Union, the raw materials that they needed. Soviet trophy brigades and security teams scoured occupied territory for uranium ore and equipment. The uranium mines in Yakima-Chukla-Savakia and the newly created Vizmat uranium mining enterprise in East Germany became early lifelines for nuclear material. The Germans also had diffusion plants, which would be used to enrich uranium for the bomb.

Starting point is 00:11:25 It's estimated that the aid of the German scientists and materials allowed the Soviets to speed up the program by at least six months and possibly more. The culmination of the Soviet atomic bomb program took place on August 29, 1949, at the semi-Polaten's test site in Kazakhstan. The USSR detonated a device that they dubbed RDS1, which the Western observers called Joe 1. The yield, a little over 20 kilotons, was similar to a fat man-class implosion device, which was used over Nagasaki. The United States learned of the first Soviet atomic test just days after through atmospheric monitoring. After the detonation, radioactive debris drifted eastward and was detected by U.S. Air Force aircraft

Starting point is 00:12:10 equipped with special air sampling filters flying near Japan. The samples contained isotopes characteristic of a nuclear explosion, and further analysis at laboratories in the United States confirmed that the Soviet Union had successfully tested an atomic weapon. President Harry Truman publicly announced the discovery on September 23, 1949, ending any doubt about the Soviet Union's nuclear capability. The political shock was almost immediate. American strategy had rested on having an atomic monopoly, and that was now gone. In Moscow, the success vindicated Stalin's decision to back various unforgiving methods, and elevated Kurchadov and his colleagues to a protected elite status within the country. The tests launched the next phase of competition, a sprint to thermonuclear weapons that would soon transform strategic doctrine on both sides. So going back to the original question, how did the Soviets make their bombs so fast? Well, it was a mix of all the factors that I described.

Starting point is 00:13:14 Spying and intelligence gathered from the Americans were undoubtedly a part of it. However, the capture of Eastern European uranium mines and German enrichment facilities also greatly sped the, the process along. But underlying everything was a monomaniacal pursuit of the bomb by Stalin and Beria after the war, which allowed the Soviet Union to achieve weapons parity with the United States and become the second member of the Nuclear Club. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Austin Otkin and Cameron Kiefer. Research and writing for this episode was provided by Olivia Ash.

Starting point is 00:13:54 Today's review comes from listener Wes Joe over on Apple Podcasts. in the United States. They write, Muibien, extremely important, very informative. Unlike other history podcasts, no political bias is shown. It's now my favorite. Well, thanks, Wes. I always enjoy hitting number one on any podcast chart, even if it's just someone's personal chart. We will be waiting for you in the Completionist Club when you're ready.

Starting point is 00:14:19 As always, if you leave me a review on any major podcast app, Facebook, or Discord, you too can have it read on the show.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Soviet Bomb

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