In February, the Soviet Union succeeded in developing the atomic bomb, which shocked the world. However, the truth is jaw-dropping, and there is an earth-shattering espionage case hidden behind it. In 1949, the Soviet Union's first atomic bomb was successful, and behind the scenes, it was a British spy who gave the Soviet Union the most core atomic bomb secrets of the United States.
Let's uncover the spy story behind the success of the Soviet atomic bomb. How did the contribution of these spies help the Soviet Union create the atomic bomb? Why did British spies help the Soviet Union?
On July 16, 1945, the United States successfully tested the world's first atomic bomb, marking the beginning of nuclear domination. A week after the test explosion, the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union convened the Potsdam Conference in Berlin, and the United States ** Truman showed off the new American ** to Stalin.
Let's explore this unknown historical event.
The atomic bomb was a secret to American world domination**, but Stalin was not interested in it, much to Truman's confusion. He believed that the atomic bomb was the best way to eliminate the threat, and that as long as the United States mastered the secret, it would be able to dominate the world, and other countries would have to submit to the United States.
Even then US Secretary of State Berners said: "It will take at least 7 to 10 years for any other country to build an atomic bomb." And Groves, the head of the American Manhattan project, believes that even if the Soviet Union can create an atomic bomb, it will take at least 20 years.
Originally, it was thought that four years later, the United States would suppress the Soviet Union with its nuclear superiority, but in 1949, the Soviet Union successfully tested the first atomic bomb, and the United States learned the news only by virtue of the drastic changes in radioactive elements over the atmosphere.
Four years later, in 1953, the Soviet Union successfully tested the first hydrogen bomb, nine months later than the United States, which caused the United States to suffer a big blow. However, with the cracking of an espionage case in 1949, the reasons why the Soviet Union was able to quickly develop an atomic bomb also emerged.
On September 5, 1945, Igor Guzenko, a military attache translator at the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa, Canada, left the embassy with a heavy heart. Guzenko has been in charge of encrypted communications between Zabotin and Moscow.
However, he received a notification from Zabotin that Moscow decided to immediately recall him and his family to return home. This news was difficult for Guzenko to accept, because he had become accustomed to the superior living environment in Canada.
His family has just stepped into happiness and they have moved into a luxury apartment to welcome a new life. However, the Canadian notice confused their whole family and asked him to return to the Soviet Union.
This was unacceptable to them, and after much deliberation, they decided to stay in Canada. However, the condition of staying in Canada is required"Gifts"Moved**. Fortunately, the nature of Guzenko's work gave him access to many classified documents that Zabotin wanted to destroy.
On September 5, 1949, the couple went to the Canadian Department of Justice to expose Soviet intelligence activities in Canada. However, the intelligence activities of the USSR, as an ally, in Canada did not go unnoticed.
Just when they were in trouble, Guzenko's wife exclaimed: "Here is the secret information of the atomic bomb!" This sentence immediately caught the attention of the Canadian **.
Canadian intelligence showed that the Soviets had obtained secrets about U.S. atomic bomb research through spies. The Prime Minister of Canada immediately informed allies such as the United States and the United Kingdom of the situation.
After investigation, the allies discovered that the source of the intelligence was actually from within the Western camp, a British physicist Klaus Fox. Why did he help the USSR?
It turned out that he was born in Germany, and at the age of 19, due to his mother's suicide, he joined the German Communist Party, and was later exiled to England because of his leadership, becoming a refugee.
He received his Ph.D. from the Birmingham Atomic Bomb Research Working Group in England with a talent for physics.
In December 1943, in order to solve a key problem in the research of the atomic bomb, Fox was sent to the Atomic Energy Research Center of the University of California in the United States as a member of the British trusted delegation"The Manhattan Project"。
Fox, as a Marxist, remained loyal to the Soviet Union deep down. In the United States, he secretly conducted espionage for seven years, leaking the technical secrets of the creation of the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union.
This intelligence network was the intelligence network of the Soviet Union, which helped the Soviet Union collect information on advanced atomic bomb technology, so that the Soviet Union reached almost the same level of nuclear energy research as the United States in a short period of time.
During World War II, the Soviet intelligence services performed particularly well, not only did they develop many spies in Germany, Japan and other places, and collected them in the first newspaper, but also successfully infiltrated the Allies at that time.
One of the most striking is undoubtedly their success in stealing information on the atomic bomb. After Guzenko reported Soviet intelligence activities to Canada, the United States and Canada respectively discovered many Soviet spies in their countries, among which Canada cracked 17 Canadian Soviet ** and 16 Soviet diplomats at one time.
Within the United States, however, the situation was even more serious, with the FBI cracking 49 cases of Soviet espionage. Despite this, Soviet spy chief Anatolia Yatskov claimed that the FBI had cracked less than half of the network he controlled in the United States.
This is enough to show how deep the Soviet spy network was in the Western camp, and many Soviet spies were Western scientists, engineers and intellectuals.
For example, Klaus Fox, the world's leading physicist involved in the Manhattan Project, went so far as to provide the Soviet Union with atomic bomb intelligence for seven years.
Fox, an expert in the field of the atomic bomb, worked on the atomic bomb from 1942 to 1949. He was well versed in the theory and practice of the atomic bomb, providing the Soviet Union with detailed information about the atomic bomb** and its detonating devices, including even a three-dimensional map of the various components of the atomic bomb that he himself had drawn by hand.
This diagram is so detailed that even physicists like Morrison have admired it: "Any physicist can know all the methods of making an atomic bomb if he has this diagram." ”
This drawing undoubtedly provided a huge help to the Soviet Union in the manufacture of the atomic bomb. Not only that, Fox also provided the Soviet Union with the design drawings and theoretical materials of the hydrogen bomb, which enabled the Soviet Union to successfully build its own hydrogen bomb only nine months after testing the American hydrogen bomb.
It can be said that Fawkes contributed to the creation of atomic and hydrogen bombs in the USSR.
In addition to Fox, many scientists provided the Soviet Union with detailed information and blueprints in the field of atomic energy research, and they played a key role in the Soviet Union's efforts to narrow the gap with the United States in nuclear research.
Kurchatov, who presided over the Soviet atomic bomb project, once said: "The Soviet intelligence services provided unparalleled assistance in the creation of the atomic bomb."
No spy agency in the world has been able to successfully infiltrate the interior of the Manhattan Project, but the Soviets did, and they managed to obtain top-secret information on the creation of the atomic bomb.
This intelligence helped the Soviet Union gain the same strategic advantage as the United States, without which the Soviet Union would have been suppressed by the United States during the Cold War.
The intelligence provided by Fox and others allowed the Soviet Union to successfully build the atomic bomb by at least several years, and the Soviet Union's nuclear monopoly was broken as a result.
The nuclear balance between the United States and the Soviet Union has had a far-reaching impact on the development of the world pattern.