Stalin does not insert a spy into the Manhattan Project

How much longer would it take for the Soviets to develop a nuclear weapon if they don't get spies into the Manhattan project? Would it give the Americans enough time to develop an insurmountable lead?
 
It's debatable how much Soviet spying accelerated their development with some experts saying that it didn't help Soviet research at all or at most one to two years. The biggest limiting factor on Soviet development was how much uranium they could get their hands on, not necessarily the science or engineering itself.
 
... The biggest limiting factor on Soviet development was how much uranium they could get their hands on, not necessarily the science or engineering itself.

IIRC it was the development of the Hungarian Uranium deposits post 1946 that initially fueled the Soviet atomic energy programs. By 1954 the mine workers were a factor in the Hungarian revolt.

The information provided by the spies allowed the Soviet research to be more focused and more in the nature of prototype development. They were able to skip a couple years of lab tests and experiment design. The Brits had the same benefit from their direct participation.
 
They get it all anyways when Theodore Hall offers his services on his own volition.

Assuming that doesn't still happen for what ever reason, the common estimates is that espionage accelerated the Soviet program by a minimum of six months and a maximum of two years. In one way it actually benefits the Soviets in that they can lead with a more efficient and powerful domestic design instead of a identical copy of the Trinity device that they settled on for OTL.

"Implementing the stolen plans still required immense technical skill and a deep understanding of atomic processes. In addition, though the information was, as Ioffe claimed, always precise, Soviet scientists could not assume that it was. An immense amount of checking had to be done, since it was always possible that the Americans had intentionally released carefully constructed disinformation. And, in order to protect the secret of the stolen secrets, only the most senior scientists were aware that the designs had been pilfered. Most scientists went to their graves believing that their bomb was distinctively Russian." -The Bomb: A Life, Page 128.
"Fuchs himself did not believe that his contribution was crucial. In his interrogation, he remarked that he was 'extremely surprised that the Russian explosion had taken place so soon'. In common with other [Western] analysts, he had assumed that the information he had given 'could not have been applied so quickly and that the Russians would not have the engineering, design, and construction facilities that would be needed to build a production plant in such a short time.'" -The Bomb: A Life, Page 147

"Beria was not remotely moved by the ideals that motivated his scientists. He was not an esoteric voyage of discovery but a practical quest to build a bomb in the shortest possible time. Therefore, he simply told his scientists to build an exact copy of the American bomb, the specification of which had been supplied by Fuchs and others. A specifically Russian design was cast aside even though it offered more promise than Fat Man.[Footnote here, when going to the bottom of the page to read it, it says:] When finally built and tested in 1951 (the second Soviet atomic test) it produced twice the yield, at half the weight." -The Bomb: A Life, Page 135.

Contrary to popular belief, there was no concrete "secret" behind the atomic bomb. The discovery of fission in 1938 meant that a nuclear chain reaction was possible and that the energy produced from this process could be used to produce a weapon of unusual force. Physicists like J. Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, and Leo Szilard knew that it was only a matter of time before other countries were able to develop their own atomic weapons. The only secret behind the bombs lay in their specifications, material composition, and inner workings. Any government with the determination and the resources to develop an atomic weapon could do so within a matter of time.

When Klaus Fuchs's espionage was discovered in 1950, many believed that his actions had been essential to the Soviet bomb. Fuchs did pass along important information about the bomb's design and technical specifications, and the Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy concluded that "Fuchs alone has influenced the safety of more people and accomplished greater damage than any other spy not only in the history of the United States but in the history of nations." However, there has been much debate surrounding the role of espionage in the Soviet Union's atomic program. Scholarship suggests that Soviet spying probably allowed the USSR to develop an atomic bomb six months to two years faster than they would have had there been no espionage.
-https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/soviet-atomic-program-1946 (Emphasis added)

They were able to skip a couple years of lab tests and experiment design.

No, they still had to do a whole bunch of those in order to verify the information they had been getting.

IIRC it was the development of the Hungarian Uranium deposits post 1946 that initially fueled the Soviet atomic energy programs. By 1954 the mine workers were a factor in the Hungarian revolt.

Most of the uranium came from mines in Central Asia which had been under development since 1944. Smaller portions were sourced from Eastern European countries like East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Poland but Hungary does not show up as a source on Soviet import lists from this period.
 
Last edited:
"What most determined the timing of the first Soviet bomb test in 1949 was not information learned from spies but, Holloway concludes, the availability of uranium in the Soviet Union. 'As soon as uranium became available in sufficient quantity' he writes, 'Kurchatov was able to build and start up the experimental reactor.' Fuchs, who had not visited the Soviet Union, thought that he had accelerated the Soviet bomb project `by one year at least', Holloway is willing to make this one to two years' time saved through intelligence information, and notes that the British, who were far better represented at Los Alamos than the Soviets, took five years from deciding to build a bomb to testing it, about a year longer than the Russians. 'One should not overestimate the importance of [the] Soviet intelligence community in setting up the atomic program although its efforts and its contribution were commendable,' wrote Khariton, who was there. Emphasis on the role of espionage in the Soviet project exaggerates the extent to which proliferation explains the extension of nuclear knowhow. A better model is polycentric, acknowledging as it does multiple sources of knowledge and multiple sites of imaginative and productive work on the nucleus. Physicists in the Soviet Union can share the credit and must share the blame for their efforts to build an atomic bomb after 1945." Andrew J. Rotter, Hiroshima: The World's Bomb (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). https://books.google.com/books?id=y9YKrRM1BowC&pg=PT332
 
You know, it just dawned on me: if the Soviets could introduce a spy, could the Nazis have gotten someone in there too?
 
You know, it just dawned on me: if the Soviets could introduce a spy, could the Nazis have gotten someone in there too?

Maybe if their intelligence services were less of a complete joke. As it was, their intelligence services did make some inquiries related to atomic research in the America's (although they never got so far as asking around about a bomb program) but they ran into... issues. Such as their sources being turned by Allied agencies. Here is a good primer on the issue.
 
You know, it just dawned on me: if the Soviets could introduce a spy, could the Nazis have gotten someone in there too?

The German foreign intelligence efforts were about fifty times less effective then Soviet efforts.

Really German intelligence efforts in general were pretty piss poor during WW2.
 
That delay of six months to two years may end up having a massive impact - what impact might the Americans having a nuclear monopoly have on, say, the Berlin Airlift?
 

thorr97

Banned
That delay of six months to two years may end up having a massive impact - what impact might the Americans having a nuclear monopoly have on, say, the Berlin Airlift?

Not much, in that specific. The Berlin Airlift wrapped up in May of '49. The Soviets detonated their first Atom Bomb in August of that year. So the Soviets weren't emboldened by having their own Cans Of Instant Sunshine during that event.
 
If we have a few Russian scientists who later play a major role in their atomic program die at random between 1914-1945 (picking a reason in Russia seems rather easy in that time period), could that delay it more than a couple years?
 
The effect of Soviet spies in the Manhattan Project and providing information back to the Soviet Union is very difficult if not impossible to know. It relies on people working on the development of the Soviet atomic bomb to tell us how much it helped them. Unfortunately it was and is in the best interest of the Soviet scientists to downplay any importance of the leaks from the American Manhattan Project. By saying that this information did not significantly aid in the development of a Soviet atomic weapon, the Soviet scientists increase their own importance and prestige.
 
Let's assume it would have delayed the Soviet bomb by 2 years. Isn't the obvious answer that it would have a direct impact on whether / when there would be a Korean War?

No nuke may have made little difference to Kim Il-sung (who was genuinely delusional and thought he would be welcomed as a liberator in the South), but Mao would have avoided a direct confrontation unless he knew Stalin could match the US escalation. Mao and his generals were reluctant (in extremis) even in the OTL. More importantly, Stalin would have never allowed Norks to invade in 1950 as the risk of a confrontation spilling over to Soviet was very real.

Thus if Stalin died (1953) before there was a Soviet bomb, one could hypothesise there would be no Korean War as Khrushchev is extremely unlikely to have sanctioned the war. There may have been an unsanctioned invasion by Kim Il-sung which would have ended in defeat eventually without Chinese intervention.

Of course, no communist bomb means the US could have overplayed their hand: MacArthur remains in charge of the Pacific, and possibly even cross the Yalu river and blazing through Liaoning towards Beijing in an attempt to reinstate KMT. Guess why Mao was extremely reluctant?
 

Ian_W

Banned
The German foreign intelligence efforts were about fifty times less effective then Soviet efforts.

Really German intelligence efforts in general were pretty piss poor during WW2.

In the Second World War, the German foreign intelligence services are not working for the Nazis.
 
It's debatable how much Soviet spying accelerated their development with some experts saying that it didn't help Soviet research at all or at most one to two years. The biggest limiting factor on Soviet development was how much uranium they could get their hands on, not necessarily the science or engineering itself.
I recall that David Halloway's "Stalin and the Bomb", which seems to be fairly authoritative, states that espionage might have saved the Russians at most 18 months to 2 years.
 
Not much, in that specific. The Berlin Airlift wrapped up in May of '49. The Soviets detonated their first Atom Bomb in August of that year. So the Soviets weren't emboldened by having their own Cans Of Instant Sunshine during that event.
They'd also need a means of credibly delivering it - the best they could do at the time was reverse-engineered B-29s.
 
Top