It won't matter. The Soviets got their hands on both German and Japanese nuclear scientists at the war's end, together with all the research and experimental data gathered. If they won't go with gaseous diffusion then it would be electromagnetic or centrifuge separation (which reached high enrichment levels 98+ at the same time as the gaseous plant)
What if no Soviet spy in Manhattan project?
- Thread starter Joku_
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RamscoopRaider
Donor
It matters because up until the mid 50's Gaseous diffusion is the most efficient process. There's a reason only the US did large scale electromagnetic separation, and that the Manhattan Project cut off Centrifuge research (in retrospect a mistake, but the argument was it won't be ready until well after the war was over). Not doing it basically slow you down a good ways, it won't stop them, but it will take them more resources, at least until the mid 50's when Centrifuges do become viable and they race ahead
The Germans and Japanese were pretty far behind the Manhattan Project even in terms of theory, and hadn't really touched the metallurgical or engineering aspects (how do you machine Uranium/Plutonium, how do you get that many fuses to reliably fire with millisecond precision, etc.)
At the same point the USSR does have scientist of their own who were pretty smart and some of the German and Japanese ones, so they can do this, just with a lower budget and somewhat smaller talent pool it will take longer
Except that it actually happened?
That might be an exaggeration. For the French it took less than 15 years from the start of their program in 1945 until they had their first test in 1960. The Soviets had much more resourses than the French, and they had their own program running during WWII.
There's nothing making gaseous diffusion more efficient than 1940s centrifuge separation. Just because the US program considered it less efficient/not worth pursuing doesn't mean that the European/Asian programs thought the same.
The German program pursued the centrifuge method from the beginning and the Japanese from late 44/early 45 because they considered it more efficient and simpler to build.
And even if the Soviets make a less efficient centrifuge than gaseous diffusion, so what? They will still get a bomb at the price of an extra tone of uranium.
Their grasp on the theory was firmly solid and well understood by 1944, and by 1945 they were already looking into fission boosted bombs with tritium or lithium deuterite so I would say the German had it covered, as for the Japanese, by 1945 they also understood how a U-233/U-235 bomb would work.
The Germans did touch the engineering aspects though, the most visible aspect being their thousand or so uranium metal cubes for their reactors, other less visible aspects being a heavy water plant, the manufacturing of centrifuges in Kiel, building of cyclotrons, experiments with explosive lens etc. I don't know enough about the engineering aspects of the Japanese program to comment.
Not sure about a smaller budget, it was the highest priority program in the Soviet Union and had no lack of funding throughout its life.
Yes, it happened, but in the long term, those "Russian atomic spies" were more useful to US anticommunist propaganda than to Soviet atomic research.
The spy information that the Soviets received regarding the Atomic bomb, was regarded with a very large grain of salt. Beria, who was in overall charge of the Soviet bomb effort, regarded any information received from the West as highly suspect. The Russian bomb design ream was not given any of this information directly. Instead it was used for reference checks on their teams design progress. The Soviets had had many more logistical and material issues (like access to uranium) that slowed their production progress.
ric350
ric350
Derek Pullem
Donor
It would be an interesting test of the MAD philosophy. If USSR is say 5 years late in developing the bomb then do the Soviets risk a war in Europe earlier before the American nuclear capacity is overwhelming and/or will the Americans see a window in mid 50's when a nuclear war could be fought and "won" against the Soviets.
IOTL the Soviets knew that they would have the bomb relatively soon after the war and knew that the Americans did not have a huge arsenal of the weapons. But if they were more in the dark due to less intelligence would they risk going early. Or if the Americans saw a Russian test in 1954 would they look at their 2000+ warheads and believe that they could bully USSR into nuclear disarmament?
Can argue that the atom spies did more to prevent the risk of a "hot war" than increasing it as the MAD principle kicked in earlier.
IOTL the Soviets knew that they would have the bomb relatively soon after the war and knew that the Americans did not have a huge arsenal of the weapons. But if they were more in the dark due to less intelligence would they risk going early. Or if the Americans saw a Russian test in 1954 would they look at their 2000+ warheads and believe that they could bully USSR into nuclear disarmament?
Can argue that the atom spies did more to prevent the risk of a "hot war" than increasing it as the MAD principle kicked in earlier.
Except the Western Allies grabbed the lion’s share of nuclear talent and research locations in Epsilon and Alsos, and whatever program Japan had was all based on the mainland, not Manchuria (plus, a ton of it was destroyed during the Tokyo firebombings). Most of the German scientists that ended up working for the Soviet nuclear program were talented in the relevant fields, but they were not part of the nuclear program. The only exception were a handful of chemists involved with heavy water production, but that was not the main thrust of the Soviet nuclear program.
Hall and Fuchs were independent sources, and much of their information confirmed to the NKVD that the other was being truthful.
The Americans COULD have fought a winnable nuclear war against the Soviets during early and mid 50s even in OTL. It wasn't until late 50s before there was any resemblance of MAD.
True, but Beria would not let any of their data to be presented directly to the Soviet design team. It was only used to independently confirm their design was on track. Such was their level of paranoia.
Though perhaps he and Stalin had a right to be. For example, General Groves directed that the Oranienburg uranium processing plant be bombed, (it was in March ‘45), not to deny it to the Germans, but because it was to be in the Russian zone after the war.
ric350
Except Beria was in a position to use the information Fuchs provided, being the Soviet equivalent of Groves. He and Kurchatov were the people to opt for the implosion-type design, actually over the objection of most of the physics team. Pyotr Kapitsa actually wrote to Stalin protesting this decision (along with the general principle of copying over original work), resulting in him getting removed from the nuclear program. Also, I believe Kurchatov generally had access to most atomic intelligence.
Derek Pullem
Donor
But there was a realistic chance that the Soviets could have overrun Europe before the Americans delivered enough bombs to end the war. In 1952 the Soviets had 50 bombs and realistically would be lucky to deliver more than 1 or 2 against America. Five years later they had more than 10x as many. In 1952 America had over 800 warheads - five years later they had over 5500 and they had the B-52 in service.
If the atom spies shortened the development program by five years then in 1957 the USA would be facing a marginal Soviet threat from approx 50 bombs whilst they had more than 100x as many. At that point they could have launched Dropshot / Reaper with an expectation of minimal US civilian casualties. And they would have enough weapons left over to ensure the Soviet armies never made it to the Rhine.
Scary but whilst I agree it wasn't Mutually Assured Destruction IOTL until later it was certainly Mutually Assured Devastation from the mid 50's onwards.
800 nukes definitely should have been enough to stop Soviets from overrunning Europe - apparently current US arsenal of deployed nukes is just double that number.
Based on that table, the US would have had best shot at destroying Soviets somewhere around 1951-1955 or so. After that it's probably going to hurt other NATO countries quite a bit even if majority of the Soviet bombers can't get to their targets.
I'd also say that the atomic spies speeding up Soviet nuclear program by 5 years is rather generous. And while it's true that any delay would have increased the window of winnable nuclear war for the US, it would have also made the issue less urgent for the Americans. OTL they had a few years "now or never" window for winning the cold war going hot, and a delay would have given them more time to durdle around while panicking less.
Would the south at least be in a better position to resist an invasion?
RamscoopRaider
Donor
And the Soviets still ended up building big gaseous diffusion plants despite their scientists not likeing the route. They would not have spent the money if they had an equally efficient centrifuge route available, they would have cancelled it like they did electromagnetic separation, where they improved on the US process but still was not as efficient
Both of those programs were basically pure experimental, so they may have thought for the quantities they needed
The so what is that it takes them longer to get enough enriched material to do the experimental work to do the engineering work to get the bomb, and slightly longer to get the bomb. I've never said they won't, I just figure 2-3 years more time to account for less efficient production and doing more trial and error
I've heard completely differently about both programs and that the Farm Hall transcripts pretty much indicate Germany had no functional bomb program and didn't even have a good critical mass calculation. They may have known "large amount of highly enriched Uranium/plutonium, compression, boom" but I haven't seen indications they knew enough to calculate a critical mass given all the interacting factors involved and that some of their fundamental calculations were pretty off(IE neutron absorption of Graphite)
The Japanese were still purely in the experimental phase. The Germans were working on some of the issues but they didn't get particularly far, they could make cubes of Uranium Oxide but hadn't really worked on the pure metal itself and hadn't touched Plutonium, they didn't really work on the fusing issue, they hadn't solved one of the biggest issues with Centrifuges that the US did, how far they got in explosive lenses is a question
While the highest priority program for the Soviet Union, it is still a program from a war ravaged state that was substantially poorer than the US before losing 30 million people and having its industrial regions wrecked by the war, and in 1946 is in a borderline state of famine. Quite simply put it won't have the same resources as the top priority program from a richer state
I'm not so sure the lack of a Soviet bomb was going to make that much of a difference. The end of the Chinese Civil War was more the key point and Kim outright lied to both Mao and Stalin about the support he had from each of them to get the to agree to support the war. Part of Truman/MacArthur's worries over Rhee was that he might grab the US stockpiles that were left in the country and go without even asking the US, which was part of why MacArthur was trying to move the stocks back to Japan and trying to delay deliveries to the South.
Kim actually had the timing sort of right (and Stalin was in fact aware the US was seriously understrength in Asia and focused more on Europe) and that Rhee would continue to build up if he didn't go as soon as possible. But as above Kim told him that he already had Mao's full support, (and told Mao that he had Stalin's full support) so trying to hold off longer would have been difficult to justify.
Arguably another couple of years of Truman's military cut-backs might have been "better" but by 1949 the strain on the military with the current commitments was even being seen by Truman to be somewhat unsustainable so he could just as easily reverse the situation. (I think he would have continued at least until he gotten the Navy whittle down some more and the Air Force to take over all aircraft operations but the Army was rightly complaining about having too much to do and too little to do it with enough that Congress was getting antsy)
Randy