WI: Soviets Get the Atomic Bomb First

What if before World War II, the Soviet Union begins developing an atomic weapons program and is able to get the bomb before the West?
 
wow....

Ok do you have any idea how much money, industry, and scientific know how it took to create the bomb? What a hurculian task it was? The soveits got their program OTL by having one of the best spy networks on the planet. As much as I like to brag about america our program was aided by the british and a host of the best scientists on the planet.

Keep in mind that the soviet Regieme is still young during the interwar period and going through a series of crash industrial and scientific programs which ate up quite a bit of resources.

Then you have to think of delivery systems america basically had to almost create a brand new plane to deliver the bomb.


Ok lets say the soviets power through they throw enough darts at the board and enough resources that they get the bomb. I guess its possible but their going to have to scrap other projects to do it, and their not going to start off with a lot.

The Nazi's get wreaked and the Russians lord their new power over every neighbor around them. This results in a commonwealth nuclear program, an american nuclear program, the japanese will try but wont have the economic heft to pull it off for a couple decades. If the french don't get occupied they will have a program.

The soviets get maybe 15 years tops as the uncontested top dog, if the worlds unlucky we get a nuclear war before MAD becomes a thing.
 
Only possible if the Soviet Union doesn't lose 25 million people and much of its productive forces during the war years. The German invasion would have to either not happen or fail miserably.
 
Only possible if the Soviet Union doesn't lose 25 million people and much of its productive forces during the war years. The German invasion would have to either not happen or fail miserably.

This. Even then it's far more likely the Soviets come in close second instead of first place.
 
What if Stalin sends spies to sabotage the Manhattan Project in say 1944? It might buy them a year.
 
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Uh huh.

In a brutal, repressive regime in the midst of war at their doorstep, with barely enough resources to keep body and soul together, these jokers are going to outdo the combined intellectual power of the world's best and brightest emigre physicists and engineers combined with the industrial know-how and firepower of the likes of du Pont? Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

If this isn't verging on ASB, I'm not sure what is.
 
USSR wasn't the world leader in industrial uses of Fluorine.

What's that have to do with a Bomb?

Teflon seals for Uranium Hexafluoride. UF6.
Nothing else would hold up to that heated corrosive gas at the K-25 plant at Oak Ridge.

Why was US the leader?
Dupont refrigerants, Chlorofluorocarbons. General Motors wanted a safer refrigerant for home refrigerators under their 'Frigidaire' brand to compete with the then popular GE and Kelvinators that used SO2,Sulfur dioxide, toxic and smelly.

Dupont discovered Teflon in the search for what would become R-12 before WWII

No Teflon, there just isn't a way to do Uranium Enrichment cheaply enough to make enough U-235 for a bomb.
 
Basically the U..S. developed the atomic bomb thanks to a combination of the best scientists in the world from three major industrialized nations (the U.S., U.K. and Germany) supported by the financial, scientific, and industrial resources of the worlds largest economy effectively untouched by years of warfare.

So this is not a realistic AH.

Though most aren't if you want to get technical.
 
USSR wasn't the world leader in industrial uses of Fluorine.

Basically the U..S. developed the atomic bomb thanks to a combination of the best scientists in the world from three major industrialized nations (the U.S., U.K. and Germany) supported by the financial, scientific, and industrial resources of the worlds largest economy effectively untouched by years of warfare.

As much as I fundamentally agree that the USSR isn't in any position to get the bomb before the US, even without a German invasion inflicting massive damage upon it's economy, I should note that none of this was enough to prevent the crash Soviet program from being able to produce a bomb in 5-6 years without factoring in espionage. If we remove Barbarossa and assume the Soviets start such a program in 1942 (when they first became aware of the bomb IOTL) then the Soviets could have a bomb by 47-48, one to two years ahead of OTL. Maybe 46, factoring in espionage and/or their stronger economy. Still second place, but much sooner then OTL.
 
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Maybe 46, factoring in espionage and/or their stronger economy. Still second place, but much sooner then OTL.

But the biggest advantage was that the Soviets knew what worked, so didn't spend near a half billion dollars on the Y-12 Calutrons, but right to the improved gaseous diffusion method at K-25 and Hanford style reactors to make plutonium.

The Soviets didn't start their gaseous diffusion plant till they determined that that was the way the British were also going in 1947 for HEU production, just as U-235 research was at low level till the Soviets found that Fermi had a working reactor in 1942.

They didn't have enough Uranium for a test reactor till 1947, and it was a near copy of the 10 watt Hanford 305 test reactor.

I have doubts that the Soviets would have been able to come up with implosion on their own.

Kurchatov was brilliant, but still only one man.
 
But the biggest advantage was that the Soviets knew what worked, so didn't spend near a half billion dollars on the Y-12 Calutrons, but right to the improved gaseous diffusion method at K-25 and Hanford style reactors to make plutonium.

Except the Soviets used intelligence to check their own work rather then as a "how-to" guidebook. They didn't just blindly copy. And their likely to still have access to a number of espionage sources as well as a stronger industrial base.

They didn't have enough Uranium for a test reactor till 1947, and it was a near copy of the 10 watt Hanford 305 test reactor.

The main problem there was how long it took to get the Central Asian mines online, since during the war the Soviets didn't prioritize uranium mining at all for obvious reasons.

I have doubts that the Soviets would have been able to come up with implosion on their own.

They actually did and more so. A indigenously designed tritium-boosted design was submitted that was superior to the Fat Man, but was rejected by Beria because in favor of a direct copy of the Fat Man design because he knew it worked. After RDS-1, the Soviets did go on to develop that design and its test, the second Soviet nuclear test had nearly twice the yield with just half the consumption of fissile material.

Kurchatov was brilliant, but still only one man.

You think Kurchatov was the only Soviet nuclear physicist in the USSR of that he did not do the work? The Soviets had a very well established field in nuclear physics by the 40s and plenty of talented young minds to work on it. Hell, the Soviets deliberately excluded their most talented man from the program since the classification of his work would have been more noticeable.
 
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