Down below is one of the most
radioactive places on Earth.
A site so secret that it has
never appeared on any map.
Even now it is a tightly
restricted area
under the direct control
of a Red Army General.
For 40 years, this empty land was
codenamed Semipalatinsk 21.
It was the main test site
in the Soviet nuclear program.
The lake down there marks
the spot of their first atom b*mb.
It is the bleak epicenter
of an extraordinary story.
Of how the Soviet b*mb was built,
with secrets stolen from the West.
This tattered manuscript tells
many of the secrets of Russia's b*mb.
It is an unpublished account
of a hidden world,
written by a scientist
at its very heart.
In it are revealed for the first time
the names and faces of people
the public never saw.
The scientists and military men
who built the Russian b*mb.
We have traced
many of the key figures,
and uncovered
the part they played
in the most closely guarded
operation of the Cold w*r.
Men like Yuli Hariton,
a reclusive figure who for 50 years
was in charge of constructing
the Soviet Union's nuclear arsenal.
Today he is an old man of 90,
still living incognito
and behind barbed wire
in the remote and secret city
which he himself founded
Or Yakov Teretsky,
the KGB mathematician
who was sent secretly to meet
a top Western scientist
who wanted the
Soviet Union to know
what the West already knew.
Or Anatoly Yatskov,
who ran the Soviet spy
network in New York,
which smuggled a blueprint
of America's first b*mb
back to the KGB's headquarters
in Moscow.
And this is the end product
of the story
they have to tell.
Both sides armed to this day
with weapons which in a few
minutes could k*ll more people
than all the wars in history
put together.
It all started
in a quite different key.
The medieval University City
of Cambridge, England,
was where man first
split the atom.
In 1919,
a scientist called Ernest Rutherford
started the process that led
inexorably to the age of the b*mb.
{an8}The 1920s were a fantastically exciting
time in physics throughout Europe
because you had the development of a new
physics dealing with subatomic matter.
It's very much an international community,
quite a small community.
What drove them was the sheer
intellectual excitement of the
discoveries that were being made.
Some of those involved,
like Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein,
were already big names
in contemporary science.
But beneath them,
a whole new generation of brilliant
young physicists was emerging.
{an8}There was a sort of feeling of
community among scientists,
almost like one family
from all over the world.
And all the sciences
opened in those days,
so everybody knew
what other people are doing.
So in this sense,
scientists formed
at that stage this family,
almost citizens of the world,
if you like.
No boundaries.
Two people
who visited Cambridge in the 1920s
were to play crucial roles
on opposite sides
in the race to build a b*mb.
One of them was a brilliant
called Robert Oppenheimer,
who arrived in the summer of 1926
and who would later become
famous as the man who led
the American atomic b*mb project.
The man who became
his b*mb-building opponent
is still virtually unknown.
Yuli Hariton.
But he is an expl*sives designer
so important to the Soviet Union
that he still commands
his own private carriage
when he travels on Russian railways.
It was a gift from Joseph Stalin.
He is a hero of socialist labour
three times over.
The unsung scientist
who built the red b*mb.
Communism was fashionable among
students at Cambridge in those days
and Hariton spent
two carefree years there,
openly sponsored by the Bolshevik
government in Moscow.
For Hariton and the rest of them,
physics was a matter of
detached inquiry,
not of engineering
that could destroy mankind.
They used to meet at conferences
and their main concern was
about science itself
and the idea that science,
how it affects society,
the overall community,
entered very little.
One might put it briefly,
many of them lived in an ivory tower
and they felt that because
they are only investigating nature
and nature has no connections
with human feelings,
therefore science
should not be concerned
the way how science affects
society as a whole.
Rutherford's lecture hall was
a central room in their ivory tower.
Few seemed to realise the dangerous
potential of the work they were doing.
Rutherford himself did not believe
that we should be able to use,
to utilise the energy
contained in the nucleus.
He thought it would be impossible.
In fact at one of the meetings
in Cambridge,
he said anybody
who speaks about the
utilisation of nuclear energy
is talking moonshine.
Hariton was a romantic
and friendly young man.
But his carefree days
were almost over.
When the time came to go home,
Hariton decided to break
his journey in Germany.
There he found a different atmosphere,
particularly for Jews like himself.
I bought newspapers at the kiosks
and read them.
{an8}And I discovered
all sorts of fascist leaflets,
{an8}which I found
thoroughly unpleasant.
For the time being,
fascism was still weak,
but if it started to flourish,
then that could cause serious
unpleasantness for the Soviet Union.
Soon his worst fears were realised.
Hitler came to power in Germany
pledged to drive out
communists and Jews.
Some of those who fled the Nazis were
among Europe's brightest scientists.
Some, like Einstein and Teller,
went to America.
Others, like Rudolf Peierls,
fled to England.
So I found myself in Cambridge
when Hitler came into power
and stayed there.
{an8}We didn't exactly predict
what was coming,
{an8}but we knew it was not good.
In 1938,
Hitler's army
swarmed into Czechoslovakia.
The period of international cooperation
in science had ended.
But not all Hitler scientists had fled,
and those that remained
were about to make
a breakthrough that would
change the world.
What they discovered was that
if you split the uranium atom,
you released enormous
expl*sive power.
The news spread like wildfire
through the scientific world.
In Russia, Yuli Hariton read with
fascination what the Germans had done.
It was obvious to people like us,
who'd been working
with expl*sives for years,
that something terrible
like an atomic expl*si*n
could not be discounted.
But Hariton found that
no one in authority
was interested in nuclear theory.
He was told to stick to work on
conventional armaments.
But in Cambridge,
refugees like Rudolf Peierls
immediately saw
the military implications.
When we decided that
an atom b*mb was possible and
not excessive in size,
we immediately thought that
the Germans might have
realized the same thing
and might be ahead of us.
And an atom b*mb in the hands of Hitler
would have been frightening.
In America, too,
the scientists were worried.
But no one else
seemed to take it seriously.
In April 1939, the New York Times
ran this report on a meeting
of distinguished physicists.
Tempers and temperatures
increase visibly today
among members of the American
Physical Society
as they close their spring meeting
with arguments over the probability
of some scientists blowing up
a sizable portion of the Earth
with a tiny amount of uranium.
It was left to a scientist still working
in Germany to spell out the threat.
He smuggled a message to old friends
who had fled to America.
{an8}We got a message
{an8}through a refugee physicist
which said, essentially,
we know how to make
nuclear explosions high up.
But time was already running out.
In September 1939,
the Second World w*r began.
This posed to the scientists
a great dilemma,
I suppose, the greatest dilemma
they ever had to face.
The job of a scientist is to try to do
something which will help humanity.
And the effort to try to make an
atom b*mb with mass destruction
was completely abhorrent.
But people began to realize
that if Hitler goes ahead,
if he acquires the b*mb,
it will help him to win the w*r.
In which case,
all the humanitarian principles
of which we stand
would have been abolished.
So it was a race to build a b*mb
and a race in which the winner
would take all.
{an8}The early days of the w*r saw
a deceptive peace in the Soviet Union.
But it was a highly dangerous,
volatile time,
in which this man
was to play a crucial role.
Lavrentiy Beria
was the ruthless head of the NKVD,
the secret organization
which later became the KGB.
He was the man
in charge of Stalin's purges
when millions had been k*lled
or sent to the Gulag.
Now, after Stalin,
he was the most feared man
in the Soviet Union.
{an8}Beria had huge authority.
{an8}His word was law,
and people lived in fear.
They used to say,
who's going to be next against the wall?
They lived in fear whatever they did.
Vladimir Barkovsky was then
one of Beria's young agents.
He was sent by sea from a Russia
at peace to an England at w*r.
His first night was a shock.
That evening, we came down to supper,
and an air raid began on Liverpool.
That's where we had docked.
I can't say it was a pleasant feeling.
{an8}To be honest, I got a bit panicky.
After so many years of peaceful life,
it was pretty frightening.
His first job was
to report to a man named Gorski,
who ran the intelligence operation
in the Soviet Embassy in London.
Gorski had just received some
secret British government papers
about atomic research.
When I was going through that material
for my report to Moscow,
I didn't know who it had come from,
because the boss,
Gorski, didn't tell me.
He just said, here, take this and
prepare a report for Moscow center.
What Barkovsky didn't realize
was that a few miles away,
the British w*r Cabinet was
discussing that very same material.
The Soviets had acquired
a copy of the Maude Report,
a top-secret summary of Britain's
plans to build an atom b*mb,
and of parallel steps
just starting in America.
It was an espionage coup,
but Moscow ignored it.
Beria was very
suspicious of the material.
It's the Germans trying to divert
our attention and our resources
from proper military purposes,
he said.
So no one acted on the information.
It just lay around, unused.
In fact, the papers had come from
one of Beria's top spies in Britain.
But in those days, none of his agents
knew enough about atomic physics
to assess them.
What they needed was a specialist.
And that was
what they were about to get.
Klaus Fuchs was a German scientist
who'd fled from Germany
because he was a communist
rather than a Jew.
But because of his brilliance
and his opposition to the Nazis,
he was soon co-opted into
Britain's atomic b*mb program.
There he came into contact
with fellow refugee Rudolf Peierls.
Fuchs was, well,
I had not known him in Germany.
I met him in this country and
knew that he was a good physicist.
Tended to be rather silent,
but when you talk to him
and ask questions,
he would discuss things.
Many years later,
Fuchs broke his silence
to give a rare interview.
In it, he described
his early work on the b*mb.
To begin with, I was in Birmingham
with Peierls.
{an8}We were working on initial assessments
of how big the b*mb would be.
But we soon focused on the
problem of separating isotopes.
You see, the uranium-235 had to be
separated from the uranium-238.
That was one of the roads
to the atom b*mb.
At the same time,
Fuchs made contact with a
communist agent living in Oxford.
Nicknamed Red Sonja,
her real name was Ruth Verner,
and she would bicycle
to meet Fuchs in the countryside.
I picked out the crossroads
where we would meet,
and I loved to bike and thought
it was the least suspicious.
We had a culture to talk
and a political talk,
as comrades have,
and we both enjoyed it greatly.
He was very sensitive, intelligent.
He looked very kind.
He carried a big blue book,
and I opened the book at home,
{an8}and it was to me
like Egyptian writing.
I mean, there were so many
chemical, physical forms,
but I could see that it was a military
thing, let's say, of importance.
And I thought,
if he hands over 300 pages,
it must be very important.
All the inefficiency of the MI-5
stinks to heaven.
I mean, that they didn't find us out.
The information Fuchs passed her
went straight back to Moscow.
But again it was put on one side.
The Soviet government had
more immediate problems on its mind.
On Soviet-Russian soil,
in spite of the careful
preparations of the defenders,
the German Wehrmacht has captured
vast stretches of territory.
Under such severe bombardment,
complex papers
about a theoretical weapon
didn't come high
on the list of priorities.
Take these unknown souls
to your heart, native soil.
They fought till death
for your sake.
So priceless information from Fuchs
and other spies was left on one side.
It would take a chance
encounter of battle
to make the leadership understand
that atomic research actually mattered.
The catalyst was this man,
Ilya Stardinov,
known in those days
as King of the Saboteurs.
Early in 1942
he took part in a daring raid
on a German garrison
in which a great number of
documents were captured.
One in particular caught his attention.
A large number of documents
were seized.
Among these documents
there was a notebook,
and I forwarded it to headquarters.
They returned it to me.
They said the notebook
wasn't important to them.
It contained some formulas,
so to speak,
but no troop deployments.
{an8}Try to figure it out for yourself,
they said.
{an8}You are the engineering troops.
It must be of some interest to you.
I took the notebook, sent it off
for translation in Rostov.
It turned out that in the notebook
the author was suggesting
the use of an atomic system
to produce explosions.
Despite the army's indifference,
Stardinov thought it was worth
sending on to Moscow.
Eventually the captured document landed on
the desk of Lavrentiy Beria,
who this time did not dismiss it
as German disinformation.
But decisive action still
depended on Stalin,
and his overwhelming priority was
rallying his stricken army.
Comrade soldiers of the Red Army,
sailors, commanders
of the political sections,
men and women partisans.
The whole world is watching to see
if you are capable of destroying
the invading marauders.
But Beria now had enough
on his desk about atomic weapons
to convince him that there was an even
greater danger in doing nothing.
He went to see Stalin.
One of the few men to have seen
the full story of what happened next
is a KGB colonel
called Vladimir Chikov.
He was recently given unique
access to Russia's nuclear archive,
still listed top secret
despite the end of the Cold w*r.
The archive is kept in the Lubyanka,
then headquarters of Beria's NKVD.
Inside the Lubyanka,
Chikov unearthed
a succession of documents,
showing how critical spies were
in persuading Stalin
that the Russians must do
something immediately
to match research
going on in other countries.
And so, when enough material
had piled up on Beria's desk,
the data on heavy water
from the German officer,
the first two intelligence
reports from London,
and then a third report,
Beria went to see Stalin once again.
And this time,
Stalin paid more careful attention.
Stalin authorized a cable to be sent
to Beria's station chiefs
in London and New York.
Please take whatever steps you think fit
to obtain information
on the theoretical and practical
aspects of the atomic b*mb projects,
on the design of the atom b*mb,
nuclear fuel components,
and the trigger mechanism.
Stop.
Which government departments
have been made responsible?
Stop.
Where this work is being done,
and under whose leadership?
Message ends.
The cable back from their man
in New York was forthright
and, to the Russians,
shocking.
All the research laboratories
studying uranium fissions
cited in New York, Berkeley, Princeton,
and Chicago have begun
to work to a coordinated plan,
which has been given the code name,
Manhattan Project.
We have unsubstantiated information
that an offer has been made
to Robert Oppenheimer
to head the most powerful
super laboratory in America.
The first pieces of information
started coming from New York,
which said that the laboratory
had been set up at Los Alamos
and it was involved in the
development of atomic weapons.
The Los Alamos laboratory was
in the remote state of New Mexico.
In a desert locality
that was nearly inaccessible.
I mean, not only
to our intelligence agents,
but for all outsiders in general.
Stalin realized
he could wait no longer.
He appointed a brilliant scientist
called Igor Kuchatov
to be head of a project
to build a Russian b*mb.
Later, Kuchatov would become so famous
that they'd make records of his voice.
The first thing Kuchatov did
was to put a call through to
one of the few Russian scientists
still working on atomic theory.
Yuliy Khariton,
the man who'd studied under Rutherford
at Cambridge all those years before.
I heard Kuchatov's voice saying,
you stay at home.
I'm on my way round.
I've got something
very important to tell you.
You are to get started immediately
on the design of an atom b*mb.
From that point onwards,
Kuchatov became
the public face of the Soviet b*mb.
While Khariton disappeared
into a hidden world
from which few names emerged.
Out here, on the Kazakh steppes,
is the secret city
named after Kuchatov,
which grew up around the atomic project
in the years which followed.
In due course, thousands of scientists and
soldiers would flood into the city
and turn it into the testing ground
of the most destructive arsenal
in the history of mankind.
But at that moment,
the great push forward
was on the other side of the world.
{an8}In the high mesas of New Mexico
{an8}is the place where America's
b*mb was being built.
This was the top secret complex
which housed what was called
the Manhattan Project.
The team that was assembled
was made up largely of
top European scientists
who'd fled fascism
just before the w*r.
After what they'd been through,
many were uneasy about
putting science to military use,
but recognized the supreme
need to beat Hitler.
Men like Teller, Fermi, and Bethe.
And the man known as the
godfather of the Manhattan Project,
the distinguished Dane,
Niels Bohr.
As the Soviet spies had predicted,
and maybe wanted,
they were led by
Robert Oppenheimer,
who'd also studied at Cambridge
before the w*r.
Oppenheimer was known
by the American authorities
to have sympathized with communism,
but seemed to offer the right
combination of energy and brilliance.
Because people have respected him,
{an8}he managed to keep them all together.
{an8}There are many
prima donnas in Los Alamos,
{an8}and they want to go in different ways.
But somehow he managed
to do this by the way
his organizational skill.
Joseph Rotblat was one of those
who came from Europe to join
Oppenheimer in Los Alamos.
They all came under the ultimate
control of a soldier,
General Leslie Groves.
He was uneasy with the way
the scientists approached the job.
In the first instance, he wanted
to put all scientists in uniform
and give them ranks and so on.
Secondly, he wanted to keep each scientist
in a separate compartment,
because they wouldn't at all
communicate with each other.
He was very concerned
about security and secrecy.
Of course, science doesn't work.
The only way scientists work
is by talking to each other,
trying to get new ideas coming out
from such conversations.
So it didn't work.
In fact, it was Oppenheimer
who convinced him it wouldn't work.
Nevertheless, security was tight.
Everyone knew that this was a race
which America and its allies
could not afford to lose.
And in this context,
Groves was quite clear.
The term allies
did not include the Russians.
It was a cue for Beria's espionage w*r
to switch its focus to America.
At the Soviet consulate
on Manhattan Island,
worked a man for whom
Los Alamos was a prime target.
His real name was Anatoly Yatskov,
though in his FBI file, he appeared
for many years as Anatoly Yakovlev.
On the surface, he was
a middle-ranked diplomat.
In fact, he was the Soviet master spy
working for Beria.
Robert Lamphere was an FBI agent,
assigned to what was then a tiny squad
watching out for Soviet spies.
The new unit had little
experience at that stage,
but he soon picked out Yakovlev
as someone to watch.
{an8}One of the reasons for our
interest in Yakovlev
{an8}was that he could
come and go almost at will
where as other employees had to
stay to their consulate duties,
and he was frequently
out of the consulate.
Furthermore, he was treated with,
we thought, a little undue respect
by the other members of the consulate.
Behind his front as a family man,
Yatskov had no qualms
about spying on a wartime ally.
Years later,
he wrote an article in Pravda,
justifying his action.
{an8}In those years, the Fatal Forties,
{an8}we were allies in the w*r
against Fascist Germany
and subsequently against Japan,
allies with the USA.
As an ally, the American authorities
should have shared
the information on the b*mb with us.
We had a full moral right to it.
But they meticulously concealed
even the very existence
of some work from us.
So there,
shouldn't the actions of our
intelligence network be regarded
not as spying activities,
but rather as a positive attempt
to help the American authorities
correct their oversight.
The contrast between the resources
available at Los Alamos
and what the Russians could afford
on atomic research
could not have been greater.
This cluttered little
laboratory in Moscow
housed the entire Soviet atom b*mb
program at that stage in the w*r.
Compared with Oppenheimer,
the Soviet team leader Igor Kurchatov
lacked money, manpower and expertise.
Kurchatov managed to bring together
a small group of people
at laboratory number two,
{an8}which literally started up
with five people, just five people.
The team considered it
a great step forward
when they were given a large tent
on the outskirts of Moscow to work in.
This is thought to be the only picture
in existence of their Canvas HQ.
Their main problem, scientifically,
was how to move forward
without a supply of uranium
for their experiments.
In practical terms,
their problem was mud.
It was an open field
and part of the grounds
around the building
were marked off
by a barbed wire perimeter fence
a little distance away.
There were guards
standing at the checkpoint
{an8}with a barrier
and so much mud all round.
{an8}It was almost impossible to get through.
The official Soviet legend
is that Igor Kurchatov was
the genius who matched
Oppenheimer talent for talent.
But the full story is more complicated.
Kurchatov was brilliant,
but he was leading a double life.
By night he would study
an ever-increasing flow
of intelligence reports
being brought in by various spies.
Next day he would appear in the labs
and issue his instructions.
No one knew many of them were based on
ideas stolen from the West.
Most of the information was
delivered by courier.
Because the information
ran into hundreds of pages,
it was impossible to code
or transmit it all over the radio
for fear of interception.
There were two possible delivery options
over to the center, to Moscow,
{an8}by courier and by diplomatic mail,
though it was in violation of the rules.
And when there was a need
to send classified data fast,
the diplomatic mail was used.
When Kurchatov hit a problem,
he'd sometimes send a specific question
out to the network of spies.
March 22, 1943.
Give instructions
to the intelligence services
to find out what work has been done
on using Ekorinium 239 for a b*mb.
He even suggested
a list of experimental research sites
where they might find answers.
Berkeley.
Yale.
Ann Arbor.
Columbia.
Rochester.
Princeton.
And Swarthmore, Pennsylvania.
But what he got back was
more than one man could handle.
Thousands of documents lay untouched
in the Lubyanka vaults.
The secretive Beria was determined
that no one else should know
just how dependent
Soviet science was on the West.
Beria banned showing
the materials to anyone
but Kurchatov at this early stage.
Just imagine,
a 600-page volume comes in.
How could he find the time
to compute something in his head?
Problem surfaced.
New ideas and thoughts.
And Kurchatov had to
process them in his mind.
The Soviets had good reason
to be suspicious of their allies.
In 1943,
President Roosevelt met the
arch-anti-communist
Winston Churchill in Quebec
at Churchill's suggestion
the Russians weren't invited.
After the public greetings
and behind closed doors
an agreement was reached under which
the signatories would pool
their atomic secrets
and their atomic scientists.
But though they had been excluded
there was an unexpected
bonus for the Russians.
The deal meant that Klaus Fuchs
who had been steadily
supplying material
through Red Sonja in London
got orders to move
to the United States.
Fuchs' first stop was New York.
There he made contact with Yakovlev
through an intermediary
known in the spy business as a cut-out.
{an8}One of the early meetings
took place
{an8}here in Manhattan
just at the entrance,
{an8}back of us here,
of the Queensborough Bridge.
As I remembered, I think there were
a total of seven meetings took place
between the two men in the
boroughs of New York City Queens,
Brooklyn, Manhattan,
most of them in Manhattan.
The key developments taking
place on the Manhattan Project
were known to the KGB about
as fast as they were known
to the American scientists.
The KGB was
right inside the project.
Once Fuchs got to Los Alamos
the life of the spy
was comparatively easy.
Not least because of
Oppenheimer's insistence
that everything between
scientists should be open.
{an8}We had complete freedom to converse
{an8}with any scientist
who had a white badge.
This was partly due to Oppie.
He insisted on that.
Hans Bethe was head of
theoretical physics at Los Alamos.
A fellow refugee
from Hitler's Germany,
he was Fuchs' direct boss.
Klaus Fuchs was very reticent.
He wouldn't give anything
by himself,
except science.
He wouldn't talk about
personal things.
My friend, Daniel Piers, Mrs. Piers,
said you have to drop a penny
into the slot to make him talk.
Scientifically, however,
he was very good.
He worked, I think,
seven days a week,
and he produced
an awful lot of results.
He was a very good scientist and
very silent.
But the more the actual b*mb
took shape,
the more doubt some of the scientists
had about their work.
The threat from Hitler was fading fast,
so why was the b*mb needed?
One night in 1944,
at a dinner party for senior scientists,
their boss, General Groves,
let the cat out of the bag.
{an8}Groves said to us,
you realize, of course,
{an8}that the whole purpose of the project
{an8}is to subdue the Russians.
Now, I remember these words,
almost as they were spoken yesterday,
because they came to me
with such a shock,
I couldn't believe my own ears.
The shock came to me because,
first of all,
this was not the purpose
of the b*mb at all,
it should be used
against another nation.
Secondly, because at that time,
the Russians were our allies.
We had a mortal enemy
and they were carrying
the main burden of the w*r
against Germany, and here I am told,
what we are doing now
is to subdue these people.
The godfather of the
American b*mb project,
the Dane, Niels Bohr,
was particularly concerned.
Although Groves' view was not official,
Bohr felt it was essential to share
atomic information with the Russians,
to stop what he thought would inevitably
turn into a nuclear arms race.
Bohr and Fuchs were obviously
in agreement on this,
and later, Fuchs explained
how the protest grew.
{an8}The first statement,
and probably the firmest,
{an8}came from Niels Bohr
in a memo to Roosevelt.
{an8}He had evidently been thinking
{an8}much more intensely about this
than anyone else.
{an8}And this memo to the president
also expressed very clearly
{an8}the need for the United States
and the Soviet Union
{an8}to work together in harmony.
{an8}And he argues that in order
to establish the confidence required,
{an8}America should inform the Soviet Union
before using the atom b*mb.
{an8}Roosevelt raised the matter
with Churchill.
{an8}But Churchill was completely
opposed to the idea and,
{an8}in his first outburst,
{an8}went so far as to comment that
{an8}Niels Bohr ought to be
arrested on suspicion.
Bohr was invited to the White House
to put his case to the president.
He didn't get far.
Roosevelt didn't even let him speak
for the half hour
that had been allotted to him
and told him, well,
Mr Bohr, you are a great scientist.
When you want to talk to me
about science,
I am terribly interested,
but these political matters
are our business.
The w*r, meanwhile,
was reaching a bloody crescendo.
The Russians, who'd already lost
over 20 million people
in the long years of fighting,
were now pounding their way
into Berlin.
Victory in Europe was virtually won.
Hitler was beaten.
And the need for the atomic b*mb,
as originally defined, was over.
But everyone knew
it wouldn't end there.
Nils Bohr returned to Denmark,
disillusioned and worried.
He foresaw
that if the Americans go on by
themselves, together with the British,
and then the Russians will go on their
own, they'll make their own b*mb,
there will be an arms race,
which will have enormous consequences,
dire consequences
for the whole of civilisation.
And he tried to prevent this.
He and some of his fellow scientists
now believed that building the b*mb
had opened a Pandora's box.
I don't know whether it's
apocryphal or not, I can't remember,
{an8}but I'm supposed to have
said at the time,
{an8}it's too late now.
The military men have got their hands
on the b*mb.
They had indeed.
The following month,
the first atom b*mb,
code-named Trinity,
was wheeled out for testing.
For the scientists involved,
it was a time of great tension.
Very nervous.
Who did work.
We wanted to see
the actual expl*si*n,
very accurately,
because we wanted to measure
the development of the fireball.
now.
Even the experts were
astonished by the result.
It was just tremendous.
And first it was brilliant white.
And then as it rose in the atmosphere,
it became dominantly purple.
The gamma rays give you
then this purple light
that's radiation from the air.
So it was a tremendous spectacle,
and we all were aware
what kind of a weapon it was.
When they actually saw
the result at the Trinity test,
they were really flattened.
I mean, it's one thing to do
a calculation on a piece of paper.
{an8}It's another thing to actually see it.
{an8}They were really flattened by it
when it hit them
what they had done.
The very next day, Harry Truman,
newly made president
after the death of Roosevelt,
was able to tell his allies
he had a new super weapon
ready to beat the Japanese.
Stalin, of course, already knew
about the b*mb from his spies,
and he made no sign of
being impressed.
{an8}A few days later, he was.
Once the dust had settled,
everyone knew the rules of w*r
had changed forever.
Los Alamos was a very
depressed place
after Hiroshima,
because it suddenly sank in fully
what it was
they had been working on.
What motivated them initially was
the fear that the Germans
were going to get the b*mb.
And so they were building this thing,
and they weren't really
building it to use it,
they were building it so that
they could have, you know,
in case Germany did get the b*mb,
we would have our own b*mb,
and it would be a stalemate
with regard to nuclear weapons.
So I don't-I think many of them
seriously considered
that it was going to be used,
and there was all this
there was all this
euphemistic language.
I mean, they weren't building a b*mb,
they were building a gadget.
Among the first foreigners to pick
their way through the ruins of the city
was a man from Russian military
intelligence called Mikhail Ivanov.
{an8}We made our way through the streets,
{an8}those devastated streets.
{an8}All the maps were terribly confused.
There was rubble everywhere,
and the rubble was covered
in a strange dust.
It was an awful sight.
When we said
we had come to look at the city,
one man smiled and said,
What city?
There is no city.
There is a dreadful
sickness here, he said.
A dreadful sickness.
People who have survived
are dying from just being here.
Ivanov's report was sent
straight back to the Kremlin,
where Stalin summoned
his Politburo to a crisis meeting.
Despite all the information
from his spies,
he was shocked
by the news from Japan.
He was enraged,
he banged his fist and
stamped his feet.
{an8}He clearly hadn't reckoned that
they would really drop the b*mb
{an8}or that it would cause
such destruction.
The news couldn't have been worse time.
{an8}After a long and bitter w*r,
the Russians were celebrating.
And not just victory.
They were celebrating
the future as well.
It's obvious why Stalin was enraged.
We had won the w*r.
The stage was set
for making Europe socialist,
making it red,
nearly everything was in place,
and all of a sudden
this obstacle appeared,
and everything was going to the dogs.
Stalin was in no mood
to leave anything to chance.
Instead of leaving the building of
a b*mb to his scientists,
he put his secret police in charge.
The boss of the Lubyanka,
Lavrentiy Beria,
was told he must deliver a working
atomic b*mb within five years.
He knew that the vaults of
the Lubyanka were filled
with wartime intelligence.
But much of it was still
waiting to be read.
And the volume alone
told Beria one thing.
The Soviets had a long way to go
before they could match
the United States.
But within months,
he was to get a message
from the West
that could dramatically cut down
the Americans' lead.
One of the top men
in the Los Alamos team
was willing to talk.
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