Britain bathed in nuclear fire, America left all alone without any allies? What would have happened if the Soviet Union had developed the atom bomb first? In our real timeline, the Soviet Union was far too economically devastated by the war to have any hope of developing a wartime nuclear weapons program.
In fact, it relied
heavily on stolen research from the US's own Manhattan project to complete
its first working nuclear weapon four years after the war was over.
Even after that, the
nation struggled for a long time to develop the delivery platforms needed
to get a nuclear bomb from a manufacturing lab to a battlefield.
As early as 1910, Russian scientists were becoming aware
of the potential of radioactive elements.
Russia, at the time struggling to keep
pace with the rest of Europe, nonetheless made great strides despite
the many troubles caused by revolution and civil war.
Vladimir Verna sky, mineralogist and geochemist, and
founder of geochemistry, biogeochemistry, and radio geology, called for a
survey of uranium deposits within Russia's borders even before the
revolutionary troubles of 1905.
However, the nation had far more pressing concerns and
his request for an extensive survey of potentially valuable resources was
ignored.
Other individuals however knew of the potential
inherent in Verna sky’s research and privately funded such surveys until 1922,
when the Radium Institute in Petrograd officially took over the task under
state direction.
From 1920 until the
late 1930s, Russian physicists conducted joint atomic physics
research alongside European counterparts at the Cavendish Laboratory in
Cambridge, England.
At home though it was
Abram ICoffee, director of the Leningrad Physical-Technical Institute,
who guided the soviet effort in nuclear physics.
When the neutron was discovered
by British physicist James Chadwick, the LPTI's nuclear physics program
was expanded to include the first cyclotron- a type of particle
accelerator- with energies of over 1 mega electron volt, leading to
the first splitting of the atomic nucleus by John Cockcroft and Ernest
Walton.
The Russian government though showed little interest in
this field of research as they were far more concerned with the troubles
from two back-to-back revolutions.
Instead, their early
research was focused on the exploration of radium for medical and
scientific purposes thanks to its easy availability.
Russian physicists nonetheless
lobbied for an increase in funding and attention to this emerging field of physics,
but it wouldn't be until 1939, when German chemist Otto Hahn discovered fission
by splitting uranium, those scientists in Russia and America both realized
this could have serious military significance.
Early Russian efforts though were geared at using
fission for power generation, as there was deep skepticism that a working
bomb could be built in any reasonable timeframe.
However, as
World War II began a renewed emphasis on the military use of fission was
placed thanks to lobbying by Russian scientists, leading to a commission
that was set up to investigate how fission could be used to
produce a working bomb.
With the German invasion
of the Soviet Union practically all work was stopped on developing an
atomic bomb, as Stalin re-tasked Russian physicists into metallurgy,
the mining industry, or serving in the technical branches of the red army.
During this time some
research did continue, all of it unclassified and shared for peer
review in public scientific journals.
Georgy Floor, a Russian physicist serving in the Soviet
air force, noted that the Germans, British, and Americans had all suddenly
stopped publishing any papers on nuclear science.
This led him to the obvious conclusion that all three
of these countries had turned their efforts to creating secret nuclear
weapon programs, and were keeping quiet about their discoveries.
Stalin however had dispersed the research staff of
the Radium Institute deeper inside Russian territory, and tasked them with
developing better radar and anti-mine protection for ships.
Nuclear bombs were a
distant third.
Floor wrote two
impassioned letters to Stalin in April of 1942, warning him that if the Soviets
failed to develop an atomic bomb, “the results will be so overriding it won’t
be necessary to determine who is to blame for the fact that this work has been
neglected in our country.
” Basically, if the Soviets didn't develop an atom
bomb, there would be no survivors to blame for their failure.
Incredibly, Stalin took the letters seriously and immediately
pulled Russia's best physicists from their military postings and
authorized the start of an atomic bomb project.
Anatoly Alexandro and Igor V Kurchatov would
be placed in charge of Laboratory No.
2 as it came to be
known.
Kurchatov however
was skeptical that developing an atomic bomb was more important than the very
pressing needs from the Russian front- which at this time was not far from
Moscow itself where the laboratory was located.
Despite their best efforts over the next three years
though, Russian physicists were unable to make any headway in developing a
uranium-based bomb.
Many expressed the
futility of their effort, but all knew that any day now Germany could unleash
nuclear Armageddon on them from the air.
There was no way they
could have known that Germany's own nuclear weapons program
had barely made more progress than theirs thanks to Hitler's
paranoia leading to him splitting up the research efforts across
multiple, completely independent laboratories.
This division of
labor and lack of information sharing crippled the Nazi atomic weapon program
and ensured they'd have no hope of developing a nuclear weapon during the
war.
The Russians got a break when NKVD spies stole data
from the British on using plutonium instead of uranium for a
nuclear weapon- the first of many leaks to come that would bolster
the development of Soviet nuclear weapons.
In America, the efforts of British and US scientists
were combined after it was determined that the two nations needed to unite
their efforts to prevent the Germans from developing a nuclear weapon
first.
Britain very
reluctantly agreed to a program based out of the US due to basic
necessity- if Germany were to invade Britain such a program could not be
defended or kept secret.
At the time, Britain
led the world in the development of nuclear weapons, but was forced
to share that knowledge- again, reluctantly- with the US.
Germany was not blind to allied research into nuclear
weapons, and had attempted to penetrate the United States with many
spies.
However, these
efforts went largely unsuccessful and most German spies were caught.
Japan also attempted to
infiltrate the American nuclear program with spies but met with no success
either.
The Soviets however were extremely adept at spying, and
enjoyed the benefit of having the sympathy of a great deal of Americans
and British, as well as foreign emigres.
The Soviet Union
had devoted a great deal of resources into infiltrating its two wartime
allies, while both the US and Britain had failed to plant so
much as a single agent in Moscow.
In the US
hundreds of Americans provided classified information to Soviet handlers
out of sympathy, and the Communist Party of the United States of America
had thousands of members, some of which would happily share secrets with
Soviet spies.
The CPUSA was largely made up of highly educated intellectuals
fed up with the exploitative nature of capitalism and given their
education were often involved in technical military efforts, putting
them in prime position to gather classified materials to share with Soviet spies.
However, not all
CPUSA members were willing to betray their country, and the intelligence gathered
by the Soviets was limited in scope.
In Britain though Soviet sources were even better
placed, and the Soviet Union first learned of a possible US-British atomic
bomb program in September of 1941, a full year before the effort was
formalized.
It's believed
that the leak came from John Cairn cross, a member of the infamous
“Cambridge Five” who divulged a large number of state secrets to the
Soviets during the war.
At about the same
time, Donald Maclean also informed the Soviets of a potential atomic bomb
project.
Almost immediately,
the NKVD launched a massive effort to place sources within the burgeoning American
Manhattan Project- though most of these attempts were foiled by the FBI
and Manhattan Project counterintelligence agents.
In February of 1943, Soviet attempts to contact
physicists conducting work related to the bomb project at the “Rad
Lab” at University of California, Berkeley, were discovered by the
FBI, and the scientists in question were placed under twenty four
hour surveillance.
Those deemed
vulnerable to Soviet influence were assigned away into the military to
work on unrelated projects to prevent them from leaking classified
information.
One, caught leaking information in 1944, was
immediately discharged from the project, and early that same year the FBI
learned of several other employees leaking information to the Soviets.
So close to success,
it was becoming clear that the Manhattan Project was a leaky boat, but
nobody knew just how thoroughly the Soviets had penetrated it.
They wouldn't find
out until 1950 that one of the project's innermost members was a Soviet
spy all along.
Klaus Fuchs was a German communist who fled to England
in September of 1933 in order to avoid persecution.
While there he earned
his Ph.D.
In physics in 1937, later
earning a Ph.
D in science and
applying for British citizenship.
However, the war
broke out before his application could be processed and he was sent
to an internment camp in Quebec, Canada to ride out the war.
However, Max Born,
the scientist he had been working under, pressed the government for his
release, and it was granted.
Fuchs returned to
Edinburgh to resume his work in January 1941.
In May 1941 he was
offered a spot working on the British atomic bomb project- shortly
after he offered his services to the Soviet NKVD due to his communist
sympathies.
In 1943 Fuchs was sent to Columbia University in New
York to work on the Manhattan Project.
He was contacted
by Soviet intelligence in 1944, just in time for Fuchs to be transferred
to Los Alamos, birthplace of the atomic bomb.
While by then the Soviets
had infiltrated the Manhattan Project with various other spies, Fuchs was
one of the highest placed Soviet agents, and his efforts led to the
Soviet Union developing an atomic bomb anywhere from one to two years
ahead of schedule.
He would be discovered in 1949 when decrypted cables
from the US Army Signal Intelligence Service’s Verona project revealed
that Fuchs had been spying for the Soviets.
He was arrested
in January 1950 and served 9 years in prison before being deported to East
Germany.
Despite a large number of well-placed spies though, the
Soviet Union still failed to produce a nuclear weapon during the war,
taking until 1949 to develop their own atomic bomb.
The reasons for this were largely due to logistics,
as the Soviet Union had failed to take uranium mining seriously until
1942, and by 1943 was still only producing a few tons of uranium
concentrate per year.
The Americans, with the
help of Belgian businessman Edgar Signer, had in 1940 already blocked the
Soviets off from access to uranium in Congo, South Africa, and Canada,
seriously setting back Soviet efforts.
In 1946 the
first Soviet nuclear reactor went online, but production was still
insufficient to fuel it- instead it was fueled from seized German stockpiles
from their own failed program.
For the Soviet Union
to have developed the atomic bomb first it would have had to listen
to Vladimir Verna sky’s calls in the early 1900s for uranium surveys.
But with two
revolutions and a bloody civil war, uranium was the last thing on any
Soviet leader's mind.
With the devastating
invasion of the Soviet homeland by the German army during World War II, other
priorities took precedence- there could be no nuclear program after all if
the Germans simply overran the country with their superior forces.
But what if the Soviets had developed the first atomic bomb?
Surprisingly, not much of world history would have changed.
The United States was
already well on its way to development of an atomic weapon and would have
followed with its own bomb within months or a year at most of a Soviet
bomb.
However, life would
likely have been a lot harder for Germany, as you could expect that along
with Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Berlin would have suffered the wrath of atomic
hellfire from a Soviet bombing.
A second nuclear
bomb would have likely been dropped on the infamous Wolf's Lair bunker,
incinerating Hitler and decapitating German leadership.
Neither bombing would have been necessary to end the
war, as the German army was on the verge of collapse already, but the
Soviets would have likely carried out the bombing in retaliation for
the atrocities the Germans committed against Soviet citizens in their
invasion.
Berlin would have
paid the price for millions of dead Soviet citizens, and razed to the
ground in nuclear fire.
The post-war period would have likely played out
exactly the same, as even the US- which bluffed about the number of
nuclear bombs it had after the strikes against Japan- struggled to produce
nuclear bombs quickly.
Any plans Stalin
might have had to use nuclear weapons to subjugate Europe would have been
placed on hold due to the simple logistics of actually building nuclear
weapons- and then finding efficient ways of delivering them.
The US after all was only able to successfully bomb
Japan because its air forces had been almost completely destroyed, and
American bombers could fly over japan with complete impunity.
The allies however still had strong air
forces, and Soviet bombers would have found it impossible to
penetrate French and British skies deep enough to deliver nuclear strikes.
It would be well over a decade before rocketry had
advanced to the point that a nuclear weapon could be delivered with any
measure of success, and by that time the world would have been
meeting the Soviet nuclear capabilities with their own.
Even more importantly
though, it's doubtful Stalin had the stomach for further
conflict after the defeat of Germany, and even more doubtful his
armies would have obeyed such orders to continue carrying on
a war that had so thoroughly decimated them and their homeland
for half a decade.
Now go check out What If There Was a Nuclear War between the US and Russia, or click this other video instead! Nerf nuclear Gandhi!