Who Designed Soviet Atomic Weapons?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Boris Kochnev, the son of Anatoly Kochnev, who worked at secret nuclear facilities, reveals the facts about the transfer of technology from the Third Reich to the Soviet Union in the post-war period. Echelons from Germany to the USSR sent unique equipment and entire institutes …

If you go to the encyclopedia's website and type in the name of the SS Standartenfuehrer, Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves, Baron Manfred von Ardenne (January 20, 1907 - May 26, 1997), then you may be surprised to read that he is a laureate of two Stalin Prizes in 1947 and 1953. For what???

A talented physicist. Author of 600 patents. One of the pioneers of television. National awards of the GDR for 1958 and 1965 Maybe for broadcasting? Our sources are completely silent - well, this person is not in the world. In fact, it was the Ardennes, not Kurchatov, who made the atomic bomb to Stalin and actually gave us the role of a great power. This was done in order to save Germany from the Anglo-Saxons and push Russia against America.

Von Ardenne was the Fuhrer's favorite physicist. He had his own private laboratory near Berlin, which was generously funded by the Post Office for the German "Uranium Project" (Kerwaffenprojekt) 1938-1945. It was Manfred F. Ardenne who developed a method of gas-diffusion purification of uranium isotopes (hexafluoride, or uranium hexafluoride, it turns out, a gas) and separation of uranium 235 isotopes in a centrifuge.

His laboratory was guarded by an SS regiment. Concrete fortifications, well-trained soldiers - the USSR had to lose three divisions to storm the facility and there was no chance of taking documentation and undamaged (not blown up) equipment, all the more no chance of catching these physicists, who could scatter in an instant and lie to the bottom in the western zone. And suddenly an April miracle - the SS men resignedly lay down their arms, the entire scientific staff of the laboratory wants to cooperate with the Russians, all the equipment and the uranium centrifuge of the institute were handed over to work, with all the documentation and reagents.

Moreover, the NKVD authorities in Germany get 15 tons of uranium metal of German purification quality - they were robbed!

The smart mister Baron travels to Moscow with Frau Ardenne, capturing a magnificent piano, SS dress uniform and a full-length oil painting from the personal artist of the Fuehrer, where he gives him oak leaves to the Knight's Cross - the highest award of the Reich (state).

He is not traveling alone - over 200 of the most prominent physicists, radio engineers, and rocket scientists are traveling with him. This is the Nobel laureate, the creator of the V-3 rocket Gustav Hertz, Professor, Werner Zulius, Gunther Wirth, Nikolaus Riehl, Karl Zimmer, Dr. Robert Doppel, Peter Thiessen, Professor Heinz Pose - several hundred of the best minds in Germany go to Moscow, where they were shot and the professors of Russian universities rotted away in the camps, and where the term was given simply for the nobility.

Russia is poor and hungry, there is no oil for children or wounded in hospitals, there is no chance of making an atomic bomb by themselves, since it requires billions of dollars in investments, modern devices and … brains. Desirable Jewish, like Landau. Or German, like F. Ardenne. But not like Mekhlis, his mother is there …

Together with f. The best and freshest equipment of the Berlin Kaiser Institute and the Ardenne-Berlin-Lichterfelde-Ost institute are traveling in trains to the Ardennes.

Even German electric transformers are running - one of these still works without repair near the town of Golitsino M. O. Documents and reagents, stocks of film and paper for recorders, photo recorders, wire tape recorders for telemetry and optics are going … What Stalin's Russia did not produce at all, and still cannot master some positions in terms of quality. Workers 'and peasants' marauders take out the best machines and take out new factories from all countries, not only from Germany, private property is not recognized. So near Vienna in Austria, a brand new radio tube factory was completely dismantled, whose tungsten vacuum furnaces played an important role. The Austrians learned to evacuate air with mercury vacuum pumps, which made it possible to obtain a vacuum with a vacuum of up to 10 to minus 13 degrees of mm Hg. Art. For backward Russia, this was unattainable.

In Moscow, a concentration camp is rapidly being built on the October field. Quite comfortable - Herr F. The Ardenne lives in a two-story mansion, on the stairs is a portrait of the Fuhrer and he was awarded the Knight's Cross.

My father and mother graduated from MIKhM in 1948, and the entire course the boys were assigned to this concentration camp, which was encrypted as the Research Institute of Glavmosstroy No. 9 - the famous 9. They paid well, the main thing was rations in a hungry country. Instead of a general amnesty, the men after captivity were rotted in the camps, and in the villages the women howled from loneliness, who did not know how to feed their children.

Now there is the Kurchatov Institute, but it was more correct to name it after the Ardenne. The Germans also brought the tested schemes of an industrial nuclear reactor and a breeder reactor. After all, they were the pioneers in the atomic field, the first test mini-bomb was detonated on the island of Rügen in the Baltic Sea, and the second in Pomerania. During the tests, about 700 Soviet prisoners of war ("guinea pigs") were killed. Power - about 5 kilotons.

Each German was assigned 5-6 of our engineers - apprentices, often speaking German. Our people lived in barracks, could go to the city with passes, but indicated in the pass where, to whom, the place. For example "k / t chronicles, Pushkin Square, session 14-30". F. Ardenne was not afraid of anyone, on holidays he walked around the camp in full uniform with awards. Father and mother were often invited to dinner, as they studied the language at the institute and were German-speaking, and mother played well with Frau Ardenne in 4 hands on the piano.

From the NKVD, Igor Kurchatov was appointed, who should not be confused with the physicist Boris Kurchatov. If the memoirs say that there was a meeting of Ladau, Kapitsa (future academicians of the USSR) and others at the Academy of Sciences and the name of Kurchatov was mentioned, then this is Boris, and if Lavrenty Palych and Iosif Vissarionich heard the report, then this is Igor. So the Chekist became a great physicist.

At the same time, plutonium for the first Soviet atomic bomb was obtained in the industrial reactor of the Chelyabinsk-40 facility, after its testing the German doctor N. Ril became the Hero of Socialist Labor.

Then came the turn of mass production of warheads and industrial volumes of purification of radioactive uranium.

Now we understand the impudence with which Stalin behaved in 45g. at the Potsdam conference - he knew that the German bomb and German uranium were already in his hands. Moreover, it has now become clear that the Japanese received uranium from the Germans in gold-lined boxes transported on a submarine, there is evidence that they were conducting an experimental explosion off the coast of Korea. The last boat in the spring of 45. surfaced and surrendered to an American destroyer. This is why the US responded to Hiroshima and Nagasaki and not to intimidate Stalin. It was too late to intimidate this maniac, Ardenne had already worked in Moscow.

Then the Ardennes was transferred to Sukhumi, where a new scientific center, a centrifuge for purifying uranium isotopes, was built on the coast of the bay. The object bore the code "A", then A-1009 of MinSredmash, and I do not advise citizens to rest and swim in the Sukhum Bay without a dosimeter. My father and mother moved there and before school I lived in my native Abkhazia. There have been several isotope release accidents.

Baron v. Ardenne was the scientific director of this institute (SIPT Sukhum Institute of Physics and Technology). An important role was also played by the Austrian scientists - radio technician Dr. Fritz. For this work, the Baron received the second Stalin Prize in 1953. and in 1955 he was allowed to return, but to the GDR.

At the end of the war in 45, Germany had jet engines and serial jet aircraft, the first anti-aircraft missiles, the first air-to-air missiles, there was a nuclear industry, there were infrared tank sights and gyroscopic stabilization of sea guns, radar and jamming selection stations, excellent direction finders. There were aircraft sights and gyro-stabilized navigation devices for submarines, "blue" optics and 1.5 volt radio tubes the size of a pinky fingernail, cruise and ballistic missiles. All this and a bunch of developments, documentation and brains of living scientists went to Stalin.

Having confronted the Stalinist empire with the United States and the crumbling British empire, Germany got a chance - and in a short time got up from its knees and turned into the second or third largest economy in the world. Then Japan did it, and note that without a single district committee, security officers and the leading role of the party. And in Russia - the winner, people dreamed of sausage and butter from Moscow, and could not buy medicine for a dying child. I well remember how in 1982 I used to carry bags of food to my hungry relatives in Kalinin (Tver) by train from Moscow.

The Germans made the right move, and I'm not entirely sure that it was the personal initiative of Baron F. Ardenne - to hand over such a laboratory without instructions from above is unrealistic. Any officer will shoot you along with your Frau. After all, he had an order for this case too.

Go to the encyclopedia website.

And remember in the church the young Soviet fools of the 40s, who in cotton white coats took radioactive isotopes with their bare hands, which poured radioactive waste into the nearest river in buckets, and few of them lived to be 30-40 years old. A whole generation of young and talented, gullible, but simply stupid, who designed dosimeters for others, but themselves worked without dosimeters, was established. Their widows and children remember them.

I remember my father. Kochnev Anatoly Timofeevich, born in 1926.. Twenty years in the nuclear industry. And a slow beggar death from radiation sickness.

Eternal memory to them….

And thanks to Herr Standartenfuehrer for the USSR nuclear industry, which Stalin allegedly created. Truth be told, the Germans gave it to us!

Bomb from a German Baron: Who Designed Soviet Atomic Weapons?

Once Beria spoke with Hitler's scientific adviser Peter Thyssen, director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Physics Institute.

- I am many years old, what is the use of me? - Thyssen dissuaded. - For the atomic bomb I am already ruins.

“If you are the ruins,” Beria answered to the Fuehrer’s adviser, “then they are very impressive. Start working and we will help.

The first Soviet atomic bomb was tested 60 years ago. This is an event of historic proportions, it has established a nuclear equilibrium and made possible only a bloodless "cold war". After the test, the Pentagon sobered up and no longer made plans for nuclear bombing of dozens of Soviet cities. The role of Soviet intelligence, which has shortened the time it takes to develop nuclear weapons, has recently been declassified. But the participation of German specialists in our atomic project is still not advertised. In 1945, hundreds of German scientists related to the nuclear problem were delivered from Germany to the USSR on a voluntary-compulsory basis. The largest batch of Germans was brought to Sukhumi and secretly housed in the magnificent estates of Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich and millionaire Smetsky. Perhaps these places were chosen for the reason that Beria was born nearby and knew all the secret paths and even underwater currents here.

Golden cage for the "useful Jew"

Holiday-makers, softened in the sun, wander heavily from the beach - to their delight, they have subjected their organisms to a radiation attack. Women drag crazy children, men swim under the weight of beer bellies like sea brigs. Beach-goers walk past a pompous and abandoned mansion, which is hidden a hundred meters from the shore in a wild garden. The house has been looted, and no one cares about it - in Abkhazia after the war there are too many destroyed buildings.

“There was a big kindergarten here,” says an elderly ice cream saleswoman. - But after the war there were few kids. The house was abandoned. What was before kindergarten? No, no one will remember that.

It's about the 1992-1993 Georgian-Abkhaz war. And after the Great Patriotic War, the Nobel and Stalin Prize laureate Gustav Hertz, the nephew of that Hertz, whom every schoolboy knows, even if he is caught on the beach, lived and worked in this mansion for ten years and worked on the Soviet atomic bomb. Even before the war, Hertz said that of all countries, he would bring the most benefit if he worked in the USSR. Hertz could easily have followed the example of Einstein and many other German scientists who made their way to America. But he did not leave Germany, where he lived with the Ausweis of a "useful Jew", lost the right to work in state institutions and served in a private Siemens. In 1945, Gustav Hertz became one of the first German physicists who agreed to come to the USSR, became the director of the institute and lived on the Black Sea coast in a house built according to his own design. Hertz remains the only foreign Nobel laureate who worked in our country.

In 1945, a group of colonels, who were actually not colonels, but secret physicists, were looking for specialists in Germany - future academicians Artsimovich, Kikoin, Khariton, Shchelkin … The operation was led by First Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Ivan Serov, which opened any doors. In addition to scientists, undercover academics found 200 tons of uranium metal, which, according to Kurchatov, reduced the work on the bomb by a year and a half. The United States managed to export even more uranium from Germany, as did the specialists headed by the head of the German atomic project, Nobel laureate Werner von Heisenberg. Mechanics, electrical engineers, glass blowers were sent to the USSR. Many were taken away from prisoner of war camps. Max Steinbeck, the future Soviet academician and vice-president of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR, was found when, at the whim of the head of the camp, he made a sundial. In total, 7 thousand German specialists worked on the atomic project in the USSR, and another 3 thousand - on the rocket project.

The sanatoriums "Sinop" and "Agudzera" were transferred to the disposal of German physicists in Abkhazia, and dozens of high-ranking families were evicted from them. Echelons with equipment came from Germany. Three of the four German cyclotrons were brought to the USSR, as well as powerful magnets, electron microscopes, oscilloscopes, high-voltage transformers, and ultra-precise instruments. In the USSR, equipment was exported from the Institute of Chemistry and Metallurgy, the Kaiser Wilhelm Physics Institute, Siemens electrical laboratories, and the Physics Institute of the German Ministry of Posts. By the way, the Postmaster General was bothering Hitler with promises that he would be able to save Germany by making an atomic bomb for his budget, but the Fuhrer, who was only interested in a quick result, dismissed it.

The sanatoriums have forever lost their historical name. "Sinop" was named "Object" A "- it was led by the scientist Baron Manfred von Ardenne." Agudzers "became" Object "G" - it was headed by Gustav Hertz. Prominent scientists worked at objects "A" and "D" - Nikolaus Riehl, who was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor by Stalin, Max Volmer, who built the first installation for the production of heavy water in the USSR, and then became president of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR, a member of the NSDAP and adviser to Hitler in science Peter Thyssen, designer of the legendary centrifuge for uranium separation Max Steinbeck and holder of the first Western patent for the centrifuge Gernot Zippe … A total of about 300 people. All these scientists created an atomic bomb for Hitler, but in the USSR they were not reproached for this. Many German scientists have become - and more than once - the Stalin Prize laureates.

Gustav Hertz remained in the memory of our scientists as an introverted person who thoughtfully smoked his pipe. But could he be a merry fellow who lived half his life with the nickname "useful Jew"? Sometimes Hertz complained about the boys who steal melons from his garden, but did not give way to the complaints. Hertz said sadly: "There is no boy, no melon." At seminars, the Nobel laureate invariably began his speech with the words “Maybe I’ll say something very stupid, but …” And he said completely unexpected things that never occurred to anyone. When Hertz returned to Germany, it turned out that he had collected the rich and first in Europe collection of Abkhaz folklore …

A spyglass, so as not to suffer

“The USSR government would like your institute to start developing our atomic bomb,” Beria said in 1945 in the Kremlin to Baron Manfred von Ardenne.

“This is a great honor, the offer expresses your faith in my capabilities,” the baron replied after 10 seconds, which seemed to him the longest in his life, because he understood that the fate of thousands of compatriots depends on the answer. - But I propose that German scientists be entrusted with the equally difficult task of separating isotopes, and that the development of the atomic bomb itself was carried out by Soviet scientists who can accomplish a great task for their homeland.

Beria agreed with the distribution of tasks. Twenty years later, Khrushchev exclaimed cheerfully: "Are you the Ardenne who managed to pull his head out of the noose?" Baron von Ardenne, with his 600 patents for Germans, is as iconic an inventor as Edison is for Americans. He was one of the pioneers of television, created the generation of electron microscopes and mass spectrometers, and many other devices. Thanks to von Ardenne, the first mass spectrometer appeared in the USSR, and the Physico-Technical Institute in Sukhumi, having absorbed the lessons of the German school, became one of the leaders of our science. A huge contribution, as promised by Baron Beria, was made to the creation of the world's best uranium enrichment technology, and the advanced technology for obtaining uranium metal was developed by Nikolaus Riehl, who desperately entered into a dispute with the bureaucracy and whom Stalin was personally interested in.

How were the German specialists arranged in Sukhumi? They lived in a comfortable town, but behind barbed wire. Salaries were high - von Ardenne received 10, 5 thousand rubles, while the salary of a Soviet engineer was 500 rubles. In the work, the scientists did not know the refusal, the orders were executed instantly - for the necessary device, the plane could fly to any city in the USSR. The Germans came to the conviction and wrote in their memoirs that the Soviet labor system is the most effective in the world, Germany is far from it, and socialism will certainly triumph. Many asked to be included in social competition. Even Baron von Ardenne became a socialist and sincerely praised the Soviet system, although he did not refuse exorbitant awards.

The only thing that the Germans could not understand in the USSR was the struggle against genetics, which was declared a bourgeois pseudoscience "We see genes in a microscope," scientists were surprised. "How can you deny what is a fact?" By the way, at object "A" a doctor with the ominous surname Menke conducted experiments on the effect of radiation on animals, but nothing is known about the results.

The rest was harder. When the Germans went beyond the border of the object, an escort was attached to each. There were many excursions in Abkhazia, many sports competitions. To maintain good spirits, joint holidays were arranged. The Germans sang "Katyusha" and taught Soviet young ladies to dance, and the best dancer was Peter Thyssen, a former adviser to Hitler. For all the years, only one mixed marriage was concluded, however, the groom was not a German, but an Austrian Yevgeny Baroni, who remained in Sukhumi.

The Germans, like the Russians, are not fools to drink. But there were difficulties with alcohol. Chemists learned how to drive egg liqueur and carried it past the sentry in a steaming vessel with a heart-rending hum from under a gas mask: "Beware, poison!" The worst thing was with the arrows of Cupid, because not everyone had families, and the subtropics are conducive to languid dreams. By the way, it was allowed to bring any woman from Germany, not necessarily a wife. There were so many suffering minnesingers that the optician Hoffmann, in order to save his nerves, built a telescope through which, right from the institute, it was possible to observe women on the beach while sunbathing.

Member of the Politburo in the bunker

The secrecy at the facilities was such that the secretary confused himself at the entrance. Perhaps for this reason, former Politburo member Eduard Shevardnadze, after becoming Georgian president, hid in a bunker on the territory of facility "A" in 1993. I looked into the bunker - a wretched sight and an evil irony of fate! When the Abkhaz went on the offensive, the leader of Georgia fled from the bunker and threw a suitcase full of underwear, which local boys brandished with more inspiration than they stole melons from Gustav Hertz. Shevardnadze barely made it to the airport, where it turned out that Georgian planes, whoever doubted, did not fly. The President was saved by Russian special forces. Turn a little differently, object "A" would go down in history even louder.

“Our institute has gone through a difficult crisis twice,” says director Anatoly Markolia. - The first time when the Germans left. The second time was during the war. Ties with Russia have ceased. Tbilisi created an institute exactly with our name - the Sukhumi Physicotechnical Institute. They wrote letters to Moscow demanding money. The SPTI employed 5 thousand people, now there are 600 left, scientists - only 150. Hopes are connected with Russia, we are creating joint ventures on topics where our positions are still strong. Students from Abkhazia study in the best Russian universities in our direction. So far, our salary is only 5 thousand, but when we get out of the hole, the youth will return to the Physicotechnical Institute. Many Georgians still work for us, no one is persecuting them. Tolerance has been preserved since the days when German scientists worked in Sukhumi after the previous war.

In Russia, I have not seen portraits of politicians in the scientists' office. The head of the plasma department, Yuri Matveyev, a liberal-minded man, has a modest portrait of Putin on his desk. "We owe everything to him," says an expert on plasma vortices. "If it weren't for Putin, there would be no scientists left in Abkhazia." During the war years, scientists, left without a livelihood, figured out how to make bread from tangerines, and cakes from nettles. From the excessive consumption of tangerines, physicists have turned yellow like the Chinese. But they went to work, were on duty around the clock in the laboratories. “I collected tangerines to survive. I lived to preserve the installations,” recalls designer Nikolai Sudak. “The Georgians offered me to repair weapons, but I said that I only knew about the atomic bomb. As a result, I ended up without bread cards.”

Why did these scientists stay in Sukhumi if they were offered jobs in Russian laboratories? Maybe they are driven by a rare, but very simple feeling - they love their job, are proud of the institute and do not want to leave it to their fate in a difficult hour. And, probably, they could easily find a common language with German physicists, who brought high science to these lands after the most terrible war in history.

Shadow of Basil the Blessed

It was promised that in 1955 the German scientists would return to Germany. Nikolaus Riehl's wife was extremely frightened by the golden shower of awards, prizes and honors - all family members received the lifelong right to study, receive medical treatment and travel around the USSR free of charge. Rill told Beria's deputy, General Zavenyagin: "I have never been a capitalist in my life, and it would be surprising to expect that I will become a capitalist in a socialist country." When everyone was packing their suitcases in Sukhumi, Ril ostentatiously avoided packing and said that all his valuables were kept in his head. Riehl later wrote that Stalin's love and abundance of benefits were the heaviest burden for him.

Manfred von Ardenne, as luck would have it, read about the fate of the architects of St. Basil's Cathedral and doubted whether he would suffer the same fate. But the baron was bathed in glory and knew nothing of refusal. All devices confiscated in 1945 were returned to him and delivered back to Germany. And the socialist baron brought so much money from the USSR to Germany that he was able to open and equip the first private scientific institute in the socialist world.

Is the contribution of German specialists to the Soviet atomic bomb great? And would the USSR have made a bomb without the intelligence data that was working in the West, and without the help of German scientists? No matter how much you argue, there will be no answer. But you need to know the main lesson: at a critical moment in history, the country managed to mobilize all resources and completed the most important strategic task when the edge of the abyss was already close.

By the end of 1955, all Germans returned to Germany, and no one, not even the kindly laureates, was tempted to stay in the USSR. Children settled in the mansion of Gustav Hertz, and the chair of Baron von Ardenne is passed on to each other by inheritance of the director of the Sukhum Physics and Technology Institute, in order to indulge in high thoughts.

Sergey Leskov, Izvestiya Nauki