On August days 68 years ago, namely, on August 6, 1945 at 08:15 local time, the American B-29 "Enola Gay" bomber, piloted by Paul Tibbets and bombardier Tom Fereby, dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima called "Baby" . On August 9, the bombing was repeated - the second bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki.

According to official history, the Americans were the first in the world to make an atomic bomb and hastened to use it against Japan., so that the Japanese capitulate faster and America could avoid colossal losses during the landing of soldiers on the islands, for which the admirals were already preparing closely. At the same time, the bomb was a demonstration of its new capabilities to the USSR, because in May 1945 Comrade Dzhugashvili was already thinking of extending the construction of communism to the English Channel.

Seeing the example of Hiroshima, what will happen to Moscow, the Soviet party leaders reduced their ardor and accepted the right decision build socialism no further than East Berlin. At the same time, they threw all their efforts into the Soviet atomic project, dug up the talented academician Kurchatov somewhere, and he quickly made an atomic bomb for Dzhugashvili, which the general secretaries then rattled on the UN rostrum, and Soviet propagandists rattled it in front of the audience - they say, yes, our pants are sewn bad, but« we made the atomic bomb». This argument is almost the main one for many fans of the Soviet of Deputies. However, the time has come to refute these arguments.

Somehow, the creation of the atomic bomb did not fit with the level of Soviet science and technology. It is unbelievable that a slave-owning system could produce such a complex scientific and technological product on its own. Over time somehow not even denied, that people from Lubyanka also helped Kurchatov, bringing ready-made drawings in their beaks, but academicians completely deny this, minimizing the merit of technological intelligence. In America, the Rosenbergs were executed for transferring atomic secrets to the USSR. The dispute between official historians and citizens who want to revise history has been going on for a long time, almost openly, but true position cases are far from both the official version and the views of its critics. And things are such that the first atomic bomb, likeand many things in the world were done by the Germans by 1945. And they even tested it at the end of 1944.The Americans were preparing the nuclear project themselves, as it were, but they received the main components as a trophy or under an agreement with the top of the Reich, and therefore they did everything much faster. But when the Americans detonated the bomb, the USSR began to look for German scientists, whichand made their contribution. That is why they created a bomb so quickly in the USSR, although according to the calculation of the Americans, he could not make a bomb before1952- 55 years old.

The Americans knew what they were talking about, because if von Braun helped them make rocket technology, then their first atomic bomb was completely German. For a long time it was possible to hide the truth, but in the decades after 1945, then someone resigning unleashed his tongue, then accidentally declassified a couple of sheets from secret archives, then the journalists sniffed something out. The earth was filled with rumors and rumors that the bomb dropped on Hiroshima was actually Germanhave been going since 1945. People whispered in the smoking rooms and scratched their foreheads over the logicaleskiminconsistencies and puzzling questions until one day in the early 2000s, Mr. Joseph Farrell, a well-known theologian and specialist in an alternative view of modern "science" combined all the known facts in one book - Black sun of the Third Reich. The battle for the "weapon of vengeance".

The facts were repeatedly checked by him and much that the author had doubts was not included in the book, nevertheless, these facts are more than enough to reduce the debit to the credit. One can argue about each of them (which the US officials do), try to refute, but all together the facts are super convincing. Some of them, for example, the Decrees of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, are completely irrefutable neither by the pundits of the USSR, nor even by pundits of the United States. Since Dzhugashvili decided to give "enemies of the people"Stalinistprizes(more on that below), so it was for what.

We will not retell the entire book of Mr. Farrell, we simply recommend it for mandatory reading. Here are just a few quoteskifor example, some quotesabouttalking about the fact that the Germans tested the atomic bomb and people saw it:

A man named Zinsser, an anti-aircraft missile specialist, recounted what he witnessed: “In early October 1944, I took off from Ludwigslust. (south of Lübeck), located 12 to 15 kilometers from the nuclear test site, and suddenly saw a strong bright glow that illuminated the entire atmosphere, which lasted about two seconds.

A clearly visible shock wave erupted from the cloud formed by the explosion. By the time it became visible, it had a diameter of about one kilometer, and the color of the cloud changed frequently. After a short period of darkness, it was covered with many bright spots, which, unlike the usual explosion, had a pale blue color.

Approximately ten seconds after the explosion, the distinct outlines of the explosive cloud disappeared, then the cloud itself began to brighten against a dark gray sky covered with solid clouds. Diameter still visible to the naked eye shock wave was at least 9000 meters; it remained visible for at least 15 seconds. My personal feeling from observing the color of the explosive cloud: it took on a blue-violet color. Throughout this phenomenon, reddish-colored rings were visible, very quickly changing color to dirty shades. From my observation plane, I felt a slight impact in the form of light jolts and jerks.

About an hour later I took off in a Xe-111 from the Ludwigslust airfield and headed for eastbound. Shortly after takeoff, I flew through a zone of continuous cloud cover (at an altitude of three to four thousand meters). Above the place where the explosion occurred, there was a mushroom cloud with turbulent, eddy layers (at an altitude of approximately 7000 meters), without any visible connections. A strong electromagnetic disturbance manifested itself in the inability to continue radio communication. Since American P-38 fighters were operating in the Wittenberg-Bersburg area, I had to turn north, but I got a better view of the lower part of the cloud above the explosion site. Side note: I don't really understand why these tests were conducted in such a densely populated area."

ARI:Thus, some German pilot observed the test of a device that, by all indications, is suitable for the characteristics of an atomic bomb. There are dozens of such testimonies, but Mr. Farrell cites only officialthe documents. And not only the Germans, but also the Japanese, whom the Germans, according to his version, also helped to make a bomb, and they tested it at their training ground.

Shortly after the end of World War II, American intelligence in the Pacific received a startling report: the Japanese had built and successfully tested an atomic bomb just before their surrender. The work was carried out in the city of Konan or in its vicinity (the Japanese name for the city of Heungnam) in the north of the Korean Peninsula.

The war ended before these weapons saw combat use, and the production where they were made is now in the hands of the Russians.

In the summer of 1946, this information was widely publicized. David Snell of Korea's 24th Investigation Division... wrote about it in the Atlanta Constitution after he was fired.

Snell's statement was based on the allegations of a Japanese officer returning to Japan. This officer informed Snell that he was tasked with providing security this object. Snell, recounting in his own words in a newspaper article the testimony of a Japanese officer, argued:

In a cave in the mountains near Konan, people worked, racing against time to complete the assembly of the "genzai bakudan" - the Japanese name for an atomic bomb. It was August 10, 1945 (Japanese time), just four days after the atomic explosion tore the sky apart.

ARI: Among the arguments of those who do not believe in the creation of the atomic bomb by the Germans, such an argument that it is not known about the significant industrial capacity in the Hitlerite district, which was directed to the German atomic project, as was done in the United States. However, this argument is refuted byextremely curious fact connected with the concern "I. G. Farben", which, according to the official legend, produced syntheticesskyrubber and therefore consumed more electricity than Berlin at that time. But in reality, in five years of work, EVEN A KILOGRAM of official products was produced there, and most likely it was the main center for uranium enrichment:

Concern "I. G. Farben "took an active part in the atrocities of Nazism, creating during the war years a huge plant for the production of synthetic rubber Buna in Auschwitz ( German title Polish town of Auschwitz) in the Polish part of Silesia.

prisoners concentration camp, who first worked on the construction of the complex, and then served it, were subjected to unheard of cruelties. However, at the hearings of the Nuremberg Tribunal for war criminals, it turned out that the Auschwitz buna complex was one of the great mysteries of the war, for despite the personal blessing of Hitler, Himmler, Goering and Keitel, despite the endless source of both qualified civilian personnel and slave labor from Auschwitz, “work was constantly hampered by failures, delays and sabotage ... However, in spite of everything, the construction of a huge complex for the production of synthetic rubber and gasoline was completed. More than three hundred thousand concentration camp prisoners passed through the construction site; of these, twenty-five thousand died of exhaustion, unable to bear the exhausting labor.

The complex is gigantic. So huge that "it consumed more electricity than all of Berlin." However, during the war criminals tribunal, it was not this long list of macabre details that puzzled the investigators of the victorious powers. They were perplexed by the fact that, despite such a huge investment of money, materials and human lives, "never a single kilogram of synthetic rubber was produced."

On this, as if obsessed, the directors and managers of Farben, who found themselves in the dock, insisted. Consume more electricity than all of Berlin - at the time the eighth largest city in the world - to produce absolutely nothing? If this is true, then the unprecedented expenditure of money and labor and the huge consumption of electricity did not make any significant contribution to the German war effort. Surely something is wrong here.

ARI: Electrical energy in insane amounts is one of the main components of any nuclear project. It is needed for production heavy water- it is obtained by evaporating tons of natural water, after which the same water that nuclear scientists need remains at the bottom. Electricity is needed for the electrochemical separation of metals; uranium cannot be obtained in any other way. And it also needs a lot. Based on this, historians argued that since the Germans did not have such energy-intensive plants for the enrichment of uranium and the production of heavy water, it means that there was no atomic bomb. But as you can see, everything was there. Only it was called differently - like in the USSR then there was a secret "sanatorium" for German physicists.

An even more surprising fact is the use by the Germans of an unfinished atomic bomb on ... the Kursk Bulge.

The final chord of this chapter, and a breathtaking indication of other mysteries that will be explored later in this book, is a report declassified by the National Security Agency only in 1978. This report appears to be the transcript of an intercepted message transmitted from the Japanese embassy in Stockholm to Tokyo. It is entitled "Report on the bomb based on the splitting of the atom". It is best to quote this astounding document in its entirety, with the omissions resulting from the decipherment of the original message.

This bomb, revolutionary in its effects, will completely overturn all established concepts of conventional warfare. I am sending you all the reports collected together about what is called the bomb based on the splitting of the atom:

It is authentically known that in June 1943 the German army at a point 150 kilometers southeast of Kursk tested a completely new type of weapon against the Russians. Although the entire 19th Russian Rifle Regiment was hit, just a few bombs (each with a live charge of less than 5 kilograms) were enough to destroy it completely, down to the last man. The following material is given according to the testimony of Lieutenant Colonel Ue (?) Kendzi, an adviser to the attache in Hungary and in the past (worked?) in this country, who accidentally saw the consequences of what happened immediately after it happened: “All the people and horses (? in the area? ) shell explosions were charred to blackness, and even detonated all the ammunition.

ARI:However, even withhowlofficial documents official US pundits are tryingrefute - they say, all these reports, reports and protocols are fakedew.But the balance still does not converge, because by August 1945, the United States did not have enough uranium to produce bothminimmindtwo, and possibly four atomic bombs. There will be no bomb without uranium, and it has been mined for years. By 1944, the United States had no more than a quarter of the required uranium, and it took at least another five years to extract the rest. And suddenly uranium seemed to fall on their heads from the sky:

In December 1944, a very unpleasant report was prepared, which very upset those who read it: by May 1 - 15 kilograms. This was indeed very unfortunate news, for according to the initial estimates made in 1942, 10 to 100 kilograms of uranium were required to create a uranium-based bomb, and by the time this memorandum was written, more than accurate calculations gave the critical mass required to produce a uranium atomic bomb to be approximately 50 kilograms.

However, it was not only the Manhattan Project that had problems with the missing uranium. Germany also seems to have suffered from "missing uranium syndrome" in the days immediately preceding and immediately after the end of the war. But in this case, the volumes of missing uranium were calculated not in tens of kilograms, but in hundreds of tons. At this point, it makes sense to quote a lengthy excerpt from the brilliant work of Carter Hydrick in order to comprehensively explore this problem:

From June 1940 until the end of the war, Germany exported three and a half thousand tons of uranium-containing substances from Belgium - almost three times Moreover, which was at the disposal of Groves ... and placed them in salt mines near Strassfurt in Germany.

ARI: Leslie Richard Groves (eng. Leslie Richard Groves; August 17, 1896 - July 13, 1970) - lieutenant general of the US Army, in 1942-1947 - military head of the nuclear weapons program (Manhattan Project).

Groves claims that on April 17, 1945, when the war was already drawing to a close, the Allies managed to seize about 1,100 tons of uranium ore in Strassfurt and another 31 tons in the French port of Toulouse ... And he claims that more uranium ore Germany never had, thus showing that Germany never had enough material either to process uranium into feedstock for a plutonium reactor, or to enrich it by electromagnetic separation.

Obviously, if at one time 3,500 tons were stored in Strassfurt, and only 1,130 were captured, there are still approximately 2,730 tons left - and this is still twice as much as the Manhattan Project had throughout the war ... The fate of this missing ore unknown to this day...

According to historian Margaret Gowing, by the summer of 1941, Germany had enriched 600 tons of uranium to the oxide form needed to ionize the raw material into a gaseous form in which uranium isotopes can be separated magnetically or thermally. (Italics mine. - D. F.) Also, the oxide can be converted into a metal for use as a raw material in a nuclear reactor. In fact, Professor Reichl, who during the war was in charge of all the uranium at the disposal of Germany, claims that the true figure was much higher ...

ARI: So it's clear that without getting enriched uranium from somewhere else, and some detonation technology, the Americans would not have been able to test or detonate their bombs over Japan in August 1945. And they got, as it turns out,missing components from the Germans.

In order to create a uranium or plutonium bomb, uranium-containing raw materials must be converted into metal at a certain stage. For a plutonium bomb, you get metallic U238; for a uranium bomb, you need U235. However, due to the insidious characteristics of uranium, this metallurgical process is extremely complex. The United States tackled this problem early, but did not succeed in converting uranium into a metallic form in large quantities until late in 1942. German specialists ... by the end of 1940 had already converted 280.6 kilograms into metal, more than a quarter of a ton ......

In any case, these figures unequivocally indicate that in 1940-1942 the Germans were significantly ahead of the Allies in one very important component of the atomic bomb production process - in uranium enrichment, and, therefore, this also allows us to conclude that they were at that time pulled far ahead in the race for possession of a working atomic bomb. However, these numbers also raise one troubling question: where did all that uranium go?

The answer to this question is given by the mysterious incident with the German submarine U-234, captured by the Americans in 1945.

The history of U-234 is well known to all researchers involved in the history of the Nazi atomic bomb, and, of course, the "Allied legend" says that the materials that were on board the captured submarine were in no way used in the "Manhattan Project".

All this is absolutely not true. The U-234 was a very large underwater minelayer capable of carrying a large load underwater. Think about what is the highest degree strange cargo was aboard U-234 on that last flight:

Two Japanese officers.

80 gold-plated cylindrical containers containing 560 kilograms of uranium oxide.

Several wooden barrels filled with "heavy water".

Infrared proximity fuses.

Dr. Heinz Schlicke, inventor of these fuses.

When U-234 was loading in a German port before leaving for her last voyage, the submarine's radio operator Wolfgang Hirschfeld noticed that Japanese officers wrote "U235" on the paper in which the containers were wrapped before loading them into the hold of the boat. Needless to say, this remark provoked all the barrage of debunking criticism with which skeptics usually meet UFO eyewitness accounts: the low position of the sun above the horizon, poor lighting, a large distance that did not allow to see everything clearly, and the like. And this is not surprising, because if Hirschfeld really saw what he saw, the frightening consequences of this are obvious.

The use of containers coated with gold on the inside is explained by the fact that uranium, a highly corrosive metal, quickly becomes contaminated when it comes into contact with other unstable elements. Gold, which is not inferior to lead in terms of protection against radioactive radiation, unlike lead, is a very pure and extremely stable element; therefore, its choice for the storage and long-term transportation of highly enriched and pure uranium is obvious. Thus, the uranium oxide on board U-234 was highly enriched uranium, and most likely U235, the last stage of raw material before turning it into weapon-grade or bomb-usable uranium (if it was not already weapons-grade uranium) . And indeed, if the inscriptions made by Japanese officers on the containers were true, it is very likely that this was the last stage of purification of raw materials before turning into metal.

The cargo aboard U-234 was so sensitive that when, on June 16, 1945, representatives navy The United States compiled its inventory, uranium oxide disappeared without a trace from the list .....

Yes, it would have been the easiest if not for an unexpected confirmation from a certain Pyotr Ivanovich Titarenko, a former military translator from the headquarters of Marshal Rodion Malinovsky, who at the end of the war accepted the surrender of Japan from the Soviet Union. As the German magazine Der Spiegel wrote in 1992, Titarenko wrote a letter to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In it, he reported that in reality three atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, one of which, dropped on Nagasaki before the Fat Man exploded over the city, did not explode. Subsequently, this bomb was transferred by Japan to the Soviet Union.

Mussolini and the Soviet marshal's interpreter are not the only ones who confirm the strange number of bombs dropped on Japan; it is possible that at some point a fourth bomb was also involved in the game, which was transported to the Far East aboard the US Navy heavy cruiser Indianapolis (tail number CA 35) when it sank in 1945.

This strange evidence again raises questions about the "Allied legend", for, as has already been shown, in late 1944 and early 1945, the "Manhattan Project" faced a critical shortage of weapons-grade uranium, and by that time the problem of plutonium fuses had not been solved. bombs. So the question is: if these reports were true, where did the extra bomb (or even more bombs) come from? It is hard to believe that three or even four bombs ready for use in Japan were made in such a short time - unless they were war booty taken from Europe.

ARI: Actually a storyU-234begins in 1944, when, after the opening of the 2nd front and failures on the Eastern Front, possibly on behalf of Hitler, it was decided to start trading with the allies - an atomic bomb in exchange for guarantees of immunity for the party elite:

Be that as it may, we are primarily interested in the role that Bormann played in the development and implementation of the plan for the secret strategic evacuation of the Nazis after their military defeat. After the Stalingrad disaster in early 1943, it became obvious to Bormann, like other high-ranking Nazis, that the military collapse of the Third Reich was inevitable if their secret weapons projects did not bear fruit in time. Bormann and representatives of various armaments departments, industries and, of course, the SS gathered for a secret meeting at which plans were developed for the export of material assets, qualified personnel, scientific materials and technologies from Germany ......

First of all, JIOA director Grun, appointed as project leader, compiled a list of the most qualified German and Austrian scientists that the Americans and British had used for decades. Although journalists and historians repeatedly mentioned this list, none of them said that Werner Ozenberg, who during the war served as head of the scientific department of the Gestapo, took part in its compilation. The decision to involve Ozenbsrg in this work was made by US Navy Captain Ransom Davis after consultations with the Joint Chiefs of Staff......

Finally, the Ozenberg list and the interest shown by the Americans in it seems to support another hypothesis, namely that the Americans' knowledge of the nature of the Nazi projects, as evidenced by General Patton's unerring actions in finding Kammler's secret research centers, could come only from Nazi Germany itself. Since Carter Heidrick proved quite convincingly that Bormann personally supervised the transfer of the secrets of the German atomic bomb to the Americans, it can be safely argued that he ultimately coordinated the flow of other important information regarding the "Kammler headquarters" to the American intelligence services, since no one knew better than he the nature, content and personnel of the German black projects. Thus, Carter Heidrick's thesis that Bormann helped organize the transportation to the United States on the submarine "U-234" of not only enriched uranium, but also a ready-to-use atomic bomb, looks very plausible.

ARI: In addition to uranium itself, a lot more things are needed for an atomic bomb, in particular, fuses based on red mercury. Unlike a conventional detonator, these devices must detonate supersynchronously, gathering the uranium mass into a single whole and starting a nuclear reaction. This technology is extremely complex, the United States did not have it, and therefore the fuses were included. And since the question did not end with the fuses, the Americans dragged German nuclear scientists to their consultations before loading the atomic bomb on board the aircraft flying to Japan:

There is another fact that does not fit into the post-war legend of the Allies regarding the impossibility of the Germans creating an atomic bomb: the German physicist Rudolf Fleischmann was brought to the United States by plane for interrogation even before the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Why was there such an urgent need to consult with a German physicist before the atomic bombing of Japan? After all, according to the legend of the Allies, we had nothing to learn from the Germans in the field of atomic physics ......

ARI:Thus, there is no doubt that Germany had a bomb in May 1945. WhyHitlerdidn't apply it? Because one atomic bomb is not a bomb. For a bomb to become a weapon, there must be a sufficient number of them.identitymultiplied by means of delivery. Hitler could destroy New York and London, could choose to wipe out a couple of divisions moving towards Berlin. But the outcome of the war would not have been decided in his favor. But the Allies would have come to Germany in a very bad mood. The Germans already got it in 1945, but if Germany used nuclear weapons, its population would have got much more. Germany could be wiped off the face of the earth, like, for example, Dresden. Therefore, although Mr. Hitler is considered by someWithathe was not a masshed, nevertheless insane politician, and soberly weigh everythinginquietly leaked World War II: we give you a bomb - and you do not allow the USSR to reach the English Channel and guarantee a quiet old age for the Nazi elite.

So separate negotiationsaboutry in April 1945, described in the movie pRabout 17 moments of spring, really took place. But only at such a level that no pastor Schlag ever dreamed of negotiatingaboutry was led by Hitler himself. And physicsRthere was no unge because while Stirlitz was chasing him Manfred von Ardenne

already tested itweapons - as a minimum in 1943on theTothe Ur arc, as a maximum - in Norway, no later than 1944.

By ByintelligiblemoreoverandTo us, Mr. Farrell's book is not promoted either in the West or in Russia, not everyone has caught the eye of it. But the information makes its way and one day even the dumb will know about how the nuclear weapon was made. And there will be a veryicantthe situation because it will have to be radically reconsideredall officialhistorythe last 70 years.

However, official pundits in Russia will be worst of all.Insk federation, who for many years repeated the old mantr: maour tires may be bad, but we createdwhetheratomic bombby.But as it turns out, even American engineers were too tough for a nuclear device, at least in 1945. The USSR is not involved at all here - today the Russian federation would compete with Iran on the subject of who will make the bomb faster,if not for one BUT. BUT - these are captured German engineers who made nuclear weapons for Dzhugashvili.

It is authentically known, and academicians of the USSR do not deny it, that 3,000 captured Germans worked on the USSR missile project. That is, they essentially launched Gagarin into space. But as many as 7,000 specialists worked on the Soviet nuclear projectfrom Germany,so it's not surprising that the Soviets made the atomic bomb before they flew into space. If the United States still had its own way in the atomic race, then in the USSR they simply stupidly reproduced German technology.

In 1945, a group of colonels, who in fact were not colonels, but secret physicists, were looking for specialists in Germany - the future academicians Artsimovich, Kikoin, Khariton, Shchelkin ... The operation was led by First Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Ivan Serov.

More than two hundred of the most prominent German physicists (about half of them were doctors of science), radio engineers and craftsmen were brought to Moscow. In addition to the equipment of the Ardenne laboratory, later equipment from the Berlin Kaiser Institute and other German scientific organizations, documentation and reagents, stocks of film and paper for recorders, photo recorders, wire tape recorders for telemetry, optics, powerful electromagnets and even German transformers were delivered to Moscow. And then the Germans, under pain of death, began to build an atomic bomb for the USSR. They built from scratch, because by 1945 the United States had some of its own developments, the Germans were simply far ahead of them, but in the USSR, in the realm of "science" of academicians like Lysenko, there was nothing on the nuclear program. Here is what the researchers of this topic managed to dig up:

In 1945, the sanatoriums "Sinop" and "Agudzery", located in Abkhazia, were transferred to the disposal of German physicists. Thus, the foundation was laid for the Sukhumi Institute of Physics and Technology, which was then part of the system of top-secret objects of the USSR. "Sinop" was referred to in the documents as Object "A", headed by Baron Manfred von Ardenne (1907-1997). This person is legendary in world science: one of the founders of television, the developer of electron microscopes and many other devices. During one meeting, Beria wanted to entrust the leadership of the atomic project to von Ardenne. Ardenne himself recalls: “I had no more than ten seconds to think. My answer is verbatim: I consider such an important proposal as a great honor for me, because. it is an expression of exceptionally great confidence in my abilities. The solution to this problem has two different directions: 1. The development of the atomic bomb itself and 2. The development of methods for obtaining the fissile isotope of uranium 235U on an industrial scale. The separation of isotopes is a separate and very difficult problem. Therefore, I propose that isotope separation should be main problem our institute and German specialists, and the leading nuclear scientists of the Soviet Union sitting here would do a great job of creating an atomic bomb for their homeland.

Beria accepted this offer. Many years later, at a government reception, when Manfred von Ardenne was introduced to the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR Khrushchev, he reacted like this: “Ah, you are the same Ardenne who so skillfully pulled his neck out of the noose.”

Von Ardenne later assessed his contribution to the development of the atomic problem as "the most important thing to which post-war circumstances led me." In 1955, the scientist was allowed to travel to the GDR, where he headed a research institute in Dresden.

Sanatorium "Agudzery" received the code name Object "G". It was led by Gustav Hertz (1887–1975), nephew of the famous Heinrich Hertz, known to us from school. Gustav Hertz received the Nobel Prize in 1925 for the discovery of the laws of the collision of an electron with an atom - the well-known experience of Frank and Hertz. In 1945, Gustav Hertz became one of the first German physicists brought to the USSR. He was the only foreign Nobel laureate who worked in the USSR. Like other German scientists, he lived, knowing no refusal, in his house on sea ​​shore. In 1955 Hertz left for the GDR. There he worked as a professor at the University of Leipzig and then as director Institute of Physics at the university.

The main task of von Ardenne and Gustav Hertz was to find different methods for separating uranium isotopes. Thanks to von Ardenne, one of the first mass spectrometers appeared in the USSR. Hertz successfully improved his isotope separation method, which made it possible to establish this process on an industrial scale.

Other prominent German scientists were also brought to the facility in Sukhumi, including the physicist and radiochemist Nikolaus Riehl (1901–1991). They called him Nikolai Vasilyevich. He was born in St. Petersburg, in the family of a German - the chief engineer of Siemens and Halske. Nikolaus' mother was Russian, so he spoke German and Russian from childhood. He received an excellent technical education: first in St. Petersburg, and after the family moved to Germany - in Berlin University Kaiser Friedrich Wilhelm (later Humboldt University). In 1927 he defended his doctoral dissertation in radiochemistry. His supervisors were future scientific luminaries - nuclear physicist Lisa Meitner and radiochemist Otto Hahn. Before the outbreak of World War II, Riehl was in charge of the central radiological laboratory of the Auergesellschaft company, where he proved to be an energetic and very capable experimenter. At the beginning of the war, Riel was summoned to the War Ministry, where he was offered to start producing uranium. In May 1945, Riehl voluntarily came to the Soviet emissaries sent to Berlin. The scientist, who was considered the Reich's chief expert on the production of enriched uranium for reactors, pointed out where the equipment needed for this was located. Its fragments (a plant near Berlin was destroyed by bombing) were dismantled and sent to the USSR. 300 tons of uranium compounds found there were also taken there. It is believed that this saved the Soviet Union a year and a half to create an atomic bomb - until 1945, Igor Kurchatov had only 7 tons of uranium oxide at his disposal. Under the leadership of Riel, the Elektrostal plant in Noginsk near Moscow was reequipped to produce cast uranium metal.

Echelons with equipment were going from Germany to Sukhumi. Three of the four German cyclotrons were brought to the USSR, as well as powerful magnets, electron microscopes, oscilloscopes, high-voltage transformers, ultra-precise instruments, etc. Equipment was delivered to the USSR from the Institute of Chemistry and Metallurgy, the Kaiser Wilhelm Physical Institute, Siemens electrical laboratories, Physical Institute of the German Post Office.

Igor Kurchatov was appointed scientific director of the project, who was undoubtedly an outstanding scientist, but he always surprised his employees with extraordinary "scientific insight" - as it turned out later, he knew most of the secrets from intelligence, but had no right to talk about it. The following episode, which was told by academician Isaac Kikoin, speaks about leadership methods. At one meeting, Beria asked Soviet physicists how long it would take to solve one problem. They answered him: six months. The answer was: "Either you will solve it in one month, or you will deal with this problem in places much more remote." Of course, the task was completed in one month. But the authorities spared no expense and rewards. Very many, including German scientists, received Stalin Prizes, dachas, cars and other rewards. Nikolaus Riehl, however, the only foreign scientist, even received the title of Hero Socialist Labor. German scientists played a big role in raising the qualifications of the Georgian physicists who worked with them.

ARI: So the Germans didn't just help the USSR a lot with the creation of the atomic bomb - they did everything. Moreover, this story was like with the "Kalashnikov assault rifle" because even German gunsmiths could not have made such a perfect weapon in a couple of years - while working in captivity in the USSR, they simply completed what was already almost ready. Similarly, with the atomic bomb, work on which the Germans began as early as a year in 1933, and possibly much earlier. Official history holds that Hitler annexed the Sudetenland because there were many Germans living there. It may be so, but the Sudetenland is the richest uranium deposit in Europe. There is a suspicion that Hitler knew where to start in the first place, because the German legacy since the time of Peter was in Russia, and in Australia, and even in Africa. But Hitler started with the Sudetenland. Apparently, some people knowledgeable in alchemy immediately explained to him what to do and which way to go, so it is not surprising that the Germans were far ahead of everyone and the American intelligence services in Europe in the forties of the last century were only picking up leftovers for the Germans, hunting for medieval alchemical manuscripts.

But the USSR did not even have leftovers. There was only the "academician" Lysenko, according to whose theories the weeds growing on a collective farm field, and not on a private farm, had every reason to be imbued with the spirit of socialism and turn into wheat. In medicine, there was a similar "scientific school" that tried to speed up the duration of pregnancy from 9 months to nine weeks - so that the wives of the proletarians would not be distracted from work. There were similar theories in nuclear physics, therefore, for the USSR, the creation of an atomic bomb was just as impossible as the creation of its own computer, because cybernetics in the USSR was officially considered a prostitute of the bourgeoisie. By the way, important scientific solutions in the same physics (for example, in which direction to go and which theories to consider working) in the USSR, at best, "academicians" from agriculture accepted. Although more often this was done by a party functionary with an education in the "evening working faculty". What kind of atomic bomb could there be on this base? Only a stranger. In the USSR, they could not even assemble it from ready-made components with ready-made drawings. The Germans did everything, and on this score there is even an official recognition of their merits - the Stalin Prizes and orders that were awarded to the engineers:

German specialists are laureates of the Stalin Prize for their work in the field of using atomic energy. Excerpts from the resolutions of the Council of Ministers of the USSR "on rewarding and bonuses ...".

[From the resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR No. 5070-1944ss / op “On awarding and bonuses for outstanding scientific discoveries and technical advances in the use of atomic energy, October 29, 1949]

[From Decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR No. 4964-2148ss / op "On awarding and bonuses for outstanding scientific work in the field of the use of atomic energy, for the creation of new types of RDS products, achievements in the production of plutonium and uranium-235 and the development of a raw material base for the nuclear industry" , December 6, 1951]

[From the Decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR No. 3044-1304ss "On the award of Stalin Prizes to scientific and engineering workers of the Ministry of Medium Machine Building and other departments for the creation of a hydrogen bomb and new designs of atomic bombs", December 31, 1953]

Manfred von Ardenne

1947 - Stalin Prize (electron microscope - "In January 1947, the Chief of the Site presented von Ardenne with the State Prize (a purse full of money) for his microscope work.") "German Scientists in the Soviet Atomic Project", p . eighteen)

1953 - Stalin Prize, 2nd class (electromagnetic isotope separation, lithium-6).

Heinz Barwich

Günther Wirtz

Gustav Hertz

1951 - Stalin Prize of the 2nd degree (the theory of the stability of gas diffusion in cascades).

Gerard Jaeger

1953 - Stalin Prize of the 3rd degree (electromagnetic separation of isotopes, lithium-6).

Reinhold Reichmann (Reichmann)

1951 - Stalin Prize of the 1st degree (posthumously) (development of technology

production of ceramic tubular filters for diffusion machines).

Nikolaus Riehl

1949 - Hero of Socialist Labor, Stalin Prize of the 1st degree (development and implementation of industrial technology for the production of pure metallic uranium).

Herbert Thieme

1949 - Stalin Prize of the 2nd degree (development and implementation of industrial technology for the production of pure metallic uranium).

1951 - Stalin Prize of the 2nd degree (development of industrial technology for the production of high purity uranium and the manufacture of products from it).

Peter Thiessen

1956 - Thyssen State Prize,_Peter

Heinz Freulich

1953 - Stalin Prize 3rd degree (electromagnetic isotope separation, lithium-6).

Ziel Ludwig

1951 - Stalin Prize 1st degree (development of technology for the production of ceramic tubular filters for diffusion machines).

Werner Schütze

1949 - Stalin Prize of the 2nd degree (mass spectrometer).

ARI: This is how the story turns out - there is no trace of the myth that the Volga is a bad car, but we made an atomic bomb. All that remains is the bad Volga car. And it would not have been if it had not been bought drawings from Ford. There would be nothing because the Bolshevik state is not capable of creating anything by definition. For the same reason, nothing can create a Russian state, only to sell natural resources.

Mikhail Saltan, Gleb Shcherbatov

For the stupid, just in case, we explain that we are not talking about the intellectual potential of the Russian people, it is just quite high, we are talking about the creative possibilities of the Soviet bureaucratic system, which, in principle, cannot allow scientific talents to be revealed.

Sergey LESKOV

On August 12, 1953, the world's first hydrogen bomb was tested at the Semipalatinsk test site. It was the fourth Soviet test of a nuclear weapon. The power of the bomb, which had secret code"Product RDS-6s", reached 400 kilotons, 20 times more than the first atomic bombs in the USA and the USSR. After the test, Kurchatov turned to the 32-year-old Sakharov with a deep bow: “Thank you, the savior of Russia!”

Which is better - Bee Line or MTS? One of the most pressing issues of Russian everyday life. Half a century ago, in a narrow circle of nuclear physicists, the question was equally acute: which is better - an atomic bomb or a hydrogen bomb, which is also thermonuclear? The atomic bomb, which the Americans made in 1945, and we made in 1949, is built on the principle of releasing colossal energy by splitting heavy nuclei of uranium or artificial plutonium. A thermonuclear bomb is built on a different principle: energy is released by the fusion of light isotopes of hydrogen, deuterium and tritium. Materials based on light elements do not have critical mass, which was a great structural complexity in the atomic bomb. In addition, the synthesis of deuterium and tritium releases 4.2 times more energy than the fission of nuclei of the same mass of uranium-235. In short, the hydrogen bomb is a much more powerful weapon than the atomic bomb.

In those years, the destructive power of the hydrogen bomb did not scare away any of the scientists. The world entered the era of the Cold War, McCarthyism was raging in the United States, and another wave of revelations rose in the USSR. Only Pyotr Kapitsa allowed himself demarches, who did not even appear at the solemn meeting at the Academy of Sciences on the occasion of Stalin's 70th birthday. The question of his expulsion from the ranks of the academy was discussed, but the situation was saved by the President of the Academy of Sciences Sergei Vavilov, who noted that the first to be excluded was the classic writer Sholokhov, who skimps on all meetings without exception.

In creating the atomic bomb, as you know, intelligence data helped scientists. But our agents almost ruined the hydrogen bomb. The information obtained from the famous Klaus Fuchs led to a dead end for both Americans and Soviet physicists. The group under the command of Zeldovich lost 6 years to check the erroneous data. Intelligence provided the opinion of the famous Niels Bohr about the unreality of the "superbomb". But the USSR had its own ideas, to prove the prospects of which to Stalin and Beria, who were "chasing" the atomic bomb with might and main, was not easy and risky. This circumstance must not be forgotten in fruitless and stupid disputes about who worked harder on nuclear weapons - Soviet intelligence or Soviet science.

The work on the hydrogen bomb was the first intellectual race in human history. To create an atomic bomb, it was important, first of all, to solve engineering problems, to launch large-scale work in mines and combines. The hydrogen bomb, on the other hand, led to the emergence of new scientific directions– physics of high-temperature plasma, physics of ultrahigh energy densities, physics of anomalous pressures. The first time I had to ask for help mathematical modeling. Lagging behind the United States in the field of computers (von Neumann's devices were already in use overseas), our scientists compensated with ingenious computational methods on primitive arithmometers.

In a word, it was the world's first battle of wits. And the USSR won this battle. Andrei Sakharov, an ordinary employee of the Zeldovich group, came up with an alternative scheme for the hydrogen bomb. Back in 1949, he proposed original idea the so-called "puff", where cheap uranium-238 was used as an effective nuclear material, which was considered as garbage in the production of weapons-grade uranium. But if this "waste" is bombarded by fusion neutrons, which are 10 times more energy-intensive than fission neutrons, then uranium-238 begins to fission and the cost of producing each kiloton decreases many times over. The phenomenon of ionization compression of thermonuclear fuel, which became the basis of the first Soviet hydrogen bomb, is still called "saccharization". Vitaly Ginzburg proposed lithium deuteride as a fuel.

Work on the atomic and hydrogen bombs proceeded in parallel. Even before the atomic bomb tests in 1949, Vavilov and Khariton informed Beria about the "sloika". After the infamous directive of President Truman at the beginning of 1950, at a meeting of the Special Committee chaired by Beria, it was decided to speed up work on the Sakharov design with a TNT equivalent of 1 megaton and a test period in 1954.

On November 1, 1952, on Elugelub Atoll, the United States tested the Mike thermonuclear device with an energy release of 10 megatons, 500 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. However, "Mike" was not a bomb - a giant structure the size of a two-story house. But the power of the explosion was amazing. The neutron flux was so great that two new elements, einsteinium and fermium, were discovered.

All forces were thrown at the hydrogen bomb. The work was not slowed down either by the death of Stalin or by the arrest of Beria. Finally, on August 12, 1953, the world's first hydrogen bomb was tested in Semipalatinsk. The environmental consequences were horrendous. To share the first explosion of all time nuclear testing Semipalatinsk accounts for 82% of strontium-90 and 75% of cesium-137. But then about radioactive contamination, as well as in general about ecology, no one thought.

The first hydrogen bomb caused rapid development Soviet cosmonautics. After the nuclear tests, the Korolyov Design Bureau was given the task of developing an intercontinental ballistic missile for this charge. This rocket, called the "seven", launched the first artificial satellite Earth, the first cosmonaut of the planet Yuri Gagarin started on it.

On November 6, 1955, the test of a hydrogen bomb dropped from a Tu-16 aircraft was carried out for the first time. In the United States, the drop of the hydrogen bomb did not take place until May 21, 1956. But it turned out that Andrei Sakharov's first bomb was also a dead end, and it was never tested again. Even earlier, on March 1, 1954, near Bikini Atoll, the United States blew up a charge of unheard of power - 15 megatons. It was based on the idea of ​​Teller and Ulam about the compression of a thermonuclear assembly not by mechanical energy and a neutron flux, but by the radiation of the first explosion, the so-called initiator. After the test, which turned into casualties among the civilian population, Igor Tamm demanded that his colleagues abandon all previous ideas, even national pride"puffs" and find fundamentally new way: “Everything that we have done so far is of no use to anyone. We are unemployed. I am sure that in a few months we will reach the goal.”

And already in the spring of 1954, Soviet physicists came up with the idea of ​​an explosive initiator. The authorship of the idea belongs to Zeldovich and Sakharov. November 22, 1955 Tu-16 dropped over Semipalatinsk test site bomb with a design capacity of 3.6 megatons. During these tests, there were dead, the radius of destruction reached 350 km, Semipalatinsk suffered.

Ahead was a nuclear arms race. But in 1955 it became clear that the USSR had achieved nuclear parity with the United States.

Changes in US military doctrine between 1945 and 1996 and basic concepts

//

On the territory of the United States, in Los Alamos, in the desert expanses of the state of New Mexico, in 1942, an American nuclear center was established. At its base, work was launched to create a nuclear bomb. General leadership The project was entrusted to the talented nuclear physicist R. Oppenheimer. Under his leadership, the best minds of that time were gathered not only from the USA and England, but from almost all of Western Europe. A huge team worked on the creation of nuclear weapons, including 12 Nobel Prize winners. There was no shortage of funds either.

By the summer of 1945, the Americans managed to assemble two atomic bombs, called "Kid" and "Fat Man". The first bomb weighed 2722 kg and was loaded with enriched Uranium-235. "Fat Man" with a charge of Plutonium-239 with a capacity of more than 20 kt had a mass of 3175 kg. On June 16, the first field test of a nuclear device took place, timed to coincide with the meeting of the leaders of the USSR, the USA, Great Britain and France.

By this time, relations between former associates had changed. It should be noted that the United States, as soon as they got the atomic bomb, sought to have a monopoly on its possession in order to deprive other countries of the opportunity to use atomic energy at their discretion.

US President G. Truman became the first political leader who decided to use nuclear bombs. From a military point of view, there was no need for such bombardments of densely populated Japanese cities. But political motives during this period prevailed over military ones. The leadership of the United States aspired to supremacy throughout the post-war world, and nuclear bombing, in their opinion, should have been a powerful reinforcement of these aspirations. To this end, they began to seek the adoption of the American "Baruch Plan", which would secure the US monopoly possession of atomic weapons, in other words, "absolute military superiority."

The fateful hour has come. On August 6 and 9, the crews of B-29 "Enola Gay" and "Bocks car" planes dropped their deadly cargo on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The total loss of life and the extent of destruction from these bombings are characterized by the following figures: thermal radiation(temperature about 5000 degrees C) and a shock wave - 300 thousand people, another 200 thousand were injured, burned, irradiated. On an area of ​​12 sq. km, all buildings were completely destroyed. In Hiroshima alone, out of 90,000 buildings, 62,000 were destroyed. These bombings shocked the whole world. It is believed that this event marked the beginning of the nuclear arms race and the confrontation between the two political systems of that time at a new qualitative level.

The development of American strategic offensive weapons after the Second World War was carried out depending on the provisions of military doctrine. Its political side determined the main goal of the US leadership - the achievement of world domination. The main obstacle to these aspirations was considered the Soviet Union, which, in their opinion, should have been liquidated. Depending on the alignment of forces in the world, the achievements of science and technology, its main provisions changed, which was reflected in the adoption of certain strategic strategies (concepts). Each subsequent strategy did not completely replace the one that preceded it, but only modernized it, mainly in matters of determining the ways of building up the Armed Forces and methods of waging war.

From mid-1945 to 1953, the American military-political leadership in matters of building strategic nuclear forces (SNF) proceeded from the fact that the United States had a monopoly on nuclear weapons and could achieve world domination by eliminating the USSR during a nuclear war. Preparations for such a war began almost immediately after the defeat of Nazi Germany. This is evidenced by the directive of the Joint Military Planning Committee No. 432 / d dated December 14, 1945, where the task was to prepare atomic bombing 20 Soviet cities- major political and industrial centers Soviet Union. At the same time, it was planned to use the entire stock of atomic bombs available at that time (196 pieces), which were carried by modernized B-29 bombers. The method of their application was also determined - a sudden atomic "first strike", which should put the Soviet leadership before the fact of the futility of further resistance.

The political justification for such actions is the thesis of the "Soviet threat", one of the main authors of which can be considered US Chargé d'Affaires in the USSR J. Kennan. It was he who, on February 22, 1946, sent a “long telegram” to Washington, where in eight thousand words he described the “life threat” that seemed to hang over the United States, and proposed a strategy for confrontation with the Soviet Union.

President G. Truman instructed to develop a doctrine (later called the "Truman Doctrine") of pursuing a policy from a position of strength in relation to the USSR. In order to centralize planning and increase the effectiveness of the use of strategic aviation, in the spring of 1947 a strategic aviation command (SAC) was created. At the same time, the task of improving strategic aviation technology is being implemented at an accelerated pace.

By mid-1948, the Committee of Chiefs of Staff drew up a plan for a nuclear war with the USSR, which received the code name Chariotir. It stipulated that the war should begin "with concentrated air raids using atomic bombs against government, political and administrative centers, industrial cities and selected oil refineries from bases in the Western Hemisphere and England." In the first 30 days alone, it was planned to drop 133 nuclear bombs for 70 Soviet cities.

However, as American military analysts calculated, this was not enough to achieve a quick victory. They believed that during this time the Soviet Army would be able to capture key areas of Europe and Asia. In early 1949, a special committee was created from the highest ranks of the army, air force and navy under the leadership of Lieutenant General H. Harmon, which was tasked with trying to assess the political and military consequences of the planned atomic attack on the Soviet Union from the air. The committee's conclusions and calculations clearly showed that the United States was not yet ready for a nuclear war.

The conclusions of the committee indicated that it was necessary to increase the quantitative composition of the SAC, increase its combat capabilities, and replenish nuclear arsenals. To ensure a massive nuclear strike by air means, the United States needs to create a network of bases along the borders of the USSR, from which nuclear bombers could carry out combat sorties along the shortest routes to planned targets on Soviet territory. It is necessary to launch serial production of B-36 heavy strategic intercontinental bombers capable of operating from bases on American soil.

The message that the Soviet Union had mastered the secret of nuclear weapons caused ruling circles The US desire to unleash a preventive war as soon as possible. The Troyan plan was developed, which provided for the start of hostilities on January 1, 1950. At that time, the SAC had 840 strategic bombers in combat units, 1350 in reserve and over 300 atomic bombs.

To assess its viability, the Committee of the Chiefs of Staff ordered the group of Lieutenant General D. Hull to test the chances of putting out of action nine of the most important strategic areas on the territory of the Soviet Union at headquarters games. Having lost the air offensive against the USSR, Hull's analysts summed up: the probability of achieving these goals is 70%, which will entail the loss of 55% of the available bombers. It turned out that US strategic aviation in this case would very quickly lose combat effectiveness. Therefore, the question of a preventive war in 1950 was removed. Soon, the American leadership was able to actually verify the correctness of such assessments. In the course of the 1950 Korean War B-29 bombers suffered heavy losses from fighter jet attacks.

But the situation in the world was changing rapidly, which was reflected in the American strategy of "massive retaliation" adopted in 1953. It was based on the superiority of the United States over the USSR in the number of nuclear weapons and their means of delivery. It was planned to conduct a general nuclear war against the countries of the socialist camp. Strategic aviation was considered the main means of achieving victory, for the development of which up to 50% of the funds allocated to the Ministry of Defense for the purchase of weapons were directed.

In 1955, SAC had 1,565 bombers, 70% of which were B-47 jets, and 4,750 nuclear bombs for them with a yield of 50 kt to 20 Mt. In the same year, the B-52 heavy strategic bomber was put into service, which is gradually becoming the main intercontinental carrier of nuclear weapons.

At the same time, the military-political leadership of the United States is beginning to realize that in the face of a rapidly growing Soviet funds Air defense heavy bombers will not be able to solve the problem of achieving victory in a nuclear war alone. In 1958, the medium-range ballistic missiles "Thor" and "Jupiter", which are being deployed in Europe, enter service. A year later, the first Atlas-D intercontinental missiles were put on combat duty, the nuclear submarine J. Washington" with missiles "Polaris-A1".

With the advent of ballistic missiles in the strategic nuclear forces, the possibilities for delivering a nuclear strike from the United States are significantly increasing. However, in the USSR, by the end of the 1950s, intercontinental carriers of nuclear weapons were being created, capable of delivering a retaliatory strike on the territory of the United States. Soviet ICBMs were of particular concern to the Pentagon. Under these conditions, the leaders of the United States considered that the strategy of "massive retaliation" did not fully correspond to modern realities and should be adjusted.

By the beginning of 1960, nuclear planning in the United States was taking on a centralized character. Prior to this, each branch of the Armed Forces planned the use of nuclear weapons independently. But the increase in the number of strategic carriers required the creation of a single body for planning nuclear operations. They became the Joint Strategic Objectives Planning Headquarters, subordinate to the commander of the SAC and the Committee of the Chiefs of Staff of the US Armed Forces. In December 1960, the first unified plan for the conduct of a nuclear war was drawn up, which received the name "Unified Integrated Operational Plan" - SIOP. It envisaged, in accordance with the requirements of the "massive retaliation" strategy, waging only a general nuclear war against the USSR and China with unlimited use of nuclear weapons (3.5 thousand nuclear warheads).

In 1961, the "flexible response" strategy was adopted, reflecting changes in official views on the possible nature of the war with the USSR. In addition to a general nuclear war, American strategists began to allow the possibility of limited use of nuclear weapons and warfare with conventional weapons for a short time (no more than two weeks). The choice of methods and means of waging war had to be carried out taking into account the current geostrategic situation, the balance of forces and the availability of resources.

The new installations had a very significant impact on the development of American strategic weapons. A rapid quantitative growth of ICBMs and SLBMs begins. The improvement of the latter is given Special attention, since they could be used as "forward-based" means in Europe. At the same time, the American government no longer needed to look for possible deployment areas for them and persuade the Europeans to give their consent to the use of their territory, as was the case during the deployment of medium-range missiles.

The military-political leadership of the United States believed that it was necessary to have such a quantitative composition of strategic nuclear forces, the use of which would ensure the "guaranteed destruction" of the Soviet Union as a viable state.

In the early years of this decade, a significant constellation of ICBMs was deployed. So, if at the beginning of 1960 in combat strength SAK had 20 missiles of only one type - Atlas-D, then by the end of 1962 - already 294. By this time, Atlas intercontinental ballistic missiles of modifications "E" and "F", "Titan-1" were adopted and "Minuteman-1A". The latest ICBMs were several orders of magnitude higher than their predecessors in terms of sophistication. In the same year, the tenth American SSBN went on combat patrol. The total number of Polaris-A1 and Polaris-A2 SLBMs has reached 160 units. The last of the ordered B-52H heavy bombers and B-58 medium bombers entered service. Total bombers as part of the strategic aviation command amounted to 1819. Thus, the American nuclear triad of strategic offensive forces (units and formations of ICBMs, nuclear missile submarines and strategic bombers) took shape organizationally, each component of which harmoniously complemented each other. It was equipped with over 6,000 nuclear warheads.

In mid-1961, the SIOP-2 plan was approved, reflecting a "flexible response" strategy. It provided for the conduct of five interconnected operations to destroy the Soviet nuclear arsenal, suppress the air defense system, destroy the organs and points of the military and government controlled, large groupings of troops, as well as strikes on cities. The total number of targets in the plan was 6,000. In place of those, the developers of the plan also took into account the possibility of a retaliatory nuclear strike by the Soviet Union on US territory.

At the beginning of 1961, a commission was formed, whose duties were charged with developing promising ways for the development of American strategic nuclear forces. Subsequently, such commissions were created regularly.

In the autumn of 1962, the world was again on the brink of nuclear war. burst out Caribbean crisis forced politicians around the world to look at nuclear weapons with new side. For the first time, it clearly played the role of a deterrent. The sudden appearance of Soviet medium-range missiles in Cuba and the lack of an overwhelming superiority in the number of ICBMs and SLBMs over the Soviet Union made the military way of resolving the conflict impossible.

American military leadership immediately announced the need for additional armament, in fact, heading for unleashing a strategic offensive arms race (START). The desires of the military found due support in the US Senate. Enormous money was allocated for the development of strategic offensive arms, which made it possible to improve the strategic nuclear forces qualitatively and quantitatively. In 1965, the Thor and Jupiter missiles, the Atlas missiles of all modifications and the Titan-1 were completely decommissioned. They were replaced by the Minuteman-1B and Minuteman-2 intercontinental missiles, as well as the heavy Titan-2 ICBM.

The marine component of the SNA has grown significantly both quantitatively and qualitatively. Taking into account such factors as the almost undivided dominance of the US Navy and the combined fleet of NATO in the vast oceans in the early 60s, the high survivability, stealth and mobility of SSBNs, the American leadership decided to significantly increase the number of deployed submarine missile carriers that could successfully replace medium-sized missiles. range. Their main targets were to be large industrial and administrative centers of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries.

In 1967, the strategic nuclear forces had 41 SSBNs with 656 missiles, of which more than 80% were Polaris-A3 SLBMs, 1054 ICBMs and over 800 heavy bombers. After the decommissioning of obsolete B-47 aircraft, the nuclear bombs intended for them were eliminated. In connection with the change in strategic aviation tactics, the B-52 was equipped with AGM-28 Hound Dog cruise missiles with a nuclear warhead.

The rapid growth in the second half of the 60s in the number of Soviet OS-type ICBMs with improved characteristics, the creation of a missile defense system, made the likelihood of America achieving a quick victory in a possible nuclear war miserable.

The strategic nuclear arms race posed more and more new tasks for the US military-industrial complex. It was necessary to find a new way to quickly build up nuclear power. The high scientific and production level of the leading American rocket-building firms made it possible to solve this problem as well. Designers have found a way to significantly increase the number of nuclear charges raised without increasing the number of their carriers. Multiple reentry vehicles (MIRVs) were developed and implemented, first with dispersive warheads, and then with individual guidance.

The US leadership decided that the time had come to slightly correct the military-technical side of its military doctrine. Using the tried-and-tested thesis of the "Soviet missile threat" and the "US lagging behind", it easily managed to allocate funds for new strategic weapons. Since 1970, the deployment of Minuteman-3 ICBMs and Poseidon-S3 SLBMs with MIRV-type MIRVs began. At the same time, the obsolete Minuteman-1B and Polaris were removed from combat duty.

In 1971, the strategy of "realistic deterrence" was officially adopted. It was based on the idea of ​​nuclear superiority over the USSR. The authors of the strategy took into account the upcoming equality in the number of strategic carriers between the US and the USSR. By that time, without taking into account the nuclear forces of England and France, the following balance of strategic weapons had developed. For land-based ICBMs, the United States has 1,054 versus 1,300 for the Soviet Union; for the number of SLBMs, 656 versus 300; and for strategic bombers, 550 versus 145, respectively. The new strategy in the development of strategic offensive arms provided for a sharp increase in the number of nuclear warheads on ballistic missiles while improving their tactical and technical characteristics, which was supposed to provide a qualitative superiority over the strategic nuclear forces of the Soviet Union.

The improvement of the strategic offensive forces was reflected in the next plan - SIOP-4, adopted in 1971. It was developed taking into account the interaction of all components of the nuclear triad and provided for the defeat of 16,000 targets.

But under pressure from the world community, the US leadership was forced to negotiate nuclear disarmament. The methods of conducting such negotiations were regulated by the concept of "negotiating from a position of strength" - an integral part of the "realistic deterrence" strategy. In 1972, the US-USSR Treaty on the Limitation of ABM Systems and the Interim Agreement on Certain Measures in the Sphere of the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (SALT-1) were concluded. However, the buildup of the strategic nuclear potential of the opposing political systems continued.

By the mid-1970s, the deployment of the Minuteman-3 and Poseidon missile systems was completed. All SSBNs of the Lafayette type, equipped with new missiles, have been upgraded. Heavy bombers were armed with nuclear SD SRAM. All this led to a sharp increase in the nuclear arsenal assigned to strategic delivery vehicles. So in five years from 1970 to 1975, the number of warheads increased from 5102 to 8500 pieces. System improvements were in full swing combat control strategic weapons, which made it possible to implement the principle of quickly re-aiming warheads at new targets. It now took only a few tens of minutes to completely recalculate and replace the flight mission for one missile, and the entire grouping of SNA ICBMs could be retargeted in 10 hours. By the end of 1979, this system was implemented on all ICBM launchers and launch control points. At the same time, the security of the mine launchers of the Minuteman ICBMs was increased.

The qualitative improvement in US START made it possible to move from the concept of "assured destruction" to the concept of "selection of targets", which provided for multi-variant actions - from a limited nuclear strike with several missiles to a massive strike against the entire complex of planned targets of destruction. The SIOP-5 plan was drawn up and approved in 1975, which provided for strikes on military, administrative and economic targets of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact countries in a total number of up to 25 thousand.

The main form of use of American strategic offensive arms was considered to be a sudden massive nuclear strike with all combat-ready ICBMs and SLBMs, as well as a certain number of heavy bombers. By this time, SLBMs had become the leaders in the US nuclear triad. If until 1970 most of the nuclear warheads belonged to strategic aviation, then in 1975 4536 warheads were installed on 656 sea-based missiles (2154 charges on 1054 ICBMs, and 1800 on heavy bombers). The views on their use have also changed. In addition to attacking cities, given the short flight time (12-18 minutes), submarine missiles could be used to destroy launching Soviet ICBMs in the active part of the trajectory or directly in launchers, preventing their launch before the American ICBMs approached. The latter were entrusted with the task of destroying highly protected targets, and above all, silos and command posts of missile units of the Strategic Missile Forces. In this way, a Soviet retaliatory nuclear strike on US territory could be thwarted or significantly weakened. Heavy bombers were planned to be used to destroy surviving or newly identified targets.

From the second half of the 1970s, the transformation of the views of the American political leadership on the prospects for nuclear war began. Given the opinion of most scientists about the disastrous for the United States, even a retaliatory Soviet nuclear strike, it decided to accept the theory of limited nuclear war for one theater, and specifically, the European one. For its implementation, new nuclear weapons were needed.

The administration of President J. Carter allocated funds for the development and production of the highly effective strategic sea-based Trident system. The implementation of this project was planned to be carried out in two stages. At the first, it was planned to rearm 12 SSBNs of the J. Madison" missiles "Trident-C4", as well as build and put into operation 8 SSBNs of a new generation of the "Ohio" type with 24 of the same missiles. At the second stage, it was supposed to build another 14 SSBNs and arm all the boats of this project with the new Trident-D5 SLBM with higher performance characteristics.

In 1979, President J. Carter decides on the full-scale production of the Peekeper (MX) intercontinental ballistic missile, which, in terms of its characteristics, was supposed to surpass all existing Soviet ICBMs. Its development has been carried out since the mid-1970s, along with the Pershing-2 IRBM and a new type of strategic weapon - long-range ground and air-based cruise missiles.

With the coming to power of the administration of President R. Reagan, the “doctrine of neo-globalism” appeared, reflecting the new views of the US military-political leadership on the path to achieving world domination. It provided for a wide range of measures (political, economic, ideological, military) to "reject communism", direct use military force against those countries where the United States sees a threat to its "vital interests." Naturally, the military-technical side of the doctrine was also adjusted. Its basis for the 1980s was the strategy of "direct confrontation" with the USSR on a global and regional scale, aimed at achieving "complete and undeniable military superiority of the United States."

Soon, the Pentagon developed "Guidelines for the construction of the US armed forces" for the coming years. In particular, they determined that in a nuclear war "the United States must prevail and be able to force the USSR to cease hostilities in a short time on the terms of the United States." Military plans provided for the conduct of both general and limited nuclear war within the framework of one theater of operations. In addition, the task was to be ready to wage an effective war from space.

Based on these provisions, concepts for the development of the SNA were developed. The concept of "strategic sufficiency" required to have such a combat composition of strategic carriers and nuclear warheads for them in order to ensure the "deterrence" of the Soviet Union. The concept of "active countermeasures" envisaged ways to ensure flexibility in the use of strategic offensive forces in any situation - from a single use of nuclear weapons to the use of the entire nuclear arsenal.

In March 1980, the president approves the SIOP-5D plan. The plan provided for the delivery of three options for nuclear strikes: preventive, retaliatory, and retaliatory. The number of objects of destruction was 40 thousand, which included 900 cities with a population of over 250 thousand each, 15 thousand industrial and economic facilities, 3500 military targets in the USSR, the Warsaw Pact countries, China, Vietnam and Cuba.

In early October 1981, President Reagan announced his "strategic program" for the 1980s, which contained guidelines for further building up the strategic nuclear potential. At six meetings of the Committee on Military Affairs of the US Congress, the last hearings on this program were held. Representatives of the president, the Ministry of Defense, leading scientists in the field of armaments were invited to them. As a result of comprehensive discussions of all structural elements, the strategic arms buildup program was approved. In accordance with it, starting from 1983, 108 Pershing-2 IRBM launchers and 464 BGM-109G land-based cruise missiles were deployed in Europe as forward-based nuclear weapons.

In the second half of the 1980s, another concept was developed - "essential equivalence". It determined how, under the conditions of the reduction and elimination of some types of strategic offensive weapons, by improving the combat characteristics of others, to ensure a qualitative superiority over the strategic nuclear forces of the USSR.

Since 1985, the deployment of 50 silo-based MX ICBMs began (another 50 missiles of this type in a mobile version were planned to be put on combat duty in the early 1990s) and 100 B-1B heavy bombers. The production of BGM-86 air-launched cruise missiles to equip 180 B-52 bombers was in full swing. A new MIRV with more powerful warheads was installed on the 350 Minuteman-3 ICBMs, while the control system was modernized.

An interesting situation developed after the deployment of Pershing-2 missiles in West Germany. Formally, this group was not part of the US SNA and was the nuclear means of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armed Forces of NATO in Europe (this position has always been occupied by representatives of the United States). official version, for the world community, its deployment in Europe was a reaction to the appearance of RSD-10 (SS-20) missiles in the Soviet Union and the need to re-arm NATO in the face of a missile threat from the East. In fact, the reason was, of course, different, which was confirmed by the Supreme Commander of the Allied NATO Armed Forces in Europe, General B. Rogers. In 1983, in one of his speeches, he said: “Most people believe that we are undertaking the modernization of our weapons because of the SS-20 missiles. We would have carried out the modernization even if there were no SS-20 missiles.”

The main purpose of the Pershings (considered in the SIOP plan) was to deliver a "decapitation strike" on the command posts of the strategic formations of the USSR Armed Forces and the Strategic Missile Forces in Eastern Europe, which was supposed to disrupt the Soviet retaliatory strike. To do this, they had all the necessary tactical and technical characteristics: a short flight time (8-10 minutes), high firing accuracy and a nuclear charge capable of hitting highly protected targets. Thus, it became clear that they were intended to solve strategic offensive tasks.

Land-based cruise missiles, also considered NATO's nuclear weapons, have become a dangerous weapon. But their use was envisaged in accordance with the SIOP plan. Their main advantage was the high accuracy of firing (up to 30 m) and the secrecy of the flight, which took place at an altitude of several tens of meters, which, combined with a small effective dispersion area, made the interception of such missiles by the air defense system extremely tricky business. The targets for the KR could be any pinpoint highly protected targets such as command posts, silos, etc.

However, by the end of the 1980s, the United States and the USSR had accumulated such a huge nuclear potential that it had long outgrown reasonable limits. There was a situation when it was necessary to make a decision what to do next. The situation was aggravated by the fact that half of the ICBMs (Minuteman-2 and part of Minuteman-3) had been in operation for 20 years or more. Maintaining them in a combat-ready state cost more and more every year. Under these conditions, the country's leadership decided on the possibility of a 50% reduction in strategic offensive arms, subject to a reciprocal step on the part of the Soviet Union. Such an agreement was concluded at the end of July 1991. Its provisions largely determined the development of strategic weapons for the 1990s. A directive was given for the development of such strategic offensive arms, so that the USSR would need to spend large financial and material resources to parry the threat from them.

The situation changed radically after the collapse of the Soviet Union. As a result, the United States achieved world domination and remained the only "superpower" of the world. Finally, the political part of the American military doctrine was carried out. But with the end of the Cold War, according to the Clinton administration, threats to US interests have remained. In 1995, the report "National Military Strategy" appeared, presented by the chairman of the committee of the chiefs of staff of the Armed Forces, and sent to Congress. It became the last of the official documents that set out the provisions of the new military doctrine. It is based on a “strategy of flexible and selective engagement”. Certain adjustments in the new strategy have been made to the content of the main strategic concepts.

The military-political leadership still relies on force, and the Armed Forces are preparing to wage war and achieve "victory in any wars, wherever and whenever they arise." Naturally, the military structure is being improved, including the strategic nuclear forces. They are entrusted with the task of deterring and intimidating a possible enemy, both in peacetime and at the entrance to a general or limited war using conventional weapons.

A significant place in theoretical developments is given to the place and methods of operation of the SNA in a nuclear war. Taking into account the existing correlation of forces between the United States and Russia in the field of strategic weapons, the American military-political leadership believes that the goals in a nuclear war can be achieved as a result of multiple and spaced nuclear strikes against objects of military and economic potential, administrative and political control. In time, it can be both proactive and reciprocal actions.

The following types of nuclear strikes are envisaged: selective - to destroy various command and control agencies, limited or regional (for example, against groupings of enemy troops during a conventional war if the situation develops unsuccessfully) and massive. In this regard, a certain reorganization of the US START was carried out. A further change in American views on possible development and the use of strategic nuclear weapons can be expected early in the next millennium.

The investigation took place in April-May 1954 in Washington and was called, in the American manner, "hearings."
Physicists participated in the hearings (with a capital P!), but for the scientific world of America the conflict was unprecedented: not a dispute about priority, not an undercover struggle of scientific schools, and not even the traditional confrontation between a forward-looking genius and a crowd of mediocre envious people. In the proceedings, the keyword "loyalty" sounded imperiously. The accusation of "disloyalty", which acquired a negative, formidable meaning, entailed punishment: deprivation of access to works of the highest secrecy. The action took place in the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). Main characters:

Robert Oppenheimer, native of New York, pioneer of quantum physics in the USA, scientific director of the Manhattan Project, "father of the atomic bomb", successful scientific manager and refined intellectual, after 1945 a national hero of America ...

“I’m not the easiest person,” once remarked American physicist Isidore Isaac Rabi. "But compared to Oppenheimer, I'm very, very simple." Robert Oppenheimer was one of central figures of the twentieth century, the very "complexity" of which absorbed the political and ethical contradictions of the country.

During the Second World War brilliant physicist Azulius Robert Oppenheimer led the development of American nuclear scientists to create the first atomic bomb in the history of mankind. The scientist led a secluded and secluded life, and this gave rise to suspicions of treason.

Atomic weapons are the result of all previous developments in science and technology. Discoveries that are directly related to its occurrence were made at the end of the 19th century. a huge role the studies of A. Becquerel, Pierre Curie and Marie Sklodowska-Curie, E. Rutherford and others played in revealing the secrets of the atom.

In early 1939, the French physicist Joliot-Curie concluded that a chain reaction was possible that would lead to an explosion of monstrous destructive power and that uranium could become an energy source, like an ordinary explosive. This conclusion was the impetus for the development of nuclear weapons.

Europe was on the eve of World War II, and the potential possession of such a powerful weapon pushed militaristic circles to create it as soon as possible, but the problem of the availability of a large amount of uranium ore for large-scale research was a brake. The physicists of Germany, England, the USA, and Japan worked on the creation of atomic weapons, realizing that it was impossible to work without a sufficient amount of uranium ore, the USA in September 1940 purchased a large amount of the required ore under false documents from Belgium, which allowed them to work on the creation nuclear weapons in full swing.

From 1939 to 1945, more than two billion dollars were spent on the Manhattan Project. A huge uranium refinery was built at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. H.C. Urey and Ernest O. Lawrence (inventor of the cyclotron) proposed a purification method based on the principle of gaseous diffusion followed by magnetic separation of two isotopes. gas centrifuge separated the light Uranium-235 from the heavier Uranium-238.

On the territory of the United States, in Los Alamos, in the desert expanses of the state of New Mexico, in 1942, an American nuclear center was established. Many scientists worked on the project, but the main one was Robert Oppenheimer. Under his leadership, the best minds of that time were gathered not only from the USA and England, but from almost all of Western Europe. A huge team worked on the creation of nuclear weapons, including 12 Nobel Prize winners. Work in Los Alamos, where the laboratory was located, did not stop for a minute. In Europe, meanwhile, the Second World War, and Germany carried out mass bombing of the cities of England, which endangered the English atomic project “Tub Alloys”, and England voluntarily transferred its developments and leading scientists of the project to the USA, which allowed the USA to take a leading position in the development of nuclear physics (the creation of nuclear weapons).

"The father of the atomic bomb", he was at the same time an ardent opponent of American nuclear policy. Bearing the title of one of the most outstanding physicists of his time, he studied with pleasure the mysticism of ancient Indian books. A communist, traveler and staunch American patriot, a very spiritual person, he was nevertheless willing to betray his friends in order to defend himself against the attacks of anti-communists. The scientist who devised a plan to cause the most damage to Hiroshima and Nagasaki cursed himself for "innocent blood on his hands."

write about it controversial person the task is not easy, but interesting, and the twentieth century is marked by a number of books about it. However rich life scientist continues to attract biographers.

Oppenheimer was born in New York in 1903 to wealthy and educated Jewish parents. Oppenheimer was brought up in love for painting, music, in an atmosphere of intellectual curiosity. In 1922, he entered Harvard University and in just three years received an honors degree, his main subject was chemistry. In the next few years, the precocious young man traveled to several countries in Europe, where he worked with physicists who dealt with the problems of investigating atomic phenomena in the light of new theories. Just a year after graduating from university, Oppenheimer published scientific work, which showed how deeply he understands new methods. Soon he, together with the famous Max Born, developed the most important part of quantum theory, known as the Born-Oppenheimer method. In 1927, his outstanding doctoral dissertation brought him worldwide fame.

In 1928 he worked at the Zurich and Leiden universities. In the same year he returned to the USA. From 1929 to 1947 Oppenheimer taught at University of California and the California Institute of Technology. From 1939 to 1945 he actively participated in the work on the creation of an atomic bomb as part of the Manhattan Project; heading the specially created Los Alamos laboratory.

In 1929, Oppenheimer, a rising star in science, accepted offers from two of several universities that were vying for the right to invite him. He taught during the spring semester at the vibrant, fledgling Caltech in Pasadena, and during the fall and winter semesters at the University of California at Berkeley, where he became the first lecturer in quantum mechanics. In fact, the erudite scholar had to adjust for some time, gradually reducing the level of discussion to the capabilities of his students. In 1936 he fell in love with Jean Tatlock, a restless and moody young woman whose passionate idealism found expression in communist activities. Like many thoughtful people of the time, Oppenheimer explored the ideas of the left movement as one of the possible alternatives, although he did not join the Communist Party, which his younger brother, sister-in-law and many of his friends did. His interest in politics, as well as his ability to read Sanskrit, was the natural result of a constant pursuit of knowledge. In his own words, he was also deeply disturbed by the explosion of anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany and Spain and invested $1,000 a year from his $15,000 annual salary in projects related to the activities of communist groups. After meeting Kitty Harrison, who became his wife in 1940, Oppenheimer parted ways with Jean Tetlock and moved away from her circle of leftist friends.

In 1939, the United States learned that in preparation for global war Nazi Germany discovered the fission of the atomic nucleus. Oppenheimer and other scientists immediately guessed that the German physicists would try to create a controlled chain reaction that could be the key to creating a weapon far more destructive than any that existed at that time. Enlisting the support of the great scientific genius, Albert Einstein, concerned scientists warned President Franklin D. Roosevelt of the danger in a famous letter. In authorizing funding for projects aimed at creating untested weapons, the president acted in strict secrecy. Ironically, many of the world's leading scientists, forced to flee their homeland, worked together with American scientists in laboratories scattered throughout the country. One part of the university groups explored the possibility of creating a nuclear reactor, others took up the solution of the problem of separating the isotopes of uranium necessary for the release of energy in a chain reaction. Oppenheimer, who had previously been occupied with theoretical problems, was offered to organize a wide front of work only at the beginning of 1942.

The US Army's atomic bomb program was codenamed Project Manhattan and was led by Colonel Leslie R. Groves, 46, a professional military man. Groves, who described the scientists working on the atomic bomb as "a costly bunch of lunatics," however, acknowledged that Oppenheimer had a hitherto untapped ability to control his fellow debaters when the heat was on. The physicist proposed that all scientists be united in one laboratory in the quiet provincial town of Los Alamos, New Mexico, in an area that he knew well. By March 1943, the boarding house for boys had been turned into a tightly guarded secret center, of which Oppenheimer became scientific director. By insisting on the free exchange of information between scientists, who were strictly forbidden to leave the center, Oppenheimer created an atmosphere of trust and mutual respect, which contributed to the amazing success in his work. Not sparing himself, he remained the head of all areas of this complex project, although his personal life suffered greatly from this. But for a mixed group of scientists - among whom there were more than a dozen then or future Nobel laureates and of whom a rare person did not have a pronounced individuality - Oppenheimer was an unusually dedicated leader and subtle diplomat. Most of them would agree that the lion's share of the credit for the project's eventual success belongs to him. By December 30, 1944, Groves, who by that time had become a general, could confidently say that the two billion dollars spent would be ready for action by August 1 of the next year. But when Germany admitted defeat in May 1945, many of the researchers working at Los Alamos began to think about using new weapons. After all, probably, Japan would have capitulated soon without the atomic bombing. Should the United States be the first country in the world to use such a terrible device? Harry S. Truman, who became president after Roosevelt's death, appointed a committee to study possible consequences use of the atomic bomb, which included Oppenheimer. Experts decided to recommend dropping an atomic bomb without warning on a major Japanese military facility. Oppenheimer's consent was also obtained.
All these worries would, of course, be moot if the bomb had not gone off. The test of the world's first atomic bomb was carried out on July 16, 1945, about 80 kilometers from the air base in Alamogordo, New Mexico. The device under test, named "Fat Man" for its convex shape, was attached to a steel tower set up in a desert area. At precisely 5:30 a.m., a remote-controlled detonator set off the bomb. With an echoing roar across a 1.6 kilometer diameter area, a gigantic purple-green-orange fireball shot up into the sky. The earth shook from the explosion, the tower disappeared. A white column of smoke rapidly rose to the sky and began to gradually expand, taking on an awesome mushroom shape at an altitude of about 11 kilometers. The first nuclear explosion startled scientific and military observers near the test site and turned their heads. But Oppenheimer remembered the lines from the Indian epic poem Bhagavad Gita: "I will become Death, the destroyer of worlds." Until the end of his life to the satisfaction of scientific success always mixed with a sense of responsibility for the consequences.
On the morning of August 6, 1945, there was a clear, cloudless sky over Hiroshima. As before, the approach from the east of two american aircraft(one of them was called Enola Gay) at an altitude of 10-13 km did not cause alarm (because every day they appeared in the sky of Hiroshima). One of the planes dived and dropped something, and then both planes turned and flew away. The dropped object on a parachute slowly descended and suddenly exploded at an altitude of 600 m above the ground. It was the "Baby" bomb.

Three days after the "Kid" was blown up in Hiroshima, an exact copy of the first "Fat Man" was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. On August 15, Japan, whose resolve had finally been broken by this new weapon, signed an unconditional surrender. However, the voices of skeptics were already being heard, and Oppenheimer himself predicted two months after Hiroshima that "mankind will curse the names of Los Alamos and Hiroshima."

The whole world was shocked by the explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Tellingly, Oppenheimer managed to combine the excitement of testing a bomb on civilians and the joy that the weapon had finally been tested.

Nevertheless, the following year he accepted an appointment as chairman of the scientific council of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), thus becoming the most influential adviser to the government and the military on nuclear issues. While the West and the Stalin-led Soviet Union were seriously preparing for the Cold War, each side focused its attention on the arms race. Although many of the scientists involved in the Manhattan Project did not support the idea of ​​creating a new weapon, former Oppenheimer employees Edward Teller and Ernest Lawrence felt that US national security required the rapid development of a hydrogen bomb. Oppenheimer was horrified. From his point of view, the two nuclear powers were already opposed to each other, like "two scorpions in a jar, each able to kill the other, but only at the risk of his own life." With the spread of new weapons in wars, there would no longer be winners and losers - only victims. And the "father of the atomic bomb" made a public statement that he was against the development of the hydrogen bomb. Always out of place under Oppenheimer and clearly envious of his achievements, Teller began to make an effort to head the new project, implying that Oppenheimer should no longer be involved in the work. He told FBI investigators that his rival was keeping scientists from working on the hydrogen bomb with his authority, and revealed the secret that Oppenheimer suffered bouts of severe depression in his youth. When President Truman agreed in 1950 to finance the development of the hydrogen bomb, Teller could celebrate victory.

In 1954, Oppenheimer's enemies launched a campaign to remove him from power, which they succeeded after a month-long search for "black spots" in his personal biography. As a result, a show case was organized in which Oppenheimer was opposed by many influential political and scientific figures. As Albert Einstein later put it: "Oppenheimer's problem was that he loved a woman who didn't love him: the US government."

By allowing Oppenheimer's talent to flourish, America doomed him to death.

Oppenheimer is known not only as the creator of the American atomic bomb. He owns many works on quantum mechanics, theory of relativity, elementary particle physics, theoretical astrophysics. In 1927 he developed the theory of the interaction of free electrons with atoms. Together with Born, he created the theory of the structure of diatomic molecules. In 1931, he and P. Ehrenfest formulated a theorem, the application of which to the nitrogen nucleus showed that the proton-electron hypothesis of the structure of nuclei leads to a number of contradictions with the known properties of nitrogen. Investigated the internal conversion of g-rays. In 1937 he developed the cascade theory of cosmic showers, in 1938 he made the first calculation of the model neutron star, in 1939 predicted the existence of "black holes".

Oppenheimer owns a number of popular books, including Science and the Common Understanding (Science and the Common Understanding, 1954), The Open Mind (The Open Mind, 1955), Some Reflections on Science and Culture (Some Reflections on Science and Culture, 1960) . Oppenheimer died in Princeton on February 18, 1967.

Work on nuclear projects in the USSR and the USA began simultaneously. In August 1942, a secret "Laboratory No. 2" began to work in one of the buildings in the courtyard of Kazan University. Igor Kurchatov was appointed its leader.

In Soviet times, it was claimed that the USSR solved its atomic problem completely independently, and Kurchatov was considered the "father" of the domestic atomic bomb. Although there were rumors about some secrets stolen from the Americans. And only in the 90s, 50 years later, one of the main characters then, Yuli Khariton, spoke about significant role intelligence in accelerating the lagging Soviet project. And American scientific and technical results were obtained by Klaus Fuchs, who arrived in the English group.

Information from abroad helped the country's leadership to make a difficult decision - to start work on nuclear weapons during the most difficult war. Intelligence allowed our physicists to save time, helped to avoid a "misfire" during the first atomic test, which was of great political importance.

In 1939, a chain reaction of fission of uranium-235 nuclei was discovered, accompanied by the release of colossal energy. Shortly thereafter, articles on nuclear physics began to disappear from the pages of scientific journals. This could indicate a real prospect of creating an atomic explosive and weapons based on it.

After the discovery by Soviet physicists spontaneous fission uranium-235 nuclei and determining the critical mass in the residency at the initiative of the head of the scientific and technological revolution L. Kvasnikov, a corresponding directive was sent.

In the FSB of Russia (the former KGB of the USSR), 17 volumes of archival file No. 13676, which documented who and how attracted US citizens to work for Soviet intelligence, lie under the heading "keep forever" under the heading "keep forever". Only a few of the top leadership of the KGB of the USSR had access to the materials of this case, the classification of which was removed only recently. Soviet intelligence received the first information about the work on the creation of the American atomic bomb in the fall of 1941. And already in March 1942, extensive information about the ongoing research in the United States and England fell on the table of I.V. Stalin. According to Yu. B. Khariton, in that dramatic period it was more reliable to use the bomb scheme already tested by the Americans for our first explosion. “Given the interests of the state, any other decision was then unacceptable. The merit of Fuchs and our other assistants abroad is undeniable. However, we implemented the American scheme in the first test not so much from technical as from political considerations.

The announcement that the Soviet Union had mastered the secret of nuclear weapons aroused in the US ruling circles a desire to unleash a preventive war as soon as possible. The Troyan plan was developed, which provided for the start of hostilities on January 1, 1950. At that time, the United States had 840 strategic bombers in combat units, 1350 in reserve and over 300 atomic bombs.

A test site was built near the city of Semipalatinsk. Exactly at 7:00 am on August 29, 1949, the first Soviet nuclear device under the code name "RDS-1" was blown up at this test site.

The Troyan plan, according to which atomic bombs were to be dropped on 70 cities of the USSR, was thwarted due to the threat of a retaliatory strike. The event that took place at the Semipalatinsk test site informed the world about the creation of nuclear weapons in the USSR.

Foreign intelligence not only drew the attention of the country's leadership to the problem of creating atomic weapons in the West and thereby initiated similar work in our country. Thanks to the information foreign intelligence, according to academicians A. Aleksandrov, Yu. Khariton and others, I. Kurchatov did not big mistakes, we managed to avoid dead ends in the creation of atomic weapons and create an atomic bomb in the USSR in just three years, while the United States spent four years on it, having spent five billion dollars on its creation.
As noted in an interview with the Izvestia newspaper on December 8, 1992, the first Soviet atomic charge was made according to the American model with the help of information received from K. Fuchs. According to the academician, when government awards were presented to participants in the Soviet atomic project, Stalin, satisfied that there was no American monopoly in this area, remarked: “If we were late for one to a year and a half, then we would probably try this charge on ourselves.” ".

Oleg Lavrentiev

Oleg Lavrentiev was born in 1926 in Pskov and was probably a child prodigy. In any case, having read the book "Introduction to Nuclear Physics" in the 7th grade, he immediately caught fire with "the blue dream of working in the field of nuclear power". But the war began. Oleg volunteered for the front. He met the victory in the Baltic states, but further studies again had to be postponed - the soldier had to continue military service in South Sakhalin, just liberated from the Japanese, in the small town of Poronaysk.

The part had a library with technical literature and university textbooks, and even Oleg on his sergeant allowance subscribed to the journal "Uspekhi fizicheskikh nauk". The idea of ​​a hydrogen bomb and controlled thermonuclear fusion first came to him in 1948, when the command of the unit, which distinguished a capable sergeant, instructed him to prepare a lecture on the atomic problem for the personnel.
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The world's first hydrogen bomb - "RDS-6s"
“Having a few free days to prepare, I rethought all the accumulated material and found a solution to issues that I had been struggling with for more than one year,” says Oleg Alexandrovich. - In 1949, in one year, I completed the 8th, 9th and 10th grades of the evening school for working youth and received a matriculation certificate. In January 1950, the American president, speaking before Congress, called on US scientists to complete work on the hydrogen bomb as soon as possible. And I knew how to make a bomb.

We read slowly and meaningfully:
a simple Russian guy, while on active military service, completed the 8th, 9th and 10th grades of the evening school for working youth in one year. Having access only to a school textbook on physics, he alone, with the help of only his brains, did what huge teams of highly paid high-browed Jewish scientists struggled with, with unlimited means and opportunities on both sides of the ocean.

Having no contact with scientific world, a soldier, in full agreement with the norms of the then life, writes a letter to Stalin."I know the secret of the hydrogen bomb!"No answer. In the Central Committee of the CPSU (b). And soon the command of the unit received an order from Moscow to create working conditions for Sergeant Lavrentiev. He was given a guarded room at the headquarters of the unit, where he wrote his first articles. In July 1950, he sent them by secret mail to the department of heavy engineering of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.

Lavrentiev described the principle of operation of a hydrogen bomb, where solid lithium deuteride was used as a fuel. This choice made it possible to make a compact charge - quite "on the shoulder" of the aircraft. Note that the first American hydrogen bomb "Mike", tested two years later, in 1952, contained liquid deuterium as a fuel, was as high as a house and weighed 82 tons.

Oleg Aleksandrovich also owns the idea of ​​using controlled thermonuclear fusion in the national economy for the production of electricity. Chain reaction The synthesis of light elements must proceed here not in an explosive manner, as in a bomb, but slowly and in a controlled manner. Main question was how to isolate the ionized gas heated to hundreds of millions of degrees, that is, the plasma, from the cold walls of the reactor. No material can withstand such heat.The sergeant proposed a revolutionary solution at that time - a force field could act as a shell for high-temperature plasma.The first option is electric.

In the atmosphere of secrecy that surrounded everything connected with atomic weapons, Lavrentiev not only understood the structure and principle of operation of the atomic bomb, which in his project served as a fuse that initiated thermonuclear explosion, but also anticipated the idea of ​​compactness by proposing to use solid lithium-6 deuteride as a fuel.

He did not know that his message was very quickly sent for review to the then Candidate of Sciences, and later Academician and three times Hero of Socialist Labor A. Sakharov, who already in August commented on the idea of ​​controlled thermonuclear fusion: “... I believe that the author puts a very an important and not hopeless problem... I consider it necessary to discuss in detail the draft of Comrade. Lavrentiev. Regardless of the results of the discussion, it is necessary to note the creative initiative of the author right now.”

On March 5, 1953, Stalin dies, on June 26, Beria is arrested and soon shot, and on August 12, 1953, a thermonuclear charge using lithium deuteride is successfully tested in the USSR.Participants in the creation of new weapons receive state awards, titles and prizes, but Lavrentyev, for a reason completely incomprehensible to him, loses a lot overnight.

- At the university, they not only stopped giving me an increased scholarship, but also “turned out” the tuition fee for the past year, in fact, leaving me without a livelihood, - says Oleg Aleksandrovich. “I made my way to an appointment with the new dean and, in complete confusion, I heard: “Your benefactor has died. What do you want?" At the same time, my access to LIPAN was withdrawn, and I lost my permanent pass to the laboratory, where, according to an earlier agreement, I had to undergo undergraduate practice and subsequently work. If the scholarship was later restored,I never got admission to the institute.
In other words, they were simply removed from the secret fiefdom. Pushed back, fenced off from him with secrecy. Naive Russian scientist! He could not even imagine that this could be so.

A fifth-year student had to write a graduation project contrary to all university canons - without an internship and without a supervisor. Well, Oleg took as a basis the already made by him theoretical work in TTC, successfully defended and received a diploma with honors.

However, he was not hired to work at LIPAN, the only place in the country where controlled thermonuclear fusion was then carried out.

Oleg was not going to abandon the "blue dream" chosen once and for all. At the suggestion of Panasenkov, Khrushchev's scientific assistant and a physicist by education, he decided to go to Kharkov, to Institute of Physics and Technology, where a new department of plasma research was to be created.

In the spring of 1956, a young specialist arrived in Kharkov with a report on the theory of electromagnetic traps, which he wanted to show to the director of the institute, K. Sinelnikov.

Oleg did not know that even before his arrival in Kharkov, Kirill Dmitrievich had already been called by one of the LIPANites, warning that a “scandalist” and “author of confused ideas” were coming to see him. They also called the head of the theoretical department of the institute, Alexander Akhiezer, recommending that Lavrentiev’s work be “hacked to death”.

But Kharkiv residents were in no hurry with their assessments. Akhiezer asked the young theorists Konstantin Stepanov and Vitaly Aleksin to essentially understand the work. Boris Rutkevich, who worked with Sinelnikov, also read the report independently. Experts, without saying a word, gave the work a positive assessment.

Well, thank God! The influence of the powerful Moscow-Arzamas scientific clique could not spread over one and a half thousand kilometers. However, they took an active part - they called, spread rumors, discredited the scientist. How to protect your feeder!

Application for opening

Oleg Alexandrovich found out by chance that he was the first to propose to hold the plasma by the field, having stumbled in 1968 (! 15 years later) in one of the books on the memoirs of I. Tamm (Head Sakharov). His last name was not, only an indistinct phrase about "one military man from the Far East",

who proposed a method for the synthesis of hydrogen, by which “... even in principle it was impossible to do anything

". Lavrentiev had no choice but to defend his scientific authority.

The cat smells, (Tamm) whose meat she ate! Tamm and Sakharov understood perfectly well what was happening. What Lavrentiev came up with is the key that opens access to the implementation of the hydrogen bomb in practice. Everything else, the whole theory, has long been known to absolutely everyone, since it was described even in ordinary textbooks. And not only the "brilliant" Sakharov could bring the idea to a material embodiment, but also any techie who has unlimited access to material state resources.

And another interesting piece, in which the invisible bony hand of saboteurs with American money is well felt: This is already about the "period of stagnation", when the advanced thoughts and developments of Russian scientists were forcibly "stagnated" ...

Lavrentiev was confident in his idea of ​​electromagnetic traps. By 1976, his group had prepared a technical proposal for a large multi-slot unit "Jupiter-2T". Everything worked out extremely well. The topic was supported by the leadership of the institute and the immediate head of the department, Anatoly Kalmykov (Russian). The State Committee for the Use of Atomic Energy allocated three hundred thousand rubles for the design of Jupiter-2T. The FTINT of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR undertook to manufacture the installation.

- I was in seventh heaven with happiness, - recalls Oleg Alexandrovich. “We can build a facility that will take us on a direct road to thermonuclear Eldorado!” I had no doubt that high plasma parameters would be obtained on it.

The trouble came from a completely unexpected direction. While on an internship in England, Anatoly Kalmykov accidentally received a large dose of radiation, fell ill and died.

And the new head of the department offered Lavrentiev to design ... something smaller and cheaper.

It took two years to complete the project of the Jupiter-2 installation, where the linear dimensions were halved. But while his band got on this project positive feedback from Moscow, from the Institute of Atomic Energy,

the reserved site was given over to other projects, funding was cut, and the group was asked to… further reduce the size of the plant.

“This is how the Jupiter-2M project was born, already one-third of the natural size of Jupiter-2,” states Oleg Aleksandrovich. - It is clear that this was a step back, but there was no choice. Manufacturing new installation dragged on for several years. Only in the mid-1980s were we able to start experiments that fully confirmed our predictions. But there was no longer any talk about the development of works. TCB funding began to decline, and from 1989 it stopped altogether. I still believe that electromagnetic traps are one of the few thermonuclear systems where it was possible to completely suppress the hydrodynamic and kinetic instabilities of the plasma and obtain particle and energy transfer coefficients close to the classical ones.

The work of saboteurs from science is clearly visible, exactly the same situation was in the 1970s and 80s with domestic developments of microprocessors and Soviet computers (see the message "Soviet computers, betrayed and forgotten") When the relevant ministries and some academicians, the most advanced domestic development.

I began to think, as I wrote, about this range of questions as early as 1949, but without any reasonable concrete ideas. In the summer of 1950, a letter sent from the secretariat of Beria came to the facility with a proposal from a young sailor of the Pacific Fleet, Oleg Lavrentiev. In the introductory part, the author wrote about the importance of the problem of a controlled thermonuclear reaction for the energy of the future. What followed was the proposal itself. The author proposed to implement a high-temperature deuterium plasma using an electrostatic thermal insulation system. Specifically, a system of two (or three) metal meshes surrounding the reactor volume was proposed. A potential difference of several tens of KeV had to be applied to the grids, so that the escape of deuterium ions was delayed or (in the case of three grids) the escape of ions was delayed in one of the gaps, and electrons were delayed in the other. In my review, I wrote that the idea put forward by the author of a controlled thermonuclear reaction is very important. The author raised a problem of colossal importance, which indicates that he is very enterprising and creative person deserving all the support and help. On the merits of Lavrentiev's specific scheme, I wrote that it seems to me unrealizable, since it does not exclude direct contact of the hot plasma with the grids and this will inevitably lead to a huge heat removal and, thus, to the impossibility of achieving temperatures sufficient for the flow of thermonuclear reactions. It probably should have also been written that perhaps the author's idea would be fruitful in combination with some other ideas, but I had no thoughts about this, and I did not write this phrase. While reading the letter and writing a review, I had the first, still unclear thoughts about magnetic thermal insulation. Fundamental difference magnetic field from electric is that it lines of force may be closed (or form closed magnetic surfaces) outside material bodies, thus the “problem of contact” can be solved in principle. Closed magnetic lines of force arise, in particular, in the internal volume of a toroid when current is passed through a toroidal winding located on its surface. This is the system I decided to consider.

This time I drove alone. In the waiting room of Beria, however, I saw Oleg Lavrentiev - he was recalled from the fleet. Both of us were invited to Beria. Beria, as always, sat at the head of the table, wearing a pince-nez and a light cape draped over his shoulders, something like a cloak. Sitting next to him was Makhnev, his permanent assistant, formerly head of the Kolyma camp. After the elimination of Beria, Makhnev moved to our Ministry as head of the information department; in general, then they said that MSM was a “reserve” for former employees of Beria.

Beria, even with some insinuatingness, asked me what I thought of Lavrentiev's proposal. I repeated my review. Beria asked several questions to Lavrentiev, then let him go. I didn't see him again. I know that he entered the Faculty of Physics or some radiophysical institute in Ukraine and after graduation came to LIPAN. However, after a month of being there, he had big disagreements with all the employees. He went back to Ukraine.

I wonder what disagreements a Russian scientist could have in a team led by two laureates who clearly knew whose idea they were using?

In the 70s, I received a letter from him in which he said that he was working as a senior researcher at some applied research institute, and asked me to send documents confirming the fact of his proposal in 1950 and my review of that time. He wanted to issue a certificate of invention. I didn’t have anything on hand, I wrote from memory and sent it to him, having officially certified my letter in the office of the FIAN.

For some reason my first letter didn't get through.

At Lavrentiev's request, I sent him a second letter. I don't know anything more about him. Maybe then, in the mid-1950s, Lavrentiev should have been given a small laboratory and given him freedom of action. But all the LIPAN people were convinced that nothing but trouble, including for him, would come of it.

How clearly the mental suffering of the great "inventor of the hydrogen bomb" is seen from this passage! At first, he still hoped to sit out, maybe he would blow through. Lavrentiev sent a second letter. After all, no one except Sakharov can confirm his authorship! The letters were either hidden in the distant Beriev archives or destroyed. Well, Sakharov nevertheless confirmed, after much thought. And imagine that Landau would have been in his place? We know his moral character well.

And here is what Oleg Lavrentiev himself writes. http://www.zn.ua/3000/3760/41432/

“A heavy man in pince-nez got up from the table and went to meet me,” recalls Oleg Aleksandrovich. He extended his hand and offered to sit down. I waited and prepared to answer questions related to the development of the hydrogen bomb, but there were no such questions. Beria wanted to look at me, and perhaps at Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov, to see what kind of people we are. The screenings were successful.

Then Sakharov and I walked to the subway, talked for a long time, both were excited after such a meeting. Then I heard many kind words from Andrey Dmitrievich. He assured me that everything would be fine now and offered to work together.

Of course, I agreed to the proposal of a man I liked very much.

Lavrentiev did not even suspect that A. Sakharov liked his idea of ​​controlled thermonuclear fusion so much that he decided to use it

and by that time, together with I. Tamm, he had already begun to work on the problem of CTS. True, in their version of the reactor, the plasma was held not by an electric, but by a magnetic field. (Subsequently, this direction resulted in reactors called "tokamak".)

And a few years later:

“It was a big surprise for me,” recalls Oleg Aleksandrovich. - When meeting with me, Andrei Dmitrievich did not say a single word about his work on the magnetic thermal insulation of plasma. Then I thought that Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov and I came up with the idea of ​​plasma isolation by a field independently of each other, only I chose an electrostatic thermonuclear reactor as the first option, and he chose a magnetic one.

Help from the Internet:
In the 1950s in the USSR, Andrei Sakharov and Igor Tamm proposed a fundamentally new idea for generating energy in the legendary tokamaks, donut-shaped magnetic chambers that hold plasma heated to several hundred million degrees. In 1956, in England, Igor Kurchatov announced thermonuclear research in the USSR. Now the leading countries, including Russia, are implementing the ITER project. For construction fusion reactor selected site in France. The reactor will be maintained at a temperature of 150 million degrees - the temperature in the center of the Sun is 20 million degrees.

And where is Lavrentiev? Can ask on the site http://www.sem40.ru?

FATHERS OF THE HYDROGEN BOMB SUGAR AND TELLER?