What did German scientists do in Sukhumi … and not only there
About five years ago, an uproar arose in the Western press about the alleged leakage of radioactive materials from Abkhazia. IAEA inspectors even came to the then unrecognized republic, but they found nothing. As it turned out later, false information came from Tbilisi, where they intended to convince the world community that the autonomy that had separated from Georgia could acquire a "dirty" atomic bomb.
But why exactly Abkhazia became the target of such a propaganda attack? This was to some extent managed to be sorted out during the international scientific and technical conference in Pitsunda, where representatives of the Sukhumi Institute of Physics and Technology were also present.
WHAT HAS BEEN
In the late 80s - early 90s, the secrecy label was removed from some documents on the involvement of the USSR special services in the creation of domestic nuclear weapons. From the published materials it follows that 1945 was especially successful for the employees of the scientific and technical direction of Soviet intelligence in the United States. They managed to acquire several valuable sources for the American atomic project and to establish a regular supply of relevant information to Moscow.
In February 1945, Leonid Kvasnikov, the deputy resident for scientific and technical intelligence (NTR), reported to Lubyanka: the agent network of the NTR station “is basically quite efficient, and its technical qualifications are at a high level. Most of the agents work with us not out of selfish motives, but on the basis of a friendly attitude towards our country. " So the Kremlin had a fairly complete idea of the development of "super bombs" overseas.
On this occasion, Academician Igor Kurchatov quite definitely noted: fifty percent of the merit in the creation of the first domestic nuclear weapons belongs to Soviet intelligence, and fifty percent to our scientists. In principle, already at the beginning of 1945, they possessed basic information on the atomic bomb, and it seemed that nothing prevented them from collecting it already in September. But in reality, it was impossible to do this: there was no necessary scientific and industrial base, there was not enough uranium raw materials, and, finally, too few people were well versed in a number of technical and technological issues that certainly had to be resolved.
Apparently for this reason, but most likely for political reasons, to this day, another aspect of the Soviet atomic project is not particularly advertised: the participation of German specialists in it. Information about this is rather scanty. However, here it should be noted right away: domestic scientists were engaged in the development of nuclear weapons, however, the Germans were also entrusted with solving an equally difficult task - isotope separation. And if we talk about the merit of the latter in the creation of a "superbomb" in the USSR, it should be recognized as quite significant. Although hardly decisive. One way or another, thanks to them, the Physicotechnical Institute in Sukhumi became one of the leaders of the national atomic science.
SUPER SECRET PROPERTY MANAGERS
Indeed, in the very first post-war year, hundreds of German scientists who worked in the Third Reich on the implementation of the "uranium project" were brought to the Soviet Union - this is how the work on the creation of the atomic bomb was called in Nazi Germany. By the way, the Minister of Posts, who formally oversaw this project, assured the Fuehrer that he would make a "miracle weapon" using only a very modest budget of his department, and thereby save the Vaterland …
The future academicians Lev Artsimovich (1909-1973), Isaac Kikoin (1908-1984), Julius Khariton (1904-1996) were looking for the right people and equipment in Germany. In mid-May 1945, they arrived in Berlin in military uniform with colonel's shoulder straps. Yuliy Borisovich, the last (alphabetically) in this "big three", was, perhaps, the most secret in his time our atomic scientist. It is he who is considered the "father" of the Soviet "superbomb", thanks to which, already in 1949, the USSR was able to deprive America of its atomic monopoly, which balanced the fragile post-war world. The list of Khariton's regalia alone is impressive: three times Hero of Socialist Labor, laureate of three Stalin Prizes and the Lenin Prize, holder of the Kurchatov Gold Medal and the Lomonosov Grand Gold Medal.
Ivan Serov, Deputy People's Commissar (since March 1946 - Minister) of Internal Affairs of the USSR, supervised the operation to search for the "necessary Germans". In addition to scientists, engineers, mechanics, electrical engineers, glass blowers were sent to our country. Many were found in prisoner-of-war camps. So, Max Steinbeck, the future Soviet academician, and in a later period - vice-president of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR, was found in a camp, where he designed … a sundial by the order of his boss. All in all, according to some data (sometimes contradictory), in the USSR, seven thousand German specialists were involved in the implementation of the atomic project and three thousand - the rocket project.
In 1945, the sanatoriums "Sinop" and "Agudzera", located in Abkhazia, were transferred to the disposal of German physicists. This was the beginning of the Sukhumi Institute of Physics and Technology, which was then part of the system of top-secret objects of the USSR. "Sinop" was named in the documents as Object "A", headed by Baron Manfred von Ardenne (1907-1997). This personality in world science is legendary, if not cult: one of the founders of television, the developer of electron microscopes and many other devices. Thanks to von Ardenne, one of the world's first mass spectrometers appeared in the USSR. In 1955, the scientist was allowed to return to East Germany (GDR), where he headed a research institute in Dresden.
Sanatorium "Agudzera" received the code name Object "G". It was led by Gustav Hertz (1887-1975), the nephew of that very famous Heinrich Hertz, known to us from school days. The main task of von Ardenne and Gustav Hertz was the search for different methods for separating uranium isotopes.
In Sukhumi, a house has been preserved that is directly related to this story. On the way from the beach, few people pay attention to the desolate mansion in the wild garden. During the 1992-1993 Georgian-Abkhaz war, the building was simply plundered, and it has stood since then, forgotten and abandoned. It would never occur to anyone that after another war, the Great Patriotic War, the Nobel and Stalin Prize laureate Gustav Hertz lived and worked here for ten years. He became a Nobel laureate back in 1925 - for the discovery of the laws of collision of an electron with an atom. He could, like Einstein, go overseas. Although, to be precise, Einstein initially wanted to move not to America, but to the Soviet Union - to Minsk. This decision was ripe for him in 1931, when the brown shadow of Nazism was already hanging over Germany. In Minsk, Albert Einstein hoped to get a job at a local university, but Stalin, for reasons only known to him, refused the author of the theory of relativity, and he emigrated to the United States at the end of 1932.
But Gustav Hertz, whose father, like Einstein, was a Jew, remained in the Third Reich. He was not touched, although he was fired from state institutions. So he made his living at Siemens electrical engineering company. During a visit to the United States (1939), Hertz confessed to friends: the level of physics research in America is very high, but he believes that he would be more useful in the Soviet Union. And how he looked into the water. In 1945, the participant of the First World War, Gustav Hertz, became one of the first German physicists brought to the USSR. He successfully improved his method of isotope separation, which made it possible to establish this process on an industrial scale.
NIKOLAY VASILIEVICH DOES NOT CHANGE THE PROFESSION
Hertz is the only foreign Nobel laureate who worked in our country. Like other German scientists, he lived in the USSR, knowing nothing of denial, in his house on the seashore. He was even allowed to prepare his own design for this mansion. Gustav was known as a gloomy and eccentric person, but cautious. His eccentricities were expressed in the fact that he passionately loved to photograph, and in Sukhumi he became interested in Abkhaz folklore. When in 1955 the scientist was going to leave for his homeland, he brought these records with him.
Moreover, Hertz returned to East - socialist - Germany. There he worked as a professor at Karl Marx University. Then, as director of the Physics Institute at the university, he supervised the construction of a new institute building to replace the one destroyed during the war. In 1961, Gustav Hertz retired. Having settled in the capital of the GDR, he lived in East Berlin for his last 14 years. He loved to look at photographs, including those of the Sukhumi period, and willingly re-read his notes on Abkhaz folklore. By the way, two sons of Mr. Hertz followed in their father's footsteps - they also became physicists.
Other prominent German scientists were also brought to objects in Abkhazia, including the physicist and radiochemist Nikolaus Riehl (1901-1991), who was later awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor. They called him Nikolai Vasilievich. He was born in St. Petersburg, in the family of a German - the chief engineer of the Siemens-Halske company, which installed telegraph and telephone sets in the city on the Neva. Nikolaus's mother was Russian. Therefore, from childhood, Rill was fluent in both Russian and German. He received an excellent technical education: first in the Russian Northern capital, and after moving to his father's homeland - at the Berlin University of Kaiser Friedrich Wilhelm (later Humboldt University). In 1927 he defended his doctoral dissertation in radiochemistry. His scientific mentors 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 himself to be an energetic and very capable experimenter. When the "battle for England" gained momentum, Riel was summoned to the War Department, where he was offered to start producing uranium.
Later it became clear that it was about the stuffing for the German atomic bomb. Indeed, it was in Germany (earlier than in the USA and the USSR) that work began on such an ammunition. As for the final result, some experts adhere to the following opinion: the point is not in the failures and miscalculations of the German physicists, but in the fact that the leading specialists of the "uranium project" - Heisenberg, Weizsäcker and Diebner, allegedly imperceptibly sabotaged the work. But there is no certainty about this version.
In May 1945, Professor Riehl, left out of work, voluntarily came to the Soviet emissaries sent to Berlin. The scientist, who was considered the main expert in the Reich for the production of pure uranium for reactors, showed, again of his own free will, where the necessary equipment is located. Its fragments (a plant located near Berlin was destroyed by aircraft of the Western Allies) were dismantled and sent to the USSR. The found 200 tons of uranium metal were also taken there. It is believed that in the creation of the atomic bomb, this saved the Soviet Union a year and a half. However, the ubiquitous Yankees stole even more valuable strategic material and instruments from Germany. Of course, they did not forget to bring in German specialists, including Werner Heisenberg, who headed the "uranium project".
Meanwhile, the Elektrostal plant in Noginsk near Moscow under the leadership of Ril was soon re-equipped and adapted for the production of cast uranium metal. In January 1946, the first batch of uranium entered the experimental reactor, and by 1950 its production had reached one ton per day. Nikolai Vasilievich was considered one of the most valuable German scientists. It was not for nothing that Stalin awarded Ril the Golden Star of the Hero of Socialist Labor, gave him a dacha near Moscow and a car. Ironically (for a German) the car from the leader was of the "Victory" brand …
Max Volmer also appears in the special "Sukhumi list". Under his leadership, the first heavy water production plant in the USSR was built (later Volmer - President of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR). In the same list - the former adviser to Hitler on science, a former member of the National Socialist Workers' Party of Germany, Peter Thyssen. By the way, at joint parties and friendly feasts, he showed himself to be a gallant gentleman and an excellent partner - at the dances Herr Peter was snapped up by Russian ladies.
It should also be said about the creator of the centrifuge for the separation of uranium - Dr. Max Steinbeck, the future vice-president of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR, the head of nuclear research. Together with him worked in Sukhumi, a graduate of the University of Vienna, holder of the first Western patent for a centrifuge, Gernot Zippe, who served as an aircraft mechanic in the Luftwaffe during the war. In total there are about 300 people on the "Sukhumi list". All of them in the war developed an atomic bomb for Hitler, but we did not blame them for this. Although they could. Moreover, later many German scientists were repeatedly awarded the Stalin Prize.
Once, work in the direction of Zippe stalled. And then, as the Germans themselves said, they were brought out of the scientific and technical impasse by a Russian engineer by the name of Sergeev. They say that during the war years it was he who found flaws in the design of the famous "Tigers", which allowed our military to draw the appropriate conclusions.
WARNING ACADEMIC ARTSIMOVICH
However, let's go back to the forty-fifth year. Echelons with equipment went from Germany to Abkhazia. Three of the four German cyclotrons were brought to the USSR, as well as powerful magnets, electron microscopes, oscilloscopes, high-voltage transformers, and ultra-precise instruments. Equipment was delivered to the USSR from the Institute of Chemistry and Metallurgy, the Kaiser Wilhelm Physics Institute, Siemens electrical laboratories, and the Physics Institute of the German Ministry of Posts.
Why were German scientists and equipment placed in Sukhumi in our country? Is it because Beria was born in these places, who knew everything and everyone here? It was he who, in March 1942, prepared a note to Stalin on the formation of a scientific advisory body under the State Defense Committee, coordinating all research work on the "uranium bomb." On the basis of this note, such a body was formed.
"The Russians will not create an atomic bomb until 1953," US CIA Director Allen Dulles tried to assure US President Harry Truman. But this major Cold War ideologist and organizer of covert subversive operations against the USSR miscalculated. The first test of the Soviet atomic bomb took place on August 29, 1949 at the test site near Semipalatinsk and was completed successfully. It was led by IV Kurchatov. On behalf of the Ministry of the Armed Forces, Major General V. A. Bolyatko was responsible for preparing the test site for a test explosion. The scientific supervisor of the test site was M. A. Sadovsky, a prominent expert in the field of explosive seismology (later director of the Institute of Physics of the Earth of the USSR Academy of Sciences). And on October 10, the first Soviet ballistic missile R-1 was launched …
On October 29, 1949, exactly two months after the test explosion of the atomic bomb, a closed resolution of the Council of Ministers was issued on rewarding the participants in the atomic project. The document was signed by Stalin. The entire list of people from this decree is still unknown. In order not to disclose its full text, those who distinguished themselves were given personal extracts of awards. It was by this resolution that a number of scientists headed by I. V. Kurchatov were nominated for the title of Hero of Socialist Labor and laureates of the Stalin Prize of the first degree. In addition, they were rewarded with large sums of money, dachas and cars ZIS-110 or Pobeda. The list also included Professor Nikolaus Ril, aka Nikolai Vasilievich …
It has long been no secret that the United States developed plans for a preemptive nuclear strike against the Soviet Union until 1954. That is, by the time when, according to American calculations, Moscow would have already created its atomic bomb. In "Memorandum-329", drawn up immediately after the end of World War II, on September 4, 1945, the US Chiefs of Staff was asked to select approximately 20 of the most important targets suitable for atomic bombing of the USSR and the territory it controls.
Together with the entire population, Moscow, Gorky, Kuibyshev, Sverdlovsk, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Saratov were subject to destruction. The same list includes Kazan, Nizhny Tagil, Magnitogorsk, Tbilisi, Novokuznetsk, Perm, Grozny, Irkutsk, Yaroslavl. Practical Yankees even determined the number of victims - 13 million people. But they miscalculated overseas. At the ceremony of presenting state awards to the participants in the Soviet atomic project, Stalin openly expressed his satisfaction with the fact that the American monopoly in this area does not exist. He remarked: "If we were one to one and a half years late, we would probably try this charge on ourselves." So the merit of the Sukhumi objects is indisputable, where the Germans worked together with Soviet scientists.
Nowadays, the Sukhumi Institute of Physics and Technology, a scientific center with rich traditions and an interesting biography, is headed by Doctor of Technical Sciences, Professor Anatoly Markolia. We met him at the international conference in Pitsunda mentioned at the beginning of the article. The hopes of the staff of the institute, which today is not as numerous as in its best days, are connected with Russia. There are joint plans on topics where the positions of Sukhumi scientists are still strong. Students from Abkhazia study in the best Russian universities in the direction of physics and technology, who will form the future of science in the republic. So Anatoly Ivanovich and his colleagues have a chance to return their former glory to their center.
And in conclusion, I would like to recall the words of Academician Artsimovich. The same one who, in the distant forty-fifth, together with his colleagues in the field of fundamental science, was engaged in such a seemingly distant problem as the search for German specialists. “Science is in the palm of the state and is warmed by the warmth of this palm,” noted Lev Andreevich. - Of course, this is not charity, but the result of a clear understanding of the meaning of science … At the same time, the state cannot afford to play the role of a kind rich uncle, meekly taking out a million after a million from his pocket at the first request of scientists. At the same time, the parsimony in financing really important scientific research can lead to a violation of the vital interests of the state."
