65 years ago, on July 24, 1945, during the Potsdam Conference, US President Harry Truman and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had a brief conversation that cost the lives of 400,000 Japanese. However, this is perhaps just one of the legends that have bred in abundance around the atomic project of the USSR.
“Mr. Generalissimo,” the president said at the time. “I wanted to inform you that we have created a new weapon of extraordinary destructive power …” He said and froze in anticipation of Stalin's reaction. There was no reaction, and this especially struck Truman. No! The Soviet leader nodded politely and leisurely left the meeting room.
Nuclear espionage
- At first, the President of the United States thought that Stalin did not understand at all what exactly he was told, - says Stanislav Pestov, a writer, historian of science. - The point was different. Stalin was as aware of the successes in the creation of the American atomic bomb (and the conversation between the two leaders was about it) as well as Truman. Physicist Klaus Fuchs, who himself offered his services to Soviet intelligence, announced in advance both the test date and the exact type of bomb - plutonium. This man, in addition to helping our country a lot, was an exceptionally talented scientist. In the "Manhattan Project", for example, he was solving a very important problem - how to ensure symmetric compression of a plutonium nucleus when the usual explosives surrounding it exploded. The Soviet intelligence agent Fuchs found this method.
In general, probably the largest spy network in history worked on "borrowing" the secrets of the "Manhattan Project" - more than a hundred agents in the United States alone! The atmosphere of secrecy that accompanied the work of the nuclear scientists who assembled the Soviet atomic bomb according to American plans only contributed to the subsequent myth-making.
There is, for example, such a legend: Stalin learned about the successful tests in New Mexico almost before Truman, and therefore could not deny himself the pleasure of making fun of the President of the United States a little. This, of course, is overkill! Intelligence, of course, kept the Soviet leader abreast of the Americans' successes. but
he did not show any particular interest in atomic weapons until a certain moment. The turning point, perhaps, was the bombing of Hiroshima, but more on that later. And on July 24, 1945, Truman was the first to receive information about the successful explosion of the world's first nuclear device. Just a few minutes before the historic conversation with Stalin, he was informed: “Mr. President, a telegram has come from the States. Here is the text: "The navigator has reached the New World." This code phrase meant that the tests were successful and that the explosion power was close to the calculated value - 15-20 kilotons!
Doomed samurai
There is another story about what happened that day at the Potsdam conference. Allegedly, after a conversation with Truman, Stalin rushed to call Kurchatov to rush him to production
"Products". I guess it never happened. First, Stalin did not trust telephones (including
government communications), especially when calling from abroad. Secondly, a few days later he still returned to Moscow and could personally talk with the "father" of the Soviet atomic bomb.
There is another unconfirmed myth about the events of those days. It consists in the fact that Truman was purely humanly hurt by Stalin's "zero reaction" to his message about atomic tests. And then, in order to prove “to this damn Uncle Joe” (as the leaders of the United States and Great Britain called Stalin behind his back) the seriousness of American intentions, Truman sanctioned the atomic bombing of Japan. It turns out that the great composure of the Generalissimo led to
the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
I suppose if Stalin had had a worse face, 400 thousand Japanese would still not have saved it. The Americans desperately needed to test atomic weapons not in proving grounds, but in real combat conditions. Japan at that time was the only candidate for the role of a victim of this experiment - Germany had already surrendered, and there were still several years left before the start of a real confrontation with the USSR. At first, the Americans wanted to bomb the ancient capital of Japan, Kyoto, but bad weather prevented them. The first goal is thus
became Hiroshima. Even the presence of a camp for American prisoners of war in the suburbs did not stop the tests.
