All of this is atomic espionage is going to blow up (quite literally) at the end of the war. You can bet that we’ll be covering the nuclear arms race that follows!
A big what if hit me an hour after viewing this video. Harry Gold's family escaped Imperial antisemitism. Young Harry was beat up by bigots in the US. This may have fueled his support for Communism. What if he knew that when he was being beaten Stalin was killing millions of Jews in Ukraine, probably including members of his family? Could this have changed history?
It's interesting that in the movie, Oppenheimer thinks the nuclear option should be a deterrent instead of a means for warfare with the weapon, because the resulting imbalance of power would trigger a war worse than this one. I agree with him, however it's clear how the Manhattan Project was "hidden" as much as they could from their enemies... and their allies too
Your above statement re: deterrent vs. a means for warfare, if my memory serves, is just about the same idea that inspired doctor Gatling to invent the Gatling gun. History repeats. If there's a new way, I'll be the first in line, but it better work this time!!!
That rather poetic ending feels like it sort of describes the future of what it may happen when this war will eventually come to an end. Thank you as always for this Spies & Ties episode Astrid & team!
Whenever I hear stories like this, I always imagine what would've happened if any of these people would've gotten robbed. Imagine if while they were standing around the streets of New York with that briefcase full of documents, someone ran past and snatched it.
The ""secret" to the atom bomb is that it requires a well developed industrial base to fabricate the materials. The United States, Britain, and Germany had that capacity, but Germany squandered their potential lead. Stalin's USSR was backward, but building industrial capacity was Stalin's "thing," so they benefitted from the basic research they stole and were able to ramp up production rapidly. Iran has been trying to develop a nuclear capacity since the Pahlavi days, but have been unable to do so, in part because Iran does not have a sufficiently advanced industrial base, and in part due to the reticence of university educated Iranians to further empower a regime that won't let them drink wine like they did at the Sorbonne.
I was lucky enough to meet a wonderful older Czech woman about 20 years ago . As i got to know her and hear her tales of her life from a girl in Pre-war Czechoslovakia . to Nazis, to Soviets, and finally to Canada I knew I had met a hero,
I know this doesn't fit within the video, but the intro doesn't do justice to the fact that most of the information that the Soviets took from the Americans came from filling the gaps of openly-published research. Information gathered through spying helped but was secondary.
They make a big deal of making the bomb, but that is not too hard. It is purifying the isotopes and the nuclear fuel that was the hard part. One needs the isotopes to create the breeder that makes Plutonium. And that info was published.....
@@tommy-er6hhThis is why the Nazis would not ever get a bomb going. They can't even create a simple reactor for testing, and even if they accomplish that, they don't even have enough fissile material to refine into weapons-grade material. A key note also here is that the heavy water needed for the very early stages of testing were already sabotaged by British and Norwegian commandoes. The Nazi nuclear weapons project is doomed from the start.
The Nobel of the Joliot-Curie is quite a controversial one, and I think Astrid could be interested by that. Although I have a lot of respect toward both of them, it can be argued that they didn't really deserve their Nobel Prize on that subject as it was one of their colleague (And colleague of Marie Curie), Ștefania Mărăcineanu, who did most of the work on induced radioactivity.
It was real well-kept secret as long as it had to remain secret and even then observant might notice something BIG related to nuclear physics is going on. Like why have all major scientists suddenly stopped publishing new research papers?
Would it be a safe assumption to the well kept secret was due to very few people had any idea or knowledge of nuclear research much less a bomb@@vksasdgaming9472
I have copies of "Metal Progress" which is or was the publication of the American metallurgist association printed during WW2 and that has articles on uranium and other atomic matters.
Addressing Parliament on August 16th, 1945, Winston Churchill insisted that the decision to attack Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945 and Nagasaki on August 9th had been a joint one between the US and the UK. Over the next decade his public position was consistent and devoid of moral qualms: in war, he maintained, weapons get used. The A-Bomb was a weapon, the Allies were at war with Japan and, consequently, the A-Bomb was a legitimate military option. ‘The historic fact remains’, he wrote in 1953, ‘that the decision whether or not to use the atomic bomb … was never even an issue.’
Yes and the only reason it wasn't used more in the future is because the Soviets obtained it, too. Otherwise the cold war would not have stayed cold for very long.
In my opinion, it is more likely that the country which openly detonated that device over city with civilians, against weakened country which had already lost the war from resource deficit and incomparable technological level no matter what their thoughts were about (majority of Japanese towns and factories around the country were destroyed many months before these 2 bombs were blasted, so the justification that these devices helped to end the war is somewhat childish), started that arms race. It is like that some person observes barehanded fight in a backyard, sees that one of fighters (his potential rival) suddenly takes a gun and shoots another fighter in knee, even though before that he had effectively beaten the loser and no additional trick was needed to calm down that worrier. Then this observer decides that he needs a gun to be sure that this eagle-fighter will not try to subjugate him. And after that, they both obtain RPG (hydrogen bomb) to ensure destruction of house of opponent. So, further, without possibility of open fight, they just shout obscene phrases at each other from far away.
Well, I would disagree that having the plans means that the Soviet Union has the bomb. Things are never that straightforward. Plans are never complete. The work of implementing plans is done by the production engineers. For sure they do not get the glory, but their work is super important. For example, the company DuPont participated in the Manhattan Project and they did the work of scaling the nuclear reactor from the Chicago one to a much larger one. Not easy and the DuPont engineers won over the theoretical physicists by making some leeway in the design that proved a very good idea. Of course, if you have the plan and you know the bomb has exploded you know that it is possible. But it is like having the 10000 pieces puzzle and a picture of it together.
Fact: Prior to their first test in 1949, the US didn’t expect the Soviet Union would test their first atomic weapon until the mid 1950’s. This fact alone shows the value of those spies, but not entirely their ties.
I can actually help with this answer. Beria didn't trust any of the incoming information and it had to pass through the stats apparatus. Furthermore, the Soviets often redid the calculations or experiments to verify the data they received rather than just plagiarise it. Finally, this often caused the Soviets to investigate doing things differently or better than the Americans and this also caused delays.
To paraphrase Churchill - "Never in the history of human conflict was so much military advantage sold out by so many mediocre individuals to such a squalid and dystopian state!"
What would the US do with their "military advantage"? Bomb Moscow? Start WW3 right after the end of WW2? It was only a matter of time until the USSR would create their own bomb. It was not as if the USSR had no scientists and no uranium.
Astrid's delivery is as ever excellent (also love the tie & suit combo) - the nuclear arms race would be nothing without the space race, and I'm looking forward to future coverage by this channel/group of presenters
“You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” ― Leon Trotsky "Let's keep our boots polished, bayonets sharpened, and present a picture of force and strength to the Red Army. This is the only language they understand and respect." - Patton
If the Soviets had not developed their own nuclear bomb, with the help of ethical atomic scientists, the odds we all would even be here would be low. Harry Truman's administration was installed specifically to stop any more cooperation with the Soviets after WW2. Truman made his position VERY CLEAR in the summer of 1941 when the Wehrmacht was still sweeping Operation Barbarossa across the western USSR _ "“If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible". Churchill too, was Hell bent on continuing the war by attacking the Soviets with "Operation Unthinkable". The newly built Pentagon made operation plans to eventually nuclear bomb the Soviets at the soonest convenient time, immediately after the surrender of Japan. Until the USSR finally had the Bomb too, thereby creating a planet saving deterrence. A deterrence that saved Human civilization as we all later discovered that even a simple first strike of >100 nuclear bombs could initiate a thermonuclear global winter, as first understood in the 1980s.
🤣 A country who's entire formation is based upon lying and taking advantage of others, gets taken advantage of and lied to. You could almost call it ironic.
Yous are going to bar me and I don't care. My Polish Father that seen the Reds cross the Vistula River , hated the reds more than the Krurts. Mindless fools of all view points but the traitors, I would of slowly squished, with a stream roller, feet first.
Sure, fair enough.I felt very strongly that Stalin did not need a bomb. But are we the allies the good guys. Yes but there is so MUCH moral ambiguity with the Bomb. Cheers.
Perhaps for viewers who have a child’s command of English and English syntax… as in not knowing how to use articles and verbs in the correct order, and for that matter how to conjugate the verb “to be.”
All of this is atomic espionage is going to blow up (quite literally) at the end of the war. You can bet that we’ll be covering the nuclear arms race that follows!
I’m really looking forward to the new projects you mentioned in the recent garden video 😊.
Especially Indy covering the Korean War 👍
Exactly what I meant in the what the Fuchs video. Fuck the world wide communist league
A big what if hit me an hour after viewing this video. Harry Gold's family escaped Imperial antisemitism. Young Harry was beat up by bigots in the US. This may have fueled his support for Communism. What if he knew that when he was being beaten Stalin was killing millions of Jews in Ukraine, probably including members of his family? Could this have changed history?
Can you do The Battle of the Dukla Pass next please?
You guys rock
It's interesting that in the movie, Oppenheimer thinks the nuclear option should be a deterrent instead of a means for warfare with the weapon, because the resulting imbalance of power would trigger a war worse than this one. I agree with him, however it's clear how the Manhattan Project was "hidden" as much as they could from their enemies... and their allies too
Your above statement re: deterrent vs. a means for warfare, if my memory serves, is just about the same idea that inspired doctor Gatling to invent the Gatling gun.
History repeats.
If there's a new way, I'll be the first in line, but it better work this time!!!
That rather poetic ending feels like it sort of describes the future of what it may happen when this war will eventually come to an end. Thank you as always for this Spies & Ties episode Astrid & team!
Ooo! Coconut Bavarian cream sounds good! Does Jell-o still make that? I have to know!
Even in 1945 Vsevelov Nikolaievich Merkulov couldn't see across the Atlantic.
Agreed. I don't believe those horses will even be on the Dnepir very long.
Whenever I hear stories like this, I always imagine what would've happened if any of these people would've gotten robbed. Imagine if while they were standing around the streets of New York with that briefcase full of documents, someone ran past and snatched it.
The ""secret" to the atom bomb is that it requires a well developed industrial base to fabricate the materials. The United States, Britain, and Germany had that capacity, but Germany squandered their potential lead. Stalin's USSR was backward, but building industrial capacity was Stalin's "thing," so they benefitted from the basic research they stole and were able to ramp up production rapidly. Iran has been trying to develop a nuclear capacity since the Pahlavi days, but have been unable to do so, in part because Iran does not have a sufficiently advanced industrial base, and in part due to the reticence of university educated Iranians to further empower a regime that won't let them drink wine like they did at the Sorbonne.
Wow! One of the best episodes of Spies and Ties! Excellent job Astrid and Team!
I was lucky enough to meet a wonderful older Czech woman about 20 years ago . As i got to know her and hear her tales of her life from a girl in Pre-war Czechoslovakia . to Nazis, to Soviets, and finally to Canada I knew I had met a hero,
Im pretty confident the country that actually invented the atomic bomb started the arms race.
The Americans "definitelyyyyyyy" didn't do anything bad with atomic weapons ever right?
@@theomen131 They performed a lot of tests in the desert. That wasn’t all that nice.
It takes 2 to tango
@@theomen131 who the fuck even thinks that
I know this doesn't fit within the video, but the intro doesn't do justice to the fact that most of the information that the Soviets took from the Americans came from filling the gaps of openly-published research. Information gathered through spying helped but was secondary.
They make a big deal of making the bomb, but that is not too hard. It is purifying the isotopes and the nuclear fuel that was the hard part. One needs the isotopes to create the breeder that makes Plutonium.
And that info was published.....
You make them?@@tommy-er6hh
@@tommy-er6hhThis is why the Nazis would not ever get a bomb going. They can't even create a simple reactor for testing, and even if they accomplish that, they don't even have enough fissile material to refine into weapons-grade material. A key note also here is that the heavy water needed for the very early stages of testing were already sabotaged by British and Norwegian commandoes. The Nazi nuclear weapons project is doomed from the start.
Next step: MAD
The Nobel of the Joliot-Curie is quite a controversial one, and I think Astrid could be interested by that. Although I have a lot of respect toward both of them, it can be argued that they didn't really deserve their Nobel Prize on that subject as it was one of their colleague (And colleague of Marie Curie), Ștefania Mărăcineanu, who did most of the work on induced radioactivity.
Astrid is a fantastic story teller!!!
Another great episode from the Spies & Ties team. Thank you Astrid.
This was a great look into the Soviet Spies who stole the Atom Bomb.
1:25 : Abram Fedorovich Ioffe (Russian: Абра́м Фёдорович Ио́ффе, IPA: [ɐˈbram ˈfʲɵdərəvʲɪtɕ ɪˈofɛ]
Manhattan leaked like NY subway
I think this is Astrid's best performance so far... she had me shivering.
WHAT AN ENDING!!!!
OK, what about George Koval the atomic spy that managed to escape?
Ioffe, not Loffe ;)
Thank you all for these wonderful episodes!
The man who gave the Soviet la the atomic bomb. Got it I’ll check that book out when I visit Mexico. Thanks Astrid!
uhoh...does this mean that things aren't going to be
all unicorns and roses once the thousand (12) year regime is defeated?
...sigh
This blows up the claim that the Manhattan Project was the best keep secret of the war
It was real well-kept secret as long as it had to remain secret and even then observant might notice something BIG related to nuclear physics is going on. Like why have all major scientists suddenly stopped publishing new research papers?
Would it be a safe assumption to the well kept secret was due to very few people had any idea or knowledge of nuclear research much less a bomb@@vksasdgaming9472
I have copies of "Metal Progress" which is or was the publication of the American metallurgist association printed during WW2 and that has articles on uranium and other atomic matters.
That last paragraph made her sound very ominous
Excellent work!!! One of your best!!!
Thank you.
Addressing Parliament on August 16th, 1945, Winston Churchill insisted that the decision to attack Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945 and Nagasaki on August 9th had been a joint one between the US and the UK. Over the next decade his public position was consistent and devoid of moral qualms: in war, he maintained, weapons get used. The A-Bomb was a weapon, the Allies were at war with Japan and, consequently, the A-Bomb was a legitimate military option. ‘The historic fact remains’, he wrote in 1953, ‘that the decision whether or not to use the atomic bomb … was never even an issue.’
Yes and the only reason it wasn't used more in the future is because the Soviets obtained it, too. Otherwise the cold war would not have stayed cold for very long.
Great video!!!👍👍👍
prodigious is such a good word +2 pts
Boom. Man, what a great weighty episode. Thank you, Astrid!
It's just so delightful listening to Astrid
Merkulov misunderstood 😮
Always love a new Astrid video... oh I guess I enjoy WW2
Her daughter is pretty good, too.
49-45 =4 years 45-41=3years
its Astrid!! nice! love her ties! shes like a cool grand uma!
Great episode, as always. And am I the only one who thinks Joel Barr looks a bit like Indy?
In my opinion, it is more likely that the country which openly detonated that device over city with civilians, against weakened country which had already lost the war from resource deficit and incomparable technological level no matter what their thoughts were about (majority of Japanese towns and factories around the country were destroyed many months before these 2 bombs were blasted, so the justification that these devices helped to end the war is somewhat childish), started that arms race.
It is like that some person observes barehanded fight in a backyard, sees that one of fighters (his potential rival) suddenly takes a gun and shoots another fighter in knee, even though before that he had effectively beaten the loser and no additional trick was needed to calm down that worrier. Then this observer decides that he needs a gun to be sure that this eagle-fighter will not try to subjugate him. And after that, they both obtain RPG (hydrogen bomb) to ensure destruction of house of opponent. So, further, without possibility of open fight, they just shout obscene phrases at each other from far away.
That was a chilling but hopefully not prophetic end
No worries, Soviet Union no longer exists. It's not a real prophecy, just some bs from a torturer.
Hi Astrid
This video is exciting to watch.
Lots of details and haven't heard before.
Thanks.
Fuchs out foxes the west
I swear, Lady Astrid could tell me the world is flat and i would believe it. These spy ties are great!
Well, I would disagree that having the plans means that the Soviet Union has the bomb. Things are never that straightforward. Plans are never complete.
The work of implementing plans is done by the production engineers. For sure they do not get the glory, but their work is super important. For example, the company DuPont participated in the Manhattan Project and they did the work of scaling the nuclear reactor from the Chicago one to a much larger one. Not easy and the DuPont engineers won over the theoretical physicists by making some leeway in the design that proved a very good idea.
Of course, if you have the plan and you know the bomb has exploded you know that it is possible. But it is like having the 10000 pieces puzzle and a picture of it together.
Hold up.... There was a nuclear arms race?! Spoiler alert!
Fact: Prior to their first test in 1949, the US didn’t expect the Soviet Union would test their first atomic weapon until the mid 1950’s.
This fact alone shows the value of those spies, but not entirely their ties.
If I close my eyes, in places, it sounds like Queen Elizabeth II is giving us a lecture.
Brilliant as always 🤝🏻
Why does it take the Soviets until 1949 to develop their first bomb? If they had the instructions all the way back in '44? Couldn't translate?
Maybe because they had to rebuild their country first, the European part was destroyed by war. They had other priorities.
They had to build the infrastructure from scratch and they lacked the money and resources to do so as quickly we had.
I can actually help with this answer.
Beria didn't trust any of the incoming information and it had to pass through the stats apparatus.
Furthermore, the Soviets often redid the calculations or experiments to verify the data they received rather than just plagiarise it.
Finally, this often caused the Soviets to investigate doing things differently or better than the Americans and this also caused delays.
@@Paladin1873Agree. It was really the Americans that pushed the World forward post-WW2; - and at lightning speed at that
I'm from Alamogordo.
To paraphrase Churchill - "Never in the history of human conflict was so much military advantage sold out by so many mediocre individuals to such a squalid and dystopian state!"
What would the US do with their "military advantage"? Bomb Moscow? Start WW3 right after the end of WW2? It was only a matter of time until the USSR would create their own bomb. It was not as if the USSR had no scientists and no uranium.
This is really lame hypocritical insult and mediocre individual trying to rub intellectual look from famous name onto him.
An explosive installment.
Outstanding!
Astrid xxx
Brilliant job Astrid. This is probably the greatest episode of Spies & Ties I've ever fucking seen. Incredible.
Your best intro
The surname is Ioffe [i'ofe], not Loffe.
Another great episode presented by Astrid who, I may add, looks absolutely darling in that pink coat and tie!
Astrid's delivery is as ever excellent (also love the tie & suit combo) - the nuclear arms race would be nothing without the space race, and I'm looking forward to future coverage by this channel/group of presenters
Them's or Thames? 😅
And, the Cold War begins
.
“You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” ― Leon Trotsky
"Let's keep our boots polished, bayonets sharpened, and present a picture of force and strength to the Red Army. This is the only language they understand and respect." - Patton
Monkey brain Patton
@@robertkalinic335Seeing events in 2022 Patton was right. But that is not part of this channel yet 😊
@@Amradar123 Russia is not USSR and if you are happy to die in some pointless war do it yourself.
Casual fasc1st sympathizer Patton. What a loser
It isn't yet it glorifies it openly, a sorry state of affairs don't You think?@@robertkalinic335
👍👍👍
If the Soviets had not developed their own nuclear bomb, with the help of ethical atomic scientists, the odds we all would even be here would be low.
Harry Truman's administration was installed specifically to stop any more cooperation with the Soviets after WW2.
Truman made his position VERY CLEAR in the summer of 1941 when the Wehrmacht was still sweeping Operation Barbarossa across the western USSR _
"“If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible".
Churchill too, was Hell bent on continuing the war by attacking the Soviets with "Operation Unthinkable".
The newly built Pentagon made operation plans to eventually nuclear bomb the Soviets at the soonest convenient time, immediately after the surrender of Japan.
Until the USSR finally had the Bomb too, thereby creating a planet saving deterrence.
A deterrence that saved Human civilization as we all later discovered that even a simple first strike of >100 nuclear bombs could initiate a thermonuclear global winter, as first understood in the 1980s.
Astrid and crew, it's Ioffe with capital I.
ok I do the episode again :))
She's a honey!
Is this Lady the Mother of Dr Evil from Austin Powers??
yes I am
The H in "Thames" is silent. Pronounced "Tems". Verdamt.
I am so sorry :))
not interested in nuclear stuff, but its important to keep up with the deinhard outfits
hello darlings
✌️☮️🖤
Soviet abuse of American naivety and trust during WWII is just horrible.
🤣
A country who's entire formation is based upon lying and taking advantage of others, gets taken advantage of and lied to.
You could almost call it ironic.
Those sound like really cool predictions, not dark ones
11th, 4 October 2023
Yous are going to bar me and I don't care. My Polish Father that seen the Reds cross the Vistula River , hated the reds more than the Krurts. Mindless fools of all view points but the traitors, I would of slowly squished, with a stream roller, feet first.
Perhaps we should avoid baiting the moderators. Perhaps we should also work on our grammar… to not mention our tone.
Sure, fair enough.I felt very strongly that Stalin did not need a bomb. But are we the allies the good guys. Yes but there is so MUCH moral ambiguity with the Bomb. Cheers.
Yous is proper usage, as far as I am concerned, it very Oker Assie. Which am not, I think!
Why that old lady is waving her hands all the time and talks like to little kids?
Perhaps for viewers who have a child’s command of English and English syntax… as in not knowing how to use articles and verbs in the correct order, and for that matter how to conjugate the verb “to be.”
@@WorldWarTwo I didn’t quite understand that but ok.
It still looks ridiculous.
@@efz629I think that my comrade is trying to gently point to your lack of correct syntax and grammar as evidence of how childish your comment was.
@@spartacus-olsson So, there are "right opininions" and "wrong opininions"?
That sounds like Stalin. Channel subscription cancelled.
Never forget.
@@efz629 no, there are polite and impolite comments…