Who first invented the atomic bomb. The creators of the atomic bomb - who are they. Nuclear weapons - weapons of mass destruction

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 made the right decision to build socialism no further than East Berlin. In parallel, they threw all their forces into the Soviet nuclear project, they dug up a talented academician Kurchatov somewhere and he quickly blinded an atomic bomb for Dzhugashvili, which the secretary generals then rattled on the UN podium, and Soviet propagandists rattled it in front of an audience - they say, yes, our pants are sewn bad, but on the other hand« 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, however, the true state of affairs is 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. Long time it was possible to hide the truth, but in the decades after 1945, either someone resigning unleashed his tongue, or accidentally declassified a couple of sheets from secret archives, or 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 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 official men of the United States 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 the 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 east. 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, a certain German pilot observed the testing 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 officialdocumentation. 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 that 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 its environs (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 securing the facility. 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 not 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 Buna synthetic rubber in Auschwitz (the German name for the 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 the production of 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 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 attaché 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 initial estimates made in 1942, between 10 and 100 kilograms of uranium was required to make a uranium-based bomb, and by the time this memorandum was written, more accurate calculations had given the critical mass needed to produce uranium an atomic bomb, equal to 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 program to create nuclear weapons(Manhattan Project).

Groves states 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 Germany never had more uranium ore, so 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 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 greet UFO eyewitness accounts: the low position of the sun above the horizon, bad light, long distance, which 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 is obvious for the storage and long-term transportation of highly enriched and pure uranium. 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 the U.S. Navy officials compiled an inventory on June 16, 1945, the uranium oxide disappeared from the list without a trace.....

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 on 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 conclusively that Bormann personally oversaw 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 another important information concerning the “Kammler headquarters” to the American intelligence services, since no one knew better than him about the nature, content and personnel of 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 for consultations with a German physicist before atomic bombing 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 the academicians of the USSR do not deny that over rocket project The USSR employed 3,000 captured Germans. 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 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 the seashore. In 1955 Hertz left for the GDR. There he worked as a professor at the University of Leipzig, and then as director of the Physics Institute 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 method of isotope separation, 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, at the Kaiser Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin (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 called to war ministry, where they offered to engage in the production of 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 will 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 of 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 decisions in the same physics (for example, which way to go and which theories to consider working) in the USSR were made in best case"academicians" from agriculture. 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 Decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR No. 5070-1944ss / op "On awarding and bonuses for outstanding scientific discoveries and technical achievements in the use of atomic energy", October 29, 1949]

[From the 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 they say, "Volga" bad car but we made the 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.

American Robert Oppenheimer and Soviet scientist Igor Kurchatov are officially recognized as the fathers of the atomic bomb. But in parallel deadly weapon developed in other countries (Italy, Denmark, Hungary), so the discovery rightfully belongs to everyone.

The first to deal with this issue were the German physicists Fritz Strassmann and Otto Hahn, who in December 1938 for the first time managed to artificially split atomic nucleus uranium. And six months later, at the Kummersdorf test site near Berlin, the first reactor was already being built and urgently purchased uranium ore from the Congo.

"Uranium project" - the Germans start and lose

In September 1939, the Uranium Project was classified. 22 reputable scientific centers were attracted to participate in the program, the research was supervised by the Minister of Armaments Albert Speer. The construction of an isotope separation plant and the production of uranium for extracting an isotope from it that supports a chain reaction was entrusted to the IG Farbenindustry concern.

For two years, a group of the venerable scientist Heisenberg studied the possibilities of creating a reactor with and heavy water. A potential explosive (the isotope uranium-235) could be isolated from uranium ore.

But for this, an inhibitor is needed that slows down the reaction - graphite or heavy water. The choice of the last option created an insurmountable problem.

The only plant for the production of heavy water, which was located in Norway, after the occupation was put out of action by local resistance fighters, and small stocks of valuable raw materials were taken to France.

The explosion of an experimental nuclear reactor in Leipzig also prevented the rapid implementation of the nuclear program.

Hitler supported the uranium project as long as he hoped to obtain a super-powerful weapon that could influence the outcome of the war he unleashed. After the cuts in public funding, the programs of work continued for some time.

In 1944, Heisenberg managed to create cast uranium plates, and a special bunker was built for the reactor plant in Berlin.

It was planned to complete the experiment to achieve a chain reaction in January 1945, but a month later the equipment was urgently transported to the Swiss border, where it was deployed only a month later. In a nuclear reactor there were 664 cubes of uranium weighing 1525 kg. It was surrounded by a graphite neutron reflector weighing 10 tons, an additional one and a half tons of heavy water was loaded into the core.

On March 23, the reactor finally started working, but the report to Berlin was premature: the reactor did not reach a critical point, and a chain reaction did not occur. Additional calculations have shown that the mass of uranium must be increased by at least 750 kg, proportionally adding the amount of heavy water.

But the reserves of strategic raw materials were at the limit, as was the fate of the Third Reich. On April 23, the Americans entered the village of Haigerloch, where the tests were carried out. The military dismantled the reactor and transported it to the United States.

The first atomic bombs in the USA

A little later, the Germans took up the development of the atomic bomb in the United States and Great Britain. It all started with a letter from Albert Einstein and his co-authors, immigrant physicists, sent by them in September 1939 to US President Franklin Roosevelt.

The appeal stressed that Nazi Germany was close to building an atomic bomb.

Stalin first learned about the work on nuclear weapons (both allies and opponents) from intelligence officers in 1943. They immediately decided to create a similar project in the USSR. The instructions were issued not only to scientists, but also to intelligence, for which the extraction of any information about nuclear secrets has become a super task.

Invaluable information about the developments of American scientists, which was obtained Soviet intelligence officers, significantly advanced the domestic nuclear project. It helped our scientists avoid inefficient search paths and significantly speed up the implementation of the final goal.

Serov Ivan Aleksandrovich - head of the operation to create a bomb

Of course, the Soviet government could not ignore the successes of German nuclear physicists. After the war, a group of Soviet physicists was sent to Germany - future academicians in the form of colonels of the Soviet army.

Ivan Serov, the first deputy commissar of internal affairs, was appointed head of the operation, which allowed scientists to open any doors.

In addition to their German colleagues, they found reserves of uranium metal. This, according to Kurchatov, reduced the development time Soviet bomb for at least a year. More than one ton of uranium and leading nuclear specialists were also taken out of Germany by the American military.

Not only chemists and physicists were sent to the USSR, but also skilled labor - mechanics, electricians, glass blowers. Some employees were found in POW camps. In total, about 1,000 German specialists worked on the Soviet nuclear project.

German scientists and laboratories on the territory of the USSR in the postwar years

A uranium centrifuge and other equipment were transported from Berlin, as well as documents and reagents from the von Ardenne laboratory and the Kaiser Institute of Physics. As part of the program, laboratories "A", "B", "C", "D" were created, which were headed by German scientists.

The head of laboratory "A" was Baron Manfred von Ardenne, who developed a method for gaseous diffusion purification and separation of uranium isotopes in a centrifuge.

For the creation of such a centrifuge (only on an industrial scale) in 1947, he received the Stalin Prize. At that time, the laboratory was located in Moscow, on the site of the famous Kurchatov Institute. The team of each German scientist included 5-6 Soviet specialists.

Later, laboratory "A" was taken to Sukhumi, where a physico-technical institute was created on its basis. In 1953, Baron von Ardenne became a Stalin laureate for the second time.

Laboratory "B", which conducted experiments in the field of radiation chemistry in the Urals, was headed by Nikolaus Riehl - a key figure in the project. There, in Snezhinsk, the talented Russian geneticist Timofeev-Resovsky worked with him, with whom they were friends back in Germany. The successful test of the atomic bomb brought Riel the star of the Hero of Socialist Labor and the Stalin Prize.

The research of laboratory "B" in Obninsk was led by Professor Rudolf Pose, a pioneer in the field of nuclear testing. His team managed to create fast neutron reactors, the first nuclear power plant in the USSR, and designs for reactors for submarines.

On the basis of the laboratory, the A.I. Leipunsky. Until 1957, the professor worked in Sukhumi, then in Dubna, at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Technologies.

Laboratory "G", located in the Sukhumi sanatorium "Agudzery", was headed by Gustav Hertz. The nephew of the famous 19th-century scientist gained fame after a series of experiments that confirmed the ideas of quantum mechanics and the theory of Niels Bohr.

The results of his productive work in Sukhumi were used to create an industrial plant in Novouralsk, where in 1949 they made the stuffing of the first Soviet bomb RDS-1.

The uranium bomb that the Americans dropped on Hiroshima was a cannon-type bomb. When creating the RDS-1, domestic nuclear physicists were guided by the Fat Boy, the “Nagasaki bomb”, made from plutonium according to the implosive principle.

In 1951, Hertz was awarded the Stalin Prize for his fruitful work.

German engineers and scientists lived in comfortable houses, they brought their families, furniture, paintings from Germany, they were provided with a decent salary and special food. Did they have the status of prisoners? According to academician A.P. Alexandrov, an active participant in the project, they were all prisoners in such conditions.

Having received permission to return to their homeland, the German specialists signed a non-disclosure agreement about their participation in the Soviet atomic project for 25 years. In the GDR, they continued to work in their specialty. Baron von Ardenne was twice a laureate of the German National Prize.

Professor headed Physics Institute in Dresden, which was created under the auspices of the Scientific Council for the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy. The Scientific Council was headed by Gustav Hertz, who received the National Prize of the GDR for his three-volume textbook on atomic physics. Here, in Dresden, at the Technical University, Professor Rudolf Pose also worked.

The participation of German specialists in the Soviet atomic project, as well as the achievements of Soviet intelligence, do not diminish the merits of Soviet scientists, who, with their heroic labor, created domestic atomic weapons. And yet, without the contribution of each participant in the project, the creation of the atomic industry and the nuclear bomb would have dragged on for indefinite

Hundreds of thousands of famous and forgotten gunsmiths of antiquity fought in search of the ideal weapon capable of vaporizing the enemy army with one click. Periodically, a trace of these searches can be found in fairy tales, more or less plausibly describing a miracle sword or bow that hits without a miss.

Fortunately, technological progress moved so slowly for a long time that the real embodiment of crushing weapons remained in dreams and oral stories, and later on the pages of books. The scientific and technological leap of the 19th century provided the conditions for the creation of the main phobia of the 20th century. The nuclear bomb, created and tested in real conditions, revolutionized both military affairs and politics.

The history of the creation of weapons

For a long time, it was believed that the most powerful weapons could only be created using explosives. The discoveries of scientists who worked with the smallest particles provided a scientific justification for the fact that with the help of elementary particles one can generate enormous energy. The first in a series of researchers can be called Becquerel, who in 1896 discovered the radioactivity of uranium salts.

Uranium itself has been known since 1786, but at that time no one suspected its radioactivity. The work of scientists at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries revealed not only special physical properties, but also the possibility of obtaining energy from radioactive substances.

The option of making weapons based on uranium was first described in detail, published and patented by French physicists, the Joliot-Curie spouses in 1939.

Despite the value for weapons, the scientists themselves were strongly opposed to the creation of such a devastating weapon.

Having gone through the Second World War in the Resistance, in the 1950s, the spouses (Frederick and Irene), realizing the destructive power of war, are in favor of general disarmament. They are supported by Niels Bohr, Albert Einstein and other prominent physicists of the time.

Meanwhile, while the Joliot-Curies were busy with the problem of the Nazis in Paris, on the other side of the planet, in America, the world's first nuclear charge was being developed. Robert Oppenheimer, who led the work, was given the broadest powers and huge resources. The end of 1941 was marked by the beginning of the Manhattan project, which eventually led to the creation of the first combat nuclear charge.

In the town of Los Alamos, New Mexico, the first production facilities for the production of weapons-grade uranium were erected. In the future, the same nuclear centers appear throughout the country, for example, in Chicago, in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, research was also carried out in California. The best forces of the professors of American universities, as well as physicists who fled from Germany, were thrown into the creation of the bomb.

In the "Third Reich" itself, work on the creation of a new type of weapon was launched in a manner characteristic of the Fuhrer.

Since the Possessed was more interested in tanks and planes, and the more the better, he did not see much need for a new miracle bomb.

Accordingly, projects not supported by Hitler, at best, moved at a snail's pace.

When it began to bake, and it turned out that tanks and planes were swallowed Eastern front, the new wonder weapon received support. But it was too late, in the conditions of bombing and the constant fear of Soviet tank wedges, it was not possible to create a device with a nuclear component.

Soviet Union was more attentive to the possibility of creating a new type of destructive weapon. In the pre-war period, physicists collected and summarized general knowledge about nuclear energy and the possibility of creating nuclear weapons. Intelligence worked hard during the entire period of the creation of the nuclear bomb both in the USSR and in the USA. The war played a significant role in curbing the pace of development, as huge resources went to the front.

True, Academician Kurchatov Igor Vasilyevich, with his characteristic persistence, promoted the work of all subordinate units in this direction as well. Looking ahead a little, it will be he who will be instructed to accelerate the development of weapons in the face of the threat of an American strike on the cities of the USSR. It was to him, who stood in the grave huge machine hundreds and thousands of scientists and workers will be awarded the honorary title of the father of the Soviet nuclear bomb.

World's first test

But back to the American nuclear program. By the summer of 1945, American scientists managed to create the world's first nuclear bomb. Any boy who has made himself or bought a powerful firecracker in a store experiences extraordinary torment, wanting to blow it up as soon as possible. In 1945, hundreds of US military and scientists experienced the same thing.

On June 16, 1945, in the Alamogordo Desert, New Mexico, the first nuclear weapons tests in history and one of the most powerful explosions at that time were carried out.

Eyewitnesses watching the detonation from the bunker were struck by the force with which the charge exploded at the top of a 30-meter steel tower. At first everything was flooded with light, several times stronger than the sun. Then a fireball rose into the sky, turning into a column of smoke, which took shape in the famous mushroom.

As soon as the dust settled, researchers and bomb makers rushed to the site of the explosion. They watched the consequences from lead-lined Sherman tanks. What they saw startled them, no weapon would do such damage. The sand melted to glass in places.

Tiny remains of the tower were also found, in a funnel of huge diameter, mutilated and fragmented structures clearly illustrated the destructive power.

Affecting factors

This explosion gave the first information about the power of the new weapon, about how it can destroy the enemy. These are several factors:

light radiation, a flash that can blind even protected organs of vision;
shock wave, a dense stream of air moving from the center, destroying most buildings;
electromagnetic pulse that disables most technology and not allowing to use means of communication for the first time after the explosion;
penetrating radiation, the most dangerous factor for those who have taken refuge from other damaging factors, is divided into alpha-beta-gamma radiation;
radioactive contamination that can adversely affect health and life for tens or even hundreds of years.

The further use of nuclear weapons, including in combat, showed all the features of the impact on living organisms and on nature. August 6, 1945 was the last day for tens of thousands of residents of the small city of Hiroshima, then famous for several important military installations.

The outcome of the war in the Pacific was a foregone conclusion, but the Pentagon considered that the operation in the Japanese archipelago would cost more than a million lives of US Marines. It was decided to kill several birds with one stone, withdraw Japan from the war, saving on the landing operation, test new weapons in action and declare it to the whole world, and, above all, to the USSR.

At one o'clock in the morning, the plane, on board of which the nuclear bomb "Kid" was located, took off on a mission.

A bomb dropped over the city exploded at an altitude of about 600 meters at 8.15 am. All buildings located at a distance of 800 meters from the epicenter were destroyed. The walls of only a few buildings survived, designed for a 9-point earthquake.

Of every ten people who were at the time of the explosion within a radius of 600 meters, only one could survive. Light radiation turned people into coal, leaving traces of a shadow on the stone, a dark imprint of the place where the person was. The ensuing blast wave was so strong that it was able to knock out glass at a distance of 19 kilometers from the explosion site.

A dense stream of air knocked one teenager out of the house through the window, landing, the guy saw how the walls of the house were folding like cards. The blast was followed by fiery tornado, which destroyed those few residents who survived the explosion and did not have time to leave the fire zone. Those who were at a distance from the explosion began to experience severe indisposition, the cause of which was initially unclear to the doctors.

Much later, a few weeks later, the term "radiation poisoning" was coined, now known as radiation sickness.

More than 280 thousand people became victims of just one bomb, both directly from the explosion and from subsequent diseases.

The bombing of Japan with nuclear weapons did not end there. According to the plan, only four to six cities were to be hit, but weather allowed to hit only Nagasaki. In this city, more than 150 thousand people became victims of the Fat Man bomb.

Promises by the American government to carry out such strikes before the surrender of Japan led to a truce, and then to the signing of an agreement that ended world war. But for nuclear weapons, this was only the beginning.

The most powerful bomb in the world

The post-war period was marked by the confrontation between the bloc of the USSR and its allies with the USA and NATO. In the 1940s, the Americans seriously considered attacking the Soviet Union. To contain the former ally, it was necessary to speed up the work on creating a bomb, and already in 1949, on August 29, the US monopoly in nuclear weapons was over. During the arms race, two tests of nuclear warheads deserve the most attention.

Bikini Atoll, best known for its frivolous swimwear, in 1954 literally thundered all over the world in connection with the tests of a nuclear charge of special power.

Americans, deciding to try new design atomic weapons, did not calculate the charge. As a result, the explosion turned out to be 2.5 times more powerful than planned. Residents of nearby islands, as well as the ubiquitous Japanese fishermen, were under attack.

But it was not the most powerful American bomb. In 1960, the B41 nuclear bomb was put into service, which did not pass full-fledged tests because of its power. The strength of the charge was calculated theoretically, for fear of blowing up such dangerous weapon.

The Soviet Union, which loved to be the first in everything, experienced in 1961, nicknamed differently "Kuzkin's mother."

In response to America's nuclear blackmail, Soviet scientists created the most powerful bomb in the world. Tested on Novaya Zemlya, it has left its mark in almost every corner the globe. According to memoirs, a light earthquake was felt in the most remote corners at the time of the explosion.

The blast wave, of course, having lost all its destructive power, was able to go around the Earth. To date, this is the most powerful nuclear bomb in the world, created and tested by mankind. Of course, if his hands were untied, Kim Jong-un's nuclear bomb would be more powerful, but he does not have New Earth to test it.

Atomic bomb device

Consider a very primitive, purely for understanding, device of the atomic bomb. There are many classes of atomic bombs, but consider the three main ones:

uranium, based on uranium 235 for the first time exploded over Hiroshima;
plutonium, based on plutonium 239, first detonated over Nagasaki;
thermonuclear, sometimes called hydrogen, based on heavy water with deuterium and tritium, fortunately, it was not used against the population.

The first two bombs are based on the effect of fission of heavy nuclei into smaller ones by an uncontrolled nuclear reaction with the release of a huge amount of energy. The third is based on the fusion of hydrogen nuclei (or rather, its isotopes of deuterium and tritium) with the formation of helium, which is heavier in relation to hydrogen. With the same weight of a bomb, the destructive potential of a hydrogen bomb is 20 times greater.

If for uranium and plutonium it is enough to bring together a mass greater than the critical one (at which a chain reaction begins), then for hydrogen this is not enough.

To reliably connect several pieces of uranium into one, the gun effect is used, in which smaller pieces of uranium are fired at larger ones. Gunpowder can also be used, but low-power explosives are used for reliability.

In a plutonium bomb, explosives are placed around plutonium ingots to create the necessary conditions for a chain reaction. Due to the cumulative effect, as well as the neutron initiator located in the very center (beryllium with a few milligrams of polonium), the necessary conditions are achieved.

It has a main charge, which cannot explode by itself, and a fuse. To create conditions for the fusion of deuterium and tritium nuclei, pressures and temperatures unimaginable for us are needed at least at one point. What happens next is a chain reaction.

To create such parameters, the bomb includes a conventional, but low-power, nuclear charge, which is the fuse. Its undermining creates the conditions for the start of a thermonuclear reaction.

To assess the power of an atomic bomb, the so-called "TNT equivalent" is used. An explosion is the release of energy, the most famous explosive in the world is TNT (TNT - trinitrotoluene), and all new types of explosives are equated to it. Bomb "Kid" - 13 kilotons of TNT. That is equivalent to 13000 .

Bomb "Fat Man" - 21 kilotons, "Tsar Bomba" - 58 megatons of TNT. It's scary to think of 58 million tons of explosives concentrated in a mass of 26.5 tons, that's how much fun this bomb is.

The danger of nuclear war and catastrophes associated with the atom

Appearing in the midst of the most terrible war of the twentieth century, nuclear weapons have become the greatest danger to mankind. Immediately after the Second World War, the Cold War began, several times almost growing into a full-fledged nuclear conflict. The threat of the use of nuclear bombs and missiles by at least one side began to be discussed as early as the 1950s.

Everyone understood and understands that there can be no winners in this war.

For containment, the efforts of many scientists and politicians have been and are being made. University of Chicago, using the opinion of invited nuclear scientists, including Nobel laureates, puts the clock doomsday a few minutes before midnight. Midnight denotes a nuclear cataclysm, the beginning of a new World War and the destruction of the old world. In different years, the hands of the clock fluctuated from 17 to 2 minutes to midnight.

There are also several major accidents that have occurred at nuclear power plants. These catastrophes have an indirect relation to weapons, nuclear power plants are still different from nuclear bombs, but they perfectly show the results of using the atom for military purposes. The largest of them:

1957, Kyshtym accident, due to a failure in the storage system, an explosion occurred near Kyshtym;
1957, Britain, in the northwest of England, security was not checked;
1979, USA, due to an untimely discovered leak, an explosion and a release from a nuclear power plant occurred;
1986, tragedy in Chernobyl, explosion of the 4th power unit;
2011, accident at the Fukushima station, Japan.

Each of these tragedies left a heavy seal on the fate of hundreds of thousands of people and turned entire regions into non-residential zones with special control.

There were incidents that almost cost the start of a nuclear disaster. Soviet nuclear submarines have repeatedly had reactor-related accidents on board. The Americans dropped the Superfortress bomber with two Mark 39 nuclear bombs on board, with a capacity of 3.8 megatons. But the “security system” that worked did not allow the charges to detonate and the catastrophe was avoided.

Nuclear weapons past and present

Today it is clear to anyone that a nuclear war will destroy modern humanity. Meanwhile, the desire to possess nuclear weapons and enter the nuclear club, or rather tumble into it by kicking down the door, still haunts the minds of some state leaders.

India and Pakistan arbitrarily created nuclear weapons, the Israelis hide the presence of the bomb.

For some, the possession of a nuclear bomb is a way to prove their importance in the international arena. For others, it is a guarantee of non-interference by winged democracy or other factors from outside. But the main thing is that these stocks do not go into business, for which they were really created.

Video

Third Reich Bulavina Victoria Viktorovna

Who invented the nuclear bomb?

The Nazi Party has always recognized great importance technologies and invested heavily in the development of missiles, aircraft and tanks. But the most outstanding and dangerous discovery was made in the field of nuclear physics. Germany was in the 1930s perhaps the leader in nuclear physics. However, with the rise of the Nazis, many German physicists who were Jews left the Third Reich. Some of them emigrated to the US, bringing with them disturbing news: Germany may be working on an atomic bomb. These news prompted the Pentagon to take action to develop its own nuclear program, which they called the "Manhattan Project" ...

An interesting, but more than dubious version of " secret weapon Third Reich," suggested Hans Ulrich von Krantz. In his book The Secret Weapon of the Third Reich, a version is put forward that the atomic bomb was created in Germany and that the United States only imitated the results of the Manhattan Project. But let's talk about this in more detail.

Otto Hahn, the famous German physicist and radiochemist, together with another prominent scientist Fritz Straussmann, discovered the fission of the uranium nucleus in 1938, in fact, giving this start to work on the creation of nuclear weapons. In 1938, nuclear developments were not classified, but in almost no country, except Germany, they were not given due attention. They didn't see much point. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain said: "This abstract matter has nothing to do with public needs." Professor Gan assessed the state of nuclear research in the United States of America as follows: “If we talk about a country in which the processes of nuclear fission are given the least attention, then we should undoubtedly name the United States. Of course, now I am not considering Brazil or the Vatican. However, among developed countries even Italy and communist Russia are well ahead of the US.” He also noted that little attention is paid to the problems of theoretical physics on the other side of the ocean, priority is given to applied developments that can give immediate profit. Ghana's verdict was unequivocal: "I can confidently say that over the next decade, North Americans will not be able to do anything significant for the development atomic physics". This statement served as the basis for the construction of the von Krantz hypothesis. Let's take a look at his version.

At the same time, the Alsos group was created, whose activities were limited to "bounty hunting" and the search for the secrets of German atomic research. Here a logical question arises: why should Americans look for other people's secrets if own project going full steam ahead? Why did they rely so much on other people's research?

In the spring of 1945, thanks to the activities of Alsos, many scientists who took part in German nuclear research fell into the hands of the Americans. By May, they had Heisenberg, and Hahn, and Osenberg, and Diebner, and many other outstanding German physicists. But the Alsos group continued active searches in the already defeated Germany - until the very end of May. And only when all the major scientists were sent to America, "Alsos" ceased its activities. And at the end of June, the Americans are testing the atomic bomb, allegedly for the first time in the world. And in early August, two bombs are dropped on Japanese cities. Hans Ulrich von Krantz drew attention to these coincidences.

The researcher also doubts that only a month has passed between testing and combat use of the new superweapon, because the manufacture of a nuclear bomb is impossible in such short term! After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the next US bombs did not enter service until 1947, preceded by additional tests at El Paso in 1946. This suggests that we are dealing with a carefully concealed truth, since it turns out that in 1945 the Americans drop three bombs - and all are successful. The next tests - the same bombs - take place a year and a half later, and not too successfully (three out of four bombs did not explode). Serial production began another six months later, and it is not known to what extent the atomic bombs that appeared in the American army warehouses corresponded to their terrible purpose. This led the researcher to the idea that “the first three atomic bombs - the very ones of the forty-fifth year - were not built by the Americans on their own, but received from someone. To put it bluntly - from the Germans. Indirectly, this hypothesis is confirmed by the reaction of German scientists to the bombing of Japanese cities, which we know about thanks to the book by David Irving. According to the researcher, the atomic project of the Third Reich was controlled by the Ahnenerbe, which was personally subordinate to the SS leader Heinrich Himmler. According to Hans Ulrich von Krantz, "the nuclear charge is the best tool for post-war genocide, both Hitler and Himmler believed." According to the researcher, on March 3, 1944, the atomic bomb (Loki object) was delivered to the test site - in the swampy forests of Belarus. The tests were successful and aroused unprecedented enthusiasm in the leadership of the Third Reich. German propaganda had previously mentioned a “wonder weapon” of gigantic destructive power that the Wehrmacht would soon receive, now these motives sounded even louder. Usually they are considered a bluff, but can we unequivocally draw such a conclusion? As a rule, Nazi propaganda did not bluff, it only embellished reality. So far, it has not been possible to convict her of a major lie on the issues of the “wonder weapon”. Recall that propaganda promised jet fighters - the fastest in the world. And already at the end of 1944, hundreds of Messerschmitt-262 patrolled air space Reich. Propaganda promised rocket rain to the enemies, and from the autumn of that year, dozens of V-cruise rockets rained down on British cities every day. So why should the promised super-destructive weapon be considered a bluff?

In the spring of 1944, feverish preparations began for the mass production of nuclear weapons. But why were these bombs not used? Von Krantz gives the following answer - there was no carrier, and when the Junkers-390 transport aircraft appeared, the Reich was waiting for betrayal, and besides, these bombs could no longer decide the outcome of the war ...

How plausible is this version? Were the Germans really the first to develop the atomic bomb? It is difficult to say, but one should not exclude such a possibility, because, as we know, it was German specialists who were leaders in atomic research in the early 1940s.

Despite the fact that many historians are investigating the secrets of the Third Reich, because many secret documents have become available, it seems that even today the archives with materials about German military developments reliably store many mysteries.

author

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Nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction of explosive action, based on the use of the energy of fission of heavy nuclei of some isotopes of uranium and plutonium, or in thermonuclear fusion reactions of light nuclei of hydrogen isotopes of deuterium and tritium into heavier nuclei, for example, nuclei of helium isotopes.

Warheads of missiles and torpedoes, aviation and depth charges, artillery shells and mines can be equipped with nuclear charges. By power, nuclear weapons are distinguished as ultra-small (less than 1 kt), small (1-10 kt), medium (10-100 kt), large (100-1000 kt) and extra-large (more than 1000 kt). Depending on the tasks to be solved, it is possible to use nuclear weapons in the form of underground, ground, air, underwater and surface explosions. Features of the destructive effect of nuclear weapons on the population are determined not only by the power of the ammunition and the type of explosion, but also by the type nuclear device. Depending on the charge, they distinguish: atomic weapons, which are based on the fission reaction; thermonuclear weapons - when using a fusion reaction; combined charges; neutron weapons.

The only fissile material found in nature in appreciable quantities is an isotope of uranium with a nucleus mass of 235 atomic mass units (uranium-235). The content of this isotope in natural uranium is only 0.7%. The rest is uranium-238. Since the chemical properties of the isotopes are exactly the same, separating uranium-235 from natural uranium requires a rather complicated isotope separation process. The result can be highly enriched uranium, containing about 94% uranium-235, which is suitable for use in nuclear weapons.

Fissile substances can be obtained artificially, and the least difficult from a practical point of view is the production of plutonium-239, which is formed as a result of the capture of a neutron by a uranium-238 nucleus (and the subsequent chain of radioactive decays of intermediate nuclei). A similar process can be carried out in a nuclear reactor running on natural or low enriched uranium. In the future, plutonium can be separated from the spent fuel of the reactor in the process of chemical processing of fuel, which is much simpler than the isotope separation process carried out in the production of weapons-grade uranium.

Other fissile substances can also be used to create nuclear explosive devices, for example, uranium-233 obtained by irradiating thorium-232 in a nuclear reactor. However, only uranium-235 and plutonium-239 have found practical application, primarily because of the relative ease of obtaining these materials.

The possibility of practical use of the energy released during nuclear fission is due to the fact that the fission reaction can have a chain, self-sustaining character. In each fission event, approximately two secondary neutrons are produced, which, being captured by the nuclei of the fissile material, can cause their fission, which in turn leads to the formation of even more neutrons. When special conditions are created, the number of neutrons, and hence the number of fission events, grows from generation to generation.

The explosion of the first nuclear explosive device was carried out by the United States on July 16, 1945 in Alamogordo, New Mexico. The device was a plutonium bomb that used a directed explosion to create criticality. The power of the explosion was about 20 kt. In the USSR, the explosion of the first nuclear explosive device, similar to the American one, was carried out on August 29, 1949.

The history of the creation of nuclear weapons.

In early 1939, the French physicist Frédéric 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 a conventional explosive. This conclusion was the impetus for the development of nuclear weapons. Europe was on the eve of the Second World War, and the potential possession of such a powerful weapon gave any owner of it a huge advantage. The physicists of Germany, England, the USA, and Japan worked on the creation of atomic weapons.

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.

The Fat Man bomb with a charge of Plutonium-239 with a power of more than 20 kt had a mass of 3175 kg.

US President G. Truman became the first political leader who decided to use nuclear bombs. Japanese cities (Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Kokura, Niigata) were chosen as the first targets for nuclear strikes. From a military point of view, there was no need for such bombardments of densely populated Japanese cities.

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. On August 9, another bomb was dropped over the city of Nagasaki.

The total loss of life and the scale of destruction from these bombings are characterized by the following figures: 300 thousand people died instantly from thermal radiation (temperature about 5000 degrees C) and a shock wave, another 200 thousand were injured, burns, and radiation sickness. On an area of 12 sq. km, all buildings were completely destroyed. In Hiroshima alone, out of 90,000 buildings, 62,000 were destroyed.

After the American atomic bombings, by order of Stalin, on August 20, 1945, a special committee on atomic energy was formed under the leadership of L. Beria. The committee included prominent scientists A.F. Ioffe, P.L. Kapitsa and I.V. Kurchatov. A conscientious communist, scientist Klaus Fuchs, a prominent worker at the American nuclear center at Los Alamos, rendered a great service to the Soviet atomic scientists. During 1945-1947, he transmitted information four times on the practical and theoretical issues of creating atomic and hydrogen bombs, which accelerated their appearance in the USSR.

In 1946-1948, the nuclear industry was created in the USSR. A test site was built near the city of Semipalatinsk. In August 1949, the first Soviet nuclear device was blown up there. Before that, US President G. Truman was informed that the Soviet Union had mastered the secret of nuclear weapons, but the Soviet Union would create a nuclear bomb no earlier than 1953. This message 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 in early 1950. At that time, the United States had 840 strategic bombers and over 300 atomic bombs.

Affecting factors nuclear explosion are: shock wave, light radiation, penetrating radiation, radioactive contamination and electromagnetic pulse.

shock wave. Basic damaging factor nuclear explosion. It consumes about 60% of the energy of a nuclear explosion. It is an area of sharp air compression, spreading in all directions from the explosion site. The damaging effect of the shock wave is characterized by the amount of excess pressure. Overpressure is the difference between the maximum pressure at the front of the shock wave and the normal atmospheric pressure in front of it. It is measured in kilo pascals - 1 kPa \u003d 0.01 kgf / cm2.

With an excess pressure of 20-40 kPa, unprotected people can get light injuries. The impact of a shock wave with an excess pressure of 40-60 kPa leads to lesions of moderate severity. Severe injuries occur at an excess pressure of more than 60 kPa and are characterized by severe contusions of the whole body, fractures of the limbs, ruptures of internal parenchymal organs. Extremely severe lesions, often fatal, are observed at excess pressure over 100 kPa.

light emission is a stream of radiant energy, including visible ultraviolet and infrared rays.

Its source is a luminous area formed by the hot products of the explosion. Light radiation propagates almost instantly and lasts, depending on the power of the nuclear explosion, up to 20 s. Its strength is such that, despite its short duration, it can cause fires, deep burns of the skin and damage to the organs of vision in people.

Light radiation does not penetrate through opaque materials, so any obstruction that can create a shadow protects against the direct action of light radiation and eliminates burns.

Significantly attenuated light radiation in dusty (smoky) air, in fog, rain.

penetrating radiation.

This is a stream of gamma radiation and neutrons. The impact lasts 10-15 s. The primary effect of radiation is realized in physical, physicochemical and chemical processes with the formation of chemically active free radicals (H, OH, HO2) with high oxidizing and reducing properties. Subsequently, various peroxide compounds are formed that inhibit the activity of some enzymes and increase the activity of others, which play an important role in the processes of autolysis (self-dissolution) of body tissues. The appearance in the blood of decay products of radiosensitive tissues and pathological metabolism when exposed to high doses of ionizing radiation is the basis for the formation of toxemia - poisoning of the body associated with the circulation of toxins in the blood. Violations of the physiological regeneration of cells and tissues, as well as changes in the functions of regulatory systems, are of primary importance in the development of radiation injuries.

Radioactive contamination of the area

Its main sources are fission products of a nuclear charge and radioactive isotopes formed as a result of the acquisition of radioactive properties by the elements from which a nuclear weapon is made and which are part of the soil. They form a radioactive cloud. It rises to a height of many kilometers, and is transported with air masses over considerable distances. Radioactive particles, falling from the cloud to the ground, form a zone of radioactive contamination (trace), the length of which can reach several hundred kilometers. Radioactive substances pose the greatest danger in the first hours after falling out, since their activity is highest during this period.

electromagnetic pulse .

This is a short-term electromagnetic field that occurs during the explosion of a nuclear weapon as a result of the interaction of gamma radiation and neutrons emitted during a nuclear explosion with the atoms of the environment. The consequence of its impact is the burnout or breakdowns of individual elements of radio-electronic and electrical equipment. The defeat of people is possible only in those cases when they come into contact with wire lines at the time of the explosion.

A type of nuclear weapon is neutron and thermonuclear weapons.

A neutron weapon is a small-sized thermonuclear munition with a power of up to 10 kt, designed mainly to destroy enemy manpower due to the action of neutron radiation. Neutron weapons are classified as tactical nuclear weapons.