Klaus Fuchs
Klaus Fuchs was a German-born physicist whose early years were marked by his father's influence as a Christian socialist and his own engagement in anti-Nazi activities. After fleeing Germany in the early 1930s, he pursued advanced studies in physics and became involved in significant scientific projects during World War II, including the British atomic bomb effort known as Tube Alloys and the American Manhattan Project. In a notable turn, Fuchs began spying for the Soviet Union, transmitting critical information about atomic bomb development techniques to Soviet officials, which he believed would aid their efforts against Nazi Germany.
Fuchs's espionage activities came to light, leading to his arrest in 1950. His subsequent trial was swift, resulting in a guilty plea under the Official Secrets Act and a prison sentence of fourteen years, of which he served nine. After his release, he moved to East Germany, where he continued to work in nuclear research. Fuchs's actions had far-reaching implications, straining British-American nuclear cooperation and influencing Cold War dynamics. While some viewed him as a traitor, others, including his father, perceived his actions as aligned with a higher moral duty. The debate over the true impact of his espionage continues, with estimates suggesting he significantly accelerated Soviet advancements in nuclear capabilities.
Subject Terms
Klaus Fuchs
German physicist and communist spy
- Born: December 29, 1911
- Birthplace: Rüsselsheim, Germany
- Died: January 28, 1988
- Place of death: East Berlin, East Germany (now Berlin, Germany)
Major offense: Espionage
Active: 1942-1949
Locale: Birmingham and London, England; New York, New York; Los Alamos, New Mexico; and Boston, Massachusetts
Sentence: Fourteen years in prison; served nine years
Early Life
The childhood and adolescence of Klaus Emil Julius Fuchs (klows ay-MEEL JEW-lyuhs fooks) was dominated by his father, an itinerant Lutheran minister and a dedicated Christian socialist. When Klaus began studying mathematics and physics at the University of Leipzig, he broke with his father, who had become a Quaker, by joining a semimilitary group that believed Nazi thuggery could not be countered pacifistically. In 1930, Klaus moved with his family from Leipzig to Kiel, where he continued his scientific education and anti-Nazi activities. When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, Fuchs, who had already been the target of Nazi violence, realized that he would have to leave Germany. Following the advice of Communist Party leaders, he fled via Paris to England.
With financial support, Fuchs was able to complete his studies in physics at Bristol University, receiving his doctorate in 1937. He then became a postdoctoral physicist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland under Max Born, a prominent German émigré scientist. When World War II broke out in 1939, Fuchs, an enemy alien, was placed in internment camps, first in England, then in Quebec, Canada. Eventually, with the support of Born (who had become a British citizen), Fuchs returned to Edinburgh, but, shortly thereafter, he accepted an offer to work on a secret project in Birmingham, England.
Espionage Career
An ironic confluence of events occurred for Fuchs in 1942. He became a member of the British atomic bomb research project, code-named Tube Alloys, and a citizen of his adopted country. However, after taking the Oath of Allegiance and learning of the nature of his war work, he decided to spy for Russia and initiated contact through a Communist Party member. At the end of 1942, Fuchs was part of a distinguished group of British scientists who traveled to the United States to participate in the Manhattan Project, the American program to develop the atomic bomb. While working at Columbia University in were chosen and later at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, Fuchs made arrangements to inform the Russians about how the Americans planned to obtain the fissionable isotope uranium-235 for one kind of atomic bomb and how they were developing an improved technique (implosion) for the plutonium-239 atomic bomb. At Los Alamos, Fuchs worked in the theoretical division headed by the German American physicist Hans Albrecht Bethe.
In a series of meetings over the next few years with a Soviet courier code-named “Raymond” (his real name was Harry Gold), Fuchs communicated to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s spymaster Lavrenty Beria detailed information that Fuchs had acquired by participating in the development of the implosion technique. Beria allowed Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov, the leader of the Soviet atomic bomb project, to see sizable selections from the massive amount of material that Fuchs was supplying.
Fuchs was present at the Trinity Test of the first atomic bomb, an implosion device nicknamed “Fat Man,” at Alamogordo, New Mexico. After the dropping of a uranium-235 bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, and a plutonium-239 bomb on Nagasaki, Japan, brought World War II to an end in 1945, Fuchs remained at Los Alamos, where he participated in the early stages of the development of a fusion or hydrogen bomb. Before returning to England in 1946, Fuchs informed the Soviets of the results of the Trinity Test and Japanese bombs, as well as what he had learned about the hydrogen bomb.
The British had an atomic research facility at Harwell, and Fuchs continued his secret research there, as well as his spying, which was now communicated largely through Alexander Feklisov, a Soviet intelligence agent. Fuchs’s lies and deceptions began to be known to the Americans in the late 1940’s through the success of the Venona Project, which allowed U.S. officials to decipher Soviet communications during World War II. The Americans alerted the British to Fuchs’s spying, and subsequent British investigations confirmed American suspicions. At the end of 1949, a British officer informed Fuchs that he would be charged with spying for the Soviet Union. After repeated denials, Fuchs confessed.
Legal Action and Outcome
By the time of Fuchs’s arrest in February, 1950, the Soviets had surprised the world by testing their own atomic bomb, and Fuchs’s trial generated great interest both in the press and in scientific and political communities. Because of his confession and guilty plea, Fuchs’s trial at the Old Bailey in London was over in less than ninety minutes. Fuchs expressed regret for having deceived his British colleagues, and he hoped that his confession and cooperation would contribute to atoning for his many betrayals. Fuchs was prosecuted under the United Kingdom’s Official Secrets Act, but, since his crimes involved a British ally, he could be given only the maximum sentence of fourteen years in prison. After nine years, he was released on June 24, 1950, for good behavior and permitted to go to East Germany, where he became a citizen. As a committed communist, he received many honors and served as deputy director of the Central Institute for Nuclear Research near Dresden.
Impact
Klaus Fuchs’s trial had an immediate impact on his colleagues and family. On one hand, such scientists as Bethe and Richard Feynman, who were his Los Alamos collaborators, felt bewildered and betrayed. On the other hand, Fuchs’s father stated that his son’s brave actions actually served the good of the British people more than their government did: He saw his son’s lawbreaking in terms of previous rebels who followed their consciences and obeyed the “higher law” of true justice.
The revelations surrounding Fuchs’s treachery also had an immediate political impact. It had a detrimental effect on British-American nuclear cooperation, since American intelligence officials believed that British security arrangements were lax. Shortly after Fuchs’s trial, the Special Committee of the American National Security Council voted to recommend that U.S. president Harry S. Truman order a crash program to develop a hydrogen bomb, advice that he quickly followed. Another immediate consequence of the revelations of Fuchs’s spying was the role that it played in the discovery of an American spy ring centered on Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, in which Gold, Fuchs’s Soviet courier, was also involved. Even though the information communicated by Julius Rosenberg to the Soviets was far less important than Fuchs’s material, the Rosenbergs were executed for their crimes.
During the Cold War, some politicians and scientists tended to exaggerate the damage Fuchs had done to the United States and Great Britain. A congressional committee on atomic energy concluded that Fuchs had compromised the safety of more people than any other spy in history. The nuclear physicist Edward Teller claimed that the information Fuchs supplied to the Soviets saved them ten years of research on the hydrogen bomb. England’s lord chief justice and others condemned Fuchs for doing irreprable and incalculable damage to the security of several countries.
When documents became available after the fall of the Soviet Union in the late twentieth century, some scholars took a more modest view of Fuchs’s spying. Some believe that Soviet scientists were able to discover much about the atomic bomb on their own, and Fuchs’s information simply saved them some time by informing them what lines of research were valueless. However, when the British Security Service released more than twenty files on Fuchs, this material, though heavily censored, convinced certain scholars that Fuchs was indeed the most destructive spy in British history. Estimates of how much time Fuchs’s revelations saved Soviet scientists in developing the atomic bomb range from several months to several years.
Bibliography
Feklisov, Alexander. The Man Behind the Rosenbergs. New York: Enigma Books, 2004. Feklisov was a professional spy for Stalin, so this memoir has to be read cautiously. Nevertheless, he was Fuchs’s handler, and he has much of interest to say about their relationship.
Moss, Norman. Klaus Fuchs: The Man Who Stole the Atom Bomb. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987. This biography is largely based on interviews of people who knew Fuchs. It emphasizes Fuchs’s motivations for spying. Illustrated, with an appendix on Fuchs’s confession and an index.
Williams, Robert Chadwell. Klaus Fuchs, Atom Spy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987. Using archival materials obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, Williams concentrates on Fuchs as a traitor and on the failures of Allied security to detect his crimes. Illustrated, with appendixes on two Fuchs confessions and a Harry Gold statement to the FBI. Selected bibliography and index.