Russia Honors the Spy Who Stole the A-Bomb

An anonymous reader writes "The New York Times reports on the life of George Koval, codenamed Delmar, one of the most important spies to have infiltrated the Manhattan Project, the secret program that created the world's first nuclear weapon. President Putin recently granted Koval a posthumous Hero of the Russian Federation award, the highest honorary title that can be given to a Russian citizen. Koval was born in Iowa, spoke fluent American English, and played baseball. But he was also recruited and trained by the GRU, Russia's largest intelligence agency."

Comments

You are forgetting something.

[Anonymous Coward]

One man's hero is another man's terrorist.

surely a hero to the whole World

[BoxRec]

The man is possibly one of the greatest heroes of all time, he equalised the power balance and prevented the Americans from bombing whoever they wished.

Re:News for Nerds How?!!!!

[drgonzo59]

That's alright, as long as all spies are thieves and traitors regardless of the government they are working for. Or let me guess, the American spies are heroes and anti-American spies are traitors and thieves? Of course, because we are "God's" country and we are special. Our killings are always "fights for freedom" and "wars on terror".

What's the news for nerds angle here?

That Russia Honors the Spy Who Stole the A-Bomb . Duh...

Yeah, some nerds like to take a break from playing D&D and are actually interested in what's happening in the real world.

Re:News for Nerds How?!!!!

[opencity]

> I see nothing in this story that could be considered geeky

Trinity was the biggest physics experiment ever until George. Your definition of 'geeky' must be very sectarian.

Re:that's awesome

[darkmeridian]

I am sick and tired of revisionists coming up with this tripe every time the nuclear bombings of Japan are discussed. It might be true that the Japanese were unable to continue their existence. After the war, debriefed Japanese leaders said that the mining of Japanese harbors as part of Operation Starvation was singlehandedly winning the war for the Allies. He said that if the Allies had continued the operation for another few months, the Japanese would had to have surrendered. But how many Japanese civilians would have died before the leadership would quit? The Japanese military leadership wanted to force an invasion that they were going to lose, so they could at least dictate some conditions of peace.

In spite of all this, the Allies were ready to invade Japan. After the nukes were dropped, they revised the plan to include "softening up" the beachheads with nukes three days before GIs would hit the shores. (They didn't know too much about fallout back then.) The plans were for deaths in the hundreds of thousands. The order for Purple Hearts, the military honor for being wounded in combat, in preparation for this invasion was so large that the supplies did not run out until recently in the new Iraq War. Despite what we now may know, Allied leaders were planning on invading Japan, and the nuclear bomb stopped this from happening, and saved many lives on both sides of the table. In the documentary "The War," an American infantryman that was going to be sent to Japan, when asked about the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, said that he was relieved and glad, and that he knew this was horrible, but that the news meant that he wouldn't have to die. The troops tasked to invade Japan had no illusions of getting out alive; they assumed there were going to die because the Japanese were ruthless soldiers who fought to the death and mistreated the few prisoners they took.

The Japanese were not innocent victims in World War II. They committed all sorts of atrocities such as vivisection, raping and pillaging, and testing biological weapons on civilian populations. Japanese soldiers in the Phillippines were actually cannabalizing American GIs. (Read "Flyboys.") The Japanese still had a dominion over a large civilian population in occupied territories at the time the nuclear bombs were dropped. The civilians there were dying at a very high rate due to Japanese mistreatment. And the Japanese had said they were going to execute all the POWs they held (about a hundred thousand or so) if there was an invasion.

The bombings saved lives. Even if it didn't, the Allied leaders thought that they were saving lives by dropping the bombs. Sixty years later, it's easy for us to sit back and second guess them. But the leaders truly believed Japan had to fall. No one planned for the Japanese to surrender peacefully, even if their situation was screwed. Everything else is revisionist history ignoring who started the war, who committed the true atrocities, and who refused to quit fighting a war they had lost.