Slashdot Mirror
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."
Motive in the grave,
Keep world balance in place?
Can't his name save.
Treachery on his face.
God have mercy on the knave,
And lather this disgrace:
Burma Shave
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
So why is it importand to mention that he, as a born American, spoke American Enlish? It would be more surprising would he have talked with a russian dialect.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
And, most ironic of that, that it fits ohh so perfectly to Cold War, it could be even a tagline for it.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
The Soviets understood what to do - they were missing the engineering of how to do it. Similarly while the Rosenbergs go down in history as the greatest traitors, even the Soviets admit that their information sped up the development of the H Bomb by less than 2 years. Sakharov came at the problem from a completely different direction than Teller-Ulam and essentially invented a brand new branch of nuclear physics on his own.
"Would you have trusted the US as the only country with nuclear weapons?"
For several years, the United States WAS the only country with nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. The United States under had the means to directly dominate the entire world. It refrained from doing so.
Interesting that so many prominent American military leaders at the time didn't agree with your views on the atomic bombs:
From http://www.antiwar.com/henderson/?articleid=9443
Many Army leaders had similar views. Author Norman Cousins writes of Gen. Douglas MacArthur:
"[H]e saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."[6]
Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, the supreme commander of the Allied Forces in Europe, was also against the bomb. Eisenhower biographer Stephen Ambrose writes:
"There was one additional matter on which Eisenhower gave Truman advice that was ignored. It concerned the use of the atomic bomb. Eisenhower first heard of the bomb during the Potsdam Conference; from that moment on, until his death, it occupied, along with the Russians, a central position in his thinking. ...
"When [Secretary of War] Stimson said the United States proposed to use the bomb against Japan, Eisenhower voiced '... grave misgivings....' Three days later, on July 20, Eisenhower flew to Berlin, where he met with Truman and his principal advisors. Again Eisenhower recommended against using the bomb, and again was ignored."[7]
These are a few of the many quotes in Alperovitz from military leaders who thought the bomb's use on Japan unnecessary and/or immoral.
No quite frankly we could have taken the soviets at the time and won, though at a terrible cost, which is part of the reason we didn't. Even for years after we could have fought and won a war - yet we didn't. At the time we had no desire for Empire and in fact had to be dragged (some even say tricked) kicking and screaming into the war. Creating MAD was by no means a great thing, a sole nuclear America on the world stage with a 'mind your own business, each of you' might have been a good thing. And certainly many US wars - Korea, Vietnam and other smaller ones around the globe might have been prevented. Not to mention the millions of Russians killed by Stalin.
Would I want Shrub and his ilk in the position that would create? Hell no, but at the same time half the reason for what they are doing now is to create that very thing. Without the reason to create it, would he and his type even exist? Do not confuse all American presidents and presidential hopefuls with Bush, great things *could* have been done. Like it or not there is One Government in the earths future. I would rather it had been started by men that had just gone through the greatest war in history, rather then the type we now have.
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_Intervention_in_the_Russian_Civil_War
But you have to remember something. The way the US treated the political class of both Britain and France after world war two, your two best buddies in the whole wide world at the time, directly resulted in them developing independent nuclear deterrents.
Even you have to admit that insulting the British foreign minister to the point where a generally anti-nuclear democratic socialist cabinet will spend a significant portion of a wreaked economy by going for the bomb takes some doing.
The other faction realized they had lost, and that they could not hope to win. And that if they continued to fight then millions would die on both sides.
The atomic bombs gave them the leverage to displace the controlling faction.
****
Mind you, anyone who thinks that Japan was ready to surrender is easily disproved by history. If that was the case, we would not have to have used "two" bombs.
It's an absolute proof they were not ready to surrender.
Some people (who knew better than you) would like to disagree with your opinion (this was mentioned on slashdot before): "In 1945 Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives." - then-General Dwight D. Eisenhower "The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan." Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. "The use of [the atomic bombs] at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender." Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to President Truman.
For several years, the United States WAS the only country with nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. The United States under had the means to directly dominate the entire world. It refrained from doing so.
According to the Quebec Agreement, the USA was bound to not use them without the consent of Canada and the United Kingdom.
That also means that Canada and the UK were just as guilty as the USA for the bombing of Japan.
God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!