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> The push for the bomb was an international arms race — America against Russia Was it? US (and initially UK) didn't really face any real competition at all un
by qwytw 3y ago
> The push for the bomb was an international arms race — America against Russia
Was it? US (and initially UK) didn't really face any real competition at all until the war was already over and they had the bomb. The Soviets then just stole American designs and iterated on top of them.
- femiagbabiaka 3y agoYou know that now, with the benefit of history. At the time the fear of someone else developing the bomb first was real, and the Soviet Union knew about the Manhattan project: https://www.atomicarchive.com/history/cold-war/page-9.html https://www.atomicarchive.com/history/cold-war/page-9.html.
- qwytw 3y agoIsn't this mainly about what happened after the war and developing then hydrogen bomb? Did anyone seriously believe during WW2 that the Nazis/Soviets could be the first to develop a nuclear weapon (I don't really know to be fair)?
- femiagbabiaka 3y agoA lot of it happened after the war, but the Nazis had their own nuclear program that was highly infiltrated by the CIA, and whose progress was tracked against. Considering how late Teller's mechanism for detonation was developed, the race against time was real.