Self-isolation of
science was accompanied by illegal or semi-legal import of brains and
technologies. The brightest scandalous examples of this import are the atomic
bomb and rocket technology. Atomic research in the USSR began even before the
war, but only after the testing and use of the atomic bomb in the summer of
1945 did an intensive solution of the atomic problem begin, not scientific, but
espionage. No wonder the nuclear project was headed by the Minister of the Ministry
of Internal Affairs / KGB Beria. At the cost of 400 agents (they were sentenced
by an American court to different terms of imprisonment), the atomic secrets of
the United States and Great Britain were stolen (the scandalous "trial of
four hundred" in Canada) [3,4.5], and in 1950, Enrique Fermi's student Bruno
Pontecorvo was stolen. The role of
academician Kurchatov in the atomic project is highly doubtful, but the
principal role of Soviet spies in the United States, the Mukaseevs and the
Cohens, is undeniable and is now officially recognized. However, the decisive
role was played by the German baron von Ardenne [6,7]. His
secret laboratory was guarded by an SS regiment. The Soviet troops would have
needed to lose three divisions to storm this facility - without a chance to
receive documentation and intact (not blown up) equipment, but in April 1945
the laboratory was transferred to the Soviet side - obviously not without
instructions from above. The entire staff of scientists agreed to cooperate
with the USSR, handed over all the equipment, including a uranium centrifuge,
documentation and reagents, including 15 tons of uranium metal of German
purification quality. Von Ardenne travels to Moscow with his wife, taking a
magnificent piano, an SS dress uniform and a full-length oil painting from the
Fuhrer's personal artist, where he hands him oak leaves to the Knight's Cross -
the highest award of the Reich. More than 200 prominent physicists, radio
engineers and rocket scientists are traveling with him. Among them are the
Nobel laureate, the creator of the V-3 rocket, Professor Gustav Hertz, Werner
Zulius, Günter Wirths, Nikolaus Riehl, Karl Zimmer, Dr. Robert Doppel, Peter
Thyssen, Professor Heinz Pose and many others.
The best equipment of
the Berlin Kaiser Institute and von Ardennes’s own institute, Berlin-
Lichterfelde -Ost, travels in echelons to the USSR. There are even German
transformers. There is documentation and reagents, stocks of film and paper for
recorders, photo recorders, wire tape recorders for telemetry and optics... A
peculiar and very comfortable concentration camp is being built in Moscow on
Oktyabrsky Pole. Now it is the Kurchatov Canter. The Germans also brought
worked-out schemes for an industrial nuclear reactor and a breeder reactor.
After all, it was they who were the pioneers in the nuclear field, on the
island of Rügen in the Baltic Sea the first test mini-bomb was detonated, in
Pomerania - the second, with a capacity of about 5 kilotons. During these
tests, about 700 Soviet prisoners of war, "guinea pigs", died. Each
German was assigned 5-6 Soviet apprentice engineers, often German-speaking. Boris
Kurchatov, the brother of the physicist Igor Kurchatov, was assigned to the
institute from the Ministry of Internal Affairs. At the same time, plutonium
was obtained in the industrial reactor of the Chelyabinsk-40 facility for the
first Soviet atomic bomb, after testing it, the German doctor N. Riehl became a
Hero of Socialist Labour. The period of mass production of warheads and industrial
volumes of purification of radioactive uranium began. Then von Ardenne was
transferred to Sukhumi, where a new scientific canter was built on the shore of
the bay, a centrifuge for the purification of uranium isotopes. The object bore
the code "A", then A-1009 of the Ministry of Medium Machine Building.
Baron von Ardenne was the scientific director of this institute. The Austrian
radio engineer Dr Fritz also played an important role. For this work, the baron
received a second Stalin Prize in 1953, and in 1955 he was allowed to return to
his homeland, but only to the GDR. At the end of the war in 1945, Germany had
jet engines and mass-produced jet aircraft, the first anti-aircraft missiles,
the first air-to-air missiles, had its own nuclear program that competed with
the Anglo-American, had infrared tank sights and gyroscopic stabilization of
naval guns, Radar and interference selection stations, excellent direction
finders. There were aircraft sights and gyro-stabilized submarine navigation
devices, "blue" optics and 1.5 volt radio tubes the size of a pinky
nail, cruise and ballistic missiles. All this went to the USSR. Having pushed
the USSR against the USA and Great Britain in the arms race and the escalation
of the Cold War, Germany, and after it Japan, among other things, got a chance
and in a short time got up from its knees, turning into the second or third
power in the world in terms of economy. In 1937, von Braun launched the first
V-2 ballistic guided missile (weight - 13 tons, engine thrust - 25, flight
range - 300 km). On October 3, 1942, the V-2 exceeded the speed of sound; on
February 17, 1943, it rose to a height of 190 km and thus became the first
space object of terrestrial origin. The German priority in space is recognized
throughout the civilized world, including the United States. The rocket project
was also not without espionage. Today, the merits in this field of the Zarubin
spouses, who were sent to Europe, and after the start of the war in the United
States, Soviet spies, are officially recognized.
Von Braun and his
closest assistant Dornberger were taken prisoner by the Americans. Von Braun
openly led the American space program, including astronaut flights. After the
end of the war, documentation, samples of the V-2 and rockets " Reintochter
", "Reinbote", " Wasserfall ", "Typhoon",
engines, technological equipment arrived in the Soviet Union (on an even larger
scale - in the USA, England). The first Soviet ballistic missile R-1 is a
complete analogue of the German V-2 missile, only created according to domestic
drawings and from domestic materials. In the very first days of peace, the
Soviet command, puzzled by the results of the study of parts of huge ballistic
missiles found at the Polish training ground in 1944, began the hunt for German
specialists. One of the first "skull hunters" was B. Chertok (later
S. Korolev's permanent deputy). It turned out that in the Soviet zone of
occupation there was a missile canter - "Nordhausen", an underground
factory where prisoners of concentration camps worked. They found important
material there. To study them, the Rabe Institute was created. B. Chertok
became the head of the institute, and one of the employees of the German rocket
canter became the director. But they really lacked a specialist who owns the
whole problem. And soon they found him - he turned out to be Helmut Grottrup.
Grottrup, in turn, attracted leading German specialists, professors and doctors
of sciences to work. The study of our future luminaries went so successfully,
such prospects for improving the V-2 opened up that it was necessary to
significantly enlarge the organization. The project was headed by the organizer
of rocket artillery Lev Gaidukov, S. Korolev was appointed his deputy, whom
Gaidukov, bypassing Beria, released from the Kazan "sharashka". In
the summer of 1946, about 500 leading German specialists with their families
were sent to the USSR on a voluntary-compulsory basis, where some of them
(about 150 people) were placed in strict isolation on the island of Gorodomlya
in the middle of the picturesque Lake Seliger. To guide rocket development in
the USSR, NII-88 was created, headed by L. Gonor. It was the "Soviet"
Germans under the leadership of G. Grottrup, ahead of the "American"
Germans, in the projects of "their" missiles, who gave the world
technical solutions that are now a textbook for all rocket scientists in the
world - detachable warheads, carrying tanks, intermediate bottoms, hot
pressurization of fuel tanks, flat nozzle heads of engines, thrust vector control
using engines, etc. Incorporating a galaxy of world-famous scientists,
primarily such as Hoch a leading figure in control systems, died in the USSR
under mysterious circumstances - “from appendicitis”, Magnus (a specialist in gyroscopes), Umpfenbach,
Albring, Rudolf Müller, it is not surprising that they won all government
competitions for the creation of the USSR missile shield. They completed
projects of ballistic missiles with a flight range of 600, 800, 2500 and 3000
km, for intercontinental range (analogue of R-7), an aerodynamic scheme for
astronaut flights to the Moon was proposed (later used in the N-1 project).
Conical compartments were a trademark of German ... and Soviet rocket
scientists until the early 60s. The Germans also managed to lay a solid
foundation for Soviet anti-aircraft and cruise missiles (G-5 or R-15 with a
range of 3000 km). (Sudoplatov, 1999). The scheme of work with German
specialists quickly acquired a peculiar character. At the scientific and
technical councils, the Germans made a detailed report on the next rocket
project. The opponents spoke. The report was comprehensively considered and
discussed. They acknowledged his victory. Then Soviet specialists came to the
island, clarified the nuances, and took away the documentation, in many cases
not even bothering to reprint it, limiting themselves only to erasing German
surnames. And most importantly, the “guests” were not allowed to experience
anything, explaining this by the fact that all stands were busy. As a result,
having squeezed out everything that was possible from the German rocket
scientists, creating unbearable conditions for them and their leadership for
further work, the Germans were returned to the GDR, without even resolving the
issue of their employment. To compensate for the "exodus of the
Germans" in 1954, four independent rocket design bureaus were created,
including the Dnepropetrovsk one. Later than others, in August 1956, the Design
Bureau of S. Korolev was created. The last, as befits a leader, at the end of
1953, G. Grettrup left the USSR. Chertok notes that, out of shame, he could not
look Helmut in the eyes.