Klaus Fuchs was a curious character and in many ways, remains a mystery. His father was a Lutheran pastor and one of the first to join the German Social Democratic Party, even before the First World War, during which he made clear his pacifist beliefs. These views were frankly unorthodox in Germany at the time, and resulted in very hostile reactions. The young Fuchs undoubtedly suffered as a result and later at school, was regularly beaten up by the sons of former soldiers.
In spite of this, Fuchs very quickly aligned himself with the socialist cause. In Kiel, where his father settled after the war, the Fuchs were soon being called the ‘Red Foxes',22 although the young man would go much further than his father, soon abandoning the Social Democratic Party for the KPD: the German Communist Party. This was around the time that Hitler came to power and so was a brave gesture at the time. However, we now know that the German Communist Party politics orchestrated by Moscow paradoxically contributed to the success of Hitler and the bloody hunt of the communists that was to follow. Like other activists, Fuchs had to go into hiding, but his father was arrested. A hunted man, Fuchs had no choice but to go into exile. He chose England.
Fuchs was a brilliant man: by the time he left his native Germany at the age of just 20, he already held a degree in physics and mathematics. He decided to continue his studies in England and enrolled at the University of Bristol, gaining a doctorate in theoretical physics in very little time at all.
When he first arrived, Fuchs had asked to be considered as a refugee and was careful to hide his political beliefs from the British authorities.Yet at university, he clearly professed his pro-communist ideas and never hid his sympathy for the Soviet Union. In Bristol, he actively participated in mass meetings ran by the ‘Society for Cultural Relations with the USSR'. During these meetings, transcripts were often read out concerning the sinister trials in Moscow. Fuchs' master and director of research, the future Nobel Prize winner Sir Neville Mott, recalls that he was deeply impressed by the passion with which his brilliant student played the role of Vychinsky, the relentless prosecutor of the Moscow trials. He reported that Fuchs accused the defendants in an ice-cold voice, adding that he never suspected to hear such a thing from so quiet and discreet a young man.
It would appear that Fuchs had not yet been recruited by Moscow's intelligence services, even if they had probably already got their eye on this talented young man. Perhaps they were just waiting for the right time to contact him? That is to say, the day when Fuchs would have access to scientific information of the highest order.
From an academic perspective, Fuchs' scientific journey is impressive. After leaving Bristol he went to work with the great physicist Max Born, another Nobel Prize winner who had already made important discoveries in nuclear physics. Like Fuchs, he was also a German refugee, although it is not necessarily their shared origins that brought them together. Undoubtedly, Born was immediately impressed with Fuchs' scientific capabilities, but he would have to do without his services for several months. Although Fuchs had applied for British citizenship, it was done just at the outbreak of the Second World War and so he had yet to be naturalised. This meant that he was still a German refugee and so immediately came under suspicion. Like hundreds of other exiles, Fuchs was deported to Canada for security. It was his boss, Max Born, who moved heaven and earth to lobby for his release. Beyond the sympathy he must have felt for Fuchs, Born had other reasons for wanting the young physicist's return: their research into the atomic bomb.
Work on the subject was already progressing at pace in the English laboratories. The idea had originally been born in the 1930s, when atomic physicists had discovered the tremendous energy that was hidden in this elementary particle.Yet a way still had to be found as to how to release this energy. The English, and the Americans, were working in haste: they had legitimate reasons to think that Nazi Germany were also perusing the same research. Victory in the war would belong to whomever succeeded first. We now know that German research was far less advanced that the Allies had thought, but nevertheless, in the early 1940s there was a real urgency to succeed. Through Born, Fuchs now became involved in these top secret works.
The British counterintelligence-espionage service, MI5, sounded the alarm bell: Attention! This man is a communist! Yet their warning were ignored by those higher up, who argued that they could not risk ignoring the services of such an eminent researcher, regardless of his politics. Thus, Fuchs would learn the secrets of the ‘Tube Alloys' programme, the codename given to the British atomic bomb research project.
It is probably at this moment in time that Fuchs became a soviet spy. But how? He would later claim that it was he himself who took the initiative to make contact with the Russians. But by making this confession, was he just making himself look better in an attempt to justify his betrayal in the name of his idealism? It is far more likely that the Soviets took the initiative and they seemed to have no trouble in convincing Fuchs to work for them. After all, deep down he was still a communist and it was his duty to help his true homeland, the homeland of socialism, to build an A-bomb.
Stalin was already thinking about the post-war
