Russia Honors the Spy Who Stole the A-Bomb 506
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."
You are forgetting something. (Score:5, Insightful)
Elections is coming... (Score:5, Insightful)
Imperialists don't want to admit simply that Russia as "strong arm dictarionship" is dead horse, which will never work in modern time settings. I just hope their last resort won't be trying to play "hard" with the rest of the world. As we easily know how it is to have people who have nothing to loose.
Re:News for Nerds How?!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
This man was a thief, a traitor
No, that's the nuance between a traitor and a spy. From the Russian point of vue, this guy helped shape history in their favour, by tremendously helping them get the tool required to afford to make the USA crap their pants for about 40 years.
Re:that's awesome (Score:0, Insightful)
you do realize that the japanese by the time the bombs were dropped were essentially defeated in the pacific and you do realize that they were ready to capitulate? The bombs fell for the soviets to see, but the fairy tale to "normalize the unthinkable" involved "millions" of americans about to die...so let's kill a quarter of a million of innocent civilians...makes sense, no?)
Typical american, no?
Re:Elections is coming... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Pride? (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you saying if I take your car you would not be the victim?
Something was stolen from someone. How are they not a victim of the theft? Or is that not a crime in your world?
Re:that's awesome (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
surely a hero to the whole World (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:News for Nerds How?!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Nice trolling (Score:5, Insightful)
Millions of japanese? 140.000 at Horishima 80.000 at Nagasaki, several thousand afterwards. That is a quarter million from the results of the way. The cities in question would have had to been wiped out from fallout and after effects SEVERAL times to even reach one million.
So where do you get your millions from? The total death toll of WW2 is estimated around 50 million, the americans accounted for a small fraction of that. Major culprits where the germans, the russians and the japanese. It is often forgotten but they had a regime as brutal as the holocaust.
The A-bombs are noteworthy because they killed a lot of people with just one device. Before that you needed large bomber formations or massive organisation to achieve the same amount of killing, but compare it to the slaughter on the eastern front, the japanese death camps, the german concentration camps or even carpet bombing, and they were just a small note on that huge ledger of lost lives that we call WW2.
Millions of japanese lives, geez. Grow up and read a book.
Re:that's awesome (Score:3, Insightful)
The excuse for dropping the bomb was to force Japan's capitulation, in order to avoid a costly land invasion. This, while partially true, is mostly a matter of the victors writing the history books. Many modern historians do not believe in this interpretation, as Japan was already defeated by then. The oil fields of China were retaken, the islands of southeast Asia had been reconquered. Japan was back to its pre-war territorial borders, which contain precious few resources (they couldn't even produce enough high-quality steel to fuel their own war effort, which was the original reason for their invasion of China, to secure the necessary resources ), and certainly at that point wasn't a real danger to anyone.
No, the bombs were dropped for the Russians. The Soviets showed a large interest in taking over the recently-vacated Manchuria, which as an industrial heartland of China the US simply could not allow, not to mention access to an all-year east-Asia port. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were warning shots that began the Cold War, it's just that the Japanese had the unfortunate luck of being the most convenient and justifiable party to nuke, at that moment in time.
Re:that's awesome (Score:3, Insightful)
As the GP said, the A-Bombs probably saved more Japanese lives than they killed (considering the alternative was a land invasion). Of course, the US intent was only the US lives, which it also saved in much greater number.
An American traitor is just as bad as a (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:youre a dirty damn hippy (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:News for Nerds How?!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
So this man somehow bring balance (yes, rather unpleasant, but still) in the world again. USSR having nukes stopped any other nuclear attacks just because US didn't want to risk with it.
I don't admire or celebrate what he did, but definitely it wasn't easy time for anyone, because both countries were at constant readiness to blow each other in pieces.
Re:News for Nerds How?!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Trinity was the biggest physics experiment ever until George. Your definition of 'geeky' must be very sectarian.
Re:that's awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Elections is coming... (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's remember how it was in US 100 years _after_ their Constitution was created. KKK, crime by army and police, religious nuts, US Indians issue. Capitalism wasn't rosy game altogether. Even now they still have problems. But heck, they are trying, even if there is some nuts like Bush who trying to undo all achieved.
People simply need to be more patient, and work on democracy to achieve it best. However, people want to have miracle already. Lot of problems, including huge bribery and corruption in post-Soviet countries, are just consequences of so called "fall out generation", which were in their best years when USSR felt. Generation which knew that they won't see fruits of huge work in democracy today, so they want everything NOW.
Just my humble opinion,
Peter.
Mixed up story, I don't recall him being a traitor (Score:5, Insightful)
Although lots of people seem to think him a traitor, he really wasn't (although it depends heavily on how your read the history). His father at one point emigrated to the US, then moved back to russia, taking his american born son with him. So while the guy was american born, when he became an agent he was a soviet citizen.
Using people as agents who have lived in the country they are supposed to work in is nothing new. But he worked as an agent for the country of which he was a citizen. He entered the US as a spy and as such did NOT commit treason.
That is an important difference to make.
Odd by the way that a lot of americans seem to condemn hailing this guy as a hero, when their own space program was built upon a nazi war criminal. Russian spy vs nazi, oh yeah the ruskies are the baddies alright. Working people to their death vs taking a dangerous mission to protect your home country.
For those of us with a mind (american, Idol is on) this guy and others helped created the policy of mutually assured destruction. While nukes are scary, they ain't half as scary as they would have been if only one side had them. Would you have trusted the US as the only country with nuclear weapons?
Re:News for Nerds How?!!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
If he did not steal it USSR would have had no bomb for 3-4 more years until the early 50-es. USA may have probably stated WW3 by that time. Just around the time the bomb was ready. I would rather not guess the location for "testing" the prototype under those circumstances.
It is the same as with Beria. Regardless of what do I think about him and regardless of the fact that he sentenced to death many millions he has to be given the credit for "Stalin passing away in his sleep from a stroke". If that did not happen Koba would have started WW3 around 54.
So morals aside as a result of such happy or less happy circumstances we are not all glowing in the dark. Let's drink to that.
Anticommunist sentiment in the US goes back to... (Score:5, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Red_Scare [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_Raids [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Communism [wikipedia.org]
Re:Nice trolling (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:surely a hero to the whole World (Score:5, Insightful)
The one thing that history has taught us is that power corrupts. If we in the west had the ability to make communism go away with one button and no chance of any reprisals we may have done it (or our policians may have done it for us without asking).
Also note that the Russia had a policy of never striking first with Nuclear weapons unless we deployed them first, we (NATO) had no such policy. We held on to Nukes as way to discourage a conventional invasion so we had a policy that allowed us to strike first with WMD's, otherwise this policy would not have been effective.
The rulers of the west had one thing in common with Hitler, they both despised the idea of Socialism in the form adopted by Russia. The fact is that in the cold war we came very close to a nuclear exchange anyway, and this was when we knew the opposing side could match us.
If we knew they had no chance of retaliating except with a conventional attack I could see us in the west having taken things a lot further. I also believe that Russia would probably have not stopped the tanks when they did, if not for us demonstrating our nuclear ability against Japan.
Re:that's awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:that's awesome (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess the same folks who say it's OK to drop the bomb on Japan (twice) wouldn't mind if the war took a different path and Japan dropped two nukes on the US - after all, it would save lives, wouldn't it?
Re:Pride? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:that's awesome (Score:3, Insightful)
War is ugly on all levels. Killing civilian members of the enemy's society is part of it. Note that I am not excusing it, just pointing it out.
you're not a historian, you're an anti-american (Score:2, Insightful)
the japanese, in their actions throughout southeast asia and the island hopping campaign, made it abundantly clear time and again that they were not going to give up one inch of land without fierce resistance to the death, even when that meant suicide by the thousands of personnel, down to the individual decisions of individual japanese soldiers
consider japanese actions on iwo jima, saipan, etc, by the truckload of examples. now ask yourself at the time what any level headed allied personnel would have prudently gauged the japanese attitude to be like in reaction to a land invasion of their mainland
now ask yourself, when faced with the decision to drop this bomb, compared with the number of certain deaths, of americans AND japanese, in a mainland invasion, what YOU would have decided (as opposed to what a "typical american" would have decided)
and now you want to say that some future cold war, that no one knew was coming, that geopolitical posturing, was going to be more prevalent in the minds of allied personnel in making that decision than simply considering the number of lives lost in a mainland invasion?
that's called a hindsight bias [wikipedia.org]
what nationality are you? because i want to call you a "typical {}ian" for your idiotic propagandized thinking
which would of course be a grave insult to your fellow countrymen, who are most probably a lot less propagandized and jingoistic than you are. but it would be fitting to hurl that insult at you anyways, to make you aware of how stupid and unfair your propaganda is
Re:Nice trolling (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:youre a dirty damn hippy (Score:3, Insightful)
That doesn't make it right, but considering the density of Japan, there aren't a whole lot of options. Cosider what would have happened if they had gone for Tokyo and Kyoto instead?
Re:you're not a historian, you're an anti-american (Score:5, Insightful)
Go ask Korea or some of the other surrounding neighbors about how vicious Japan was to fight against. The Japanese believed they were doing you a favor by killing you instead of letting you return home shamed. They didn't understand how Americans could surrender. To them surrendering made you a non person.
I swear...I am pretty pissed about a lot of things that America has done over the years, but this is one of those areas that people need to wake up, read their history, and attempt to understand the cultural differences that lead to that horrific event. "America is eeevil" card gets so overplayed, now that we actually need it to fix things no one takes it seriously. Catapult the propoganda and all... But hey, good luck explaining that to the folks you are chastising for believing the anti-American propoganda. That's kinda the point of propoganda.
Re:surely a hero to the whole World (Score:2, Insightful)
The level of historical and political sophistication on /. is appalling. I expect and excuse this stuff from high school freshmen, not from educated adults.
Re:that's awesome (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:that's awesome (Score:4, Insightful)
The only disputable fact is whether it was the lesser of the evils to do so or not.
Yes, Japan had lost the war. Anyone that has done any real research on the subject knows this. But in the same vein, it is also a fact that Japan was NOT going to surrender, despite the fact that they had already lost. We're talking about a country with a mentality that allowed for using it's citizens as suicide bombs. They simply could not surrender. They had to save face. There are interviews out there with Japanese officials that stated that being Nuked was the only way to end the war without mass casualties on both sides. A land invasion of Japan would have been an all out fight for honor, to the death. Period.
Noting is ever Black And White, especially in war. But your argument tries to make it into such a beast. There is little doubt that there was some incentive to beat the Soviets in the nuke arms race. But trying to say that that is WHY those bombs were dropped, well, it's ignorant at best.
Want more proof? What do arguments like yours conveniently overlook? Hint: How many nukes were dropped? If it was as your argument suggests, then why was the 2nd one dropped?
The answer is that the Japanese STILL refused to surrender even after the first one fell. It took TWO for them to finally suck it up and admit defeat, to realize that this was the only easy way out of the war. It's horrible, for sure. But anything less would have required a full on invasion of Japan, and along with it, HUGE casualties well over and above the losses incurred from the two nukes being dropped.
I have no doubt whatsoever that the nukes would have been dropped even if Russia hadn't been working on the bomb as well.
Re:News for Nerds How?!!!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Mixed up story, I don't recall him being a trai (Score:3, Insightful)
It's worth noting that it would be far worse if the USSR was the sole nuclear power in the world. Any rational evaluation of the mass starvations and outright idealistic purges that mark communism can only conclude that it's wrong and evil.
Even today, 20 years after the fall of the wall, Ex-soviet bloc countries continue to pay the price of a soviet legacy.
"The United States is the source of all evil" passes for 'enlightenment' and 'educated' these days, but such a shallow stance doesn't hold up to any serious scrutiny.
"Wrong" exists. "Evil" exists. Both exist outside of and regardless of the United States. It's not nuanced, it's not sophisticated, but when you take a look at Pol Pot's killing fields, Mao's mass starvation or soviet gulags there is no other conclusion.
There is a tendancy in these comments to paint the Soviet Union as a cuddly, legitimate alternative to the 'nasty US capitilistic-imperialistic hegemon of doom.' Such a stance is utterly naive and either blind to history or indifferent to communism's millions of internal victims.
Re:that was incoherent (Score:3, Insightful)
Do I believe the bomb was bad? Absolutely. Do I believe dropping it on civilians was bad? Absolutely. Do I believe that the first one probably had to happen? Probably. Do I believe the 2nd one was a horrific mistake? Most likely. Do I belive nuclear disarmament is a silly and pointless venture? Absolutely a moronic, pitiful, and ultimately futile attempt at closing Pandora's Box.
Cat is out of the bag folks. Humans do bad things to eachother and frequently only cease doing bad things to eachother when the cost of getting caught or retaliation is to high. Welcome to reality...we can't all hold hands and sing kumbaya. What we can do is attempt to minimize the damages by squelching silly propoganda crap and understanding that bad shit happens, violence is unfortunately sometimes necessary, and we need to work to prevent it from happening again rather than pointing fingers and beating the drums of war. I'm sure Stalin, or Hitler, or everyones favorite 'wronry' Kim Jong Il would have stopped murdering and oppressing people if we just asked nicely, threw some flowers, and sang on their doorsteps... To unilaterly point the finger at one side for war is stupid, ignorant, and is only self serving rhetoric used to fire up the people to start the war machine up again.
Re:that's awesome (Score:3, Insightful)
I strongly suggest before you post again that you look into what the Japanese did as policy to civilians in the places they invaded. To the POW's they took. Further, look in to how they treated their own civilians, women, children.
You have a lot of enlightenment ahead of you if you'll only look for it.
PS: Please don't mistake this for an argument towards stating that what the US did was Just and Good. War sucks. Many innocents died. But to make it out as black and white as you are trying to do is ignorance at best. Remember, Japan was not invaded. Japan had no reason to enter WW2. No one was attacking them. Now look into what they did and why and see the truth from all sides please.
Re:News for Nerds How?!!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Very unlikely, since the citizens were pretty anti-war back then. You might have noticed how long it took us to get into WW2, and what circumstance it took?
=
Re:that's awesome (Score:3, Insightful)
Although I agree with the thrust of your argument it is worth keeping in mind that the Japanese were keen to surrender to the Americans than they were to the Soviets, who had just entered the Pacific War. Problem with deciding what the main cause of the Japanese surrender was is that you hear different things from different people.
I tend to view things this way. The reasons that were at the forefront of the mind of those who decided to drop the bomb were reprehensible. Showing the power of the bomb to the Soviets and American willingness to drop it were not good or moral reasons for the bombs use. That doesn't change the fact that the justification for dropping the bomb holds water. Just because many of the leaders of the day viewed the bomb primarily as a tool for diplomacy with the Soviets doesn't mean that the other reasons they had in mind were not justification enough.
Everyone who criticizes the decision to drop the bomb likes to forget that Truman and his advisors were working with incomplete information. The Soviets had essentially black balled the Japanese and refused to pass on their peace offerings in anticipation for the Soviet invasion. What the Americans knew about Japanese desires for peace that had obtained from code cracking efforts. The Japanese leadership was split, and even if the Emperor sided with the peace party a coup was entirely possible (more than this, when the Emperor did side with the peace party there was an attempted coup).
What can we say for sure? The Soviet invasion was more of a fear for the Japanese than the bomb was. The bomb did not cause as many deaths as fire bombing. What was happening in Eastern Europe (especially Poland) was no secret. If the bomb had been dropped a few more times (hard at the time since after Nagasaki there would be no more bombs for a while) then perhaps it would have been a bigger factor. What the bomb offered was an excuse for the Japanese leadership, particularly the Emperor to surrender.
"The enemy now possesses a new and terrible weapon with the power to destroy many innocent lives and do incalculable damage."
That sounds much better than something like:
"A new power has entered this war who will do untold cruelty to our people"
The first provides an excuse. This weapons is new, it is totally devastating. Surrender may bring dishonor, but we are surrendering because of a new and terrible weapon. The second sounds like the Emperor was prepared to sell out Japan because he could not bring himself to have his subjects do their duty in a conventional fight.
If the Americans had not dropped the bomb (assuming humanity would be alive to debate the issue) can we say for certain the hardliners would no have mounted a successful coup? Would Japan be split in two like Korea? How many more Americans and Japaneses would be dead? I cannot in all honesty answer that question. I don't know if the dropping the bomb saved lives. And I have the benefit of hindsight, something Truman did not have.
Re:News for Nerds How?!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:youre a dirty damn hippy (Score:3, Insightful)
The US of today is not the same US of the 1940's. Nobody's trying to say 'What the US did then was good, and thus everything they do now is golden'. The world has changed.
Re:that's awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, duh. If you drop one atomic bomb and they still don't surrender, what else are you supposed to do? You have to convince the Japanese (and, yes, the Soviets) that Hiroshima wasn't just a one-shot parlor trick. The idea of losing one major city wasn't enough to convince everyone in Japan not to fight. The idea of losing one major city every three days, though, was.
It's hard for people like you to realize that nobody considered it that big a deal back then. A-bombs didn't have the totemic power they have today. All they offered at the time was one-stop shopping convenience; you could carry out a Dresden- or Toyko-scale firebombing campaign with a single plane. The idea that atomic explosions represented something radically new, different, and immoral didn't gain widespread traction until they became a hundred times more powerful.
Re:News for Nerds How?!!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:that's awesome (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Mixed up story, I don't recall him being a trai (Score:2, Insightful)
"Several" meaning "four" (1945 to 1949). "It" meaning "Harry".
The four years were entirely within the administration of one president. Also, four years during which America was not yet at war again -- it would be another year after the Russians tested Joe-1 that Americans and Soviets were facing off in Korea.
So maybe a better question to ask would be:
"Would you have trusted the US as the only country with nuclear weapons during the Korean and Vietnam Wars?"
Re:News for Nerds How?!!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
This kind of mindless rhetorical "The US hated the USSR, so the cold war was justified" crap is tragic in the extreme. We had a 4 year window to get rid of nuclear weapons. That window closed when the USSR blockaded Berlin, and refused International control... and the rest of mankind has suffered ever since.
Re:that's awesome (Score:3, Insightful)
Look up Operation Downfall. All estimates are that Japan would have suffered more casualties simply leading UP to an allied invasion than they did in the two bombings. At that time there were more than 200,000 casualties per month in the pacific theatre. Further, the casualty rate for Operation Downfall, once initiated, was at least as high as that of the bombings at best, and that's not including casualties leading up to invasion.
Next, Japan was in a state of Total War. Do you know what that means? It is not clear whatsoever that those killed in the bombings can be considered simply as innocent civilians.
Again, horrific, terrible, nothing good came of any of it. Such as war. But in light of how the Japanese had conducted war up to that point and the atrocities they committed, combined with the prospect of an invasion of Japan, it is certainly not any more horrific or terrible than any other possible outcome. Numerous Japanese leaders from the time have come out and stated that that was the least horrific outcome of the pacific war. Anything else would have been much much worse for all sides.
What would be better than trying to stuff an obviously huge gray mess of a war into nice little black and white boxes would be to simply accept the horror that war is, learn from our mistakes in the past, and ensure that it never happens again.
Re:Mixed up story, I don't recall him being a trai (Score:5, Insightful)
So what? One or two presidents were either smart enough or lacked the motivation to use them or both. How long do you really think that would have kept up? How long before we had a dim bulb in power with an enemy to provoke him? We'd have never lasted until now, without using them.
Remember, the US was involved in several wars after WW2, and one the the big reasons it refrained from using nukes, or even fully committing to those wars for that matter was the threat of nuclear retaliation from the USSR if they pushed too hard.
Tragedy: A Tale of Two Russians (Score:3, Insightful)
Politkovskaya had spent most of her career in helping the victims of horrific human-rights abuses. She was their only voice in an icy land of indifference. Commenting on the murder of Politkovskaya, Putin insulted her, "The level of her influence on political life in Russia was utterly insignificant."
By contrast, Koval helped the Soviet Union to develop weapons of mass destruction. They included nuclear weapons that can incinerate millions of victims within seconds. Commenting on his death, Putin heaps lavish praise and posthumously gives him the "Hero of Russia" medal, the highest Russian award.
I am almost at a loss for words to describe my utter disgust at the Kremlin.
Re:sputnik? (Score:3, Insightful)
Uhh, yeah, you realize that we did the same thing [wikipedia.org], right?
Don't underestimate Russian technology or engineering. It's easy to make light of it (vacuum tubes in their fighters, Chernobyl, In Soviet Russia.... jokes, etc, etc) but in so doing you miss some of their real accomplishments.
Russian rocket/missile technology is every bit as advanced (in some cases more so) as Western technology. There is no Western version of this [wikipedia.org] for example. Their ICBM technology was sufficiently advanced to scare the hell out of NATO and encourage arms-reduction treaties and talks.
And while Russian engineering practices may leave a little bit to be desired [wikipedia.org], it was those same engineering practices that produced this [wikipedia.org] and defeated Nazi Germany.
People underestimate Russia at their own peril.