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."
Re:Pride? (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:You are forgetting something. (Score:3, Interesting)
Sped up the process by perhaps one year or two (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Mixed up story, I don't recall him being a trai (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:that's awesome (Score:3, Interesting)
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 [antiwar.com]
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.
Re:surely a hero to the whole World (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Anticommunist sentiment in the US goes back to. (Score:3, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_Intervention_in_the_Russian_Civil_War [wikipedia.org]
Hate to burst your bubble... (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:that's awesome (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:Mixed up story, I don't recall him being a trai (Score:4, Interesting)
According to the Quebec Agreement [wikipedia.org], 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.