Russian Alsos
The Soviet Alsos or Russian Alsos is the western codename for an operation that took place during 1945–1946 in Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, in order to exploit German atomic related facilities, intellectual materials, material resources, and scientific personnel for the benefit of the Soviet atomic bomb project.
Also significant in both the first Soviet atomic bomb test – a plutonium-based atomic bomb which required a uranium reactor for plutonium generation – and the second test, was the Soviet acquisition of a significant amount of uranium immediately before and shortly after the close of World War II.
[1] Near the close and after the end of World War II in Europe, the Soviet Union and the Western powers had programs to foster technology transfer and exploit German technical specialists.
For example, the United States had Operation Paperclip[2][3][4] and the Soviet Union had "trophy Brigades"[5] advancing with their military forces.
[6] Authorized by the Council of People's Commissars and the State Defense Committee to receive reparations entrusted to Germany by the decision of the Potsdam Conference, the return of valuables and property taken out during the war was Iosif Titovich Tabulevich.
[7] On 18 September 1944, a decree established a specialized task force within the 9th Chief Directorate (Главное Управление, Glavnoe Upravlenie) of the NKVD to support the work of German scientists "invited" to the Soviet Union.
[8][9] On 23 March 1945, in Stalin's office, Lavrentiy Beria suggested that specialized teams be sent to Germany to search for atomic technology and related personnel.
2, Lev Andreevich Artsimovich and Yulij Borisovich Khariton, were assigned to provide scientific guidance to the operation.
[13] Unfortunately for the Soviet effort, the KWIP had mostly been moved in 1943 and 1944 to Hechingen, on the edge of the Black Forest, which eventually became part of the French occupation zone.
This move and a little luck allowed the Americans to take into custody a large number of German scientists associated with nuclear research (see Alsos Mission and Operation Epsilon).
The objectives of their pact were threefold: (1) Prevent plunder of their institutes, (2) Continue their work with minimal interruption, and (3) Protect themselves from prosecution for any political acts of the past.
Two days later, Ardenne, his wife, his father-in-law, his secretary Elsa Suchland, and the biologist Wilhelm Menke, were flown to Moscow.
Volmer's group with Victor Bayerl (physical chemist) and Gustav Richter (physicist) was under Alexander Mikailovich Rosen, and they designed a heavy water production process and facility based on the counterflow of ammonia.
The installation was constructed at Norilsk and completed in 1948, after which Volmer's organization was transferred to Zinaida Yershova's group, which worked on plutonium extraction from fission products.
He worked with the Heereswaffenamt (HWA, Army Ordnance Office) which eventually provided an order for the production of uranium oxide, which took place in the Auergesellschaft plant in Oranienburg, north of Berlin.
However, in mid-May 1945, with the assistance of Riehl's colleague Karl Günter Zimmer, the Soviet nuclear physicists Georgy Flerov and Lev Artsimovich showed up one day in NKVD colonel's uniforms.
The institute in Sungul' was responsible for the handling, treatment, and use of radioactive products generated in reactors, as well as radiation biology, dosimetry, and radiochemistry.
The institute was known as Laboratory B, and it was overseen by the 9th Chief Directorate of the NKVD (MVD after 1946), the same organization which oversaw the Soviet Alsos operation.
[42][43] (Laboratory V, in Obninsk, headed by Heinz Pose, was also a sharashka and working on the Soviet atomic bomb project.
Other notable Germans at the facility were Werner Czulius, Hans Jürgen von Oertzen, Ernst Rexer, and Carl Friedrich Weiss.
In 1947, Timofeev-Resovskij was rescued out of a harsh Gulag prison camp, nursed back to health, and sent to Sungul' to complete his sentence, but still make a contribution to the Soviet atomic bomb project.
[55][failed verification] After applying to the Canadian Embassy in Moscow for asylum (exact date classified) giving the name of Professor E. W. R. Steacie as a reference, Geib was told to come back the next day.
In addition to his leftist political views, he stated that he was motivated to go to work in the Soviet Union as he was 33 years old, married, had three small children with a fourth on the way, and unemployed.
Other scientists sent to the Soviet Union included Robert Döpel (atomic scientist from Leipzig), Wilhelm Eitel (chemist), Reinhold Reichmann (isotope separation, sent to work with Barwich), Gustav Richter (a colleague of Hertz at Siemens and assigned to heavy water production at NII-9), W. Schütze (isotope separation and cyclotrons) and Karl Günter Zimmer (atomic physicist and biologist from the Kaiser-Wilhelm Gesellschaft Institute for Brain Research in Berlin-Buch[58] and also working with Riehl at Auergesellschaft).
Hence, he arranged for the Alsos Mission to remove 1,200 tons of uranium ore from a salt mine near Stassfurt, an area due to fall within the Soviet occupation zone.
This turned out to be the bulk of the German stock of uranium ore.[73] As soon as the Soviet troops occupied Vienna, a search team was sent to Austria.
[18][74] The Auergesellschaft facility in Oranienburg had nearly 100 metric tons of fairly pure uranium oxide, which a search team found.
From inspecting a plant in the Grunau district, they learned that the company Rohes had shipped several hundred tons of uranium, but they could not then determine the final destination.
