Transcripts For CSPAN3 Soviet Spy Klaus Fuchs 20240712

History tv, every weekend on cspan3, explore our nations past. Americasreated by Cable Television companies as a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. Next on American History tv, Nancy Thorndike greenspan talks about her book atomics by the dark lives of klaus fuchs. The Leon Levy Center for biography hosted this event and provided the video. She explains how she discovered klaus fuchs while researching her previous book. Lets go at it. I was asking you why klaus fuchs. I was interested in him when i was working on my previous book. Papers. Lot of family diaries during those late 1930s. He was always showing up in some piece of paper. Showing up as a very nice person. He took the children out to the movies. He played cards with them. He was in there he was in their music ensemble. People liked him. He was very quiet, very shy, but he was a nice person. All of a sudden, he was a spy, and they were dumbfounded. They did not know much about him when i was first working on it. At that point, i thought i should find out more. I went to the archives in london and there were three little skimpy files. The very last when i looked at, had a letter from somebody in the administration saying, what am i supposed to do with all of these files . The person who received it, throw them away. I was astounded by that. There is not anything. For the born but, it was what it was book, it was what it was. After ied a year finished, a friend of mine in germany said why dont you think about writing about fuchs . I am not sure there is enough information to write about him. Early looked, it was the 2000. Back to the archives of declassified5 had. Undreds and hundreds of files pages missing that they would not let you see but there were thousands of pages there. Yes, i can do this. He was an inherently interesting person. As i heard other stories, i was able to find a huge number of archives nobody else had ever found. I like being a detective. That sent me on a path. I found so much i did not know what to do with it all. At some point, if you dont stop, you will never finish. Do. Hat is what we detective work. I was astonished at the end of your book, you list over 25 or 30 archives you visited and they are all over the world. Which was your favorite one . Which was the most productive in this Treasure Hunt . Nancy the most productive was the university of kiel. I was told not to even bother to go there. There was one file and it was on his father. I thought, i cannot do that. Being i went to the archivist. Many people do not do that. I wrote to this archivist, this lovely lady. I had enough german to be able to do that. Not great, but good enough. Said,ote me back and she i think you might find gold here. She sent me the numbers for some files they had that were labeled miscellaneous disciplinary matters. Othing to do with klaus fuchs she was right. She obviously peaked. Archive in this. Ery sweet little town about klaus and his brother. Although nazis that they fought. Once i got the idea of how to find things, i found lectures they were giving. Pulling a group together, all kinds of stuff. I found hundreds and hundreds of pages. That is a good point. Lets have you talk a little bit about klaus himself as a young an and how he became antifascist. Tell us that story. That gets into the motivation for what comes next. Nancy it was a key part of his life, one of the most fascinating because nobody else ofhe started off in a family four children, he was number three. He was born right before world war i, 1911. He had a very clinically active father. The father was extremely liberal. He was a minister in the very conservative Lutheran Church. The two did not match. His mission in life was to support the working class. E was a socialist he was not a communist. All of his children became socialists. Where klaus is extremely reserved, his father was very outspoken. They both had the same steely unbending determination and they were both the same in that way. , when he was a teenager, he was the scholar in the family. He was famous in the area for his mathematical gifts and talents. When he was a senior in high school, he won the regional prize of the best student. The best student in the whole area. Politics. Talk about his brother and two sisters and his father did. They were all activists. In the to the university 1930s to study mathematics. His brother was there studying law. The first thing his brother had him do was to join the socialist party with the students there. In 1930, there were fights in the streets. Got their grips in the german universities very early. Most of the students were from welltodo families. They were government officials kids. Socialistsnot many and there were not many communists. There were a lot of nazis. They were having fights in the streets. The college said at one point, klaus said, i learned more in the streets than i did in the classroom. He and his brother moved to the university of kiel and they started their own socialist student group. They thought there should be a merging of the two. Students were much more entrenched. The way that students thought at that time was by making incendiary speeches and handing out pamphlets and calling each other names. Level of the discourse. Tumult, it can cause fisticuffs. Nazi administration at all. In 1932, the turning point, which sets up the platform for the rest of his life, 1932 was a president ial election. Hindenburg was running for a second term. The socialists decided they were going to support hindenburg because they did not want to split the vote. There was another candidate running for president and they wanted to make sure that candidate did not get in. The candidate was adolf hitler. Brother, they were dismayed. , they could not support him. Immediately, the socialist party kicked them out. The communists said, come be with us. Eventually,ted but they both joined, and they never looked back. They did not join because they were communists. They joined because they wanted to fight the nazis and they thought the socialists were not fighting the nazis. And thealists communists hated each other. They tried to kill the nazi students. The Council Voted secretly to kill him. And thes a riot students around the university were yelling throw him in the fjord. It was a piece of the baltic sea. It was february. Him in. Ew all he ever said about it was that they he swims out. It was very traumatic. He ended up in berlin a few weeks later. They were trying to get people to mobilize against the nazis. They were risking their lives every single minute. Life. A terrible it did have an effect on him. Obviously part of his motivation. Nancy exactly. At one point in your narrative, you quote the head of the british mi5. Breaks andthe case they caught fuchs. [indiscernible] it was all ideology. Saw the british and the americans by this time, he had become a british citizen after fleeing germany. He just wanted to balance the table, right . Nancy yes, that was true. Whiteite was also dick. As also the head of mi6. Eople liked fuchs they did not think what he did was right. But they liked him as a person. Some people did not like him because he was too reserved and it made him feel creepy. He never said anything. Others like him very much. He was very, very generous to his friends. Completely were ideological. That the warngry started in 1939, he was reading the newspapers. In his mind, what it looked like was and there was some truth to this the upper classes of british society, would be nice andhe germans and russians if the germans won, it was ok with them. There was very little in the newspapers, we have to help our allies, the russians. Molotov. After that, the russians got attacked, the brits did nothing to help them. He felt they really hated the communists and they were going to do whatever they could to get rid of them. Time, he was a communist. When you first joined, he was not. By then, he had gone full into it. He became a real true believer. Nancy true believer. Defended it. Nancy completely. He was always talking about his friends at the time, open about a communist. Daughters, the whole way back and forth, he would be telling you about communism. Moving along in your story, he is a very good scientist and he begins working for the on the earlyitain projects and he was transferred to meet oppenheimer and other noted scientists. He has been passing things onto 1940 1942 . Nancy 1941 is when he started. He is very successful at it, very calm. No one suspects them. He slips right under the radar. People either like him because he is friendly. In this way, he is a perfect spy. Nancy exactly. What really strikes me about your narrative, when he moves back to britain after the war is working at a Scientific Institute and you found these transcripts. He came under suspicion and they started following him and tapping the phones at his house. You have the transcripts of these conversations. What a rich resource. Nancy hundreds of pages. They tapped his friends phones, too. Unusual, richery source for a biographer to have telephone transcripts. A diary is good but a telephone transcript is in the moment. Were these transcripts declassified recently . In the last 10 years . Nancy they mostly came out around 20032008. Telephones,e they they had bugs in his office. Him being on the telephone with they would get all of that. Moment, every inch of his life covered for 34 months. They have good evidence. They had not caught him in the act. Then there was this little delicate dance between his interrogators and fuchs. This is a marvelous story. Naive he is. Y how did do do this that but it was not really important. It spying. Consider nancy he did not consider it spying. Out the u. K. And the u. S. With the information they were supposed to give and didnt. How did he get caught . Nancy there was all this information about him. He was not spying so they could not use it. In arlington, virginia, there was a big decoding center. The u. S. And u. K. Had their people there and they had russian messages from the early 1940s and for various reasons, they struggled for years to decode them, and they found the code. They deciphered bunches and bunches of them. They thought there was a spy involved in the manhattan project. They knew there was somebody involved. He had a sister and he might have gone here or there. There wasw they knew somebody. Within two weeks, they thought it was probably klaus. He fit everything. Interesting to me, the interesting piece is that he knew he was going to be uncovered. Out untilot find this august of 1949. There were these messages and this information was in it. In april of 1949, he stopped spying. I go through this the evidence of what was going on is a little complicated. Basically, the only thing he ever said about it was he wrote a note to his father when he was in prison and his father had come to visit him in the summer of 1949, and at that time, there was interest in having a nephew come live with klaus. Wrote, to his father, he now you understand why i could not take care of this little boy. Goingng that this was all on. In july, when his father and nephew were there, mi five and the fbi did not know there was a spy. He knew they were getting close to airing it all out. How, i do not know. That did not work. They then decided after much decided miey five interviewed him several times. You tell this great story about the mi five officer, who was a great interrogator. Hours and hours of discussions. Sort of blurts out and says, yes, i did that. Nancy another friend convinced him he had to confess, to make sure his friends did not fall under suspicion. That is why he confessed. There were other pieces to that. That was the main one. He felt extremely guilty that he had done this, that he had never been aware of these problems that he could cause his friends. He confesses in february of 1950. Nancy the end of january. The korean war has not yet broken out. Nancy no, it hasnt. Know, ahere is, you ofth of mccarthyism whiff mccarthyism and the cold war is raising in the soviets, four years after hiroshima, they tested their own atomic bomb. Warhis wretches up the cold ches up the cold war. He is unmasked at a very delicate time. Me,surprising thing to julius and Ethel Rosenberg get caught a few years later and they get executed. 14years fuchs gets a sentence. Happen . This nancy they tried him for espionage. If it had been treason, he would have been hung. If he confessed, he thought maybe that would happen to him. They tried him for espionage, as far as i can tell. Spying ime he was he was spying for a friendly nation, they were allies, the russians were. It made a difference in their law and how they defined espionage versus treason. Maximum for the espionage. He got out in nine for good behavior. Our definitions are different and there were a lot of other politics involved. Mccarthy had started. He did his West Virginia speech he confessed and then they had out he had a week where they did not do anything with them. February, hemid went to West Virginia. All of a sudden, there was all this information that came out at that moment just as mccarthy had this list of names was exactly when klaus was arrested. It was a tremendous whirlwind of communism. That had been going on for quite some time. U. S. , and there was much more in the news that in britain. Make a big deal over it. They also have a different legal system. They cannot make a big deal of it. If too much information is out, it jeopardizes the trial. When the brits gave the fbi information, it always seemed to leak out. It would end up in the u. S. News and then it would end up in england. We are going to lose. Trial ifot even have a we are jeopardized by the british press. That was a big concern to the british. It is harder for them to whip things up with those particular laws. The other surprising thing about the klaus story, he goes to prison, he spent nine years in prison. I guess he is paroled in he is allowed to go to the eastern bloc. He spent the rest of his life in east germany, a member of the , a member of the elite. Goes back to working on science. As aying to , he believes in the idea that Nuclear Energy can provide electricity and believes in the idea that Nuclear Energy can provide and of course the east germans have no interest in they have all this black coal they think they can rely on. So he had a rather frustrating career after this. But he is still loyal to the ideology, to the party he was loyal to the ideology, but he wasnt so much loyal to the party. He was never a person who complained. He just kept his mouth shut. But he did decide. E thought stalin was the biggest communist. He didnt quite say it but he was devastated when they wouldnt let him agree to the reactor program. Yes. That was a huge disappointment. A huge disappointment. Got to know his son . His nephew. Yes, i do know him. He became a very important source for the book, no . Very partner, and he had all the family papers. One day after i had been visiting him for years. I visited him several times a year and we sat and had lunch and chitchat. This is in germany . In berlin. Yes. He had this whole closet of information i had no idea and at the very last moment when he was going to ship it to an archive that was going to work on it which means i wouldnt have gotten my hands on it forever. So i just sat there and took pictures with my ipad of it for days until thats where i found so much information and, that and the stazi archives and the stories from the family, because where as the earlier times no one was around then. These times, remember, he had other a niece who had been an american niece who went to the university and she gave me a lot of information, because she used to go visit him on the w50ekeds so i had a lot of firsthand knowledge of what he was like at that time. Its amazing. You get these surveillance tributes from the British Intelligence then the stazi ar kies to tell you what he was doing with his life after he gets out of prison. Remarkable. Yes. I just let me say, everybody in east germany was an informant. If they were in your house they were informing on you, thats why they were there, so there was lots of information from a lot of people. So coming back to his father, emil who was important in his life. You quote him as saying he was never a man of the church but of faith and then you write, the same could be said of the son. So tell us a little more about emil, the father. Coming we are to a problem let me move closer. That seems to do it. He had his own way his own ideas about religion. He was very faithful to the bible. Nd those principles, but his ethics and his personal attitude toward the social side of him. The sense of equality. You know, werent part of the Lutheran Church in germany, anyway. And he just made his own way in that church with his own principles and his own elliottics. Ethics. So he took what he saw as the faith, and that is what he preached. But it wu7b9 what the Lutheran Church preached. It wasnt their dog anyway. Their dogma. He expanded it. He was also very involved in education. He helped reform Adult Education in germany. He was always out doing something. He never stayed still. He was always advocating for something and writing pieces in the newspaper. And he hated the he was railing against the rightwinning militia that was going on. And he made it through the war. He was in prison for a while, because he always was talking too much, and his children got nervous about what he might say about them too. And so they didnt tell him much so he couldnt repeat it. Because he always seemed to. Not to be mean. He just ran his mouth. And he said something about the nazis and she went and told the police, and they put him in prison for six weeks, and he was found guilty and he was lucky. It was in 1933 when there was still decent judges. So they gave time served is what they did. So thats what he was. Always pushing. Yet he never gave up. He was the most determined person. He lived to 7 and even at that age he was still writing letters and pushing people. And that was emil. And a very Strong Influence on his son. And the other people in his family too. So coming to sort of the end of the story. The point of it all. Theres always in every spy story an argument of well, did the spy make any difference . Did it change history . And you make an argument at the end of the book. Its only speculation, but you point out in terms of the his ology of events that spying may have helped the soviet advance their own Atomic Bomb Program by a year or two. If so, they got the bomb in 1949. And so it was available as such on the shelf there. Hen the korean war breaks out. And if they had not developed the bomb in 1949 and it had been delayed until 1951 or 1952, theres a possibility the korean war would have started, and there would have been the temptation by the americans to use an atomic bomb again against the Chicago White sox troops that were against the chinese troops that were intervening and pushing back against the americans. So in that respect he could have changed history and evented the use of another atomic weapon. Theres also did the needs justify the end . And theres a number of factors. E had bombs sitting on islands and mcarthur wanted to do that and truman said, no. So it wasnt just that they were afraid of the russians. But that had to be a piece of it. Along with the other factors. So from a Military Point of view, it had that consequence from a political point of view in the u. S. , it certainly helped fair to up mccarthy in particular. And newspapers that were that that, that had a profound effect on us. So you end the book with a question about clubhouse. Was he good or evil . A traitor or a hero . And that you even ask the question is kind of shocking. I mean, we think of him as a spy. And yet, you can ask was he a traitor or a hero . And i guess its an open question at the end of the book, huh . Right. Mean, in terms of someone asked me the if he was evil which made me think about the moral ambiguity and accountability of people. I mean, none of us are perfect, and we all have things we do that are not consistent with our personality, as some people would see it. Although he was fairly consistent, you can read his principles, the way he carried them through is the way he saw it. But you know, if in fact he what he did helped us convinced us in part not to drop a bomb, to my mind, and probably to yours, thats a good thing. Right. You know . Its a little am big youse. Ambiguous. And so many of us. The people we are talking about now in what we are doing with our own history. This person did this, but they also did something that was decent. So this is not aen unusual type of question. We talk about thomas jefferson. There were many facets to peoples permits, and how do you grapple with them . Are they all good or bad in one dimension . Or can you somehow look at these things in a fuller way, and maybe you cannot come to a complete answer but you can respect that there are different perspectives in all of us. Absolutely. Well, i want to move to some questions weve got in the q a box here. But before i do so, just following up on that. I was sort of astonished at the end. You have a funeral scene when clubhouse dies, and who is in attendance but Vladimir Putin is there . Yes. [laughter] and theres a picture of im4. And there was a newspaper picture so it wouldnt have gone well in the book but he was the representative. He was the kgb agent there and he was just a young guy. He probably thought he was a hero, right . Yes. Probably did, but the russian government has ever in acknowledged that he spied. For the most part. Never. So lets move to some questions from the audience. Heres one. Actors outraged by scientists like brown from the u. S. . I guess he would have heard about this assuming he heard about it in prison. He never made any mention of it, so i honestly dont know the answer to that one way or another and i honestly dont know if he knew about it. I mean i dont think they had a lot of newspapers to read in prison. Did he express regret about his spying aside from the risk it ran for his friends at the time . Did he later issue an apology . Did he ever never. He never said i should be have spied. Except in connection with his friends, he did not feel that he had done anything wrong by giving the information to the russians. End of story. Yes. Well, he is like his father. Very determined, and loyal to the beliefs and principle. Exactly. So another question here. Could you say a few words about clubhouses relationship with his onetime handler. Can you incidence can i, son i cant. Yes. At was he started working with her in about 1942, to it would have been 1942 or 1943 before he went to the u. S. She was part of this interesting family. German communists. All of whom came over to london. And her brother was a very they i dont know if were friends but they were come patriots, jurgen. And he actually was here in the u. S. For a while. And he was jurgen who put his sister in touch with clubhouse in order to be his handler. And it appears where as he knew jurgen and may have known some of the others. He didnt seem to know ursula. So ursula he didnt identify as a member of the family. And they had a very professional relationship. He is one of the top spies for the communists. And she has worked in a few different countries. She and he would meet in bambry, and walk along the lane and pretend they were boyfriend dingful, and he would hand her whatever information he had at the time and she had a special place to put it behind a tree and someone would come pick it up. And so they did it for a period of time. So they didnt have a long relationship, but it was very professional, and she was one of the best. Theres no doubt. Supposedly, he never got back in touch with her. But it turns out that when he was at har welle which is near oxford. She was in a town maybe 2030 miles away. And i wondered if perhaps they had gotten in touch, just themselves, and she was perhaps the person who told him that the that the arlington people and working on the messages that there was a possibility that they could come up and find out about him. Because they were just right there. The first night he was interviewed, he disappeared for hours. And didnt know where he was. He had a car. He could have driven to see her. No one was following him at that moment. So i dont know if they ever saw each other again or not, so i dont know the full relationship. And her family, i would have been interested in talking to her family. Her children around, but theres a certain narrow ti they have that they give, and there are books written. She wrote an autobiography or memoir and somebody else, a family friend wrote Something Else in german. And it doesnt say anything other than what we know, so i wasnt able to get to the family, and i wouldnt have noten any information i think that was new and different. Ey had a very professional relationship, and if there was anything more, that remains. So mysteries remain. So if you could ask what se fuks a question would it be . I would ask him how he knew that the what was going on in arlington . And that he was close to being uncovered. He never said anything about it. So that story is one. But theres another story. It turns out he was in a piece of british history that most people dont know much about is their internet. They entered 30,000 mostly german refugees. 90 of them were jewish and would be ed that this a fifth colony and rounded up 30,000 of them. And some of those several thousand they sent to canada. Nd in canada, fuks was freing. He was very about his communism and cameer in the nfluence of a very cares matic amed hanz. And these are all many of the people in these were Young University students or very, very as one of the camp commanders said i have the smartest depoup often people in any place in canada right here. [laughter] one went object to be a Nobel Peace Prize and these people made amazing discoveries in their lives later. Just like fuks, he was in edinboro. Taken off. Thats what happened to all of them. One of those people was another fizzist. Physicist. And it turned out who was part of this communist group. And it turned out when clubhouse was head of the in har whimsical in england this person worked for him. So he knew that clubhouse was a communist. Because clubhouse did not hide his feelings when he was in the camps. And he worked for him. And there was a lot of tension between them. I knew this persons wife, and i went and talked to her on a number of occasions. And she would tell me about it. And i would like to know what the relationship was and how they bridged this problem of this person knowing about includes communism. Because clubhouse did not say he was a communist at that point only saying he was a social democrat. So how did they they work this out . I have no idea. And i tried to find out, and nobody knew. I know that family. I know his family, well, and they didnt know. They didnt know. Right. Didnt know. So another member of our audience tonight asks, can you outline the nature of the information clubhouse shared or knew, and how exclusive was it . His first he first worked on diffusion, gaseous diffusion which takes the isotope you want to use out of your radium in order to and that Chain Reaction in a your rain yum bomb. So that was his first thing. And he a lot of the theory behind it, and when he came to the u. S. , he worked on all the controls of the whole plant for the u. S. So if you had this problem or that problem, heres what you could do. It was highly technical getting one of these things to work. A diffusion plant was the size of three football fields or something, and there was thousands of they had to go through. When he went thats all he had at first because thats all he did. When he went to west al most he worked on the plutonium bomb and the lenses that were explosive and they had to compress at a certain time. It was oneone millionth of a second was the timing to compress the core and create the Chain Reaction of plutonium. He gave those whole plans to the russians on june 2 of 1945. And they were they may have been more theoretical, but he had a lot of the drawings and things in there too. So that was very useful. Yes. Information. There were other people there, ted hall being one of them. Who supposedly also gave them that similar type of information. But i dont think he would have been in the position to know as much as clubhouse, because clubhouse was right in the thick of things. I mean, they were both smart, no doubt about it. But clubhouse when youre 18, even if youre smart, theres still some things you dont know. No matter how smart you are. He was very young at that point. Access to much more information. Yes. He did have much more. And he was creating something himself, as well, on these lenses. So. Well, listen, fancy, this has been a delightful conversation. We are a little bit over the hour. So we will i think end on that note. I want to thank you very much for being able and willing to do this. And i hope our audience will come back in a week from august 13th where a biography of yet nother scientist, jbs hall samanth, itten by supermain yum. And we will have that conversation conducted by karl simmons. Im sorry, nancy . I want to add the person clubhouse was involved with in the camps who ended up being i mentioned him hans collar. He was a recruiter, an agent for the Russian Military intelligence. And im pretty sure he did work for haldafe. Hans collar was amazing. So im pretty sure that i may have gotten it no. Im almost it was halldane. Well, halldane was a member of the communist party himself. If he were going to, collar would have convinced him, believe me. [laughter] so i have another question. Im curious to know. Have you landed on a new project . Or uncertain . Im looking. Ok. Yes. This whole our life at the moment kind of threw a few bricks in. So you just trying to figure out the landscape takes a while to with all of this. So im just going to try and get through this phase, and im hoping something will fall in my lap. Because thats what happened with the other two. Let me know. Well, i hope you find a new project. Well, thank you very much. Thats as productive as this one was. Anyway, thank you very much. And i thank you. This is American History tv on cspan 3 where each weekend we feature hours of program exploring our nations ast. August marked the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombings of her row she may and nagasaki. We look back at this with ian 208. Heres a preview. You know, at that point, you know, japanese strength was kind of down to its last drop. But it is true as the caller says that the japanese were essentially pouring all of their remaining strength, their military strength and their civilian population, they were preparing to meet the invasion and fight us as she said, tooth and nail. You had women and children being trained to fight with bamboo spears and being told to use kitchen knives if necessary. And so i think avoiding an invasion of japan was absolutely critical. And i think it was so critical that if it was true that really if you could say the choice was bomb two cities with an atomic bomb or launch a bloody invasion, is one or the other i think if that was true, i think using the bombs exactly the way we did, that is hitting cities without prior explicit warning i think you can defend that. The traditional way in which americans have understood the atomic bombings has produced a binary where hit the two cities or launch an invasion. And i personally dont think that was right. I think there were many options o than just those two. You can make a case of course its a counterfact that an invasion would have been necessary with or without atomic bombs. Keep in mind the first stage of the planned invasion, the target date for that was november 1st. Thats almost three months after the bombing of her row she may. So the idea that the bombs were a last resort to an invasion that was just about to happen. Thats not quite right. But as i say, veterans of that war had their own very, very stronglyheld beliefs about what had happened at the end of the war. And as annual historian and someone who has 13wr50u6ed literally hundreds of veterans, ive never made it a practice to argue with world war ii veterans. I think its important to recognize around honor the feelings, the very strong feelings the veterans have about the subject. Learn more about the subject next, as the u. S. Postal service and its rule in voting by mail are featured on current news, we feature several films about the u. S. Postal service. First, a film introducing zip codes, which were introduced in 1963. We then take a ride in men and mail in transit from 1956 when train transporting most of the mail in 1956. The mailman is a 1946 educational film which takes a behind the scenes look at the lives of the post them the postman. We end with a 1970 Postal Service film documenting innovation and development at the time. Mmmm zip mmmm zip well, hello, my friend how do you do . I hope you have a moment or two to listen to what we have been say to each and every one of you they never have failed through the years through driving rain, sleet, or