1950: Fuchs guilty of espionage
In London, Klaus Fuchs, a German-born physicist who helped build the first two US atomic bombs, is convicted of passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. Because he committed the espionage before the USSR was designated a British enemy, he was only sentenced to 14 years.
Fuchs, a Communist, fled Germany for Britain after the rise of Adolf Hitler. In 1943, he was enlisted into the US atomic bomb programme and soon was relating precise information about the US programme to a Soviet spy. In 1945, Fuchs returned to England, where he was arrested by British intelligence in December 1949.
The discovery of Fuchs' espionage came four months after the Soviets successfully tested their first atomic bomb, a development that helped motivate US President Harry Truman to approve the American hydrogen bomb programme.
2005
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