Fallout How the World Stumbled Into the Nuclear Shadow

Between December 1943 and August 1944, <b>Franklin Delano Roosevelt</b> and <b>Winston Churchill</b> ignited the <b>Cold War</b>, a superpower rivalry that would dominate the world over half a century, by building an <b>atomic bomb</b> and excluding their Russian allies. <b>Peter Watson</b> tells the pulse-pounding story of how two atomic physicists tried to counter this in two very different ways. While <b>Niels Bohr</b> sought to convince President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill to share their nuclear knowledge with <b>Joseph Stalin</b>, nuclear scientist <b>Klaus Fuchs</b>, a German Communist emigre to Britain, was leaking atomic secrets to the Soviets in a rival attempt to ensure parity between the superpowers. Neither succeeded in preventing the <b>World War II</b> allies from unleashing the atom bomb on the world.<br> <br> <br> <br> <b><i>Fallout</i></b> proves that the atomic bomb was not needed, and was made as a result of a series of flawed decisions. The Americans did not tell the UK that the atomic research was compromised by Soviet spies; the British did not tell the Americans that in 1943 they knew for sure that Germany did not have a nuclear bomb program. Neither country admitted to the scientists developing the bomb that it would never be used to counter the (non-existent) <b>German nuclear threat</b>. Had the scientists known, many of them would have refused to complete work on the bomb.<br> <br> <br> <br> This story shows how politicians fatally failed to understand the nature of atomic science and, in so doing, exposed the world needlessly to great danger, a danger that is still very much with us.