Welcome to the documentary from the BBC world service where we report the world, however difficult the issue, however hard to reach costs from the BBC world service. I supported by advertising. cannot invites you to sail in luxurious style, with flagship queen mary to queen Victoria, queen elizabeth and newly announced queen and each inspiring voyage features basis, accommodations, fine, dining entertainment. And immersive shore experiences all with british flare contact. Your travel adviser visit, tuner dot com, slash babies, or call one eight hundred seven june.

Hi, I'm Rosa S, present of the bomb season, two from the BBC world service, its gripping espionage, thriller about Klaus Fuchs, the man who's been described as the world's most dangerous spy to leak atomic secrets to the soviets. We need the help of their prized spy master, and this is where the story gets personal that store soviet spy master is part of my family history. She was migrate, hans as a special bonus for listeners of the documentary. I thought you might like to hear episode. One you'll only get this episode here for the rest, such for the bomb, wherever found this put cost

It's three: I am a monday, the tenth of september nineteen, forty nine in the north, london, home of Michael Perron, director of Britain's atomic energy programme. The telephone parents, is startled from his dreams, still half asleep. He rose out of bed. The of it's. The line delivers an urgent message. We need waiting to be american now the americans. What could they want. His mind, races he finds no wants- but he knows it must be serious rushes to get dressed and hurried out of that into the dark night he jumped into taxi, made fifteen minute right down to the middle of london, went to the

the sea where he was hustled in HU. This secure communications room there by the: u s state department, there were several coded telex messages that had come that evening from the pentagon. That said, the? U S, air force using specially equipped. Flames had detected radiation in the atmosphere can only really be one explanation for you. is after atomic bombs have devastated the japanese cities, hiroshima and nagasaki. The soviets have exploded and atomic. Of the british and american scientists have assured that governments that russia is three or more years away from getting the bomb, but this news completely reach the postwar landscape, a russian bomb challenges, american global supremacy,

and for the breads it could mean obliteration. Moscow is only fifteen hundred miles from london. Can this happen from the BBC wild service? I'm rosa radically, and this season two of the bomb

decide what a grave matter in this quiet graveyard on the outskirts of Berlin there's a headstone it smooth made of pinkish granite is engraved with block capital letters, but no epitaph, just a simple name and dates. There's no hint of the historical significance of the man buried here, klaus fuchs in life, Fuchs is now standing, mathematician and theoretical physicist when he died standing at his funeral here in nineteen eighty eight there was a kgb agent, his name vladimir Putin. So why, with the future president of russia come to pay his respects on behalf of the motherland to a physicist

Well, class Fuchs was much more than just a talented scientist. He was instrumental in the development of the american and british nuclear bomb programmes. He was also a spy. He changed the course of history and the balance of well power and putin with grateful back in the us embassy. In september, nineteen, forty nine michael parents, bleary I'd his head is spinning. The americans want into british aref planes with radiation monitoring equipment so that he can confirm that finding there is no room for era: russia and the capitalist west are engaged in a global power struggle. The cold war is threatening to turn decidedly hot, but parent has a problem

He knows the man he needs to call. He also now There is no way he can call him. Nazi thorndyke greenspan is author of the biography atomic spy, the dot lives of klaus fuchs. Only four days previously, on september, six of nineteen, forty nine, my parents had had other bad news. Britain's intelligence agency and my five have recently received a telegram from the british embassy in washington night, the classic british understatement we have discovered material which, though fragmentary appears to india, that in nineteen forty four, a british or bridges sponsored scientists working here on atomic energy, all related subjects was provide. in russia with policy informational documents. My pay

This opinion is this will prove a grave matter. Grey matter is putting it lightly. The intelligence comes from a topsecret american code breaking mission in Arlington virginia, and am I five put one of their sharp his minds on the job, awesome martian. As a professional lawyer with fastidious attention to detail, you changed smoke, cigarettes and poor, stiff whiskeys from the bottle. He's just draw you work day and night to join the dots sick, fragments of broken incoherent messages. The americans have intercepted from the russians five years previously. Some of the code words. What country is the united states island does the british, but there is an agent mentioned an agent. They could rest agent. Rest is the mist. It is a puzzle with most of the pieces missing but mark and painstakingly starts to form a picture nigel

Is it also on british intelligence history? It turned out eventually the rest. We only have been one particular person who given the furlough, had been given permission to leave the premises over christmas. Nineteen, forty four, and to visit his sister Boston Martin consults his boston. I my five unaided. I need the help of somebody who knows the british nuclear programme inside out perron. Is there man, Small team of the agency's top brass goats mademoiselle it's overlooking the thames, with some deeply disturbing news that it was a british spot in the american british atomic bomb project.

Spy had been providing top secret information to the russians throughout and Martin has a name. Klaus thinks one of Britain's most respected and accomplished nuclear sites. How could it all have gone so disastrously, wrong answers? Can be found in the most unlikely of places back to July. team forty two war rages on the continent and nazi germany has just invaded russia. Meanwhile, in the summer heat of wool, oxfordshire steam train pulls up at family railway station is typically quiet day after noon and the station cap stretches in the son, a young man with a quiet, studio, sad steps onto the pie

he's wearing glasses, dressed in a casual seat and carrying a Natasha case. He strolled out into the country lines. He looks com but a thin film of sweat on his forehead betrayal. nervousness at the same time, three miles away an energetic thirty. Three year old woman is leaving her delicate, farmhouse home on a bicycle her blouse leaves With flour from the scones she has baking in the oven. Children are being looked after by the housekeeper. She stands on the pedals and flies through the lanes heading towards them to elicit lovers on the way to a trust. Perhaps a roma. We union. In fact there is no love here. is much more serious than that. So the relationship between the case officer and the agent is of enormous importance because

Each holds the others life in their hands the rendezvous, whose, as they walk through country lanes and oxfordshire together, were of critical importance to each other. of all him reassuring her, but he has a value and is supplying important information and she's, putting her life at risk for a good purpose and so only? She is reassuring him about her professionalism. What this pair are about to do is all about political and military power. have consequences for the history of the modern world and will affect the lives of hundreds of millions of people. The woman is ursula Kaczynski, she's, a mother, a house wife and an undercover soviet intelligence officer, and if you're wondering why I'm telling this story is because

Color is also my great on the man is surprised assets, Klaus, Fuchs, isn't atomic physicist working on the most seek report. of the second world war, the development of an atomic bomb. His story reads like a spine of from nazi germany to wartime britain from the manhattan had atomic bomb development in the. U s. to the uk secret postwar nuclear research centre. Whore folks had a direct line to the soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, his axe. And shape the world, as we know it, and nineteen fifty one He was described by the: u S, congress as a man who influenced the safety of more people and accomplished greater damage than any others

I not only in the history of the united states but in the history of nations, is often referred to as the world's most dangerous spy, but was hey. There were infinite. Turning point, through history moments and relationships the shape the world we live in did Klaus fix a migrate and create more dangerous world. Did they help bring about a free? to name nuclear standoff that threatens us to this day in history there's, always another point of view grid. Comrades alexander vassili. I've is an author and form kgb agent who study kgb files on Klaus folks, the fact that The servants created their own atom bomb, So soon it actually.

public saved your approach from my from a third world war because it re established these statistics balance between them, the americans and the soviets, and he to prevent the americans from bombing the soviet union which, in my opinion, was quite possible. If the service didn't have the bull, do you think said yeah I do. I should do. I believe that it would have been very easy for them to bomb the service, for instance moscow. If the service, I didn't have a chance to retaliate safer one from one perspective a sailor and seeks saved a lot of life that option. I think they did, because if, if the boy had bombed the soviet union. This service will have retaliated with conventional weapons in europe Third world war would start and the servants

an enormous warm she and in europe many divisions, tank divisions country divisions in europe thought it would be a total bloodshed so that Why? I believe that people like glove folks, like also local genes, can they actually saved the world from sold world war. Quantum physics teaches us that its possible for some things to be in two places at once to beat things at once? A particle can be a wave, a cat. can be simultaneously alive, I'm dead, but what about people? can a person be devoted friends, a beloved houseguest, a trusted companion, apprised colleague

and, at the same time, be a traitor, a double dealer. Eliah zealots come the two things coexist and both be true. cost fakes, understood the contradictions and paradoxes of the quantum world a world he merit. Are you my marxist philosophy to establish, in my mind, to separate compartments one compartment and which I allowed myself to make friendships to have personal relations to help and to be in all personal ways, the kind of man I wanted to be. I could be free and easy and happy without the people without fear of disclosing. Self, because I knew that the other compartment would step in. If I approached the danger point, the souks wasn't only dancing with danger in his own life. Those around him were also unwittingly ensnared in his life of lies,

My investigations into the story when evolves speaking with people all over the world from the west. Of america to berlin, people whose lives and families would directly impacted by fixes espionage. The nephew, whose asked by Klaus Fuchs, his father. The problem is his loyalty to his friends? He didn't want to say the untruth to his friends. The door from the family who took him in as a second son, They were hurt. My mother, too hot, ever went away. We knew how She had heard and upset my parents and the need to act. Failed by fbi agents on her way to school. The unintended consequences do not negate what the person did. Similarly, what the what the person did does not negate The council is this story. Unfolds in a time of great turmoil, society

europe ended global power, redefined as countries, empires and ideologies battle for supremacy, politics and war provide the context but I want to understand the human story here to get into klaus weeks his mind and uncover the enigma behind his actions How was he so successful in deceiving the people closer to him, and did he I feel any remorse. By doing this, I hope to understand my own families part in the story. great on us and is considered one of the soviet union's greatest spies. It has many similarities to classes, though both born in germany amidst the rise of fascism and variants, violence at a young age, they both committed to communism and they both repeatedly put their lives and extraordinary danger. I hope

understanding. Klaus speaks I'll understand a bit more about my great on ursula the cops roads own secret agent. On a sunday afternoon, classics passes, whoever made word an english countryside, steps ahead. My great anti leads the way she stopped, tat, no one else is around takes us. trout and starts to dig a hole in the undergrowth between the roots of a tree, and she was down there. Taking away, folks, were standing there looking at just observing might russia is also at the why you changed the world and she looked operative and she didn't feel that maybe he should be helping or doing something she just looked up at him: Thought that this was quite normal because she was practical. She was depressed, who could do this. I know she Look up was this rather

Dear warm affectionate, professor, who's, she had an enormous man, respectful, which was clear. far more than she would have for an ordinary agent, every contact two lonely people in a foreign country. They couldn't talk about their past They couldn't talk about what they really believed in and what they thought they couldn't discuss anybody else around them, but really two vacancy mobile. They cared about now. Suddenly, here two german communist exiles could walk unobserved I an english countryside and actually talk about the things really interested in and about time. Anyway, Whole S and a dog was for their dead letter box It was here that I paced messages to arrange future meetings

I wonder how they mark the spot. Did they count how many trees they were from the path or mark? in some way, it was done. They continued their walk through the lanes and then parted. He headed for bambi train station and his work. in the heart of the new case atomic bomb programme and my great aunt which escape the red armies agent, sancho cycle back to her farmhouse and her head and radio transmitters with a direct line Soviet intelligence Did these two unassuming german exiles come too at the centre of one of the most audacious and important espionage missions ever next time on the bomb he went to your gun. He told him he wanted to spy. He went to give the russians Information that he had close whoops was both its by was one

and he was a communist and other than those very private person to talk much. He was extremely disciplined You can subscribe to the bomb on BBC sounds or have you got your pot costs? We'd love it. If you'd leave embracing a review to help other people find it, the bomb was presented by me ray sureness. It was written in produced by Zack bracy story. Editor was Emma Harding Alice mc, he was the assistant producer are produced in berlin. Was sabena, chirac, klaus Fuchs was played by marcus calvin and Klaus qatar, skiing bivalve, karla eugene

the piles with Madalena and a deva, with additional performances by David hounslow, sound design, was by TIM nielsen at skywalker. Sound our music was composed by trevor correctness. Additional music by Ben marshal, the episode was mixed by anyways Whittemore, the executive producers, Clinton's lee and the poor costs was commenced. And by simon pits. The BBC world service thanks for listening is quite a story. Isn't it if you will, to find out more about the double lives of Klaus luke's, a migrate on ursula. You can hear more episodes by searching for the bomb from the BBC world service. have you got your put costs renard invites you to sail and luxurious style with flagship queen mary to queen Victoria, queen elizabeth

and newly announced queen and each inspiring voyage features basis, accommodations, fine, dining entertainment. and immersive shore experiences all with british flare contact, your travel adviser visit, tuner, dot com, slash babies or call one eight hundred seven hundred.