Conclusions and Afterthoughts

Abstract

Klaus Fuchs and Rudolf Peierls played significant roles in the making of British nuclear culture in the years from 1939 until 1959. They shaped two chief components of atomic culture in their host country: the practice of nuclear science and the social, political and cultural implications of their work. Fuchs’s and Peierls’s ethnicity, socialization and schooling in Germany as well as their exposure to German culture before emigrating to Britain had a strong impact on their involvement with British nuclear culture. Their experiences with National Socialism and their personal knowledge of some of the key scientists who were believed to be behind the German nuclear weapons project led to a strong determination in both of them to become involved in nuclear arms research and to beat Germany in the race for the atomic bomb. At the same time, however, as Chapters 1 and 2 have shown, their German origins made them ‘enemy aliens’ and did not allow them to work on important war projects such as radar so that they were — almost accidentally — pushed into the direction of nuclear weapons research, which was not deemed as crucial to the war effort in 1939. And because of his extraction, Fuchs was even interned in Canada for several months.KeywordsHost CountryNuclear WeaponAtomic BombGerman OriginManhattan ProjectThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.