Proliferation before Hiroshima: tracing the wartime diffusion of nuclear knowledge

Abstract

ABSTRACT Relatively simplistic conceptions of early nuclear history can sometimes prevail even among nonproliferation scholars. The dominance of the nation-state in historic and contemporary conceptions of nuclear-weapons development carries with it a temptation to treat nuclear-weapons acquisition as essentially linear: first one state and then another, with the United States as the point of origin for all weapons-relevant nuclear knowledge and 1945 as the effective year of proliferation studies’ birth. This article argues against such a view. It draws on a wide range of archival material to illustrate the surprisingly wide diffusion of nuclear knowledge prior to the bombing of Hiroshima, highlighting, first, the reciprocal nature of the early Anglo-American nuclear relationship, including the extent to which the United States benefited from external information; second, how connections within the British Empire enabled the participation of personnel from Australia and New Zealand in various aspects of British and American nuclear work during the war; and, third, the privileged access of French personnel to British and Canadian nuclear knowledge. The overall argument is that the early history of nuclear proliferation is more complex than is generally thought and that greater acknowledgment of these complexities may have contemporary value.