zlacker

> The push for the bomb was an international arms race — America against Russia

Was it? US (and initially UK) didn't really face any real competition at all until the war was already over and they had the bomb. The Soviets then just stole American designs and iterated on top of them.

>>qwytw+(OP)
You know that now, with the benefit of history. At the time the fear of someone else developing the bomb first was real, and the Soviet Union knew about the Manhattan project: https://www.atomicarchive.com/history/cold-war/page-9.html.

>>femiag+O4
Isn't this mainly about what happened after the war and developing then hydrogen bomb? Did anyone seriously believe during WW2 that the Nazis/Soviets could be the first to develop a nuclear weapon (I don't really know to be fair)?

>>qwytw+0V
A lot of it happened after the war, but the Nazis had their own nuclear program that was highly infiltrated by the CIA, and whose progress was tracked against. Considering how late Teller's mechanism for detonation was developed, the race against time was real.