Norman Moss - Klaus Fuchs - The Man Who Stole the Atom Bomb

Curtis-Bennett battled on against Lord Goddard’s philistinism:

‘I have to endeavour to put before Your Lordship this man as he is, knowing that Your Lordship is not going to visit him savagely but justly, both in the interests of the state and in the interests of this man, and I can only try to explain what Your Lordship has said you fail to understand. Though I fail in the end, I can do no more, but do it I must.

‘There was acting in his mind a sieve whereby, with regard to the first count, he would only tell things he found out himself. He is a scientist, a pencil-and-paper man, and it is good to hear the Attorney-General say that it is not in his power to make an atom bomb and hand it over to the Russians, to give away a mighty secret of that sort. In 1943, he gave information about what he himself knew out of his own head. I am not going to confuse this case with long medical terms. He is not mad. He is sane. But he is a human being, and that is what I am trying to explain.’

He went on to say that this sieve in Fuchs’s mind opened up to let a lot of information through during the time that Russia was fighting as an ally of Britain, when the first three of the four offences were committed, and closed up later. ‘It would be difficult to see how, in 1943 and 1945, when America was helping our Russian ally, that information given to Russia would be prejudicial to the state… The change of political alignments is not the business of scientists, for scientists are not always politically wise. Their minds move along straight lines without the flexibility that some others have.’

This was his lawyer’s defence, not Fuchs’s own. Fuchs would probably not have admitted, let alone claimed, that he was a simple scientist lost in the complexities of changing international alignments. Also, unlike Nunn May, he never said in his defence that he helped Russia because Russia was an ally of Britain and America; his first loyalty was to Russia because he was a Communist.

Curtis-Bennett concluded by pointing out that Fuchs had confessed of his own free will. ‘There you have this man being logical, in my submission. Having decided to tell everything, he tells everything, makes it about as bad for himself as he can, and provides the whole of the case against him in this court. There is not one piece of evidence produced in this case which is not the result of the written and oral statements he made to. Mr Skardon in December and January.’

There was no further evidence and no other witnesses. Lord Goddard then asked Fuchs whether he had anything to say. Fuchs sat impassively, wearing a brown suit with pens and pencils protruding from his top jacket pocket. Now he rose and spoke for the only time during his hearings, very softly, almost murmuring.

‘My Lord, I have committed certain crimes for which I am charged, and I expect sentence. I have also committed some other crimes which are not crimes in the eyes of the law — crimes against my friends — and when I asked my counsel to put certain facts before you, I did not do it because I wanted to lighten my sentence. I did it in order to atone for those other crimes.

‘I have had a fair trial, and I wish to thank you and my counsel and my solicitors. I also wish to thank the Governor and his staff at Brixton Prison for the considerate treatment they have given me.’

This was still the pride of one who insists-on being his own judge, and being answerable to his own laws.

Then, while Fuchs stood there in the dock, Lord Goddard summed up his crime and passed sentence.

‘In 1933, fleeing from political persecution in Germany, you took advantage of the right and privilege of asylum which has always been the boast of this country to extend to people persecuted in their own country for political opinions.

‘You have betrayed the hospitality and protection given to you with the grossest treachery. In 1942, in return for your offer to put at the service of this country the great gifts providence has bestowed upon you in scientific matters, you were granted British nationality.

‘From that moment, regardless of your oath, you started to betray secrets of vital import for the purpose of furthering a political creed held in abhorrence by the vast majority of this country, your object being to strengthen that creed, which was then known to be inimical to all freedom-loving countries. There are four matters which seem to me the gravest aspect of your crime.

‘First, by your conduct you have imperilled the right of asylum which this country has hitherto extended. Dare we now give shelter to political refugees who may be followers of this pernicious creed, and who may well disguise themselves to bite the hand that feeds them?

‘Secondly, you have betrayed not only the projects and inventions of your own brain, for which this country was paying you and enabling you to live in comfort in return for your promise of secrecy, but you have also betrayed the secrets of other workers in this field of science, not only in this country but in the United States, and thereby might have caused the gravest suspicion to fall on those you falsely treated as friends and who were misled into trusting you.

‘Thirdly, you might have imperilled the good relations between this country and the great American republic with whom His Majesty is allied.

‘Fourthly, you have done irreparable and incalculable harm both to this land and to the United States, and you did it, as your statement shows, merely for the purpose of furthering your political creed.

‘I am willing to assume that you have not done it for gain. Your statement shows the depth of self-deception into which people like yourself can fall. Your crime is only thinly differentiated from high treason. But in this country we observe rigidly the rule of law, and as, technically, it is not high treason, you are not tried for that offence.

‘I have now to assess the penalty which it is right that I should impose. It is not so much for punishment that I impose it, for punishment to a man of your mentality means nothing. My duty is to safeguard this country. How can I be sure that a man of your mentality, as shown in the statement you have made, may not at any other minute allow some curious working in your mind to lead you further to betray secrets of the greatest possible value and importance to this land?

‘The maximum sentence Parliament has ordained is fourteen years. That is the sentence I pass upon you.’

Fuchs stood still, expressionless, throughout. He remained still for some moments after Goddard had finished, until the uniformed prison officer behind him tapped him on the shoulder. Then he turned to go, but, remembering something, turned back, picked up some papers from the chair, patted them into a neat pile, put them in his jacket pocket, and walked downstairs to the cells below.

He was taken from there to WormWood Scrubs prison in West London where many long-term prisoners serve the first part of their sentence, before being assigned to the prison best suited to them.

The next day the official Soviet news agency Tass published a statement, pro forma, that the Soviet Government had no knowledge of Fuchs and none of its officials had been in contact with him.

Naturally, British newspapers commented on the regrettable crime, and people were dismayed; this was disloyalty, and by someone to whom Britain had given asylum. However, there was no wave of accusations of being soft on Communist subversion, no demand for the heads of those responsible. For one thing, as Prime Minister Attlee was to remind Parliament, the leaks dated back to the time when the Conservatives, now in opposition, headed the wartime coalition government, so if ministers were to take the blame it would have to be shared between the parties. But in any case, although this was the most intense period of the Cold War between the West and the Soviet bloc, and in a few months’ time it would turn into a shooting war in Korea and British troops would be fighting alongside Americans, the British people as a whole did not feel as intensely engaged in the Cold War as the American people, and Russia was not seen quite so vividly as the enemy. This was partly a national disinclination to intensity and also, at this time, a disinclination to follow an American lead. But also, while most people disliked thoroughly the idea of a Communist dictatorship, anti-Communism was tempered by a residue of sentiment from the wartime alliance with Russia, and sympathy for Russia’s suffering in a common cause. Many people on the Left still could not shed entirely a benign image of the Soviet Union, as a country that practised a kind of Socialism; Russia’s support for anti-fascism in the Spanish Civil War shaded over into its leading role in the war against Nazi Germany (the interlude of the Nazi-Soviet Pact being buried out of sight of the memory).