logo
episode-header-image
Jul 2022
40m 2s

S2.2 A split life

Bbc World Service
About this episode

The world’s most dangerous spy? A young scientist’s journey into espionage. From a German pacifist family to a Soviet spy ring. Physicist Klaus Fuchs flees Nazi rule for England and joins the race to develop an atomic bomb – whoever gets there first wins the war. Presenter Rosa Ellis discovers how Fuchs’ double life begins. #thebomb

This podcast has been edited for accuracy. Audio was updated on 20th July 2022.

Up next
Jun 2022
Bonus: Introducing Rosa Ellis
"She was not just a spy - she was a spymaster". The family secret of Rosa Ellis, host of season 2 of The Bomb. Emily Strasser takes us behind the scenes of this espionage thriller, as Rosa talks about her great-aunt's double life. Season 2 begins on 9 July 2022. 
4m 5s
Jun 2022
Introducing The Bomb season 2
The spy who changed history. And a great-aunt's double life. The Bomb is returning with season 2. Klaus Fuchs was a brilliant scientist, but he was also a dangerous spy, stealing atomic secrets and handing them over to the Soviet Union. In this special episode, Emily Strasser tak ... Show More
4m 24s
Sep 2020
S1.7 The doomsday clock
The world’s first nuclear bomb drops on the unsuspecting city of Hiroshima. On 7 August 1945, the world is changed forever. In this final episode, featuring first-hand accounts of the attack that day, Emily Strasser asks how the bomb changed humanity. Have we really come to terms ... Show More
28m 56s
Recommended Episodes
Aug 2022
Bonus podcast: The Bomb
The man who stole the atomic bomb. Klaus Fuchs is the spy who changed history - why did he give the blueprint to the Soviets? This is season 2, episode 1: A grave matter. Search for The Bomb wherever you get your podcasts. 
21m 35s
Mar 2018
World War Two Spycraft: Stealing Nuclear Secrets, Blowing Up Nazi Factories, and Infiltrating Japanese High Command
Spies have been a feature of state security and military intelligence since the beginning of warfare. Entire wars have been won or lost according to these secret activities. Today we will look at spycraft during World War Two, a golden age of espionage. Spycraft was an essential ... Show More
1h 17m
Jun 2024
1. The Spy Who Fooled Hitler
In the dead of night, two British commandos carry out a daring intelligence gathering mission… right under German noses. President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill set the date for the largest seaborne invasion in history. The Allies hatch an elaborate plan to throw Hitler ... Show More
56m 56s
Mar 2021
Adolf Hitler Part 2: Hitler in the First World War
June 1914, Sarajevo. An assassination on the street disrupts the entire balance of power in Europe. The First World War explodes into action. Adolf Hitler relocates to Munich. After dodging the draft, he later embraces life as a soldier. But then, serving in Flanders in 1918, a t ... Show More
44m 18s
Sep 2023
The Impeccable Spy | WW2
For a womanizing Soviet spy, wartime Tokyo is both playground and prison. Surrounded by the enemy, he's got to keep his wits about him - and with an increasingly paranoid leader in the Kremlin, the line between friend and foe is thin indeed.Daisy Ridley joins author Owen Matthews ... Show More
44m 13s
Aug 2019
The Bastard Brigade - The Strangest Man | 4
By mid-1944, the Allies’ fight to track down and stop the Nazi atomic program had met with failure and disappointment. And so the Manhattan Project took a new tack by recruiting and developing atomic spies — including a backup catcher for the Boston Red Sox named Moe Berg. Althou ... Show More
39m 11s
Sep 2023
Episode 8.1
By 1945, the Soviet Union had established a highly effective spy ring operating in the United States.  Many of their spies were key figures within the American Government, they also spies in the atomic bomb programme, who would pass on information which helped the Soviets build t ... Show More
21m 6s
Jan 2024
410. The Nazis in Power: The Night of Broken Glass (Part 7)
By November 1938 the scene in Germany was at its darkest yet, as the full scale of Hitler’s intentions for the Jewish population of the German Reich was becoming evermore apparent. As the threat of another world war increased, so the Nazi anti-semitism machine went up a gear. Syn ... Show More
46m 44s
Apr 2020
Space: Operation Paperclip
As World War II drew to a close, the U.S. military began a covert process of trying to extricate Germany's most studious Nazi scientists—in order to bring them to America for contracts on our own nuclear projects. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoic ... Show More
49m 5s
Sep 2023
Adolf Hitler: The Final Solution (Part 21)
This is Part 21 of the Hitler Story. You can start listening here. Or, scroll down the Real Dictators feed for earlier episodes.We pick up the story in 1942. World War 2 is well underway and the Führer is still in the box seat. But he is not as untouchable as he used to be. Nazi ... Show More
55m 48s