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Klaus Fuchs' Statement
January 27, 1950
On January 27, 1950 Klaus Fuchs, a British Scientist who had worked on the
atomic bomb at Los Alamos during the war, confessed to being a Soviet spy. On
March 1, 1950 he was tried and found guilty at the Old Bailey in London.
War Office, 27th January, 1950.
STATEMENT of Emil Julius Klaus FUCHS of 17, Hillside, Harwell, Berkshire, who
saith :-
I am deputy Chief Scientific Officer (acting rank) at Atomic Energy Research
Establishment, Harwell.
I was born in Russelheim on 29th December, 1911. My father was a parson and I
had a very happy childhood. I think the one thing that most stands out is that
my father always did what he believed to be the right thing to do and he always
told us that we had to go our own way even if he disagreed. He himself had
many fights because he did what his conscience decreed even if these were at
variance with accepted conventions. For example he was the first parson to
join the Social Democratic Party.
I didn't take much interest in politics during my school days except insofar as
I was forced into it by the fact that of course all the other pupils knew who
my father was and I think the only political act at school which I ever made
was at the celebration of the Weimar Constitution when there was a celebration
at school and all the flags of the Weimar republic had been put up outside
whereas inside very large numbers of the pupils appeared with the Imperial
badge. At that point I took out the badge showing the colours of the republic
and put it on and of course it was immediately torn down.
When I got to the University at Leipzig I joined the S.P.D. and took part in
the organization of the students Group of the S.P.D. I found myself soon in
opposition to the official policy of the S.P.D. for example on the question of
navel rearmament, when the S.P.D. supported the building programme of the
Panzercreuzer. I did have some discussions with Communists but I always found
that I despised them because it was apparent that they accepted the official
policy of their party even if they did not agree with it. The main point at
issue was always the Communist policy of proclaiming the United Front and at
the same time attacking the leaders of the S.P.D. Later I went to Keil
University. It has just occurred to me, though It may not be important, that
at Leipzig I was in the Reichsbanner which was a semi-military organization
composed of members of the S.P.D. and the Democratic Party. That is a point at
which I broke away from my father's philosophy because he is a pacifist. In
Kiel I was at first still a member of the S.P.D., but the break came when the
S.P.D. decided to support Hindenburg as Reich President. There argument was
that if they put up their own candidate it would split the vote and Hitler
would be elected. In particular this would mean that the position of the
S.P.D. in Prussia would be lost when they controlled the whole of the Police
organization. The election was I think in 1932. My argument was that we could
not stop Hitler by cooperating with other bourgeois parties but that only a
united working class could stop him. At this point I decided to oppose the
official policy openly and I offered myself as a speaker in support of the
Communist candidate. Shortly after the election of Hindenburg, Papen was made
Reich Chancellor and he dismissed the elected Prussian Government and put in a
Reichstadhalter. That evening we all collected spontaneously. I went to the
headquarters of the Communist Party because I had in the meantime been expelled
from the S.P.D., but I had seen many of my previous friends in the Reichsbanner
and I knew that they were gathering together ready to fight for the Prussian
Government, but the Prussian Government yielded. All they did was to appeal to
the central Reich Court. At this point the morale of the rank and file of the
S.P.D. and the Reichsbanner broke completely and it was evident that there was
no force left in those organizations to resist Hitler. I accepted that the
Communist Party had been right in fighting against the leaders of the S.P.D.
and that I had been wrong in blaming them for it. I had already joined the
Communist Party because I felt I had to be in some organization.
Some time before this I had also joined a student organization which contained
members of the S.P.D. as well as members of the Communist Party. This
organization was frowned upon by the S.P.D., but they did not take steps
against me until I came out openly against the official policy. I was made the
chairman of this organization and we carried on propaganda aimed at those
members of the Nazis whom we believed to be sincere. The Nazis had decided to
start propaganda against the high fees which students had to pay and we decided
to take them by their word convinced that we would show them up. I carried on
the negotiations with the leaders of the Nazi group at the University,
proposing that we should organize a strike of the students. They hedged and
after several weeks I decided the time had come to show that they did not
intend to do it. We issued a leaflet explained that the negotiations had been
going on but that the leaders of the Nazi were not in earnest. Our policy did
have success because some members of our organization succeeded in making
personal contacts with some of the sincere Nazis. The Nazi leaders apparently
noticed that because some time later they organized a strike against the Rector
of the University. That was after Hitler had been made Reich Chancellor.
During that strike they called in the support of the S.A. from the town who
demonstrated in front of the University. In spite of that I went there every
day to show that we were not afraid of them. On one of these occasions they
tried to kill me and I escaped. The fact that Hindenberg made Hitler Reich
Chancellor of course proved to me again that I had been right in opposing the
official policy of the S.P.D. After the burning of the Reichstag I had to go
underground. I was lucky because on the morning after the burning of the
Reichstag I left my home very early to catch a train to Berlin for the
conference of our student organization and that is the only reason why I
escaped arrest. I remember clearly when I opened the newspaper in the train I
immediately realized the significance and I knew that the underground struggle
had started. I took the badge of the hammer and sickle from my lapel which I
had carried until that time.
I was ready to accept the philosophy that the Party is right and that in the
coming struggle you could not permit yourself any doubts after the party had
made a decision. At this point I omitted to resolve in my mind a very small
difficulty about my conduct of the policy against the Nazis. I received of
course a great deal of praise at the conference in Berlin which was held
illegally, but there rankled in my mind the fact that I had sprung our
leaflet on the leaders of the Nazis without warning, without giving them an
ultimatum that I would call to the student body unless they made a decision by
a certain date. If it had been necessary to do that I would not have
worried about it but there was no need for it. I had violated some standard of
decent behavior but I did not resolve this difficulty and very often this
incident did come back to my mind, but I came to accept that in such a
struggle things of this kind are prejudice which are weakness and which you
must fight against.
All that followed helped to confirm the ideas I had formed. Not a single party
voted against the extraordinary powers which were given to Hitler by the new
Reichstag and in the universities there was hardly anybody who stood up for
those who were dismissed either on political or racial grounds and again you
found that people whom you normally would have respected because of their
decency had no force in themselves to stand up for their own ideals or moral
standards.
I was in the underground until I left Germany. I was sent out by the
Party because they said that I must finish my studies, because after the
revolution in Germany people would be required with technical knowledge to take
part in the building up of the Communist Germany. I went first to France and
then to England where I studied and at the same time I tried to make a serious
study of the basic Marxist philosophy. The idea which gripped me most was
the belief that in the past man has been unable to understand his own history
and the forces which lead to the further development of human society; that
now for the first time man understands the historical forces and he is able to
control them and that therefore for the first time he will be really free. I
carried this idea over into the personal sphere and believed that I could
understand myself and that I could make myself into what I believed I should
be.
I accepted for a long time that what you heard about Russia internally could be
deliberate lies. I had my doubts for the first time on acts of foreign policy
of Russia; the Russo-German pack was difficult to understand but in the end
I did accept that Russia had done it, to gain time, that during that time
she was expanding her own influence in the Balkans against the influence of
Germany. Finally Germany's attack on Russia seemed to confirm that Russia
was not shirking and was prepared to carry out a foreign policy with the
risk of war with Germany. Russia's attack on Finland was more difficult to
understand but the fact that England and France prepared for an intervention in
Finland at the time when they did not appear to be fighting seriously against
Germany made it possible to accept the explanation that Russia had to prepare
its defenses against all possible Imperialist powers. In the end I accepted
again that my doubts had been wrong and the party had been right.
When Germany started the real attack on France I was interned and for a long
time we were not allowed any newspapers. We did not know what was going on
outside and I did not see how the British people fought at that time. I felt
no bitterness by the interment because I could understand that is was necessary
and that at that time England could not spare good people to look after the
internees, but it did deprive me of the chance of learning more about the real
character of the British people.
Shortly after my release, I was asked to help Professor Peierls in Birmingham,
on some war work. I accepted it and I started work without knowing at first
what the work was. I doubt whether it would have any difference to my
subsequent actions if I had known the nature of the work beforehand. When I
learned about the purpose of the work I decided to inform Russia and I
established contact through another member of the Communist Party. Since that
time I have had continuous contact with persons who were completely unknown to
me, except that I knew that they would hand whatever information I gave them to
the Russian authorities. At this time I had complete confidence in Russian
policy and I believed that the Western Allies deliberately allowed Russia and
Germany to fight each other to the death. I had therefore no hesitation in
giving all the information I had, even though occasionally I tried to
concentrate mainly on giving information about the results of my own
work.
In the course of this work, I began naturally to form bonds of personal
friendship and I had to conceal from them my inner thoughts. I used my Marxist
philosophy to establish in my mind two separate compartments. One
compartment in which I allowed myself to make friendships, to have personal
relations, to help people and to be in all personal ways the kind of man I
wanted to be and the kind of man which, in a personal way, I had been before
with my friends in or near the Communist Party. I could be free and easy and
happy with other people without fear of disclosing myself because I knew the
other compartment would step in if I approached the danger point. I could
forget the other compartment and still rely on it. It appeared to me at the
time that I had become a "free man" because I had succeeded in the other
compartments to establish myself completely independent of the surrounding
forces of society. Looking back at it now the best way of expressing it
seems to be to call it a controlled schizophrenia.
In the post war period I began again to have my doubts about Russian policy.
It is impossible to give definite incidents because now the control mechanism
acted against me also in keeping away from me facts which I could not look in
the face but they did penetrate and eventually I came to a point where I
knew that I disapproved of many actions of the Russian Government and of the
Communist Party, but I still believed that they would build a new world and
that one day I would take part in it and that on that day I would also have to
stand up and say to them that there are things which they are doing wrongly.
During this time I was not sure that I could give all the information that I
had. However it became more and more evident that the time when Russia
would expand her influence over Europe was far away and that therefore I had to
decide for myself whether I could go on for many years to continue handing over
information without being sure in my own mind whether I was doing right. I
decided I could not do so. I did not go to one rendezvous because I was ill at
the time. I decided not to got to the following one.
Shortly afterwards my father told me that he might be going into the Eastern
Zone of Germany. At that time my own mind was closer to his than it had ever
been before, because he also believed that they are at least trying to build a
new world. He disapproved of many things and he had always done so, but he
knew that when he went there he would say so and he thought that in doing so he
might help to make them realize that you cannot build a new world if you
destroy some fundamental decencies in personal behavior. I could not bring
myself to stop my father from going there. However, it made me face at least
some of the facts about myself. I felt that my father's going to the Eastern
Zone, that his letters, would touch me somewhere and that I was not sure
whether I would not go back. I suppose I did not have the courage to fight it
out for myself, and therefore I invoked an outside influence by informing
security that my father was going to the Eastern Zone. A few months passed
and I became more and more convinced that I had to leave Harwell. I was then
confronted with the fact that there was evidence that I had given away
information in New York. I was given the chance of admitting it and staying
at Harwell or of clearing out. I was not sure enough of myself to stay at
Harwell and therefore I denied the allegation and decided that I would have to
leave Harwell.
However it then began to become clear to me that in leaving Harwell in those
circumstances I would do two things. I would deal a grave blow to Harwell, to
all the work which I had loved and furthermore that I would leave suspicions
against people whom I loved who were my friends and who believed that I was
their friend. I had to face the fact that it had been possible for me in one
half of my mind to be friends with people, be close friends and at the same
time to deceive them and to endanger them. I had to realize that the control
mechanism had warned me of danger to myself but that it had also prevented me
from realizing that I was doing to people who were close to me. I then
realized that the combination of the three ideas which had made me what I was,
was wrong, in fact that every single one of them was wrong, that there are
certain standards of moral behavior which are in you and that you cannot
disregard. That in your actions you must clear in your own mind whether they
are right or wrong. That you must be able before accepting somebody else's
authority to state your doubts and to try and resolve them; and I found that at
least I myself was made by circumstances.
I know that I cannot go back on that and I know that all I can do now is to try
and repair the damage I have done. The first thing is to make sure that
Harwell will suffer as little as possible and that I have to save for my
friends as much as possible of that part that was good in my relationship with
them. This thought is at present uppermost in my mind and I find it difficult
to concentrate on any other points. However I realize that I will have to
state the extent of the information that I have given and that I shall have to
help as far as my conscience allows me in stopping other people who are still
doing what I have done. There is nobody I know by name who is concerned with
collecting information for the Russian authorities. There are people who I
know by sight whom I trusted with my life and who trusted me with theirs, and I
do not know that I shall be able to do anything that might in the end give them
away. They are not inside the project, but they are the intermediaries between
myself and the Russian Government.
At first I thought that all I would do would be to inform the Russian
authorities that work upon the atomic bomb was going on. They wished to have
more details and I agreed to supply them. I concentrated at first mainly on
the product of my own work, but in particular at Los Alamo I did what I
consider to be the worst I have done, namely to give information about the
principle of the design of the plutonium bomb. Later on at Harwell, I
began to be concerned about the information I was giving, and I began to sift
it, but it is difficult to say exactly when and how I did it because it was a
process which went up and down with my inner struggles. The last time when I
handed over information was in February or March 1949.
Before I joined the project most of the English people with whom I had made
personal contacts were left wing and affected to some degree or other by the
same kind of philosophy. Since coming to Harwell I have met English people
of all kinds, and I have come to see in many of them a deep rooted firmness
which enables them to lead a decent way of life. I do not know where this
springs from and I don't think they do, but it is there.
I have read this statement and to the best of my knowledge it is true.
(Signed) Klaus Fuchs.
Statement taken down in writing by me at the dictation of Emil Julius Klaus
Fuchs at War Office on 27th January, 1950. He read it through, made such
alterations as he wished, and initialled each and every page.
(Signed) W.J. Skardon.
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