Wartime Cooperation: The Early Cases of Nuclear Sharing

Abstract

The earliest instances of nuclear sharing were among Allied and Axis peer states during the Second World War. They consisted of non-nuclear states passing on early details of the possibility of nuclear weapons. France’s scientific community was the most advanced in comprehensive nuclear research, and as early as the spring of 1939 had considered testing a nuclear device in North Africa.¹ Immediately prior to the German invasion of France in 1940, French nuclear technical knowledge was passed on to the British. Five French nuclear scientists, including Bertrand Goldschmidt, fled to the UK, and continued to do nuclear research there and in Canada, ancillary to but outside of the Manhattan Project.² They had evacuated to the UK nuclear research equipment and 185 kg of heavy water from the laboratory of Frederic Joliot-Curie before the Germans could complete their May, 1940 invasion.³ The French government had also managed to hide a significant quantity of uranium in Morocco beyond the reach of the Germans, British or US, for use after the war.⁴