Hampstead Spies – The Atomic Secrets

“London Walks puts you into the hands of an expert on the particular area and topic of a tour.”  The New York Times

The KGB in NW3

We now have two walks under the banner of ‘Hampstead Spies’ about what Soviet intelligence got up to in the Hampstead area. This walk is about the residents of Hampstead who helped the Russians learn the secrets of how to make an atomic bomb in the 1940s. Details of the other Hampstead Spies walk ‘Philby and Comrades’ are here.

The Atomic Secrets 

During the Second World War two scientists, one German and one Austrian, both refugees from the Nazis, were separately recruited to the KGB by talent spotters living in the Belsize Park area of Hampstead. They agreed to pass on the details of their secret work on an Allied project to produce an atomic bomb. Their science helped to create the two bombs that were dropped on Japan in 1945 and their espionage speeded up the creation of the Soviet Union’s own bomb. Hampstead Spies authority and distinguished former newsman Stewart Purvis CBE has been researching the story of the two men at the National Archives in London and at museums at Los Alamos in the United States and Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.*

The best-known of the two men was Klaus Fuchs, a brilliant German-born physicist who worked on a crucial element of the bomb. He began to wonder if he should share his secrets with the Russians. He didn’t know any spies himself so he headed for Hampstead, the home of many exiled German Communists in World War Two, and linked up with somebody who might be able to help. That man passed Fuchs on to his sister…

And the rest, as they say, is history. Fuchs was part of the British team sent to the remote town of Los Alamos in New Mexico to work with Robert Oppenheimer on what was known as the Manhattan Project.

The hunt was on. Britain’s most distinguished newsman – “Stewart Purvis is one of the architects of modern television news” – went to New Mexico in 2024.

Here’s Stewart: “80 years after Klaus Fuchs I drove up to the front gate of what is now a giant military and scientific complex to ask for directions. Confronted by four burly soldiers with machine guns I spluttered that I was a sort of historian from England. ‘Well this’, their sergeant replied, ‘is America’. It wasn’t a great introduction but he was kind enough to direct me to the original iconic front gate of Los Alamos which survives as a ‘rest room’ for tourists.

“Then with the help of a lady in the Los Alamos Visitors Center I was able to find where Fuchs had lived and even the house where he babysat for the families of fellow scientists.

“And – embarrassment of riches – I discovered in a local museum the only colour video which exists of Klaus Fuchs, born in Germany, alumnus of the Physics department of Bristol and Edinburgh Universities, and even later of Wakefield Prison where he served 9 years for espionage.

“Less well known than Fuchs was Engelbert Broda, an Austrian refugee who became a leading figure in the exile community in NW3. I have managed to track down the son of the couple who gave Broda and his wife a spare room in their flat in Belsize Park Gardens. Broda met the leading Austrian Communist Party member in London, a woman who had helped to bring Cambridge graduate Kim Philby to the KGB. Now she became Broda’s recruiter and lover. Broda agreed to pass on the details of his research at Cambridge University on the bomb.  He split up with his wife who then married another scientist working on the bomb project who was also spying for the Soviets”.

THE NEW HAMPSTEAD SPIES WALK – THE ATOMIC SECRETS

“Now I have returned to London full of the joys of a research trip and keen to mix these ingredients into the recipe for a hopefully successful new Hampstead Spies walk. But what, you may well be asking, has this got to do with Hampstead?

“In his prison cell in 1950 Klaus Fuchs explained to an MI5 interrogator that early on in his research into how to make a bomb he decided he would share the answer with the Soviets. But not being a spy himself he had no idea how to contact Soviet military intelligence. A friend directed him to the Belsize Park area of Hampstead and one resident in particular.

THE REST IS HISTORY – AND A BRILLIANT NEW WALK

“The Hampstead Spies walk I have been guiding for 8 years has always had an element of the Fuchs story but it has been compressed into what is mainly been the tale of the Cambridge and Oxford graduates signed up by KGB recruiters living in the area in the 1930s.  The feedback I got from some walkers was that the Hampstead Spies walk had too many spies.

“Now thanks to my trip to Los Alamos and more research into other Hampstead KGB connections to bomb secrets, ‘The Atomic Spies’ warrants a walk of its own. After talking with my London Walks minder David Tucker ‘Hampstead Spies’ will now become an umbrella title for two different and only slightly overlapping walks about the two biggest spy scandals in British history which both started in London NW3.

HAMPSTEAD – GROUND ZERO FOR PHILBY & COMRADES AND THE ATOMIC SECRETS

Minder David here. Stewart’s putting it that way I feel like a Case Officer. Or even Head of Station.

In the event, we launched ‘Hampstead Spies – Philby & Comrades’  and ‘Hampstead Spies – The Atomic Secrets’ as separate walks in February. That test run was followed by Stewart’s recent trip to Japan. Needless to say, what Stewart found there profoundly moved him. And deepened his understanding of this, arguably the most important chapter in modern history. Both walks are now are now here on www.walks.com. They’re primed. And armed.

The photograph shows the Nagasaki clock that froze at the time – 11:02 on the 9th of August 1945 – when the atomic bomb was dropped on the city.

FUSION*

The ‘Hampstead Spies – The Atomic Secrets’ walk begins at Swiss Cottage   tube station (just outside exit 2) and ends at Belsize Park   tube station.