... enthralling and riveting ... covers a lot of familiar ground, but where it is particularly thorough and revealing is when it deals with Fuchs’s youth in Germany ... Greenspan’s pages on the interrogation and the decision about what to do with Fuchs are the most complete account available, and read like a detective novel. Her prodigious research is based on many important archives located in Britain, Germany and the United States, on Fuchs family papers and the papers of major scientists ... Greenspan tries to explain Fuchs’s activities by saying that Fuchs sought 'the betterment of mankind' — he gave atomic secrets to Moscow because 'his goal became to balance world power and to prevent nuclear blackmail.' To some, that might make him a hero. But her own material shows this was a post facto justification. The reason Fuchs spied was simply that he was a Communist and a true believer in Stalin and the Soviet Union.
The latest addition to the Klaus Fuchs bibliography, Atomic Spy, comes from Nancy Thorndike Greenspan and with it the obvious question: Do we need another book on Fuchs? Based on the first part of this book, the answer is yes. Ms. Greenspan gives us fresh and fascinating insights into Fuchs’s formative years ... One gets the niggling sense throughout Atomic Spy that the author is not entirely comfortable delving into Fuchs’s psychological hinterland or into the details of his espionage. But we need to consider both if we are to understand who he was and what he did ... Ms. Greenspan ends her book by asking whether Fuchs was 'evil or good, guilty or innocent, a traitor or a hero.' But the truth is more prosaic ... It is better to think of Fuchs as a socialist, a scientist and a spy. As with most spies throughout history, once he had started passing on secrets, he found it strangely hard to stop.
Thoroughly supported by a wide array of archival research, Greenspan’s detailed and authoritative yet equally interesting and readable study will appeal to readers of World War II and Cold War history, espionage, and nuclear history.
How does one explain a 21st century book about Klaus Fuchs, a committed communist who provided atomic secrets to Stalin’s Soviet Union during and after World War II, that sympathizes with its subject? Does the author, Nancy Thorndike Greenspan, know nothing about the history of communism in power? Does she know nothing about an ideology that is responsible for the deaths of more than 100 million people? ... This book proves that the abstract 'ideal' of communism has not died for some people despite the empirical evidence of communism in power. Klaus Fuchs does not deserve our sympathy for siding with and aiding one of the most vicious tyrannies in history. His 'conscience' and 'ideals' led him to betray his adopted country of England to a regime that ultimately sought to enslave England’s people. To forthrightly answer the author’s concluding questions: what Klaus Fuchs did was evil, he was guilty, and he was a traitor.
Greenspan focuses much attention on her subject’s early life, emphasizing his activism over his research ... The Manhattan Project occupies just 30 pages while more than 100 recount Fuchs’ surveillance, interrogation, and trial, a section that offers more detail than some readers will want ... An appealing biography of a productive spy.
Biographer Greenspan...reconsiders Soviet spy Klaus Fuchs...in this richly detailed work ... Though the book’s prose style is more diligent than dynamic, Greenspan builds tension by interweaving Fuchs’s scientific and espionage pursuits with MI5’s efforts to unmask him. This circumspect account blurs the lines between courage and treachery in thought-provoking ways.
