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RJEB Thesis Final This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ The Dominions and the bomb Commonwealth involvement in the British nuclear weapons programme, 1939 - 1947 Brown, Richard James Edward Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 01. Oct. 2021 THE DOMINIONS AND THE BOMB Commonwealth involvement in the British nuclear weapons programme, 1939 - 1947 Richard J.E. Brown August 2019 Doctoral Thesis Department of War Studies, King’s College London Table of Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................... 3 Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................. 3 Introduction: A Neglected Aspect of Nuclear History ............................................................... 4 The Contours of Nuclear History ............................................................................................................................................ 5 Commonwealth Historiographies, Nuclear and Otherwise ..................................................................................................... 12 Defining the Historiographical Gap ...................................................................................................................................... 18 The Task and the Tools ........................................................................................................................................................ 19 The Thesis .......................................................................................................................................................................... 22 Chapter One: The Earliest Stages ........................................................................................... 25 Initial Conditions ................................................................................................................................................................. 26 First Contacts with Canada .................................................................................................................................................. 32 Looking Across the Atlantic................................................................................................................................................. 37 The Significance of Mark Oliphant ....................................................................................................................................... 40 Conclusion: MAUD and the Commonwealth ........................................................................................................................ 43 Chapter Two: The Centre of Gravity Shifts ............................................................................ 46 Implementing MAUD .......................................................................................................................................................... 47 The Increasing Significance of the United States ................................................................................................................... 51 The Challenge of Crossing the Atlantic................................................................................................................................. 57 (Finally) Embracing the Canadian Option ............................................................................................................................. 62 Conclusion: Canada as Leverage .......................................................................................................................................... 67 Chapter Three: The Road to Quebec....................................................................................... 70 The Conant Crisis ................................................................................................................................................................ 71 Articulating a Response ....................................................................................................................................................... 78 The Path to Quebec ............................................................................................................................................................. 83 Conclusion: A Salvage Operation? ....................................................................................................................................... 89 Chapter Four: Canada after Quebec ........................................................................................ 91 Whither Canada? ................................................................................................................................................................. 91 Questions of Leadership ...................................................................................................................................................... 98 Rethinking Collaboration ...................................................................................................................................................102 The Triangular Relationship in Practice ..............................................................................................................................109 Conclusion: A Tripartite Project? .......................................................................................................................................112 Chapter Five: The Dominions and Tube Alloys .................................................................... 114 Oliphant and the Australians ..............................................................................................................................................115 The New Zealand Connection ............................................................................................................................................122 Australia and New Zealand in Comparative Perspective ......................................................................................................127 Resources of the Wider Empire ..........................................................................................................................................129 Conclusion: Mobilising the Commonwealth........................................................................................................................134 Chapter Six: Post-War Planning ........................................................................................... 135 British Expectations, Before and After Hiroshima ...............................................................................................................136 Britain and Canada Adjust to the New World ......................................................................................................................144 1 A Role for the Dominions? ................................................................................................................................................153 Conclusion: Britain's Nuclear Future ..................................................................................................................................163 Conclusion: The Dominions and the Bomb .......................................................................... 164 Recapitulation ...................................................................................................................................................................165 Recurring Themes .............................................................................................................................................................171 The Significance of Individuals .................................................................................... 171 Contingency ................................................................................................................. 172 Multiple tiers of interaction .......................................................................................... 173 Secrecy and Security .................................................................................................... 173 Alliance ......................................................................................................................
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