THE ATOMIC RACE DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR
The article examines the race for the possession of atomic weapons, which unfolded between Nazi Germany and the United States during the Second World War. The chronology of events shows that Nazi Germany was in the lead in the atomic race in 1940 and 1941. After the defeat of the Fascist troops near Moscow in December 1941, Hitler ordered to mobilize all resources for current military needs. At a time when the fighting on the Eastern Front was pulling more and more financial and human resources out of the Reich, the Nazi leadership came to the conclusion that the creation (and even more so the use) of nuclear weapons during the Second World War are no longer possible. If the United States (a huge rich country without military operations on its territory) intensified work on the nuclear project every month, then the Third Reich, on the contrary, conducted it according to the residual principle. The authors conclude that the main force that prevented the Nazis from unleashing atomic death on the world was the Soviet Union, which made a decisive contribution to the defeat of fascism.