Quebec Agreement

The Quebec Agreement is an Anglo-American document outlining the terms of coordinated development of the basic science and advanced engineering developments as related to nuclear energy; and, specifically weapons that employ nuclear energy. The joint agreement was between the United Kingdom and the United States, and signed by Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt on August 19, 1943, two years before the end of World War II, in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada.

The British Government was the first to realize that such an agreement was needed. On their own, they had established beyond question that, with their knowledge of the science of atomic energy, a nuclear weapon was both feasible and practicable. However, by late 1941 the British also realized that within the time frame and scale of the ongoing war, the development of a useful nuclear weapon was completely beyond the manpower and material capability of both their country and their Empire. Only the United States possessed the broad technology base in science and engineering, vast resources of skilled and semi-skilled manpower and an industrial infrastructure which could accept the burden of the development and production of nuclear weapons which would be concurrent with the meeting of the day-to-day production demands of the war. For this reason, Churchill's scientific and war mobilization advisors had advised him to seek the terms for setting up a British-American atomic bomb project. In July 1943, in London, American officials cleared up some major misunderstandings about British motives, and the agreement was drafted.

After the signing, the United Kingdom handed over all of its material to the United States and, in return, received all the copies of the American progress reports to the president. The British atomic research was subsumed then into the Manhattan Project until after the war, and a large team of British and Canadian scientists moved to the United States.

In a section of the Quebec Agreement formally entitled "Articles of Agreement governing collaboration between the authorities of the USA and UK in the matter of Tube Alloys (the British code name for the bomb project)", the United Kingdom and the United States agreed to share resources "to bring the Tube Alloys project to fruition at the earliest moment."

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