High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Alsos Mission was part of the Manhattan Project, the effort during World War II by the Allies, principally Britain and the United States, to create an atomic bomb. The Manhattan Project was also charged with coordinating foreign intelligence related to enemy nuclear activity, and the Alsos Mission was created following the Allied invasion of Italy in September 1943, to investigate the German nuclear energy project. Alsos Mission personnel followed close behind the front lines, and occasionally behind enemy lines, first in Italy, and later in France and Germany. They searched for personnel, records, material, and sites to evaluate the German nuclear project, further American research, and prevent their capture by the Soviet Union.