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One of the things that surprised me when I started reading about WWII was the oversimplification of the Nazi regime I had learned as a kid. Hitler didn't want to wage war against Britain, he admired both Britain and the U.S. He took over France because that was their historic enemy and in retaliation for WWI, including reparations. He wanted to take over predominantly Slavic lands for Germany, not France, Britain, or the U.S.
After Germany took over Paris, Hitler wanted to negotiate for peace with Britain. It was primarily Churchill who stood against negotiating for peace and pursued the war effort. I don't believe Germany would have ever attacked Britain or the U.S. out of his own volition if they wanted peace. He admired both countries for their historic treatment of other countries and peoples. He envisioned a world dominated by Britain, the U.S., and Nazi Germany.
When you take this background, it makes more sense why Germany thought attacking Russia at the time was a good idea. In his mind, communism was the common enemy and, in addition to "Lebensraum" for the German people, he wanted to show that he was an enemy of communism. He was thinking that Britain and the U.S. would support his war against communism. You also have to remember that the U.S. was neutral the first 2 years of the war, joining in only when they themselves were attacked.
When I was a child, I just thought Hitler was like some kind of cartoon character from Pinky and the Brain that wanted one world government. Largely because the subject is somewhat taboo, the nuances of the German side of WWII is lost upon many people. If you get over that taboo, you'll learn a lot about how Nazi Germany actually worked.
While Hitler=Evil is true, there were many layers of evil within Nazi Germany, and monsters beyond imagination.
Anyway, back to the original question. If Germany had the atomic bomb in 1941, I believe they would have dropped it on a Russian city to complete their conquest of Russia. Hitler's idea at the end was to make peace with Britain, so dropping the bomb would have kind of destroyed that idea.
However, if Hitler had the bomb in 1944, when it was obviously getting near the end, I believe he would have dropped it on London. All illusions of peace with the U.S. or Britain at that point were over and he was just hanging on as long as he could. The logistics of creating a bomb and dropping it are no small feat, it's not like he could have created hundreds of them and just blown up the world. I don't think it would have been at all practical to attempt a bomb drop on a U.S. city at the time.
I doubt that even an atomic bomb would have changed the course of the war. Hitler would not have come out dropping atomic bombs at the beginning, and by the time the tides of war started turning against him, it really would have been too late.
The American military (helped by British and Russians) would have bombed their research facilities, purification centers, and assembly plants into rubble long before they could try to set one off. Then landed airborne troops to permanently finish them off. Much of the Pacific forces would have been stripped bare to supply the added muscle needed, since the Japanese were clearly going nowhere.
The result would have been to move up V-E day three to six months.
The American military (helped by British and Russians) would have bombed their research facilities, purification centers, and assembly plants into rubble long before they could try to set one off. Then landed airborne troops to permanently finish them off. Much of the Pacific forces would have been stripped bare to supply the added muscle needed, since the Japanese were clearly going nowhere.
The result would have been to move up V-E day three to six months.
I guess the question would be why the Allied forces didn't shut down the launch of the V-1 and V-2 rockets if they had such capabilities at the time. The U.S. was neutral until 1941, so from 1939-1941, there would have been no military intervention by the U.S and I don't think either the U.S. or Britain were in much of a position to thwart any attacks from Germany before 1942.
Towards the latter half of the war, say 1943-1945, I could see a more aggressive role from Britain and the U.S. However, Germany was launching V-2 rockets up until the last few months of the war despite several Allied attempts to destroy launch sites.
Granted that V-2 rockets were not particularly effective, but the U.S. demonstrated no ability to stop Germany's use of them even late into the war. One major attempt to stop V-2 rockets very late in the war (March 1945), resulted in Allied forces killing over 500 innocent Dutch civilians in a bombing gone awry.
Hypothetically, depending on timing things could have gone ill for London or Moscow. Since, in 1940 or 1941, it would be years before the US developed an atomic bomb, it probably would have forced settlement of the war, with Europe living under the shadow of Hitler, for a few years, at least.
Quote:
Originally Posted by craigiri
Even if they got it first, the ruskies, brits, americans and others would have been on the case...even moreso once one or two were exploded. I'm not even sure the Germans had a plane capable of carrying the first atomic bombs.
...
This is the reason I said "Hypothetically" above. I think the B-29 was only just able to carry the two atomic bombs, and IIRC had to be modified to accommodate it. I think Germany had a 4-engine plane roughly equivalent to a B-17 - the ME-200? - but the B-29 was two steps beyond the B-17 in payload and endurance (the B-24 being the first step up).
I think Germany was the first to create nerve gas, and discovering that after the end of the war came as a surprise to the Allies. Maybe my memory is off on that, but I think the Allies "just" had mustard gas and chlorine.
Even if the Germans had developed a nuclear capability, they would have had to use it prior to wasting their troops on Russia or being wasted by the American invasion. Their numbers were depleted to the point that as the mopping up operations as the war's end approached, German troops were surrendering in droves, often kids under 16y/o in uniform. Had they flattened their enemies with nukes, the would have had no way to exert control over the territory gained.
Ever since the power of nuclear weapons was first demonstrated, their value lies in the threat of their use, not in their actual deployment. Use of nuclear weapons represents the failure of the nuclear threat.
There's actually nothing wrong with alternative history. Indeed, most alternative history questions are just rephrased historical considerations. The problem is that most alternative history are poorly done. As is your presentation of this one.
The breathless headlines notwithstanding, even had the Allies stood by and allowed the Germans to produce every last drop of heavy water that could be wrung from the Vemork plant, it wouldn't have powered near enough reactors to allow Germany to make even one uranium (Little Boy-type) bomb. And the rest of the project was at that point years behind the combined effort of the Allies. The Manhattan Project cost $23 billion (in current dollars). Germany had nowhere near that amount of funding to spare. Had they tried, it would have simply hastened their conventional collapse due to the necessary diversion of funds. Germany also had no heavy bombers with the capacity to deliver atomic devices (the He 177 wasn't big enough). Even if it magically acquired an atomic weapon, how would it deliver the device? And if it had pursued a heavy bomber program, then that would have required still more funds. The development of the B-29 alone cost many billions (in modern $). And, no, the V-2's payload was nowhere near the capacity of early atomic weapons.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jbgusa
Given the demonic nature of the Nazi regime, one wonders what would have happened but for the derring-do of these adventurer-heroes.
Only if one gets their 'history' from scant and rather ludicrous articles. If one understands the actual German bomb program and the material requirements of early atomic weapons, it is obvious that the Telemark Raid changed absolutely nothing.
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One final comment on the German bomb program:
Germany's not-very-advanced bomb program focused entirely on uranium. They did not work with plutonium. On one hand, a uranium bomb is simpler. There was no test of a gun-type uranium assembly before the drop on Hiroshima. It was so simple that Manhattan Project phycisists had no doubt how it would function. But the plutonium device was different. The implosion-type assembly required was very complicated, but it could be produced faster and more cheaply (it ultimately allowed for smaller devices with higher yields, as well). This is reflected in U.S. production numbers. When Japan surrendered, the third atomic device was being readied and would have been available for use within the week. After that, a fourth bomb would have come online about the first of September, with continual production making more bombs available, one about every ten days. These were all implosion-type plutonium bombs, the same as the Fat Man device dropped on Nagasaki.
Weapons-grade plutonium was much easier to mass-produce. So Germany's embryonic bomb program, had it come to its fruition and begun making uranium bombs, was never going to be able to produce the numbers that the U.S. eventually produced.
I'm going to use a separate post here to elaborate on the nature of what-if? threads, and how this one of yours runs so badly up on the rocks.
WHAT IF NAZIS HAD GOTTEN NUKES FIRST? is preposterous.
WHAT IF THE TELEMARK RAID NEVER HAPPENED? is perfectly reasonable.
Last one first; why is it reasonable? Because all it requires is a change of British thinking about the importance of the Vemork plant and great knowledge of the state of the German bomb program in general. In other words, it was entirely within the capacity of the British government of 1942 to not undertake the raid, and it is not implausible that they might have chosen that course of action.
But the former? It's impossible that the historical Germany of World War II might have gotten nuclear weapons first. You have to go back to the early 1930s and change Nazi behavior that resulted in both a flight of Jewish physicists whose talents were necessary to the bomb program, and stop the simultaneous purge of Jews from government and the workplace in general that pushed out those who would rather have stayed. You have to find some way for Germany to possess the enormous resources to undertake a bomb project, without weakening herself through the redirecting of those funds from critical wartime needs. In other words, how does Germany beat the combined efforts of the United States, Britain and Canada (all partners in the the Manhattan Project), who together possessed a GDP well over 3x that of Germany? Beyond that, you've got to explain the fact that even if Germany had gone balls-to-the-wall after a bomb, it appears that they could have not have had one before 1947 in a best-case scenario - so how do they survive not being defeated long enough to acquire one, and what possesses the western Allies, who through intelligence would have known that Germany was making progress toward a bomb, to decide not to develop their own (so as to allow Germany to get there first)? Then you have to solve the problem of delivery - more resources have to be conjured from somewhere, and again to not weaken Germany in the process.
You do none of that.
You just want us to talk about what would have happened if something that could not possibly have happened had happened.
That's not history.
What-if? threads should not be used by those who are too lazy to do the research and the work to demonstrate their plausibility, and even more importantly they should make a point not to postulate the absurd. WHAT IF THE USSR PUT THE FIRST MAN ON THE MOON? is reasonable with some plausible changes to history. WHAT IF THE CHINA COLONIZED MARS IN 1975? is not. See the difference?
One of the things that surprised me when I started reading about WWII was the oversimplification of the Nazi regime I had learned as a kid. Hitler didn't want to wage war against Britain, he admired both Britain and the U.S. He took over France because that was their historic enemy and in retaliation for WWI, including reparations. He wanted to take over predominantly Slavic lands for Germany, not France, Britain, or the U.S.
After Germany took over Paris, Hitler wanted to negotiate for peace with Britain. It was primarily Churchill who stood against negotiating for peace and pursued the war effort. I don't believe Germany would have ever attacked Britain or the U.S. out of his own volition if they wanted peace. He admired both countries for their historic treatment of other countries and peoples. He envisioned a world dominated by Britain, the U.S., and Nazi Germany.
When you take this background, it makes more sense why Germany thought attacking Russia at the time was a good idea. In his mind, communism was the common enemy and, in addition to "Lebensraum" for the German people, he wanted to show that he was an enemy of communism. He was thinking that Britain and the U.S. would support his war against communism. You also have to remember that the U.S. was neutral the first 2 years of the war, joining in only when they themselves were attacked.
Should Britain and the U.S. have trusted Hitler's noble intentions after his breach of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Treaty? What kind of "negotiations" would have worked with Germany? We had the example of Munich as instruction.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TXRunner
I doubt that even an atomic bomb would have changed the course of the war. Hitler would not have come out dropping atomic bombs at the beginning, and by the time the tides of war started turning against him, it really would have been too late.
Hitler enjoyed killing people. End of story.
Last edited by mensaguy; 04-13-2019 at 04:11 PM..
Reason: Fixed spelliing on a quote tag
The game Wolfenstein: New Order explores a universe in which the Axis won WW2.
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