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I do not think race of enemy was an issue with Germany, but location of friendly nations getting fallout may have been.
I doubt that was a decision factor. Nazi installations in friendly occupied nations were bombed routinely, quite often with considerable civilian casualties, and that was more or less considered the cost of liberation. In some roundabout way, there were those among the occupied populations who felt that their civilian losses were a sort of war contribution. If your country is overrun and you can't fight openly, the least you can do is tolerate the risk associated with the fight.
Btw, it was having European allies harmed, not skin color, that leads me to question if FDR would truly drop a bomb on Germany. We are not talking a giant land mass between nations we'd wish not to harm near Germany.
In post #12 of this thread I gave my opinion that the Allies would have dropped The Bomb on Dresden and I stand by that conjecture.
It's close enough for Stalin to get a whiff and far from the American, British, and other troops advancing on the western front.
A bucket of sunshine on the Führerbunker might have changed that.
Good point! According to one source, Hitler spent little time in Berlin until he moved into the Führerbunker on January 16, 1945. I wonder if the Allies had intelligence on his locations and whether they had made any attempt to target those locations. Obviously this was not as easy during WWII as it is today.
the Japanese had a border "incident" in 1939 with the Russians i believe some 40,000 died...
all the command decisions were in force without direct presidential orders (came later)...had the emperor decided to surrender earlier the people would have obeyed
after looking at all possible scenarios i believe had those bombs not been used certainly later on say Korea they would have been as MAN has never just invented a weapon...i don't think a demonstration would have sufficed it is a sad reflection on mankind IMO...no bomb would have been used against Germany no untouched target available possibly an industrial center but those were ruble in Jan 1945...facilities were built within mountains bomb proofing them
The United States Army had 42,260 soldiers killed in combat in the European Theater in 1945: 12,000+ in January, 8,000+ in February, 9000+ in March, 9000+ in April and 428 in May. That just American soldiers, not counting the losses of our allies, especially the Soviets.
If the Germans were done in January, as has been alleged here, these numbers don't reflect it. The Germans fought to the bitter end, long past any hope of victory, and had to smashed and rooted.
I usually try to stay out of these "What if" threads, but some facts need to be added here.
Nuclear fission was discovered in Germany in 1938. It was logical to assume that Germany was working to develop a bomb. FDR authorized the Manhattan Project in late 1942, and the Oak Ridge facility was built in 1943, along with the facilities at Los Alamos. This was very expensive and highly complex, meaning that it didn't happen without approval from the top, meaning FDR.
There weren't just 2 bombs. There were three. One was exploded in Nevada in July of 1945. When the other two were sent to Japan, work continued to build more bombs. Nobody knew how many would be needed. While they knew there was fallout, nobody knew how much or how deadly it was, so it was probably not a huge concern when determining a target. After all, none of the targets were anywhere near the US.
Since FDR had approved the development, it only takes common sense to realize that he would have used the device if it was finished when he needed it. If the bomb had been available in January, one would have been tested and the other dropped on Germany, wherever the military thought needed to be dealt with next. While that was being done, more bombs would have been build to finish the job in Germany and then to take Japan down.
I believe that the development was so secret that Truman was unaware of it until he was told after he assumed the Presidency. However, he had from April until the test in July to learn about it, so he probably had enough details to make an informed decision when the time came. Had he lived, FDR would have known about the progress as it developed. Since he hadn't stopped it, he probably would have used it.
I usually try to stay out of these "What if" threads, but some facts need to be added here.
Nuclear fission was discovered in Germany in 1938. It was logical to assume that Germany was working to develop a bomb. FDR authorized the Manhattan Project in late 1942, and the Oak Ridge facility was built in 1943, along with the facilities at Los Alamos. This was very expensive and highly complex, meaning that it didn't happen without approval from the top, meaning FDR.
There weren't just 2 bombs. There were three. One was exploded in Nevada in July of 1945. When the other two were sent to Japan, work continued to build more bombs. Nobody knew how many would be needed. While they knew there was fallout, nobody knew how much or how deadly it was, so it was probably not a huge concern when determining a target. After all, none of the targets were anywhere near the US.
Since FDR had approved the development, it only takes common sense to realize that he would have used the device if it was finished when he needed it. If the bomb had been available in January, one would have been tested and the other dropped on Germany, wherever the military thought needed to be dealt with next. While that was being done, more bombs would have been build to finish the job in Germany and then to take Japan down.
I believe that the development was so secret that Truman was unaware of it until he was told after he assumed the Presidency. However, he had from April until the test in July to learn about it, so he probably had enough details to make an informed decision when the time came. Had he lived, FDR would have known about the progress as it developed. Since he hadn't stopped it, he probably would have used it.
German development of an atomic bomb was very real although it had been delayed. It had been delayed for multiple reasons. German scientists had emigrated to the USA before the war. There was difficulty getting the materials needed. Allied bombing during the war made the kind of research that needed to be done difficult. Hitler was more interested in other projects that he deemed more practical.
The Germans developed missiles and they developed jet airplanes during the last stages of the war. The state of nuclear or atomic research in Germany was such that it would have taken several more years to produce a bomb in 1945. Scientists were trying to reach the first stage of the process. The first stage of the process is to create a nuclear reactor and achieve a chain reaction among atoms. The Germans were stockpiling the materials to build a reactor, but had not yet done so.
The first nuclear device indeed was exploded at Los Alamos, New Mexico at Trinity Site in July of 1945. The island of Tinian in the Pacific had been selected as the base for the 509th Composite Group to use for bombing Japan. At the time the two bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, materials existed on Tinian to assemble a third bomb. However, there would have been a significant wait if additional bombs had been required to end the war.
I think you are correct that had the bomb been available before the Germans surrendered, it would likely have been used against Germany. Some maintain it was a "racial thing" and that we would never have used the bomb against other white Caucasians. I've never believed that. It was simply a question of timing and being able to end a war favorably which had taken many lives.
The point at which Truman first learned of the bomb actually has an unusual answer. He learned about it little by little rather than all at once. Remember that Truman had been a US Senator before he was picked to be Vice President by FDR. Truman gained much notoriety by serving as chairman of a special senate committee that was created to investigate whether our tax dollars were being used effectively by the military during the war. Truman inadvertently stumbled upon the Manhattan Project during this work. Some people had come to him and complained about an ultra-secret program that seemed to be large and expensive. Because it was top secret, no one knew many details. Secretary of War Henry Stimpson learned that Truman was trying to investigate the Manhattan Project and intervened. He stopped Truman's investigation and made him give him all paperwork in his possession related to the investigation. He did tell him that the Manhattan Project's purpose was to produce a "very powerful bomb". So, Truman knew that much while he was still a US Senator in 1944. What he didn't know were any of the specifics involved.
When FDR died in April of 1945, Secretary Stimpson told Truman that the two of them needed to meet very soon to discuss an important matter. Truman met Stimpson within a few days of FDR's death. It was than he learned all of the details about the atomic bomb. Perhaps, the most startling detail was the bomb was almost ready for use. Many years later, Truman told biographers that while he thought FDR was a tremendous President that he felt it was an oversight on his part to not inform the Vice President about something so important as the atomic bomb. However, there was immense pressure to keep this secret in the hands of as few people as possible. Also, Truman did not become President until March 6, 1945. FDR died little more than one month later.
I don't think it was realistic for the Germans to have it before 1950 i.e. not in time for that particular war in any event, but given the engineering know-how the Germans had at their disposal I can see why the idea still freaked out Allied decision makers.
I would also agree that the Germans weren't ready to give up in January 1945. The German military and overall establishment had after all been convinced - on a deep psychological level - that Germany had lost WW1 due to a failure of nerve in 1918 rather than military defeat. If your identity is to a large extent built on the premise of 'righting the wrongs' of 1918 and you're essentially convinced that your mistake in 1918 was to give in to internal opposition to the war and surrender 'too early'...then you're not going make that choice again. It had to be a fight to the bitter end, a Götterdämmerung, in 1945 for anything these men had done and believed since 1918 to have any merit and value. It's not pragmatic but it's also not without precedent in war. Pride makes men do absurd things at times.
When FDR died in April of 1945, Secretary Stimpson told Truman that the two of them needed to meet very soon to discuss an important matter. Truman met Stimpson within a few days of FDR's death. It was than he learned all of the details about the atomic bomb. Perhaps, the most startling detail was the bomb was almost ready for use. Many years later, Truman told biographers that while he thought FDR was a tremendous President that he felt it was an oversight on his part to not inform the Vice President about something so important as the atomic bomb. However, there was immense pressure to keep this secret in the hands of as few people as possible. Also, Truman did not become President until March 6, 1945. FDR died little more than one month later.
Truman became Vice-President on January 20, 1945 and President on April 12, 1945.
A bucket of sunshine on the Führerbunker might have changed that.
Who knows. The bunker complex was heavily reinforced and might have withstood an early design A bomb hit. As for Berlin itself it was in ruins as a consequence of years of allied conventional bombing. Nearly all German troops, equipment and lower level command structure were nowhere near the German capital and could have continued fighting.
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