Another can of sunshine for the German gentleman, please!
Another can of sunshine for the German gentleman, please!
Another can of sunshine for the German gentleman, please!
Germany could have won WW2 if they had appealed better to Americans and convinced them to join the Nazis.
It would have been easier than that; they had a non-aggression treaty with Russia that they broke. Had they not done that, Russia likely would not have joined the Allies, and it's not out of the question that they might have joined the Axis.
That wouldn't guarantee an Axis win, but without nuclear weapons, the Allies wouldn't be able to sustain a land war against a Germany/Russia alliance.
The only way Germany was winning the war was if they got a whole new leadership structure that didn't rely on a cult of personality.
Would have probably taken a few more months, since only 2 nukes existed in August of 1945.
I would not be alive had it come to that. My dad was born in 1944 in Berlin.
We nuked Japan because we wanted to test nukes, not because it materially affected the war effort. It's possible our government would have considered it "wrong" to nuke white Europeans.
This is false. A conventional invasion of the homeland would have been extremely costly. The Japanese were deeply convinced of the war being live or death for everyone.
Excusatio non petita, accusatio manifesta. Is it so hard to see both reasons are true.
It turns out that they were already about to surrender
But… I've heard (from people online) nuking Japan was a necessary evil. Is that not the case? (I am big dummy and legit don't know, suck at history. Though I am somewhat skeptical hearing potential USians say their violence was necessary)
Even after the bombs were dropped there was a coup attemptto overthrow Emperor Hirohito so that Japan could keep on fighting to the last man, woman and child.
It was a necessary evil, but it was just that. Evil.
Essentially, there were three options going into the second half of 1945: invasion, blockade, or the atomic bombings.
Invasion and blockade both had projected casualties in the millions. So Truman made the decision to attempt to use the atomic bombs as a weapon of intimidation, dropping them and promising total destruction by the means of more such bombings if Japan did not surrender.
I will never defend the firebombings over Japan, which did nothing to hasten the end of the war. But the atomic bomb was a new and devastating weapon which Truman, and much of US high command who were aware of its existence, correctly surmised would convince the Japanese government of the futility of further resistance (combined with a bluff that we had as many as we needed).
Notably, even after the Soviet Union joined the war and both bombs had been dropped, a significant faction of the Japanese government wanted to keep fighting, even attempting a coup to continue the war. Only the direct intervention of Emperor Hirohito, a key figure in the State Shinto faith pushed by the Japanese Empire at the time, pushed the Japanese government to the negotiating table on terms less than "We keep our imperial conquests but say sowwy 😊"
We should have just like Sherman should’ve turned west from Savannah and not stopped until he reached the Pacific. No more half measures
Morgenthau 🫱🫲 Sherman
Unlikely. There wasn't the same level of racism against Germans.
Man, we utterly flattened Germany with a sustained campaign of strategic bombing, and seriously considered ethnically cleansing a good portion of the country after the war. If it seemed like Nazi Germany was going to hold out for another million Allied casualties, you bet your ass they would've had a can of sunshine opened on them.
Yeah the only question is which German cities would've been nuked, not if
"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons." -Admiral William D. Leahy, 1950
The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the world with the destruction of Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into war.... The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan. - Chester W. Nimitz, 6 October 1945 Commander-in-chief of the US pacific fleet in WWII
First, the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing. Second, I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon - Dwight D Eisenhower 1963
Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated. - US Government Strategic Bombing Survey, 1946
I would assume that the whole continent going red in response would have not been out of the question if that happened however.
I mean, nuking an European city would have been the ultimate permanent propaganda tool for the USSR why we need to band together against such barbarism.
The Man in the High Castle is set in an alternate timeline where the Germans did win the war by developing nukes first. They then bombed DC, leading to the US surrendering. Germany then took over Europe, Africa and most of the Americas while Japan conquered Eastern Asia, Oceana, and the American West Coast.
But in reality, it was not a close race. The Manhattan Project was invested in heavily due largely from fears that Germany would develop nuclear weapons first, but their Uranproject had largely been abandoned by the time the US started their equivalent. German physicists first discovered nuclear fission, and their government began seeking how to develop a bomb shortly after. However, Germany essentially gave it up as unachievable in the near term as they never managed to achieve a chain reaction or even enrich Uranium. Secret recordings show their scientists did not initially believe the news about Hiroshima, thinking it impossible with then-modern technology.
They did come fairly close to developing the first nuclear reactor however, as scientists were still interested in civilian if not military applications. It's interesting that today Germany houses US nuclear weapons for defense as part of NATO but has a population firmly opposed to nuclear power.