Scenario : the German nuclear scientists are hit by inspiration and decide to research fission instead of fusion. They convince the Fuhrer to cancel a number of lower priority weapon projects to make this possible.
By 1941, they are producing fission bombs at a rate of 3 per month, double each year thereafter. They can deliver them with V2s or construct their own heavy bombers to deliver them. They also are able to increase yield as the fighting goes on, eking out a few more kilotons per device each year.
They are successfully able to pinpoint every effort to develop nukes by Soviet Russia, the United States, Great Britain, and the other significant powers. Any time they find out about a major industrial complex to enrich the uranium or test prototypes they pencil it in to their targeting list.
Could they do it? It seems like centrally planned economies like Soviet Russia would be extremely vulnerable to atomic weapons, because there would be tight concentrations of buildings full of paper, pushed by bureaucrats, to do all the planning. The United States under full war mobilization might have been similarly vulnerable - I suspect an atomic bombing of the Pentagon or Pittsburgh might have seriously diminished production.
Germany was a continental land power while the US has always been a naval power. What makes the US so difficult to conquer, aside from the two oceans, is the fact that it’s one of few countries that can’t be blockaded. It’s a closed economy. To conquer the US, you need a powerful navy that can control at least one ocean, and then send in an army big enough to overrun an entire continent. Looks like Germany will be hard put to fulfilling either task. It’s manufacturing capacity for such an undertaking (give it 10 years) is questionable. I think the only way it could do this is if it has countries like USSR, Japan, China, UK, and India on its side. And it doesn’t matter having nukes if you have no effective mode of delivery. With world war II technology, anything close enough to nuke using a bomber is close enough to invade and overrun. You’ll be better off producing more tanks, planes and munitions than nuking an entire continent, IMHO.
Soviet Union and the UK I can see, but withy what would Germany have dropped nuclear bombs on the USA? Neither V2 nor long range bombers could have conceivably crossed the Atlantic. So, there was no way Germany could have prevented the USA from building its own bombs.
The V-2’s 208 km maximum range couldn’t have been improved to match later medium-ranged missiles patterned after it (like the SS-1 Scud, 270 km.) Even the US Pershing missile could go only 720 km. Can you imagine how much of your potato harvest goes to distilling alcohol for just one V-2 missile? Intercontinental-range missiles were not likely back in the 40s.
Germany had no strategic bombers capable of striking America. The [Amerika Bomber](Amerika Bomber) was a pipe dream. Even if they did have them, they’d be vulnerable unless Germany could either do a sneak attack or somehow establish air superiority over the bombing route. The latter seems…unlikely.
Los Alamos was in the middle of nowhere. It’d take a miracle to bomb it. But first the Germans would have to know about it.
It’s interesting to speculate on America’s reaction if New York were nuked. Would the government surrender right away, or shrug it off? Would Germany really care about occupying, or would they just be satisfied with us staying out of their way? How much would the populace rebel? Would it be the mother of all insurgencies? How would Germany respond? And so on.
I’d think Germany would be more interested in using them against Russia.
It’s not just the range, but also the payload. And there are two aspects to that (at least). One is building a ballistic missile capable of reaching the destination with some kind of accuracy (granted, these are atomic bombs so you don’t have to be up to modern smart bomb standards) and carry the prospective payload necessary. But two, you need to develop an atomic bomb small enough and light enough (and reliable enough) to GO on a ballistic missile. It took the US and Soviets years and years of testing and refinement not just on ballistic missiles but on atomic/nuclear warheads that could be engineered to fit on and work from the platform they were designing. It would have taken the Germans just as long if not longer, and they would have had to do a number of nuclear explosives tests to get something workable.
So, basically, they would have had to do it the old fashioned way by blockading the East Coast and then invading. Neither of which they had any chance at all in achieving. I don’t think they could have blockaded Canada and invaded them either, and they were a far smaller population with a far smaller military.
If England were conquered, would the terms of surrender include other parts of the Empire?
How difficult would it be for Germany to take Mexico, or countries in Central America that would give them launch areas that could hit the United States?
I disagree that Germany couldn’t have won the war with a significant amount of nuclear weapons in 1941.
Both Great Britain and Russia were within V2 or bomber range of Germany. I don’t believe that if Germany had 26-72 nuclear bombs per year that they wouldn’t find a way to deliver these war heads in sufficient to drive both nations out of the war.
Once that is done, there is no military threat to Germany that can reach out and touch them in any significant fashion. At that point, Germanys total war effort would be to find a way to improve the V2 or to develop a B-29 type aircraft in sufficient numbers or in sufficient quantities to bomb the United States. The B-29 was first flown in 1942, so the technology wasn’t that far in the future. I understand that the “Battle of America” would have been difficult. And Germany is a long way from the United States. But if one or two American cities per month are being bombed with nuclear weapons, how long could that be endured?
Now there is a difference in suing for peace and suing for peace and allowing an occupation.
Germany would have had a very difficult time invading even Mexico, assuming it was at war with the US. To do so they would not only have to basically wipe out the US Navy completely, they would have to destroy most of our long range air craft AND then they would have to somehow build up the logistic ability to project a large army across a hostile sea to a continental sized nation state with millions of people AND the support of the US who can just ship troops and material there via train instead of at the end of a thousands of miles long sea logistics system. They couldn’t do it. Think of Germany trying to support their armies in Stalingrad after they were surrounded, even though they had air superiority and you start to get the idea of what it would take…and that was an army of something like 250k accessible via land bases and strategic logistics points connected to rail heads back to Germany itself.
I wonder if they could island-hop from Britain to Iceland to Greenland using some combination of nuclear threat and actual use. Then they would be in range of Canada. This would take a lot less troops and ships than you’d need to conquer America conventionally. You might even be able to stage from Greenland for a mainland invasion.
Another major factor is the overall size of the economy. A lot of people miss this. It’s not an issue of whether a Tiger is a better tank than a Sherman (it was). The issue that decided the war was that America had the industrial capacity to build over forty-nine thousand Shermans while Germany built less than two thousand Tigers. In terms of industrial warfare, Hitler brought a knife to a gunfight.
Possibly, but “the Empire” was an increasingly nebulous thing by then. Westminster 1931 assured Canada of its own independent authority to go to war. Had England fallen, Lizzie might well have fled to Canada, and might even have established a government in exile, but neither her authority nor that of her government would have compelled Canada to surrender.
Extremely. Argentina might have officially joined the Axis had the winds been blowing correctly, and if I squint really hard I could see maybe Bolivia and Peru (possibly even Chile) as well…but they would have had their hands full with Brazil, and at any rate aren’t close enough to North America to serve as staging grounds for either missiles or ground troops.
The only chance the Axis powers had in North America was an alliance with Mexico. As XT points out, they weren’t going to be able to invade Mexico by force. But if they had somehow managed to convince Camacho (or, I suppose, Cárdenas before 1940) to join up, the was would have been very different, and Germany would have been able to send their nukes into mainland US (though not to the East Coast, still). But finding a universe in which the Axis had enough to offer Mexico is really far down the rabbit hole.
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"We intend to begin on the first of February unrestricted submarine warfare. We shall endeavor in spite of this to keep the United States of America neutral. In the event of this not succeeding, we make Mexico a proposal of alliance on the following basis: make war together, make peace together, generous financial support and an understanding on our part that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. The settlement in detail is left to you. You will inform the President of the above most secretly as soon as the outbreak of war with the United States of America is certain and add the suggestion that he should, on his own initiative, invite Japan to immediate adherence and at the same time mediate between Japan and ourselves. Please call the President's attention to the fact that the ruthless employment of our submarines now offers the prospect of compelling England in a few months to make peace." Signed, ZIMMERMANN "
While I agree, I don’t think it fully pertains to this argument.
The OP states that Germany produces has 72 nukes annually by 1942. He didn’t say that that would take 75% of the war budget to produce so we have to assume that making these nukes doesn’t break the bank.
If that’s the case, they can spend a very high percentage of the war budget on strategic bombing.
I don’t think Germany would have every been able to develop the atomic bomb, but that’s the scenario we’ve been given.
