Especially since her father, George VI, was King during World War II.
Details.
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Why not? If they hadn’t scared off all their Jewish physicists they might have had one by 1941.
The hypothetical greatly understates the effort required to produce fissionable material. Sure, magic resource-free nuclear weapons would have helped Germany. But actually putting in the sweat required to produce one wouldn’t involve “cancel[ing] a number of lower priority weapon projects” so much as “ceasing to produce war materials at all. For years. While at war.” I.e., defeat by the conventional forces of the Soviets, or maybe Lichtenstein, while pouring resources into trying to make a nuke.
For perspective: The USA didn’t test the uranium bomb used on Hiroshima (“Little Boy”). They just built it. The plant that produced the enriched uranium used in Little Boy ran on electricity. How much? That one building consumed one-seventh of all the electricity produced in the United States. That’s the late-WWII US, the greatest economic engine the world has ever known. The plutonium for the other bomb was produced elsewhere, using additional resources.
Had the Germans actually tried to produce a bomb, it would have consumed their war production for years.
Edited to add cite for 1/7th figure:
Heisenberg worked on the German effort, and when told of the American bomb did not believe it.
His group, btw, was fighting for uranium with the Luftwaffe, who needed it for instrument panels.
Not to fight the hypothetical but in addition to Sailboat’s objection about the massive industrial process involved, where was Germany going to get the uranium to crank out all these bombs?
Think about this whenever I watch this show. Not sure even with nukes that Germany actually conquers America. Convinces them to leave the war, totally. But not conquer the US.
An army. navy and air force comparable in size to the real life WW2-era German armed forces would not be able invade the US. They would even have trouble even delivering the nukes (IRL they had no long range bombers worthy of the name). Invading the US would be a far greater military undertaking than D-day and that took the combined effort of all the allies. One nuked city would be a catastrophe but don’t see how that would convince the US to unconditionally surrender to Germany and accept a German occupation, and would not make the US that much easier to invade.
Much later after the Germans had controlled the industrial power of Europe and Soviet Union for many years you could see them having armed forces that are up to the task, but that is not the story in the Man In the High Castle AFAIK (no spoilers only seen a few episodes!)
Interesting side note. The key development that made the allies realize that an atomic bomb was hypothetically viable was made by Jewish German scientists, who had fled the nazis, in exile in the UK. German scientists never made that initial breakthrough (that showed that kilogrammes of nuclear material were required, not tons).
Germany never could have invaded America. But after German nuking London, etc, yes, perhaps the USA would have agreed to end hostilities.
Even Philip Dick knew there was no way the Axis could conquer the USA. That’s why his ending was such a cheat.
(It came very close to the “it was all a dream” chestnut.)
The Wehrmacht was built for quick, large-scale assaults: blitzkrieg.
Conquering America would have required a sustained, large-scale land invasion.
It wasn’t a remote possibility, in 1776 or 1946.
The largest town in Greenland is Nuuk on the South-western coast. It is 2,476 km from Montreal, if you fly directly over Labrador/Ungava. The terrain is rugged and there were no air strips in the 40s.
The port of Thule is farther north than Thule, so the distance to Montreal from Thule is 3,462 km.
If you tried to use Greenland as a naval staging base, you’d have to go down the coast of Labrador, get past the Anglo-American garrison at St John’s Newfoundland, and then by Halifax Nova Scotia, which was a major naval base during WWII.
Why couldn’t they have snuck bombs in to our harbors in U-Boats?
Smuggle one in to N.Y. harbor, set a timer so the boat can get away again, ka-boom.
After five or ten of those, would the U.S. still have the energy to resist?
Good use of the hypothetical, and here’s my hypothetical answer.
The U.S. takes a page from Stalin’s book and keeps moving inland. Sure, maybe they could sail a ship into New York, Boston or Philadelphia, but let’s see them try it in Pittsburgh!
Very good.
I wonder what popular opinion would be if all the Nazis required was for the USA surrender was to stay out of the war, and send some tribute in raw materials, food, etc. to Germany.
Theoretically, a conquered Europe could have led to bases in Iceland, then into Greenland and from there nukes threatening Canada & New York.
Which still leaves the salient question of “why the hell would they have done that ?”. Hitler wasn’t interested in the US in the least - nobody really was back then. It was far away from everything and hadn’t displayed much inclination to get really involved in anything (so far).
Besides, would the US have continued the fight with the UK out of the picture ? First, why ?! ; second, how ? The American war effort in Europe was absolutely contingent on bases in England. Even *Torch *only worked thanks to allied naval and aerial support and involved British troops.
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Why not? If they hadn’t scared off all their Jewish physicists they might have had one by 1941.
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Then again that’s kind of like saying “If the Nazis hadn’t been Nazis at all”. Anti-Semitism wasn’t a side action for those guys.
Even it was, it was no where near large enough. The invasion of US would have made the D-day look like a skirmish, and that required a military and industrial base far larger than Germany. It would by far have been the largest military operation in history. A few nukes does not change that. WW2 A-bombs were devastating and could certainly have convinced the US to make peace, but they could not (especially without complete air supremacy, or anything close to it) have destroyed the US war machine.
The only way the scenario is remotely feasible if instead of an invasion happening in 1940-1945 it happens much later after the Nazis absorb the industrial might of Europe and Soviet Union.
The OP posited a major German nuclear program and then asked “could they do it?” And the answer is no. Even if Germany had been able to produce nuclear weapons, there’s no plausible scenario where they could have outproduced the United States. So there’s no possibility of Germany conquering America based on its nuclear superiority. The worst case scenario is both sides having nuclear weapons and there being a Cold War standoff between Germany and America.
This I would disagree with. If the Nazis completely ruled from Central Asia to the UK, and their allies Japan ruled all of Asia (given that any peace treat involved the US relinquishing the pacific), then they would overtake the US eventually (assuming they could keep this empire together).
Though even at that point an invasion of the would still be a dicey proposition. Again it would be by far, the largest invasion ever attempted. And it certainly would NOT have been possible before 1945.
Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa were all independent of the U.K., so each one would have made their own assessment whether to continue the fight or not.
India would probably have seized the opportunity to declare itself independent.