How? Did Germany have bombers that could make a 6,000 km round trip bombing run?
[ See earlier post about distance from bases in Greenland to Montreal, let alone New York. ]
If Germany was taking countries right and left by dropping nuclear weapons on them, they would have access to the resources of the countries that capitulated.
How much production would the United States be able to muster if Washington DC, Pittsburgh, and Los Angeles were all cored out by 15-25 kiloton devices?
The problem here is that the USA depends on the U.S. government making purchases…even existing as a coherent entity. 1940s USA, the government would have not been aware of the danger and a single atomic bombing could have eliminated most of Congress, all the Supremes, the President and everyone 10 or 20 places down on the succession chain.
Without that kind of organization, there might have been a lot of pissed off people, but if nobody tells anyone want to do - even indirectly by making purchase orders for the vast quantities of war material the USA produced in the actual timeline - it’s over. 1940s America might have perceived the bright flashes and mushroom clouds - something in my scenario the USA was not able to do back - as near magical attacks by Nazi super-science.
As for the how : I guess the Nazis need a heavy bomber, and it needs to have enough range to make it to the cities I mentioned from a forward base in Greenland or Siberia, 1 way. Not impossible with 1940s era tech - the B-29 could do that kind of mission.
In this scenario, industrial spies would give the B-29 to the Nazis.
And Detroit, Seattle, Wichita, Fort Worth, Oak Ridge, etc. etc. Sure, the Nazis might have 72 bombs, but the U.S. had more than 72 targets, not to mention the Reich might have wanted to use a few on Britain and the U.S.S.R.
Well, the Nazis couldn’t get a frieghter up the Potomac (it’s 163 miles by boat), and I doubt a U-boat could have gotten up it undetected either, so they’d have to blow up some place with a harbor. As soon as the gummit figures out what happened, everyone goes to Camp David ( in existence since 1938) or at least hides in the Capitol subway tunnel (1909.)
Now we have to stipulate that the Nazis had a) the bomb, b) conquered their way into North America and c) have a B-29 style aircraft at their disposal. If we’re going to give them all that, why don’t we just have Nazi Superman fly the bombs over.:rolleyes:
Mostly, there was the Trinity test, conducted at New Mexico’s Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range on 16 July 1945, an implosion-type bomb.
But you’re right, the Germans didnt have the resources.
And the B-29 was built in America not Germany.
That’s the main point. If Germany began building atomic bombs, America would also begin building atomic bombs. And America would win any arms race. By the time Germany had 72 atomic bombs, America would have 500. So if Germany blew up Washington, Pittsburgh, and Los Angeles, America would have responded by blowing up every city in Germany.
The same is true with heavy bombers or missiles or ballistic submarines. Once Germany started building them, the United States would also start building them - and we’d build more of them. Germany would never be able to achieve any strategic superiority.
Even an attempted sneak attack wouldn’t work. Suppose Germany built one or two atomic bombs and smuggled them into Washington and New York. Sure, they might be able to blow up one or two cities - but they’d have used up all the bombs they had. And the United States isn’t Japan in 1945. We’d survive the loss of those cities and a year later we’d be dropping our own atomic bombs on German cities.
Not pre ww2 America. Before America had been attacked, it owned less than 10 tanks and was barely producing or doing anything.
The secret behind the atom bomb is also not obvious - if the first sign of it is radioactive craters, it would take several years to analyze the fragments, build a massive set of industrial plants to enrich the U-235, and construct the devices.
70 years later, we know of exactly one route to reach a fission bomb : you have to fission U-235 first. Plutonium requires working nuclear reactors to create. What if the roles were reversed and certain powerful American nuclear scientists got all the research money funneled into a couple of pet methods, such as researching fusion, which won’t let you make bombs?
This is a similar problem today. It is possible that the real reason we don’t have fusion power today is because a tokamak can never work for this purpose, in the same way that you can never build a direct fusion bomb. (well, not without kicking it off with antimatter instead or something). Powerful research scientists and institutions have made sure nearly all of the fusion research money is funneled into building ever larger tokamaks and laser compression, a method that is impractical for generating useful power.
And you keep naming massive industrial cities : how are they going to decide to begin working on this if the U.S. treasury and the Federal reserve are gone, and no individual bank has a way to coordinate how much money they have with other banks?
I know in an ideal world, the amount of money in banks wouldn’t affect real world production, but it does, massively.
Again, if these are Nazis with a good supply of nukes…
Not really exploited until after the war but there were significant deposits in the old East Germany near the Czech border. After the war the Soviets used uranium from there for their own nuclear programs.
I haven’t read the Philip K. Dick book since I was a kid, but I did recently watch the 10-episode Amazon adaptation.
I believe some of the key things posited by Dick or the show are that:
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FDR being assassinated and not being around for WWII ended up being a big problem because he was replaced by a series of isolationist and incompetent Presidents. Who did not invest resources into things like preparing an effective war machine, going to a full war time economy, or investing in stuff like the Manhattan Project.
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When the Germans destroyed D.C., and we don’t know how this happened, via atomic bomb, it created grave disorder/disorganization in the U.S. command. We know from snippets that some of the highest ranking Nazi Americans in 1962 were already leaders in a pro-Nazi movement some 15 or more years before (the Nazi V-A day celebrates a 1952 capitulation of America.)
My impression always was that America was done in because it was far weaker in the alternate history than in the real one, due to a series of isolationist/inefficient Presidents who never properly built up our military, and because the atomic attack on D.C. destroyed centralized operational activities at the Federal level. In the ensuing chaos, large numbers of well placed Americans became traitors/collaborators. It’s not hard to imagine that perhaps entire States went the other way, maybe States with (in the alternate history) strong American Nazi movements combined with seeing the fury of the atomic bomb went turn coat. My impression from the book and the series is the Germans didn’t win by “forcefully conquering the entire country” but by destabilizing the country via destroying D.C. in an atomic bombing and then working heavily with a huge amount of traitors/collaborators. They eventually did invade German troops across the Atlantic (the battle at Virginia Beach), but we don’t know all the details. It’s entirely possible that the troops were staged from another American State that had turned over to the Nazi Reich at that point.
We know from one of the Jews in the Pacific States from the TV show that large numbers of Americans turned very quickly to Nazis, spontaneously lynching huge numbers of Jews in Boston and etc.
Remember Dick was a science fiction author, of course. There’s little belief in my mind you’d see so many Americans become “collaborators” just because D.C. was bombed, Dick’s reality posits an America that was far more willing to embrace fascism and Nazism than the real America ever was. But that’s really kind of the meat of what the book is about, how societies like ours maybe could perhaps have an evil streak in us that we haven’t fully looked at.
The ability of the German Reich to deliver an atomic weapon in the 1940s is also of course purely science fiction. Through control of Belgium’s African colony they would’ve had enough uranium, but you’d need a German scientist able to convince Hitler that this singular weapon is more important than a huge number of other things for the German bomb program to have received the resources necessary to convert the raw materials Germany had access to into working bombs (others have already largely explained this.) It’s been too long since I’ve read the book, but the only sort of counter point that you could make based on the TV show is we know that America capitulated in 1952, we don’t know exactly when Germany hit D.C. with an atomic bomb, or how many atomic bombs Germany had. So it’s possible it was their only one, and the first one they had built, and that they somehow won the European war without atomic weapons. The only way I would see that is if we posit the non-FDR Presidents did absolutely nothing for the allies. No lend lease very well may have lead to Britain having to sue for peace, allowing Hitler to focus more fully on the Soviet Union. In a protracted war without atomic weapons the Nazis still couldn’t have conquered and subjugated the Soviets by themselves, but some historians don’t believe they would have to, some historians argue that if Moscow had fallen (and it came close), Stalin would’ve been killed in a coup for his failure, at which point Russia would repeat WWI where it sues for peace due to “war exhaustion” and loses some of its eastern-most territory to the Reich but retains a lot. Then you’d have to speculate there’s a few years of “down time” in which Germany is able to devote more resources to the bomb and building up their military which they use to fully take Britain out and the USSR, then later America.
I don’t know that the time frame allows for that in the Dick alternate history, though.
The most realistic alternate history about Germany and WWII are the ones that postulate the Soviets and Britain coming to peace terms with Germany due to lack of support from the United States and some political changes in those countries vs reality that would lead them to not be willing to fight what would’ve been a far longer war. Then you have a “cold war” with Nazi Germany.
To answer the question, one has to appreciate the “miracles” involved. For convenience sake, I’ll adopt a ranking I’ve heard from on a religious debate.
Level One Miracles are losing your car keys, praying to your god and finding them. Highly plausible and not really considered a miracle by anyone but the highly religious.
Level Two Miracles (L2M) are things such as spontaneous remission of an incurable cancer. Highly unlikely, but still within the realm of the laws of nature.
Level Three Miracles (L3M) are Biblical stuff. Someone growing a leg back after it’s been cut off. That sort of thing.
Mr. Kobyashi is pretty good at coming up with interesting WWII Final Countdownesque Level Three Miracle scenarios, because he doesn’t attempt to stuff the ballot with too many.
The problem with this OP is that it requires – and we need to get the correct engineering term here – a shitload of Level Two and Level Three Miracles. Enough so, that we might as well give the Nazis satellites and death rays.
Most people here are willing to suspend disbelief in order to allow Germany to have the atomic bomb as per the OP. Fair enough. It would be a boring thread if we stuck to reality.
However, simply giving an unlimited number of L3M is equally uninteresting, and I can’t see the fun in a debate allowing Berlin to have the bomb, its exclusive use, plus a method of delivery to the US.
The the real world, all the advanced nations became aware of the potential of atomic bombs around the same time, including Germany, the UK, the US and Japan. Probably the USSR as well, but I’m not as familiar with any early efforts.
In order for Germany to develop the bomb by 1941 would have taken numerous Level Two and Three Miracles. From the timeline when nuclear fission was discovered to when the US, with all of her industrial and financial might, was able to produce a few bombs still took years and $2 billion.
So for Germany to produce it within three years, with its limited resources, would mean that it would require that the process would be infinitely simpler and less expensive. If this were the case, one can see how Germany could get the jump on the UK and the Soviets, but it would require another round of Level Three Miracles for the US to not develop it as well, especially since they were considering it as early as 1939.
As far as long-range heavy bombers, the B-29 project took $3 billion, 50% more than the Manhattan Project. Tossing in a heavy bomber for Germany would be another bunch of Level Three Miracles.
In 1937, the US had 41.7% of the world’s war making capacity and Germany had 14.4%. (From here, which should be a sticky on all alt-hist threads.) By 1945, the US had 50% of the world’s GNP, and still wasn’t producing the quantity of bombs in the OP.
If Germany had everything in the OP, then sure, they could win Europe, knocking out Britain and the USSR. However, as others have pointed out, they couldn’t get the US.
OTOH if Germany had the capacity to do this, then they could have conquered Europe without the bombs.
Simply nuking one city wouldn’t be enough to convince the US to surrender. It took two atomic bombs and the Soviet entry into the war against Japan after firebombing the hell out of almost all of their major and medium cities for the Japanese to quit. The desire for revenge would be powerful. It would really take an unlimited number of nukes and a magical delivery system for the US to capitulate.
This is partially an apples to orange comparison as Germany produced almost 50,000 armored fighting vehicles while the US produced close to 89,000 and the Soviets built over 100,000.
I watched an interesting presentation on the German approach to tank building, in which it required 300,000 man hours to build a Tiger where the Sherman took 48,000.
There was uranium in Germany, Romania and what is now the Czech Republic.
And the problem is that if the US also had nukes, then Germany could not have invaded the US.
No. They still could not have. Even had they controlled all of these, it would not have surpassed the US.
There would be several problems. First, they would have destroyed much of the industrial capacity of the USSR and Britain the this scenario. Second, they didn’t get as much out of the conquered counties and the accompanying slave labor.
Yeah, this is my guess.
Not true, as per above. The US was aware by 1939 of the potential of the atomic bomb.
Skip that, just give them a death ray.
But that’s another change in history you would need. The Germans didn’t control the Belgian Congo. In fact, the Manhattan Project got much of it’s uranium from there.
A few additional things:
In 1940, FDR was not opposed by an isolationist Republican. He was opposed by liberal, internationalist Republican Wendell Willkie, a man FDR thought highly of and gave some diplomatic jobs to during WW2. Meaning the alternative to FDR was NOT isolationism but a new administration run by a man who shared most of FDR’s views.
Second, Hitler never seriously considered trying to invade and occupy nearby England. He knew he couldn’t pull it off, and hoped only that England would come to terms with him to preserve her own empire. If Hitler couldn’t conquer England, how was he going to conquer the USA?
Actually, not. The US had produced over 2,900 tanks in '40 and '41. The Two Ocean Navy Act of 1940 authorized $8.55 billion (over four-times the Manhattan Project costs) to produce 18 aircraft carriers, 7 battleship and 15,000 airplanes, among other things.
Yet another Level Three Miracle? As I questioned above, Germany gets to do it for free while the US isn’t allowed anything.
Sure–you need quite a few changes in history, and a few changes in physical reality itself most likely, for Dick’s scenario to work. I’m just pointing out a lot of the debunking in this thread are assuming everything other than what Dick/the TV show explicitly stated was different, remain the same as in our world.
For example the assumption’s about American military might are predicated on a U.S. military build up that Dick is (arguably) suggesting never happened to the same degree under an alternative President to FDR. It isn’t, to my knowledge, ever stated who becomes President after FDR’s assassination in the TV show (and we know the TV show is different from the book.) But in the book FDR is assassinated in 1933, so that would’ve made Garner President for most of FDR’s first term, but we don’t know what happens after that until 1941, when John Bricker becomes President (he ran as the Republican VP candidate in the real timeline, in 1944, and had previously been Governor of Ohio.) The TV show doesn’t ever get into anything other than noting FDR was assassinated, too. FDR dead in 1933 results in a dramatically different timeline. How did Garner address the Great Depression? Did Garner invest anything at all in the military during his term(s)? Or no? We know Bricker won the election of 1940 from the book.
Bricker was in favor of limited Federal government, limited Presidential treaty making power, and also spoke out (during the War) against things like war rationing. That is suggestive of a President ill-suited to do the things FDR did (essentially convert much of the U.S. industrial base into a centralized, planned war economy and massively gear up for an expected entry into war against Germany and Japan.)
There’s also assumptions being made by OP that wouldn’t be based on the book or TV show, like assuming all the changes start in 1941, after the U.S. under years of FDR had already largely prepared for a vast war. It’s also never said in the TV show when Germany develops the bomb, 1941 is a number the OP has pulled out of thin air. I’m assuming because he made the conclusion that in the alternate universe Germany went to war in 1941 against the United States, but that’s never explicitly stated.
The book, in my mind, is less realistic since it postulates Germany outright destroying the USSR and defeating Britain, and then in combination with Japan conquering the United States by 1947. The TV show says the war lasts until 1952, and we do not know when DC is destroyed by atomic bombing.
FWIW I’m not proposing either the TV or Dick’s novel’s alternate history are “plausible” I’m just saying it is actually a little more reasonable than the way it’s been presented here, where much seems to hinge on the year 1941 being the point of deviation. In Dick’s book the point of deviation is 1933, and Roosevelt’s VP (Gardner) is in the book noted to be very weak and ineffective and John Bricker who is President in 1941 from our timeline is known to be someone who would be terribly suited for either preparing for or conducting a major war like WWII. The Dick scenario (and I make some assumptions there are similarities in the unknown backstory of the TV show and the known backstory of the book) explicitly states you have a very weak President all the way up until the 1940s, Presidents that cause the Great Depression to worsen not abate, and who have such a small military on hand when Britain and Russia are fighting the Germans that they have little capacity (or will) to help out at all, let alone engage in active war.
Also with the Belgian Congo, it was relatively lightly defended by 40,000 troops and Germany never made a serious play for it because in our timeline Hitler never took the atomic bomb project very seriously, and even if he had he was at war with too many very powerful countries to be able to afford to divert resources to it.
Again, in the alternate timeline there is no lend-lease, America has been weakly governed since 1933, and by the time WWII is “hot” it’s governed by a President that is opposed to Presidential treaty-making power, was historically opposed to war rationing, and who was opposed to greater centralization of government. It’s safe to make assumptions that this results in America having a very weak military in 1941. By August of 1941, the U.S. Army had increased from around 175,000 men in 1939 to 1.5m men, FDR was actively preparing for a major war. The Navy had also seen quite a bit of investment during the 1933-1941 years, as well. Without that, we may have seen an Army with 150,000 men in 1941, under the successive Presidencies of Garner and Bricker. Who knows how the Navy was invested in, but in the AH Garner is portrayed as very incompetent, so I’d suggest using those parameters you can assume a much weaker U.S. Navy.
Then when Germany finds itself hitting all of its early successes and is now staring east to the Soviets and North to Britain, you have an America with no desire, and no capacity, to enter the war quickly. This likely extends to also not having sufficient capacity to meaningfully help either Britain or the Soviet Union. That’s a very very different 1941 scenario than people in this thread keep talking about.
Dick was a science fiction writer, I don’t think he actually intended to write strictly plausible alternate history. The alt-history backstory that Dick writes about was to give the necessary narrative framework for the story he wanted to tell about a fascist America in 1962. Dick obviously put a lot of importance on FDR, and makes some assumptions about John Garner. Garner was a conservative Southern Democrat and did oppose some of FDR’s policies that centralized power in the Presidency, but him and FDR had largely been on cordial terms during FDR’s first term so he obviously was able to live with at least some aspects of the New Deal.
I don’t know too much about Garner’s positions on foreign policy, but his presumed hardcore isolationism features in several alternate history writings about WWII (Man in the High Castle isn’t the only one that starts with FDR dying and Garner replacing him.) I’m not sure real life President Garner would’ve maintained such positions (if he ever held them to the degree represented in fiction), especially as he’d be receiving all the intelligence reports that FDR was as President. Plus, being President very often results in shifts on thinking in foreign policy.
I think FDR was one of the better men in the Democratic Party to be President in the 30s/40s in terms of WWII preparedness, but I think there’s a few Republicans of the time and a few other Democrats who would’ve done a good job too. Most alternate histories focusing on an early death for FDR assume that men like Garner would remain or become extreme isolationists and also would be successively reelected three times like Roosevelt was in real life.
Sure, but you have to have a really good guidance system to get it to the right target. That just didn’t exist back then.
Okay, let’s ASSUME FDR was eliminated from the picture in 1933, and the USA followed isolationist policies.
Then why would the Japanese ever have seen any need to attack us?
Remember, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor BECAUSE Franklin Roosevelt was hawkishly opposing their efforts to colonize China. If the US had an isolationist President, he’d have shrugged and said “none of our business” when the Japanese invaded Manchuria. And the Japanese would have had absolutely no reason to make war on us.