Without our embargo they almost certainly wouldn’t have attacked. The fictional justification suggests Japan did it to acquire more territory in preparation for a world in which they would be at Cold War with Germany.
In the novel they use America’s weakness as an excuse to take Hawaii, Australia and New Zealand. And the attack on Pearl Harbor is far more devastating as it catches more ships and the non-FDR Presidents also hadn’t built up as robust a Navy so we had much less to fall back on. I’m not sure exactly when they attack Pearl Harbor, as I don’t think the novel ever mentions it (and the TV show is only in the first season, and has explained almost nothing about the backstory.)
In the TV show Japan is shown as more of a “reluctant” partner to the Greater Reich on several fronts, and Japan and Germany are in a sort of a weird cooperative state but also they’re in a Cold War as well. It’s cooperative in the sense that Japan works with Germany enough that they agree to help the Germans with their ethnic cleansing, but they also “allow” blacks, mentally handicapped people and Jews, sort of casually “escape” to the neutral zone as much as possible since Japan isn’t as die hard on the whole thing. It’s possible that Japan didn’t necessarily favor a war with the United States but it feared the possibility of Germany winning such a war without them, since they would (if smart) recognize that the Greater Reich being too powerful was bad for them, too.
The Japanese weren’t stupid, I’m sure their leadership was aware of Mein Kampf, a book in which the second revision of it mentions Hitler sees a world in which after conquering everything in between them Japan and Germany would eventually fight each other for ultimate dominance. Japan would have no illusions about a lasting peace with Nazi Germany.
Also keep in mind in the book the Italian Empire (a satellite of the Reich with quasi-independence) dams up Gibraltar and then supposedly pumps all the water of the Mediterranean away, creating a contiguous Eurafrican Continent with vast farmland being created in the drained Mediterranean.
This is a science fiction book, truly.
He’s not a great writer in terms of literary craft, but Turtledove does a better job at creating plausible alternate histories.
An L1M is all that would be needed to set the US back by many years. Say, a plane crash containing a handful of top physicists on their way to a conference. No Einstein and Szilárd means no Einstein–Szilárd letter, for instance. Sure, the US would figure it out eventually, but a few years difference would give the Germans a massive advantage.
I’m pretty certain that if Germany detonated an atom bomb in the middle of Washington, whatever government reformed to run the country wouldn’t waste time debating the issue of whether America should build its own bomb. It’s like the aftermath of Pearl Harbor or 9/11 - everyone agreed we should fight back.
It’s obvious now, but wasn’t then. Einstein thought they were possible, but they would probably be large enough that they’d need to be detonated from a ship instead of dropped from a plane. Heisenberg didn’t believe the reports from Hiroshima had anything to do with an atomic bomb.
Most alt-hist are completely unrealistic concerning Japan. In our universe, it wasn’t able to completely defeat China, didn’t have a capacity to invade Hawaii let alone do anything on the mainland.
Without FDR, the Pacific Fleet would not have been transferred to Peal Harbor, but would have remained in San Diego.
Without the US contesting the Pacific, the Japanese would have gone north against the Soviets in Siberia, rather than to the US.
My quote was in response to Habeed’s comment
His/Her OP specifies something completely preposterous when viewed from reality, and it seems that s/he wishes to add to that.
My point is that if the physics of building nuclear bombs were different, which seems to be the only way to allow Germany to have atomic bombs that many and that quickly, then others should also be able to develop them as well. In other words, the only way that Germany could develop bombs that quickly is that nature would have to be different enough that it could be so much easier and cheaper. Except Habeed wants only Germany to enjoy that.
In any scenario other than the gods providing functioning nuclear weapons and ICBMs, it takes time for the development of things such the delivery system. According to the OP, Germany starts off with bombing Britain and the USSR, so the US should know about this well before any bombing of the US. However Habeed wants us to believe that the US would be so ignorant as to believe it was German magic.
At this point, just give them death rays and don’t make a pretense of reality.
I still don’t agree. The Manhattan Project was not an inevitable thing; it only happened because a few specific people made a few specific choices. If a small number of people had not existed, or a few calculation errors were made, or someone weighted the risk levels slightly differently, it could easily have not happened.
It’s true that Germany could not have afforded a Manhattan Project themselves. But much of the expense is was that they took a try all possible routes simultaneously development path. But that wasn’t strictly necessary: in fact we know it wasn’t necessary in retrospect. Fat Man and Little Boy were totally different designs, using different nuclear material. If we had simply chosen one or the other, we’d still have had a successful design with less effort.
It’s entirely possible that if Germany had better scientists–perhaps capturing and enslaving their Jewish scientists them instead of driving them away–they would have hit upon the right path early on. This would enable a much cheaper path forward than what the Manhattan Project cost the US. In reality, they chose a path that used heavy water, which was not only doomed to failure but also vulnerable to allied attacks. But this was a fairly random contingency of history, and it’s easy to imagine it going the other way with fairly small tweaks to the timeline. Perhaps it requires L2 luck, but definitely not L3. Nothing in the laws of physics prevented them from happening across a path toward nuclear weapons that was more efficient than the Manhattan Project.
Also, note that the OP only specifies the production rate by 1941, and not when the divergence actually happened. A few lucky breaks by the Germans early on could have enabled this.
I read The Man In The High Castle a few times years ago. And watched the show–which I mostly enjoyed; there were definitely changes from the book. Will reread the book & watch the show again…
Philip K Dick was not the typical Alternate History writer. (He was not a typical anything.) Some writers study history deeply & make careers out of churning out books enjoyable as intellectual exercises; if the characters are slightly cardboard & the writing style awkward–most of their fans accept these limitations.
PKD was interested in the characters inhabiting a USA that had lost WW2; he wasn’t interested in convincing the reader how this could have happened. (Yes, the Japanese administrator interested in the I Ching was perhaps his most sympathetic character.) No, he was no Harry Turtledove.
Which doesn’t mean that people can’t speculate on the scenario if they wish.
I agree the OP is fantasy Little Nemo. But I don’t know why you keep arguing that the OP’s stipulations aren’t possible instead of answering his question. He’s allowed to posit the thread they way he’d like.
To reiterate, he’s stating that in 1941 the Germans are producing 3 atomic bombs a month, in 1942 they are making 6 per month. The United States isn’t making atomic bombs until 1945. That gives Germany a four year head start.
I think they can force Russia and the UK out of the war in short order. Once that happens there is little threat to Germany. This gives them four years to find a way to bring the fight (by way of nuclear bombs) to America. Invasion I don’t know. But if one American city a month is being bombed, I don’t know what the pain threshold would be before America sues for peace or allows an occupation.
Yeah, but you can say the same thing about Hitler being gassed in World War I, or Germany’s invasion of Poland, or for that matter, the Kennedy assassination or 9/11.
Now we’re stipulating that Germany not only kept the better scientists, but that the U.S. didn’t go forward, or didn’t succeed, with the Manhattan project and didn’t get the Bomb at all. The only plausible basis for that scenario would be if the Nazis hadn’t been anti-Semitic (after all, what scientist will do his best work if “capturing and enslaving their Jewish scientists” is how the research happens.)
That’s all completely fair. This is an alternate history question. It posits a universe similar to ours, where WW2 still happened and the major player was Germany with the Nazis, but with some differences. We’re allowed to ask what small perturbations could have been made to result in a universe where the Nazis got the bomb well before the Allies.
We already know that it didn’t happen that way in our universe, so it goes without saying that their history was slightly different.
Doesn’t have to be their best work; just “good enough” work. They work because their families will be killed if they don’t. The Germans still had enough good scientists to check their output. The Nazis aren’t required to be non-antisemitic, just that they privately don’t accept that “Jew science” is somehow inferior (publicly, they can keep on the same pretenses for the sake of rallying the public).
I’m not convinced that the US wouldn’t cry uncle if the Nazis nuked a couple of cities and demonstrated the capability of nuking a couple dozen more.
I’m not fighting the alternative history hypothetical, but in an effort to defend the hypothetical the “small perturbations” get bigger and bigger, almost with every post.
The OP was “what if the Nazis got nuclear bombs?” Before long people were adding on long-range bombers, invasions of Greenland, nuking Washington, and no other country being able to make a nuke. And side arguments over whether the U.S. would have gotten involved in the first place. And what happens if FDR isn’t president.
And every time someone offers an argument, someone else makes history even more “slightly different.” Pretty soon, it isn’t alternative history, it’s a parallel universe.
The problem is that OP is so far from reality that people were trying somehow to find a way to make the OP possible. It didn’t start with a small alternative history, it was a parallel universe to begin with.
It doesn’t matter if the Nazis have nukes if they can’t deliver them. So how can they? And what circumstance would prevent the US from also having nukes, which would just lead to a cold war with Germany and not the USSR?
For people who like studying history and care about it, then details matter. Obviously, it doesn’t bother some people who would accept
If the OP wants to have as a given that the Nazis take over the US and how do we deal with it, just give them death rays and be done with it.
That’s the whole point. Small changes quickly lead to a universe where just about everything is different. After time B, you have parallel universes going down completely different paths. Before time A, the universes were identical. Small perturbations at A grow over the time B-A and you get something different at the end. Part of the fun is figuring out the minimum set of perturbations that could plausibly lead to the alternate universe.
Some of these things would be “automatic” in the sense that they logically follow from some of the earlier changes. If Germany’s atomic bomb program had shown more promise, they’d realize they’d need a delivery mechanism. The Amerika bomber doesn’t make any sense with conventional weapons, but it would have with nukes. Therefore you would expect Germany to pursue that or some alternative like Greenland. This isn’t just adding a bunch of random stuff; it’s going along with the premise.
As far as the question if the US would surrender if one city gets nuked, I donno. By the time Germany had gotten to the US, we would have known how bad they were, and presumably they would have been even less inclined to hide their atrocities if they were so invincible. Even without that, the US would be aware of them wiping out city after city in Europe.
The US has a lot of land to retreat to, unless the Nazis have magical ICMBs or death rays. Destroying cities by itself didn’t work for the Allies against Germany or the US against Japan.