Before the Soviets detonated their bomb in 1949, there was only one nuclear power - The USA. Now, the fact that the US did not declare war on anyone during the four years they had the bomb has been mentioned, almost as if by a broken record, by several people at my work place as proof that the US is a great, good, and noble country, concerned deeply with the well-being of those ungrateful foriegnors.
But this seems wrong to me somehow. Now, am I wrong in saying that the US used all it’s bombs on Japan and did not have any for a bit of time? Am I also wrong when I say that the US government did not have the time, resources, or capabilities to make enough bombs to subjugate the world? Am I wrong in assuming that even if the US produced te necessary amount of bombs, it could not use them for fear of destroying the planet? And finally, am I wrong in believing that the world, under US rule, would become a huge Palestine, with bombings and guerrilla warfare/terrorism everywhere?
You haven’t answered the biggest question, which is, “Why would we have wanted to ‘conquer the world’?” What for? What’s in it for us? We already had everything we wanted.
Well, I suppose it’s conceivable, if everyone (or, well, 99.9999% of everyone) had wanted to do so. But if the U.S. had the ability to do it (note: I said if), then I doubt that it was by any significant margin… unless they wanted to just start blowing shit up willy-nilly, and in that case, there wouldn’t be much of a world to conquer.
Well, first of all I don’t think we would have dropped any more A-bombs to do it if we had intended to do so. However, I think both Macarthur and Patton were advocates for marching across the Soviet Union.
Obviously this is all purely speculative. The US pobably had enough military power to have conquered the USSR if they had been willing to begin another long bloody war in 1945. he USSR had suffered terribly in WWII and were in a weak condition. Beginning a new war was the last thing most Americans wanted.
IF the US had taken over and replaced the government of the USSR, it is possible that the world might have avoided many of the horrors of communism – with billions of people living wretched lives and many tens of millions killed.
Much worse december, because then we would have turned into the enemy.
We were the good guys because the other side broke treaties and conquered nations. Before the end of the war other treaties were made with Russia and England.
Fortunately (or unfortunately for our hypothetical scenario) Russia at the end of the war gave West Berlin to the other allies like it was accorded, and there was in essence no reason to start a new war.
Although AFAIK the US did not suffer from a lack of nuclear potential (the stockpile was certainly not empty after Hiroshima and Nagasaki), conquering the world Is Not Easy. It’s not sufficient to simply nuke everything that comes across your way.
Once you nuke everyone, or threaten to and have your bluff called, what then? Gonna just send in the troops everywhere? How many of 'em ya got, and how many does the rest of the world (which naturally doesn’t take kindly to being occupied) got?
More realistically, US conduct was always focused on winning the war and “bringing the boys home” as quickly as possible - that’s the main reason why the Bomb was used. Even given some influence by a neo-imperialist faction in Washington, and there really wasn’t one, public opinion was so overwhelmingly against any such thought that it couldn’t have happened.
From what I remember from history lessons, it was rather the other way round. Stalin supposed the Americans would leave Europe pretty quickly, so the USSR could expand its sphere of influence up to the Atlantic with the US not giving a damn about what’s going on in Europe. The Truman Doctrine assured Western Europe about America’s commitment towards its Allies, but it never intended to conquer.
The US was on a high of being The Leader in Democracy, Basic Freedoms and such.
It was also the only country with the bomb, but still had a smaller army than the USSR.
Given 1 and 2, we couldn’t take over the world. Dropping 1, means we could have tried. But we automatically would have become the most hated country on Earth. That makes taking over the world an order of magnitude harder.
Take just China for example. It was a complete mess. Nuking cities would have had no effect militarily while making things worse politcally. Do you have any idea how many troops it would have taken to conquer China? Egad.
Remember, long wars ruin economies (cf. Britain, which won the war and lost the peace). We had to end WWII ASAP or else. Continuing the war would not have worked.
Remember too that the victorious Allies generally didn’t even want to keep the colonies they’d already had before the war, much less add new ones. It stretches “what if” too far IMHO to think about what would have happened if everyone’s basic attitudes had been different.
Despite the attacks from 9/11 and others before it, I seriously doubt the average american feels the same amount of fear as an isreali. Sure, people hate the americans, and sure, people attack americans, but the US are no where near to suffering the violence in the Middle East.
AFAIK after Nagasaki in ’45 until 1947, the U.S. built no more bombs. It certainly wasn’t until 1947 that they could be mass produced. Between 1947 and 1950 they built 120 bombs of the kind of dropped on Nagasaki (yields up to 50kt). BTW The Soviets were mass producing a 30kt bomb by 1953 …
The U.S. would have had circa 6 years to “conquer the world” and even with 120 A-bombs I doubt they could do it. I bet they could have beat the USSR after a long bloody struggle …
I don’t think the war against Australia, the UK and Canada could have been won, maybe ever (as the Brits had the bomb as soon as we did) A-bomb or not.
Assuming you meant the USSR, China & the other wise guys, if we acted unilaterally and the non-Anglo world were more or less united against us, I think we would see what the US & France saw in Vietnam, the Russians/Brits saw in Afghanistan and the Japanese saw in China … That you can be vastly superior in weapons, tactics and $$$ to your enemy and still not be able to “win”. They could put a puppet dictator in each country in, say South America and cost the U.S. relatively little, but to KEEP that Vichy guy on the throne, against crazy opposition, would have required the U.S. bleed itself dry.
Am I correct in assuming your original thesis is that the United States refrained from trying to conquer the rest of the world ONLY because it was impractical?
If so, please restate your thesis incorporating the following facts:
The U.S. did not assume sovereignty over Japan, which had surrendered unconditionally.
The U.S. granted independence to the Phillipines, which had been a territory since 1898.
Patton wasn’t the smartest of the generals, but he definitely knew what he was doing and went so far as to invade the Czech Republic before we told him to pull out. Of course, the US was tired, not decimated but tired, and Patton died later that year when his car got hit by a truck.
In some way they did, although not the way they did in Germany (direct US sovereignty over the American Occupation Zone). The US forced Japan to adopt a parliamentary democratic constitution and stop the divine Emperor cult, which Japan was reluctant to do.
Given how many Russians were willing to welcome even the Nazis (until they made their intentions toward the Slavs clear) I believe that if the U.S. had invaded, Red Army units would be mutinying and surrendering en masse - the Soviet government wouldn’t have lasted six months.