August 6, 1945, the United States under Pres. Harry S Truman dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, destroying most of the city. Several days later, on August 9, 1945, we dropped the atom bomb on Nagasaki, Japan. The world and international politics were forever changed. And I am not exaggerating when I say it was one of the defining moments of the 20th Century.
My question is what if we dropped the bomb on Germany instead of Japan? Remember they were our enemies during World War II too. It was probably only fortunate circumstances and fate that saved them.
Think about this. I have noticed there is almost an unconscious racism about Japan even to this day. They don’t look like us. They didn’t live like us (unlike Germany, much of Japan was undeveloped in 1945). How would the discussion and the tone of the discussion change if Germany was the victim (if I may use this word) of the atom bomb?
Certainly, the war in the Pacific had racist elements…but there were also heavy ethnic prejudices expressed against the “krauts” (among the nicer names applied!) in the European theater of war. The west hated the Nazis every bit as much as they hated the Japanese; they just took a little more care to distinguish between “Nazis” and “everyday Germans.”
If the war against Germany had continued, and if the A-Bomb was readily at hand, and if Allied intelligence had spotted a significant concentration of Waffen SS Panzer regiments… Not a good day to be wearing double lightning bolts…
(As it turns out, black clothing absorbs beta rays, increasing the effects of beta burn. Really bad day to be wearing an SS uniform…)
Not quite sure what you’re getting at; but if you’re asking if we’d have dropped atomic weapons on German cities, I think the people of Dresden, Hamburg, and Berlin have an opinion.
Well, we originally developed the atomic bomb to be dropped on Germany after all. It was our intention…the war just ended before we were ready to use the thing on Germany.
I don’t think there is any sort of unconscious racism going on about the use of the atomic bomb. Had the bomb been ready a year before, it would have been dropped on German cities instead of (or in addition to I guess, had the Japanese not wised up and surrendered) Japanese cities. What would the effect have been? Probably less dead Germans (and Russians) in the long run. I doubt dropping a bomb on Berlin would have caused as many deaths as the Russians brute force assault through Germany and their final assault on Berlin.
Circumstances and fate, certainly, but I wouldn’t qualify the circumstances as ‘fortunate.’ German cities had been devastated, both by bombing and in many cases heavy ground combat.
I’m not sure what you mean by this. Japan was undeveloped in 1853 when Perry opened Japan after centuries of self imposed isolation (see Sakoku). It developed and modernized extremely quickly; there was nothing undeveloped about Japan by 1941. Japanese cities were more vulnerable to firebombing than German cities due to the prevalent use of wood and paper in civilian housing construction; but this was a result of cultural choice/tradition, not due to Japan being undeveloped as an industrial nation.
Wasn’t one of the main reasons it wasn’t dropped on Tokyo that we wanted to make sure there was a government still in place capable of surrender*? I ask because if that’s true, it wouldn’t have been Berlin which leads to the question of where would they have dropped it?
I might be complete wrong in this thought so please fight my ignorance if needed.
I believe the main reason it wasn’t dropped on Tokyo were that, militarily Tokyo wasn’t all that important (both of the other cities we did drop on where military and logistics hubs that would directly affect the war effort) and that Tokyo was already pretty much a burned out hulk from repeated bombings (including at least one fire bombing mission I can recall off the top of my head).
I’m pretty sure that if we COULD have dropped a bomb on Germany, that Berlin would have been one of the top candidates for receiving the thing. Taking out Hitler and the Nazi leadership was a high priority.
Ignorance fought thanks. Crap you think you understand something and … well you don’t … :smack: Not sure how I got the whole ‘has to be a functioning government’ in my head. When I think about it surrender doesn’t require much of a government at all … thanks.
This was the reason; the firebombing of Tokyo had involved a lengthy series of raids, one of which killed more than 100,000 people (low estimate; many sources say 200,000 people is more realistic, and historian Richard Rhodes believes a million people were injured) and destroyed hundreds of thousands of buildings. It’s regarded as the single deadliest air raid of all time.
It’s not cynical to say that the deterrent effect of an atomic bomb would be lost if dropped onto such a site; who could tell which were the results of the atomic bomb and which were the results of the other heavy raids? Tokyo was essentially already wreckage by the time the atomic bombs were ready.
Also, notably, they had not previously been bombed, because they were on a list of cities being reserved as potential atomic bomb targets.
For exactly the reason mentioned above, namely, dropping an atomic bomb into charred wreckage doesn’t make as big an impression, Allied planners had identified certain cities as possible targets and exempted them from the target lists used by Le May’s B-29s. There were several such cities; in fact, Nagasaki was a secondary target, and the plane that dropped that bomb had originally found the primary (Kokura) covered by clouds, and diverted to Nagasaki.
I second the comment about Japan being developed. The 1940 Olympics were originally scheduled for Tokyo (but were canceled because of WWII). Japan was extremely developed by the start of WWII, it had a huge industrial base, and its military was considered one of the best in the world.
We didn’t nuke Germany because Germany had already surrendered by the time the Bomb was ready. We absolutely would have nuked Germany earlier in the war had we been prepared.
One thing to keep in mind is that the US did not know about the effects of radiation before they dropped the bomb. Here is an interesting conversation in which the military was starting to figure out the radiation thing:
To them, nukes were just really big bombs. A few kilotons of TNT, which they were already dropping anyway in the form of raids with more planes. It did not seem to them to be a categorically different kind of warfare at first.
In retrospect, we know how awfully powerful nukes got (not that the two dropped were nothing), and we know of the dangers of radiation poisoning and fallout. They didn’t. So I think debates about dropping the Bomb should take this ignorance into consideration.
If the Battle of the Bulge drove Allied force back 400km, then I do believe we would have seen a European atomic bomb attack. It would have taken us months to regain the lost ground, so, yes.
Really? I mean their war machine seemed every bit as good as the German war machine. They were an imperial power, they had invaded and colonized most of their neighbors to some extent.
Interesting fact: Leo Szilard, who would later be one of the premier physicists of the US nuclear program, had been convinced as far back as 1933 that there was some way to create a nuclear chain reaction that would release large amounts of nuclear energy. He even tried to get General Electric interested in funding experiments along those lines; but this being the depth of the Great Depression, no one was interested.
Here’s an interesting counter-factual: Szilard finds someone to fund his research and as a result the first self-sustaining atomic pile is created in 1938, and due to patent applications is public knowledge. I could see a sort of “WW2 1/2”, where Germany, Britain and the US all acquire the bomb around 1943, and around 15-20 are used before Germany is annihilated.
Not sure the Germans actually had the strength left to win the Battle of the Bulge. But even if they did, the Soviets were knocking down the door in the East. From December on they had and maintained about a 5-1 advantage in men, artillery, tanks, and planes. I can’t imagine that the Germans have enough men in the West to transfer to the East to significantly alter the picture there. Maybe this delays things a month or two. But by August, I don’t think there would be any targets of significance left to bomb.
Hard to make an apples to apples comparison but you are largely right.
At the outset of the war the Japanese outclassed the US in most respects. Their navy was better, their airforce (especially naval air) was better and their soldiers were at least as well trained and equipped as US soldiers were.
Over the course of the war the US changed a lot of that but at the beginning the Japanese were quite capable and advanced. One of their problems (among many) was they mostly stayed where they were in terms of technological ability while the US raced ahead.
Add in the US industrial capacity and the war was lost to Japan as soon as they started it. They had hoped Americans had no stomach for war and would bow out. They were wrong.
As to the OP other posters are correct. The plans for the first atom bombs were to drop them on Germany. We only dropped them on Japan because by the time they were ready Germany had already lost the war and surrendered.
IIRC there was also a lot of debate on whether we should drop them at all. Point being the US was hardly falling over itself to drop the bomb. IIRC Truman seriously waffled for a bit before giving the go-ahead.
The Axis powers made a huge mistake in underestimating American industrial capacity. Germany, Japan, and Italy had all spent around a decade building up their militarys and they assumed the United States would need a similar amount of time to catch up to them. So they figured it was safe to declare war against the mostly unprepared United States in 1941. They never imagined the American military would catch up with them and surpass them within two years.
Of course they built their military might during peacetime. The US, when at war, shifted its economy and production almost entirely to a war footing. That allowed the US to dedicate vast resources towards the war effort. Something that would never be done during peacetime. Hardly surprising then that the US managed in two years what took them ten.
I am not sure whether the Axis thought such a thing was not possible or just didn’t think about it or thought the US would not be willing or what their blind spot was but clearly they were wrong.
