If there was no WW2, when would nuclear weapons have been developed? By whom? Would it even have been a line pursued, without the impetus of a global war to drive it?
Well, Enrico Fermi was bombarding uranium with neutrons in the 1930s, Ida Noddak theorized the result of those experiments would be fission, Otto Hahn actually achieved nuclear fission in 1938, and Frisch and Peierls calvculated how much U-235 was needed to make a critical mass, so all the theoretical underpinnings were in place before WW2.
And since Frisch and Peierls also theorized a crtical reaction could be used to make a “super-bomb” it was really only a matter of time before someone would have a big boom either accidentally (Hey, let’s see how fast we can make a reaction!) or deliberately.
Delayed response, but, thats the theoretical work. The work needed for a deliverable bomb is much more intensive. Would any nation have consented to that?
And, was the original calculations, tonnes of U235?
Humans are constantly looking for better ways to kill each other. I think it’s inevitable that some country would have been willing to make the investment to see if nuclear weapons were possible. Once the first bomb is successfully tested there is then a race by everyone else (who have the technical expertise and resources) to catch up…
Since this question calls for only speculation, let’s move it from General Questions to Great Debates.
samclem, moderator
I think the best comparison would be the development of the fusion bomb. There was no war being fought that called for its immediate use. It was developed for possible use in a future war.
I think that fission bombs would have been developed for the same purpose if they hadn’t already been built for World War II. After the war, the United States would have been looking for some weapon that gave them an edge over the Soviets.
The OP doesn’t really specify how we’re erasing WWII from the history books.
The thing is that even if, somehow, you don’t start World War II, the world was a very adversarial place prior to September 1, 1939. The West, the Fascist bloc, and the Communists did not get along and were proceeding to some extent on the assumption that sooner or later they’d be at war. The appeal of nuclear weaponry would still have been there, and the science was there.
Presuming there not having been a WWII because of the death of Hitler or because of the UK and France intimidating Germany from not attacking Poland and there being an uneasy tension in Europe,it’s likely that an atomic bomb wouldn’t have been invented until the late 1940s or early 1950s. There wasn’t a need for one seen by any of the combatants except the US and it was the only who was making a serious headway towards such a device.
Even if you postulate a WWII that occurred between japan and the US, the US still could have won without the A-bomb by simply blockading the Japanese home islands and starving the populace into submission. Brutal and costly; but far less problematic than developing a weapon which would allow your enemies to gain a strategic advantage over you.