If the US had the atomic bomb at the time would we have used it against Germany to avoid D-Day? It would have saved countless lives and the war in Europe would have presumably ended much soon one would think. Or would there have been reasons not to use it in Europe?
You know D-Day was a sideshow, right? A big sideshow but still a distraction to the main war in the east where between 80-90% of the German war effort was consumed:
If you want the Soviets to take the big hits you don’t want to eviscerate them as well.
German air defenses were weak and could be overwhelmed at any point by that stage. Still at that point of the war it was a long gauntlet through ground based AA fire to get to Germany proper. A nuke would be an all or nothing proposition on whether it got through that gauntlet.
The less risky targets to get to were all nominally friendly countries that had the misfortune to be conquered. Leaving a big nuclear crater in the middle of one of them would not be a good way to keep the resistance movements in Western Europe happy and helpful.
We were already conducting raids that were as devastating as a nuclear strike on a regular basis. It just took more planes in a given raid. They didn’t force Germany to surrender.
In the Pacific, Japan had lost the ability to project combat power outside their home islands. Losing control of sea lanes meant they weren’t likely to have the resources to be able to rebuild any significant capability to do so. Germany still had significant ground forces in a theater where the fight was on the ground.
The Soviet Union was pretty desperate to get US and UK forces on the ground in continental Europe to force Germany to divert forces and fight on two fronts. Nukes wouldn’t have helped with that.
The US and UK, looking past the defeat of Germany, had an interest in not allowing Soviet Union to dominate even more of Europe. Even a couple glassy craters in Germany wouldn’t have helped a post-war situation where the Soviet Union controlled all of Germany.
A little more important than merely a “sideshow.” It pulled a lot of pressure off the Soviets. It’s fair to call it a “Second Front.” “Sideshow” is a little too dismissive.
(It also kept the Soviets from taking over all of Germany…and who the hell knows how much of France.)
And, yes, we certainly would have dropped that puppy right in Hitler’s lap.
Of course they would have used it against Germany. In July 1945, Leo Szilard and 69 other Manhattan Project scientistspetitioned Truman to discontinue work on the atomic bomb because Germany had been defeated.
Using the bomb against Germany probably would have been even MORE popular than using it against Japan.
Exactly. D-Day prevented all of mainland Europe becoming Communist.
I’ve always read that different than you. To me it was more because Germany was seen as a “possible atomic threat” and Japan was not. Sort of an arms race before the arm had been invented yet. Not so much that the signers didn’t want the atomic bomb used against Japan so much as they didn’t want it used against anyone except in retaliation.
My feeling is that politically an atomic bombing (Hiroshima-style) against Germany would never have happened even before the invasion of Europe. The European and German ties and populations in this country would have never accepted it.
That’s hindsight. Nobody really knew what the atomic bomb would be, except that it would be a really, really big bang. The Allies flew mass bombing sorties against Germany, as well as Japan, and both the Germans and the Allies firebombed cities long before D-Day.
Possibly it is hindsight. But as in the case of Dresden we could always hide behind firebombings and carpet bombings as being basically a British tactic and mission; we were there more as allies. And even then that one (Dresden) was/has been debated quite a bit. FDR ordering a weapon of that possible magnitude, American from beginning to end, dropped on Europe? Sorry; I remain unconvinced.
The key to ending the European war would have been getting the German military to do something about Hitler.
The D-Day landings helped move the July 20th plot along.
Not all German cities were well inland. Bremen and Hamburg aren’t too far inland. One well guarded bomber in a fleet of hundreds flying at max altitude would have a fairly decent chance of getting thru. And targeting didn’t have to be so good and thus the bomb run could be at altitude.
One or two a-bombs with suitable threats and the generals would do something. If it’s around the time of the July 20th plot, then that would have been more likely to succeed.
A-bombs are qualitatively different from mass firebombings. The psychological effects are immense.
(Note: the generals doing something about Hitler in 1942, say, would have been not at all good for the Allies sans bomb.)
I wonder how interceptable a B29 flying at maximum altitude would be in the West?
You do realize the Allies seriously considered deindustrializing Germany and sterilizing much of the population in the Morgenthau Plan right? And there was no significant backlash from the German Americans about the mass expulsion of ethnic Germans east of the Oder-Neisse line.
But its possible that an argument not to use it would have been that since they only had enough fission material for one or two bombs, they might not use them against Germany because that wouldn’t end the war against Japan…
Another argument might have been that there were no targets left in Germany.
Since Dresden, Colonge and so on had been firebombed which is similar … Well thats another argument, that the Germans wouldn’t have ended the war even after being hit by two atomic bombs… they’d have continued the war anyway ? Russia wouldn’t quit occupation destruction and taking of prisoners, even if Germany had surrendered…
While Japan wasn’t forced to continue by a blood thirsty enemy… The abombs showed the japanese the USA didnt want to occupy… just force them to backdown … win.
The original intent of the Manhattan Project was to drop an atomic bomb on Germany. It was only after it became clear that Germany was going to lose the war that the planned target of the first bomb became Japan and not Germany.
Keep in mind that the U.S. strategy in WWII was to focus on Germany first, and then on Japan second. After Pearl Harbor, the American public considered Japan to be the greater enemy and the focus on the war initially was in the Pacific. However, as time went on, the focus shifted back to the original plan (which was conceived before the U.S. was drawn into the war, since planners could easily foresee a two-front war forming) and in the later years of the war, Germany was the prime objective. Only after Germany was defeated did they plan of focusing on Japan.
To be fair, there was a lot of controversy in the U.S. military over this strategy. The Navy in particular wasn’t fond of it, for example.
I suspect that there still would have been an invasion of sorts even if the first bomb had been dropped on Germany, if for no other reason than to stop the Soviets from taking control of everything.