Nuke the nazis.

lounge60

lounge60

Suppose that the atomic bomb and the B-29 bomber were available a year earlier,in early summer 1944.
How much bombs on German cities are needed to obtain a
unconditional surrender of nazi German?
And after the German capitulation,with some German cities nuked,is possible that Japan surrenders without the need of launch the bomb?
 
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shiftygiant

shiftygiant

Gone Fishin'
A City in the North or heartland would be a suitable target, like Munich or Frankfurt. Even Bonn. But hitting Berlin will just create even more a mess out a shitshow.
 

Mumph

Ladislao said:
They wouldn't hit Tokyo because of the people's reverence for the Emperor. They were worried that killing the Emperor would just enrage the people and make a occupation costly and bloody. This is why OTL the Emperor was no tried for War crimes.
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The Allies were also concerned that they would obliterate all of Japan's legitimate Government, therby creating a situation in which no one would have the authority to surrender Japan.
 

Dathi THorfinnsson

Note that B29s were available in the summer of 1944. They raided Japan from China. One of the major reasons for the late war Japanese advance in China (Ichi-go?) was to shut down those bomber bases.

Of course they were only available in small numbers at that point, but that's all you need with a nuke, right?
 

Dathi THorfinnsson

Ladislao said:
A single bomb on Berlin wins the war
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Nope.

The Japanese in August 1945 were defeated and everyone knew it. The Soviets were invading Manchuria, most cities had been bombed flat, many had had firestorms.

The nukes were only the last straw for Japan, and EVEN THEN, nutso militarists tried to kidnap the Emperor to prevent his surrender announcement from getting out.

1 bomb in Berlin, while no Allied army is within sight of pre-war German borders? Sure it will disorganize response, but these are Nazis we're talking about. OTL, they didn't surrender until Allied (Soviet) armies were in Berlin.


Would it make the war shorter? Yes. Would it be instant? No way.

What you MIGHT get is a short civil war between the SS and the Wehrmacht. If the latter win, which they might well, you'll get a junta of generals leading the country, and asking for peace terms - probably the January 1940 borders... Which they won't get, of course.
 

ggarner57

You won't make them surrender, but hitting Dusseldorf and the Ruhr valley would pretty much cripple the German war effort.
 

Deleted member 1487

Ladislao said:
They wouldn't hit Tokyo because of the people's reverence for the Emperor. They were worried that killing the Emperor would just enrage the people and make a occupation costly and bloody. This is why OTL the Emperor was no tried for War crimes.
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No, Tokyo was destroyed in the worse firebombing of it months before, it was already wrecked; you mean Kyoto. The Japanese targets were hit to see the effect of the bomb on an undestroyed target.

Available 1 year early would mean after D-Day when Germany was already beaten, so they'd likely use it on a smaller city that was unbombed.
 
Daniwani

Daniwani

Dathi THorfinnsson said:
Nope.

The Japanese in August 1945 were defeated and everyone knew it. The Soviets were invading Manchuria, most cities had been bombed flat, many had had firestorms.

The nukes were only the last straw for Japan, and EVEN THEN, nutso militarists tried to kidnap the Emperor to prevent his surrender announcement from getting out.

1 bomb in Berlin, while no Allied army is within sight of pre-war German borders? Sure it will disorganize response, but these are Nazis we're talking about. OTL, they didn't surrender until Allied (Soviet) armies were in Berlin.


Would it make the war shorter? Yes. Would it be instant? No way.

What you MIGHT get is a short civil war between the SS and the Wehrmacht. If the latter win, which they might well, you'll get a junta of generals leading the country, and asking for peace terms - probably the January 1940 borders... Which they won't get, of course.
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Though I do agree with most of this, especially the last bit, I am inclined to say the Japanese people, and armed forced for that matter were much more up to a fight to the death then the Germans ever were. That and Japan's leadership already effectively being a Junta rather then a rickety dictatorship were the actual administrator holds all the power helps in keeping it together when the head does come off; then there's the whole issue of Japan quite simply fighting for "Japan", whist Germans and Germany can more easily separate themselves from the Nazi Party and Hitler's War (not easily, just moreso).

Not saying the war would be over instantly, infact it might be quite messy with the resulting German Power struggle in the middle of it, just that Japan's general mentality and political situation was probably much more up to a prolonged war of attrition on the ashes of their fallen country then Germany's.
 

Perfidious Albion

Saphroneth said:
Yeah, blow the Ruhr to bits and that's all she wrote bar the epilogue. Can't fight without weapons/ammo.
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I've heard this often and I don't dispute the principle, but I have to ask: how many bombs of the Hiroshima/Nagasaki level, i.e. one to two dozen kilotons, would it take to inflict critical damage to the entirety of the Ruhr's industrial complexes? Given how weak those bombs were, would it be more than one? If so, that has a rather large impact on the potential timing of the attacks.
 

Napoleon IV

Perfidious Albion said:
I've heard this often and I don't dispute the principle, but I have to ask: how many bombs of the Hiroshima/Nagasaki level, i.e. one to two dozen kilotons, would it take to inflict critical damage to the entirety of the Ruhr's industrial complexes? Given how weak those bombs were, would it be more than one? If so, that has a rather large impact on the potential timing of the attacks.
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Albert Speer estimated that 12 atomic bombs would be enough to destroy Germany's industrial capacity. I suspect that was referring to more than the Ruhr though. By July 1946 IOTL 9 more atomic bombs had been built, so it's doubtful that many bombs would have been built by the time Germany surrendered.
 

Dathi THorfinnsson

Napoleon IV said:
Albert Speer estimated that 12 atomic bombs would be enough to destroy Germany's industrial capacity. I suspect that was referring to more than the Ruhr though.
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1) do you have a cite for that? I don't doubt you that he said it, but it would be interesting to see the context.
2) Assuming he said that, was he anywhere near correct? The Allies dropped massive amounts of munitions on various cities/factories/etc., and while building were often destroyed, and machinery knocked over (for instance), a good many factories were back in operation in a few days. Given that an A bomb is (mostly) about the same as a massive bombing raid (more so at the centre, less so at the edges), how many factories would actually have been KEPT out of operation, with that many bombs? So the place would be massively radioactive. Would the Nazis care?

Napoleon IV said:
By July 1946 IOTL 9 more atomic bombs had been built, so it's doubtful that many bombs would have been built by the time Germany surrendered.
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IOTL, the US was ramping up to 3 bombs a month, iirc. They shut down the production line when the war was over to a) save money (I assume), b) make the production safer, c) retool for new designs, and d) because they weren't needed.

You'd have those 9 bombs available in a couple of months if they were needed. And a lot more over the next year.
 

ObssesedNuker

If the WAllies decide to annihilate industrial targets, the A-Bombs best bet would be to target synthetic fuel plants. As a inherently flammable, they would be extremely vulnerable to the heat pulse and overpressure from the A-Bomb blasts. Continuous conventional bombing raids steadily damaged them and drove production down over a period of months, but a 20Kt A-bomb within 2-3 kilometers (terrain permitting) is going to simply annihilate such a facility completely. Only some 5 targets to destroy as well. Once those are gone and the Soviets capture the Romanian-Hungarian oil fields, Germany literally has no other significant sources of oil.
 

Deleted member 1487

ObssesedNuker said:
If the WAllies decide to annihilate industrial targets, the A-Bombs best bet would be to target synthetic fuel plants. As a inherently flammable, they would be extremely vulnerable to the heat pulse and overpressure from the A-Bomb blasts. Continuous conventional bombing raids steadily damaged them and drove production down over a period of months, but a 20Kt A-bomb within 2-3 kilometers (terrain permitting) is going to simply annihilate such a facility completely. Only some 5 targets to destroy as well. Once those are gone and the Soviets capture the Romanian-Hungarian oil fields, Germany literally has no other significant sources of oil.
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It would also be the more humane approach rather than incinerating civilians and collapses the war economy.
 

ObssesedNuker

wiking said:
It would also be the more humane approach rather than incinerating civilians
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That is liable to happen either way. These structures are located near or within civilian population centers and nukes, to use a bit of understatement, have quite an area of effect.

and collapses the war economy.
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Once the Germans run through their existing stocks, yes. With near-zero production, that would likely only take one or two months.
 

CalBear

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Napoleon IV said:
Albert Speer estimated that 12 atomic bombs would be enough to destroy Germany's industrial capacity. I suspect that was referring to more than the Ruhr though. By July 1946 IOTL 9 more atomic bombs had been built, so it's doubtful that many bombs would have been built by the time Germany surrendered.
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Speer said a lot of things. nother three days of this raid or that raid and we would never have recovered. He was a master of playing the audience, whether it was a room of Nazis or the USSBS investigators.

Find 12 useful targets inside the Reich that had not been hit over and over again by late 1944.

Just as importantly, find 12 UNDEFENDED by fighter aircraft targets inside Germany that were valid target for a day drop of an atomic bomb. You really can't drop at night, the early gen weapons were powerful enough to TLAR the drop point.

You can't fly escort for the early bombers, the damned fighters would get swatted out of the sky by the blast, trying to defend the launch aircraft as it performed the breakaway maneuver. Also, you will need to hit all 14 targets at the same time, or roughly the same time. The Luftwaffe wasn't the IJA/IJN, even if they fell for the "hey, nothing to see here, just a weather plane" trick once, that would be about it. After that every B-29 would get attacked by anything that could reach the necessary altitude, and every AAA gun in the Reich that could bear would open fire.

Lastly, early generation nukes were not really all that and a bag of chips. Impressive, you bet. Efficient use of aircraft, check. Devastation on a national scale? Not so much. The Japanese surrendered after the two weapons AND the Soviet DoW, not because they were decisive, but because they were enough of a combined shock that the fight to the last Japanese wing of the government was wrong-footed for about three days. Between that and Hirohito directly intervening, it was enough for the few sane leaders in the Empire, to end the slaughter.

If you can hit the enemy with 300 megatons of unstoppable death on a stick, you can destroy him. If you can only hit him with 200 kilotons that are vulnerable to interception, you can hurt him. Problem was that the Reich was already hurt, already past being hurt and well into numb.
 

ObssesedNuker

Yeah, even in my proposal Germany probably drags on resistance for a few months after the bomb drops, assuming the army doesn't decide to shoot Hitler and surrender in response. It's still necessary for ground forces to finish the job. It would also require that the B-29 start being used in Europe in a conventional role before using the silverplates, as the Luftwaffe would make a maximum effort at bringing down the '29s when they show up. Groves actually discussed this with Roosevelt in December 1944, when the president thought for a moment that the Ardennes Offensive might prolong the war long enough that Germany would still be fighting when the bomb was ready.

Relevant Article on Restricted Data said:
REPORTER: General Groves, could we go back for a minute. You mentioned in your book [Now it Can Be Told] that just before the Yalta Conference that President Roosevelt said if we had bombs before the European war was over he would like to drop them on Germany.3 Would you discuss this?

GROVES: At the conference that Secretary Stimson and myself had with President Roosevelt shortly before his departure, I believe it was December 30th or 31st of 1944, President Roosevelt was quite disturbed over the Battle of the Bulge and he asked me at that time whether I could bomb Germany as well as Japan. The plan had always been to bomb Japan because we thought the war in Germany was pretty apt to be over in the first place and in the second place the Japanese building construction was much more easily damaged by a bomb of this character than that in Germany. I urged President Roosevelt that it would be very difficult for various reasons.

The main one was that the Germans had quite strong aerial defense. They made a practice, as every nation does, that when a new plane came into the combat area, that they would run any risk that they could to bring such a plane down so that they could examine it and see what new ideas had come in so that they could make improvements and also would know the characteristics of the plane so that they could prepare a better defense against it. We had no B-29’s in Europe. If we had sent over a small squadron or group as we did against Japan of this type, everyone of them would have been brought down on the first trip to Germany. If they hadn’t been, it would have been through no lack of effort on the part of the Germans.

The alternative would be to bring a large number of B-29’s over to England and that would have been a major logistical task and the other possibility would have been to have used a British plane which would not have been a bit pleasing to General Arnold and also would have created a great many difficulties for our general operation because then it would be an Allied operation with the United States furnishing the bombs and everything connected with it but using a British plane and a British crew to actually drop the bomb and it would have raised a tremendous number of difficulties.

And difficulties like that — while you say you should be able to handle that — you can but in a project of this character there are so many little things, each one of them key, that you can’t afford to throw any more sand into the wheels that you can help.

The bombing of Germany with atomic bombs was, I would say, never seriously considered to the extent of making definite plans but on this occasion I told the President, Mr. Roosevelt, why it would be very unfortunate from my standpoint, I added that of course if the President — if the war demanded it and the President so desired, we would bomb Germany and I was so certain personally that the war in Europe would be over before we would be ready that you might say I didn’t give it too much consideration.
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The only quibble on I'd make with your post Calbear (and it is a very minor quibble), is this:

CalBear said:
Find 12 useful targets inside the Reich that had not been hit over and over again by late 1944.
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Just because a target had been hit does not mean it had been destroyed. One of the main lessons to come out of the strategic bombing campaign in Europe is that hitting a target with a few raids is unlikely to destroy it. Speer probably heavily exaggerated with his statements on this issue, but the overall thrust of his argument is born out by the development of the 1944-45 oil bombing campaign: it takes a pro-longed and concentrated campaign to collapse industrial production and keep it collapsed. Of course, by the time the WAllies had figured that lesson out and applied it in their strategic bombing campaign, the Reich was already collapsing from it's battlefield defeats and loss of territory anyways.

An atom bomb is different from a conventional air raid in that while the latter will at best knock the facility out for a few days, the latter will at wipe the facility out completely.
 
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