AHC: Germany gets nuked in World War Two, Japan does not.

Allies screw the pooch sometime between mid 1942 & mid 1944, thus leaving Germany in a clearly better position as 1945 arrives.

Rhodes in 'The Making of the Atomic Bomb' touches on the question of intent for use of this weapon. In the original arguments for funding this research the possibility of Germany accquiring such a weapon first was raised. Japan is hardly mentioned. In subsequent documents Germany is refered to first & japan second if at all. In the latter half of 1944 the research had progressed to the point where production of atomic devices could be scheduled with confidence. At that point it was thought Germany would be near collapse by late summer of 1945 & this weapons use in Europe uncessary. At that point Japan becomes the priciple target in the documents.

So, had it been seen or thought Germany would still be making a strong fight of it in the latter half of 1945 planning for using the weapons in Europe would have continued.

How many atomic weapons would be used depends on whos count you buy. At the high end some claim up to 36 atomic bombs could have been built by the end of 1946, about two per month. Rhoades takes a more conservative view. It is known Plutonium for five bombs was produced & enough for one or two more could have been provided in 1945 had the breeder reactors at Haniford not been shut down for improvement. Rhoades places probable production for 1946 at around 18 bombs. Since the limit was the hastily built pair of breeder reactors at Haniford breaking down it may be most of the Plutonium would have been available earlier in the year rather than later. That would be modified by any residual production from the other experimental pilot reactor built before the other two. In any case a average of 1 to 2 bombs per month would have been there to use vs Germany.


Come up with a situation in which Germany is nuked and Surrenders in WWII and Japan is conquered through conventional warfare.

Tough to do since under even the most pessimistic but realistic circumstances a few atomic bombs would have been reserved for Japan
 
Come up with a situation in which Germany is nuked and Surrenders in WWII and Japan is conquered through conventional warfare.

Germany would not have surrendered due to being nuked. Japan didn't OTL, so why would Germany?

Besides, nothing, let alone a few nukes, will make Germany surrender unless you kill Hitler.

So yes, you can have Germany nuked, but you cannot have Germany nuked and surrender because of it.

A situation in which Germany is nuked is also a situation where the end of the war is nowhere in sight and the outcome of the war is completely unknown.
 
Germany would not have surrendered due to being nuked. Japan didn't OTL, so why would Germany?

Besides, nothing, let alone a few nukes, will make Germany surrender unless you kill Hitler.

So yes, you can have Germany nuked, but you cannot have Germany nuked and surrender because of it.

A situation in which Germany is nuked is also a situation where the end of the war is nowhere in sight and the outcome of the war is completely unknown.

Well after both bombs fell the Japanese did give up. Maybe it will take some kind of Coup to make Germany surrender.
 
Well after both bombs fell the Japanese did give up. Maybe it will take some kind of Coup to make Germany surrender.

Said coup will probably happen when Hitler refuses to give up after a couple German cities get fried. Even if that doesn't happen, nukes on major logistical/population centers would be enough to end the war outright or degrade their warfighting capability to the point that they can be defeated in a short period of time.
 
I've been working on a timeline where Germany gets nuked, but Japan's fate is more ambiguous. Remember an invasion of Japan would have been much more costly than invading Germany was.
 
If the Allies end up doing better in the Pacific against the Japanese and get in a position to blockade the Home Islands by early 1944 and unleash Curtis LeMay you could get a situation where the Japanese surrender by the end of the year due to starvation and economic collapse.
 
Not difficult at all, in my view. One simply needs to look at the actual reasons each side eventually did surrender.

Japan held out because the Militarists didn't want to surrender unconditionally. They believed that they inflicted big enough casualties on the US, then they could get some terms--at least retention of the Emperor, for example. They will only surrender when that last hope is finally lost.

There are a few ways to do this: the most obvious is the atomic bombs. With these, the US can slaughter large numbers of IJA soldiers (which didn't really bother the Japanese high command) without facing any casualties themselves. The second way is just to show that the IJA has already lost its combat effectiveness. This happened OTL after August Storm, when the Red Army went through the Kantogun (the cream of the crop of the IJA) like a knife through butter. Of course, this is probably the hardest. No matter how many Japanese soldiers die, the brass won't care so long as they inflict at least a few deaths on the US, as well. Also, any theoretical fighting in Kyuushuu won't have the wide open spaces of Manchuria that made the Soviets so effective.

The third option is simple starvation. Once the US subs close the ring around the Home Islands, the end is only a matter of time. After the destruction of the Japanese railway network, the Japanese economy will collapse even sooner. One under-rated factor was when the US air-dropped mines into the old Japanese canal network. Military goods and industrial products went by rail, but bulk foodstuffs like rice went by barge. When the canals became unusable, the food can't be moved from the countryside, and the cities begin to starve immediately. Incidentally, that's the PoD I would use--quicker/earlier blockade leads to early surrender.

The Germans, on the other hand, didn't seem to have any policy objectives in the late phase of their war. Mainly, the more fanatical among the Nazi leadership just wanted to avoid the perception of ignoble surrender like after the first war. The last year of the war saw the Gauleiter--who had nothing left to lose when the Nazi regime finally fell--increase repression and violence among their own people. The endless declaring of "fortress cities", the public hanging of deserters and "cowards"... none of this had any goal, except keeping resistance going until the last possible moment. German resistance won't end until Hitler is dead.

Anyway, my PoDs are simple. The US uses a larger sub fleet in an even more aggressive campaign, and makes eliminating the last vestiges of the IJN less of a priority. The Empire of Japan begins to starve, and even the military--who takes all the food they can from the civilian population--can't get enough to feed their troops. In addition, the Militarists begin to fear that the starving population will revolt. Japan surrenders in late 1944. Germany, on the other hand, does a bit better. Maybe they adopt a defensive posture on the Eastern Front ealier. Maybe they don't extend themselves too far into other theaters, like North Africa. Maybe Anglo-American bombing is a bit less effective. It doesn't really matter. At any rate, they manage to hold on until the fall of 1945. In the late summer, some German cities (maybe Dresden? :p) are nuked, partially to finally bring the war to the end, and partially out of fear on the part of the Wallies about future Soviet power in Eastern Europe.
 
Well after both bombs fell the Japanese did give up. Maybe it will take some kind of Coup to make Germany surrender.

Only due to the combination of a Soviet invasion, which served as the major tipping point for the Japanese to surrender on the grounds that their leadership for the most part felt that Allied occupation was better than Soviet occupation. In Nazi Germany no such scenario existed; surrender would inevitably lead the Soviet occupation; indeed Nazi propoganda focused especially on how only continued resistance would stem the tide of the "Asiatic, Mongolo barbarians". This view was not limited to the pary apparatus, but throughout the German military and government. A coup attempt, as IOTL, would have been crushed without mercy and the war would continue. Even if Hitler was killed his succesor would almost certainly continued fighting. Peace was never even considered by any potential leaders until the very last days of the war.

Nuclear weapons are not game changers. German cities were being razed weekly by Allied bombing raids. Destroying them with nuclear weapons doesn't kill or damage more than a particularly bad firestorm, as radiation effects are essentially unknown. Further complete media control eliminates the impact that a bombing would have on the populace.

Thus as a whole, even with nuclear weapons, German resistance will continue until Hitler is dead and defeat is literally days away.
 
Nuclear weapons used in the densly populated European continent is asking fro troubles in the first place. Neighbouring states, such as Sweden, France (if already liberated) and especially the UK would not support the idea, just as these states understood the importance of the previous war and its conclusion. If somehow the USA wanted to use nuclear weapons on Germany, the rest of the alliance would force the USA to back down some way or another. Europe had more to win with a German people willing to live, rather than one filled with feelings or revenge only.

A more likely target would be the USSR though, especially to force them to back down after a cease fire in Europe.
 
Nuclear weapons used in the densly populated European continent is asking fro troubles in the first place. Neighbouring states, such as Sweden, France (if already liberated) and especially the UK would not support the idea, just as these states understood the importance of the previous war and its conclusion. If somehow the USA wanted to use nuclear weapons on Germany, the rest of the alliance would force the USA to back down some way or another. Europe had more to win with a German people willing to live, rather than one filled with feelings or revenge only.

A more likely target would be the USSR though, especially to force them to back down after a cease fire in Europe.


This is a decent point, but remember that the radiation effects of nuclear weapons were unknown until well into the '50s. European cities had already been bombed by allied forces en masse, so I doubt there would be as heavy opposition to its use.

Nuking cities, however, is but one use of nuclear arms; military bases, infrastructural hubs, troop formations and the like are all useful targets that would not necessarily be located in cities.
 
This would require either Germany to fight longer or the Manhatten project to work quicker

I think that it would likely require Hitler dead. He simply would not surrender
 
This is a decent point, but remember that the radiation effects of nuclear weapons were unknown until well into the '50s. European cities had already been bombed by allied forces en masse, so I doubt there would be as heavy opposition to its use.

Nuking cities, however, is but one use of nuclear arms; military bases, infrastructural hubs, troop formations and the like are all useful targets that would not necessarily be located in cities.


It is not the radiation I was refering too, but the generally already accepted issue of the nuclear weapon being a weapon with doomsday proportions, compared to conventional weapons. It would be treated at least as simmilar to other weapons of mass destruction known at the time, such as biological and chemical weapons. That was an escalation clause in teh making, so the Allies would be very cautious to use it on a people, who all believed to be at the same level as themselves, except the Russians and Japanese perhaps.

If the USA persisted on dropping a nuclear weapon on European soil, the alliance propably would break up and starting to consider the USA a threat, rather than National Socialism, or Communism!!! Since there still were US politicians with some intelligence, they would not let it come to that point. The central point is that a nuclear weapon in Europe was a not done issue, as the USA would loose more than it had to win, namely the trust of the world in her oncomming leadership.
 
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