Alternate First Nukes

IOTL, the US got the nukes first by a bit of a longshot. Say, ITTL, they don't have the incentive or push to do this. Leaving out as many other factors as possible, who would get the nuke first?
 

Archibald

Banned
Undefeated-in-1940 France, thanks to the Curie and Jolliot Curie... or Henri Becquerel, but that's a lot earlier.
 

Thande

Donor
Guys, it's not about having the scientists, it's about having the resources. America, as the richest country and the greatest industrial power, could afford to pour millions into an untested blue-skies project while still being at war. (Remember that it would have been a lot easier for the Soviets to do it later, because their spies meant that they knew a lot of what the Americans had had to find out expensively through trial and error).

If we take say 1930 as our POD date (to allow non-Nazi Germany with Jewish scientists staying there, and so forth) there are only three countries that could have invented the bomb IMO.

- USA
- Germany
- Britain (but this is iffy, and only if it was a joint project with all the dominions).

France, Italy and the USSR could have duplicated the bomb programme once someone else had worked out all the knots (as indeed the USSR did in OTL) but they lacked either the resources or the political will to utilise a vast amount of them on a dodgy project. Remember, after all, this was the era of the Depression.
 
Ok - Germany had the resources and the scientists who went wildly astray on the deuthorium... into the wild blue yonder.

OTL - Britain.

ATL - Japan with Soviet backing (why am I doing this...:D)
 
is there a possibility of no nukes at all in WWII?
if the bomb wasnt ready by 1945 the invasion of japan would still happed, the "conventional" bombings did more damage than both nukes aniway, maybe japan would not capitulate, and american casulties would be skyhigh, possibly ewen the soviets would invade but still eventually japan inevitably loses
this was basicaly the plan in case manhattan project didnt work

germany would most likely not go for the bomb, as much effort was already invested into nuclear energy and nuclear fuel, specifically to provide industrial power and to produce a reactor powered tank sized motor
 
Well, Germany has the materials and a lot of brainpower, but the brainpower that actually knew what they were doing had left the country. Plus their economy wasn't set up to complete one by the time the war was over.

The Soviet Union had the resources and eventually had the industry to spare, but the brainpower was lacking, most of their work came from spies in America.

The UK has the resources and brainpower (Thank you Canada), but I'm not sure how much money they could afford to throw into the effort.

Japan has a good resource base in Manchuria for this, and they do have some real brainiacs, but not too many of them. The industrial base is probably too low for it as well, and they're going to run into serious problems with the whole being firebombed into oblivion in '45. Or '44 since America has a few billion dollars they could spend on something else.

France has no hope of being first.

I would say England would get it first, but the cost is a really, really big problem especially since they have to rebuild and pay off the cost of the war and maintaining an army big enough to help face down the Soviets in Europe. It may get into the '50s without them spending the time/cash to build the bomb.

The question for me is how likely is WW3 without the threat of American nukes to scare the USSR?
 
It sounds like if there is no WW2 or similar major war in teh 40s, then there's a chance that several nations could have developed the bombs at similar times.... Interesting...
 
That assumes that the USSR was hell-bent on actually invading the rest of Europe, which they were not.

It could also assume they wanted to assist North Korea a little more enthusiastically, or wanted to grab onto West Berlin (I might have heard something about them maybe wanting it? :)). But there were potential flash points for a war between the East and West all the time and the threat of nuclear war made both sides much more open to conceding to the other.
 
Top