DBWI: Japan hadn't developed nukes?

With the recent denuclearization going on between the US and the Japanese Empire, with both nations working to decrease their arsenals, I've found a neat book written on the idea that Japan wasn't able to acquire nuclear weapons during WWII, and the book instead had Japan solely being attacked with atomic bombs by the US.

So, what do folks think would have happened if the Japanese Empire hadn't managed to develop nukes at the end of 1943? How would that have effected the Cold War between us and the Soviets? Would the Japanese Empire even exist today?
 
Well just one fewer country getting nukes won't change much, Japan will still stay neutral in the four cornered nuclear slugfest between Italy and Germany, and the French and British, same as the US and USSR

OOC: If Japan of all people has nukes by 1943 then everybody who matters will as well, most estimates say Japan would be lucky to develop them by the early 50's, if they have them that early then the major advances are discovered earlier
 
To sort those questions out one has to settle the debate of how effective the US central and south Pacific offensives might have been. The contrarians claim the severe logistics problems hampering MacArthurs South Pacific offense would ahve crippled it and left him stalemated somewhere between Rabaul and the Phillipines. Given the reality of those problems the contraians might have something. The Central Pacific offense kicked off in November 1943 with the invasion of the Tarawa atoll was on better ground logistically. The negative view is it would have slow and even bloodier than the initial attack on Betio island. However, the details for the US effort were far better than the shoestring operations in the South Pacific. It may have been MacArthurs offense would have been post phoned until better organized or canceled entirely.

The course of the planned central Pacific offensive is well known & had it been sucessfull would have placed bases for heavy bombers in the Marianas, the Ryukyus, Formosa, or Bonin islands. All that would have served to isolate Japan from Chinas ports, its South Pacific empire. Beyond that the massacre of Japans cargo fleet by the US submarines and airpower in 1943 would with absolute certanity be vastly worse. Eventoday the japanese naval historians admit the IJN ASW of 1944 would have been wholly ineffective.

All that brings us around to the Allied 'Unconditional Surrender' policy. It was enforced against Germany and Italy, notwithstanding small concessions to the Italians when they changed sides. The defeat of Germany took until the spring of 1945 & was driven home despite the Japanese use of the their several atomic weapons in 1943-44 and the fanatic German resistance. I personally cant see the Japanese preventing total war coming to the home islands by 1945.

Absent a Japanese atomic bomb and the subsequent stalemate in the Pacific the common question is if German resistance would have been so bitter. Right up to the last day Hitler and hundreds of thousands of other Germans sincerely believed that and all sorts of other "Wunderwaffe" would save them. Would that have been the case had the supreme wunderwaffe not been around in latter 1943? or 1944? Various scenarios have been proposed for sucessfull assasinations of nazi leaders, army mutinies, mass desertions, what have you. It is all speculation & I dont think we can really predict how the Germans would have behaved.
 

Incognito

Banned
Well just one fewer country getting nukes won't change much, Japan will still stay neutral in the four cornered nuclear slugfest between Italy and Germany, and the French and British, same as the US and USSR
OOC: Are you saying that it was a four-sided war between U.K., France, Germany and Italy? Or a two sided war between France + U.K. and Germany + Italy?
OOC: If Japan of all people has nukes by 1943 then everybody who matters will as well, most estimates say Japan would be lucky to develop them by the early 50's, if they have them that early then the major advances are discovered earlier
OOC: OTL as far as I know Japanese did not put much effort into nuclear research. I don't think it is impossible though for there to arise a "Japanese Einstein" in some ATL in the 20th century, leading to the Japanese putting more efforts into nukes. Why would they be "lucky to develop them by the early 50's" in all possible worlds?

IC: RamscoopRaider, I haven't read the book you referenced so maybe you could explain why U.S. goes to war with Japan? U.S. was very big on the idea of isolationism back then and it would be ASB for them to join the World War 2 because of this fact. Japan also never formally joined the war despite liberating a whole bunch of Asian colonies from European influence while the imperial powers where busy fighting each other in Europe.

I guess if Japanese Empire and US do go to war in WW2 and Japanese Empire DOESN'T get nukes while America DOES than it is a Japan screw. I guess Chekiang never becomes Zion (OOC: Israel in China) so the Jewish refugees never get their own nation but at least decades of conflict between Jews and the local Chinese and White Russian populations. The Soviets probably take the opportunity to finally deal with Von Ungern-Sternberg now that Japanese can't protect Mongolia and turn into an SSR just like they did with Xinjiang just a few years before that. Not sure what would happen to South East Asia and rest of China.
 
OOC: Are you saying that it was a four-sided war between U.K., France, Germany and Italy? Or a two sided war between France + U.K. and Germany + Italy? OOC: OTL as far as I know Japanese did not put much effort into nuclear research. I don't think it is impossible though for there to arise a "Japanese Einstein" in some ATL in the 20th century, leading to the Japanese putting more efforts into nukes. Why would they be "lucky to develop them by the early 50's" in all possible worlds?
OOC: Second scenario but Italy changes sides

Nukes are difficult and expensive, you could buy 20 battleships for the cost of the Manhattan project and Japan was strapped for cash, nevermind that the B-29 program to get a nuke bomber was even more expensive France started a program in 1945 and did not get a bomb till1960, Britain, who was in on the program and did not have to start from scratch, started an independent bomb program in 1946 and took until 1952 to get a bomb, both of these countries have greater expertise in the field, more educated populace, better industrial quality control and more resources than Japan would

Einstein only wrote a letter, he had no real effect on the development of the bomb

IC: RamscoopRaider, I haven't read the book you referenced so maybe you could explain why U.S. goes to war with Japan? U.S. was very big on the idea of isolationism back then and it would be ASB for them to join the World War 2 because of this fact. Japan also never formally joined the war despite liberating a whole bunch of Asian colonies from European influence while the imperial powers where busy fighting each other in Europe.

I guess if Japanese Empire and US do go to war in WW2 and Japanese Empire DOESN'T get nukes while America DOES than it is a Japan screw. I guess Chekiang never becomes Zion (OOC: Israel in China) so the Jewish refugees never get their own nation but at least decades of conflict between Jews and the local Chinese and White Russian populations. The Soviets probably take the opportunity to finally deal with Von Ungern-Sternberg now that Japanese can't protect Mongolia and turn into an SSR just like they did with Xinjiang just a few years before that. Not sure what would happen to South East Asia and rest of China.
IC: The author actually goes into greater detail, the KMT holds itself together better in the 1920's, so Japan cannot beat the Chinese quickly and they bog down into a quagmire, eventually the US embargos them after repeated atrocities in China, and to get the resources they need to keep fighting they attack the British and Dutch colonies in south east Asia, and they attack the USA as well at the same time to secure their flanks, which is in keeping with their doctrine of the time

So US isolationism really does not get involved, the Japanese attack first and the US responds

You can call it liberating, most refugees, their descendants and local resistance movements call it trading a far away master for a closer and more brutal one
 

Incognito

Banned
You can call it liberating, most refugees, their descendants and local resistance movements call it trading a far away master for a closer and more brutal one
Bah! "Refugees" and "Resistance Movements" my @$$! Those "freedom fighters" are nothing more than terrorists and cutthroats backed by Moscow. But of course the social democrats and liberals in the west are ready to jump in bed with the likes of Saloth Sar, Kim Il-Sung & Ho Chi Minh, condemning Japan for maintaining order & stability and putting down red butchers. No wonder Lenin referred to your type as "useful idiots".

OOC: I am going with the assumption that if Japanese Empire exists during the Cold War, it is anti-Communist and thus at least a semi-ally of the USA. Thus, its crimes are white-washed as it becomes yet another dictatorship U.S. is friendly towards. The fact that many of the anti-Japanese, anti-colonial movements would have a communist flavor to them does not help the partisan's reputation in the west.
 
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