Early Arrival

What if the atomic bomb had been ready six months earlier? So in February 1945, one bomb is dropped on Hiroshima and one on a German city. I am thinking both enemies surrender. Does anyone disagree? If they do, what effect does an earlier end to the war have? Also any thoughts on what German city becomes the target?
 
A lot of boys who died fighting the Nazis and the Japanese would not die. The German city i think would have been Berlin. Hitler and most of the NAZI leaders were there and they would have been fried. If not Berlin maybe Munich
 
I doubt the allies would drop the bomb on Germany after the Battle of the Bulge. During? Sure. But after that battle, they cut through Germany like a welding torch through butter. It was quite obvious the war in the west wasn't going to last much longer.
The Japanese however, looked dead set on defending the Home Islands, and a lot of people in February still agreed that an amphibious invasion would be necessary to defeat them.
 
What if the atomic bomb had been ready six months earlier? So in February 1945, one bomb is dropped on Hiroshima and one on a German city. I am thinking both enemies surrender. Does anyone disagree? If they do, what effect does an earlier end to the war have? Also any thoughts on what German city becomes the target?

The targets would most likely be Dresden and Tokyo, since the Allies already plan to firebomb them anyway. Berlin is probably too provocative, with the Red Army only 40 miles away.

Are they used during the Yalta Conference (ending the 11th) or after?
That's going to have a huge impact on the negotiations if during. Churchill may stop cooperating with Stalin if he thinks the Americans can just atom-bomb Germany into submission (and -force- Stalin into allowing an independent Poland too).

Even if Tokyo is destroyed, Japan may not surrender until much later; since the Soviets aren't on the verge of invading them (even if Yalta doesn't fall apart, Stalin wants to wait until 90 days after Germany surrenders before moving against Japan). Having atomic bombs ready in February might actually -prolong- the war in the Pacific...
 
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A lot of boys who died fighting the Nazis and the Japanese would not die. The German city i think would have been Berlin. Hitler and most of the NAZI leaders were there and they would have been fried. If not Berlin maybe Munich

I would think Hamburg is a better candidate because it is closer to the sea and the bomber would be less likely to be shot down over the intervening countryside. Another problem with Berlin is that the city is so large and its construction so masonry-oriented that there is a good chance that Hitler could, at a given time, be out of range of a 10kt or 20kt bomb.

With a two-front war going, the US would probably wait a little longer before deploying the second bomb. Germany was big on war filming and the news would have spread fast.

A scare factor might spread to Japan. If a general with a name like Eisenhower drops the Bomb on a German city, what might the Americans do in Asia, given a rather their documented demonstrations of racism.
 
Even if Tokyo is destroyed, Japan may not surrender until much later; since the Soviets aren't on the verge of invading them (even if Yalta doesn't fall apart, Stalin wants to wait until 90 days after Germany surrenders before moving against Japan). Having atomic bombs ready in February might actually -prolong- the war in the Pacific...

Except that in the Surrender the Hirohito does not name the Soviet and the bomb yes so no way it prolong the war ... if they do not surrender with the first bomb they just keep nuking them about 1 city a month ...
 

ninebucks

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I don't think the Americans would drop a nuke on a European city. Cities like Berlin and Dresden and Hamburg are important centres of Western civilisation, and destroying them will seem like a heinous act of vandalism.

With Japan though, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are dots on a map, there's no awareness in America of these being real cities, with real civilisation and real cultural treasures.
 
If the bomb is dropped on Europe the European war ends sooner, and the Americans probably get more of Germany in the post-war carve-up at the expense of the Soviets.

If the bomb is dropped on Japan earlier than in OTL, nothing of importance changes. The main event that prompted Japan's surrender was the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, not the atomic bombs, and the nukes were not as powerful as some of the massed B-29 attacks on Japanese cities.

However, if the European war ended sooner because of the atom bombs, the Soviet invasion of Manchuria would have probably happened earlier too. So yes, earlier atom bomb use would quicken the end of the war in the Pacific, but only if used against Germany.
 
If the bomb is dropped on Europe the European war ends sooner, and the Americans probably get more of Germany in the post-war carve-up at the expense of the Soviets.

Ironically, if a single bomb dropped onto Berlin killing the leading Nazis ends the war early and leaves the Soviets with a smaller part of Germany - or maybe Europe as a whole - this would benefit Germany on the long run.

A problem though is that such a bomb would make all leading Nazis martyrs. IOTL, the suicides and the unconditional defeat without "wonder weapons" discredited them, but there are still some idiots believing in Nazism. Now ITTL, there would probably be by far more Nazis. And there'd even be some who would still believe that the war could have been won if only the Americans did not use the bomb.
 
The targets would most likely be Dresden and Tokyo, since the Allies already plan to firebomb them anyway. Berlin is probably too provocative, with the Red Army only 40 miles away.

I agree on Dresden, IIRC it was chosen as a target at the insistance of the Soviets who claimed it as a logistics hub of the Eastern Front. Far enough east to "help" the Soviets, but safe enough to be able to get a bomber there and back. I suspect that it would have been a heavily escorted night raid as well.

I'm not 100% why the British and Americans agreed to hit Dresden in OTL so this may have a bearing on Dresden as a target, but Berlin, already rubble wouldn't really prove much - Dresden, pretty much intact, would, (only my opinion though).
 
I don't think the Americans would drop a nuke on a European city. Cities like Berlin and Dresden and Hamburg are important centres of Western civilisation, and destroying them will seem like a heinous act of vandalism.

Er, Dresden and Hamburg were pretty much obliterated by conventional bombing being the sites of firestorms. I don't think there was any caring for centres of Western civilisation there. If you find the video on Youtube of Hamburg after the bombing its not THAT much different from Hiroshima.

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
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