German A-Bomb Targets

For my AP U.S. History class in high school, I read Studs Terkel's The Good War, an oral history of WWII.

One section derived from interviews with a black guy who'd been involved in racial activism at the time. He said that "most blacks" don't believe the A-Bomb would have been used on a white city.

Another interview was with a Manhattan Project scientist, who said the bomb was originally intended for use on Germany.

We've gotten into discussions on this forum about whether or not the U.S. would have nuked a white city, but given how the Allies gratuitously firebombed white cities all the time and the "evil stigma" of nukes didn't exist yet, I'm pretty sure they would.

If the war in Europe had gone differently and lasted longer--perhaps OTL's Battle of the Bulge takes places in the East and gums up the Soviet advance toward Berlin--what German cities would have gotten "smacked in the face with the sun"?

I'm guessing Nuremberg or Munich, due to their significance to Nazism. But I'm no expert.
 
Munich or Nuremburg would be likely targets, although Berlin is also possible if the situation was desperate enough.
 
Somewhere that Hitler had a personal connection to would be a good idea. So Nuremburg, Munich, and maybe Braunau am Inn. If he's gone insane by this point (well more insane than he was before) then seeing the place he was born get turned into radioactive dust might be too much.
 
More likely the conventional bombing of German cities was already considered more than enough to do the job, although the message of the Allies of having the Bomb was more likely intended against the YSSR, dispite being an ally. Tentions between the two sides in the Allied Camp were already getting hot and the West simply did not trust the USSR to hold their own to agrements made at Yalta. The message to sellect a target of choice was therefore more random, just as it got the message trough to Moscow.
 
Depends how many bombs they have at the time and how soon it happened. Considering how they planned to wait only about forty-eight hours before entering them when used in Japan for grounds operations, they may have used it to blast away the Atlantic Wall or some large troop area. They also seemed fascinated with the Alpine Redoubt thing, which they later regretted as it took their eyes away from other important things. Though considering hwo they gained parts of Austria, Czechia, and Germany anyways only to give them up to the Germans, I don't see the issue so much about waiting around. As for the cities, I would say that it would depend on whether it is the first or second bomb and how much info of it becomes public. Hamburg may faces the fire. All depends on if they go for symbolism or for practicallity. Didn't they once propose to nuke Fuji?
 
More likely the conventional bombing of German cities was already considered more than enough to do the job, although the message of the Allies of having the Bomb was more likely intended against the YSSR, dispite being an ally. Tentions between the two sides in the Allied Camp were already getting hot and the West simply did not trust the USSR to hold their own to agrements made at Yalta. The message to sellect a target of choice was therefore more random, just as it got the message trough to Moscow.

Blasting Berlin and other areas in the planned Soviet Zone would be interesting, as it might catch some Soveits who didn't move back far enough, have the Soviets shoot down the Western Allies planes as they always did, or allow the Soviets to sweep even further in. Anyone have maps of the troop concentrations over the years of the Nazis?
 
Depends how many bombs they have at the time and how soon it happened. Considering how they planned to wait only about forty-eight hours before entering them when used in Japan for grounds operations, they may have used it to blast away the Atlantic Wall or some large troop area. They also seemed fascinated with the Alpine Redoubt thing, which they later regretted as it took their eyes away from other important things. Though considering hwo they gained parts of Austria, Czechia, and Germany anyways only to give them up to the Germans, I don't see the issue so much about waiting around. As for the cities, I would say that it would depend on whether it is the first or second bomb and how much info of it becomes public. Hamburg may faces the fire. All depends on if they go for symbolism or for practicallity. Didn't they once propose to nuke Fuji?

Well, a longer European War until the A-Bomb is ready can take many forms. If we go with a "D-Day in the East" scenario, the Atlantic Wall has already been breached, but if D-Day is driven back into the sea or contained in Normandy, that's another scenario.
 
More likely the conventional bombing of German cities was already considered more than enough to do the job, although the message of the Allies of having the Bomb was more likely intended against the YSSR, dispite being an ally. Tentions between the two sides in the Allied Camp were already getting hot and the West simply did not trust the USSR to hold their own to agrements made at Yalta. The message to sellect a target of choice was therefore more random, just as it got the message trough to Moscow.

There are people who think that the design of the bombing raid on Dresden had at least a strong component of sending a message to the Soviets. Soviet forward observers were already less than 50 km from Dresden, and it was no doubt that the city will fall in Soviet hands within few weeks.

For the same reason, I think a city about to fall into Soviet hands would be a target for the US nuclear bombardment - and will provide the WAllies with an overt positive message to Stalin.
"See, we are supporting your advance because fighting for this city would have bound up your armies, we just saved thousands of your soldiers' lives. And by the way, we have a couple more of them... I mean, if you need even more support, of course"
 
German Hiroshima?

Years ago at Tulane University, in a graduate course on nuclear weapons policy, I spent hours researching a paper on the decision to use the bomb in World War II. I read through copies of original documents on file with the Navy's library there (for the NROTC program).

The scientists who developed the bomb not only endorsed using it on Germans, many were angry and bitterly disappointed that it was not. There was a proposal floated that a German city be reduced with an atomic weapon despite their surrender as revenge. Several scientists had left there due to the persecution of the Jews, and by the time the weapon was developed, the first entrances by Allied troops into the death camps had revealed the depths of the horror of the Holocaust.

The scientists pushed hard to use the bomb on Japan as well. Here, however, it stemmed from what to my then naive mind was shocked to find: an essentially amoral culture in science that seeks to be "first" always in discoveries. The military was very uneasy with the bomb because it viewed radiation as a form of bio-chem warfare that was against the laws of war. (If this seems surprising, read Execute Against Japan for a related history, the resistance in the Navy to unrestricted submarine warfare, as all naval officers had been "raised" believing it was barbaric.)

When Truman asked about radiation, a memo from Los Alamos reassured him that radiation was a minimal aspect of nuclear destruction and might not even affect anyone at all. The military conceded the need to use nukes after reviewing the projected range of casualties, American and Japanese, in the event of a invasion of Japan. (We now know the casualties would have been even higher). Of course, after Hiroshima, the War Department wanted MORE nukes, and planned to deploy them all over Japan as the opening salvo of an invasion if it became necessary.

In any event: yes. There is no question the bomb would have been dropped on "white" cities.
 
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"See, we are supporting your advance because fighting for this city would have bound up your armies, we just saved thousands of your soldiers' lives. And by the way, we have a couple more of them... I mean, if you need even more support, of course"

You know, I just love how you phrase that ^_^
 
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