Hitlers bomb

mowque

Banned
Never. The German nuclear program was a joke. You'd need a POD far back enough, that it would butterfly Hitler.
 
Never. The German nuclear program was a joke. You'd need a POD far back enough, that it would butterfly Hitler.

Agreed. Strictly speaking, yes it would turn the war in Germany's favour, but the butterflies needed for a successful German A-bomb program might butterfly World War II as we know it altogether.
 
The actual German nuclear projects couldn't hope to produce anything better than a dirty bomb. We discussed this a few weeks ago and the conclusion was that even if Germany's project avoided all the mistakes made by the Manhattan Project and took measure to make up for the cost (abandoning the rocket program for one) they would still hurt their war effort and would lack suitable location to be safe from Allied bombing or later on, the advancing Red Army.
 

Deleted member 14881

Hell no, the Germans were barely able to fund one.
 
I think the carrier would be a problem quite as big as the bomb itself.
After all, the ENORMOZ operation proves that a competent spy system could pass enough info to reproduce a bomb.
But I'm not sure that Germany had a plane able to carry the tonnage
 
Granting that ASB time travelers get Hitler his bomb (Let's say Fat Boy) in 1944 he would not be able to deliver it by air on London or Moscow. The best use of such such a device would be to put it into a submarine and take out some port city like New York or London with a suicide crew. Neither action would do much to stave off the inevitable and would guarantee that Uncle Sam would nuke Berlin rather than Hiroshima
 
Let's say that Hitler started working on the bomb early, say in late 1939. Lack of industrial resources, lack of sufficient skilled labor (they'd mostly end up in the army on the Eastern Front), lack of top-flight scientists (they'd either fled or were in camps, or were of dubious loyalty such as Heisenberg) would make it uncertain the Germans could get the bomb before the Americans did. If they really put huge resources into it, that would merely mean the Americans would put even huger resources than in OTL into the Manhattan Project and still get there first. Plus the British would upgrade their ability to deliver biological and chemical weapons.

And let's say Hitler was able to produce a few planes that could deliver the bomb--he still has to deal with the formidable air defenses of the UK and of the USSR (the latter by 1944 had air supremacy over the Eastern front). And Hitler would have to choose whether to use it over London or over the greater threat of the Soviet Union. The Soviet front lines were so wide that any bomb there would be a drop in the bucket. If he drops it on London, the British (extrapolating from the pace of the American program) would know he probably didn't have a second bomb ready and certainly not a third, and they would hit the Germans with enough anthrax to make the country unlivable for decades plus start all-out use of chemical weapons. If Hitler dropped the bomb on Moscow (assuming he could get it there), the surviving Soviet leaders would know (from their spies in the U.S.) that Hitler probably didn't have more bombs and thus they would continue their offensive.

Knowing the Soviets, the result of Hitler nuking their country would be that the Soviet troops once they got into Germany would kill millions and turn East Germany into a Soviet territory peopled by Russians. No East Germany as in OTL; in fact, no East Germans at all.

The only other alternative for Hitler is to nuke on D-Day; but he could only effectively hit one beach. Bad, but not necessarily fatal for the invasion. America would go wild, and strain its resources to the limit to retaliate. Germany would be bombed beyond the Stone Age into Jurassic Park Age.
 
Nazi Germany has about as much chance of building a working A-bomb as I have, though I actually have one advantage over them - I know it's possible. Heisenberg didn't and disbelieved the news about Hiroshima when he heard it.

Even if ASBs help Germany build a Bomb they have no way to deliver it effectivley. Remember that developing and building the B-29 was a massive project on its own.
 
Wave away the US and Soviet bomb programs and give the Reich the same capability as the Americans - two functional bombs by August 1945... oops, too late.

Okay, give the Germans two bombs on January 1, 1945. Where can they deploy them in such a way as to win the war?

Not looking good? Give them a dozen bombs, and precision delivery to anywhere they need to put them.

Still not looking good, unfortunately. Take out London, and the Empire would keep on trucking. The same with Moscow or the District of Columbia. That annoying bomber factory near Detroit? Boston Harbor? The Clyde? Yes, there are some choke points, but it was a *world* war, and most of that world was out to kick Nazi ass.

Turning it back even further, a couple of nukes might have turned the tide during Barbarossa... but taking out Stalin might have backfired, too.
 
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