Impact of a nuclear strike on Europe

Let's assume that by some means, WW2 is extended by a year or so in Europe, and the USA decides to use nuclear weapons on Germany (assume Berlin and Nuremberg are the targets).

Scenario:
- D-Day messes up, while the Italy offensive has been met with failure
- Germany wins a slim victory at Stalingrad, delaying the inevitable defeat by a year, with the Russians on the outskirts of Poland
- Stalin demands that the Americans do something about the Germans, leading to two nuclear weapons being used on Germany in October 1945, leading to surrender by December. Assume that Hitler is vaporised in one of the blasts.

How would this impact on post-war politics?

I do not see the Americans having to two nuclear weapons in October 1945 without defeating Germany first.

Much of the uranium 235 to make the nuclear weapons was captured from Germany.
560 kg of uranium oxide.w as capured on the German submarine U-234.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_submarine_U-234

Critical Mass: How Nazi Germany Surrendered Enriched Uranium for the United States' Atomic Bomb


http://www.amazon.com/Critical-Mass-Germany-Surrendered-Enriched/dp/0975985310

Hi Ed regards the smuggling I was thinking of the book "Nazi Gold, The story of the World's Greatest Robbery And it's Aftermath," by Ian Sayer & Douglas Botting. 1985

"ISBN 10: 0586055940 / 0-586-05594-0
ISBN 13: 9780586055946
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Publication Date: 1985
My own book is packed away in storage but the relevant info comes from the rear of the book and if you check the index for Uranium it will lead you to the relevant pages. I also came across some other mentions that the East German authorities were paying up to $56 per kilogram for Uranium ore immediately after the war to german citizens who handed any in. They recovered about 760 tons this way. Also Peron hired Nazi nuclear scientist Ronald Richter in 1950 to head Argentina's nuclear effort. Argentina was offering hard curreny to Germans in post war Germany for Uranium.

As for the Belgian Uranium this comes from Carter Hydrick.

From June of 1940 to the end of the war, Germany seized 3,500 tons of uranium compounds from Belgium - almost three times the amount Groves had purchased.... and stored it in salt mines in Strassfurt, Germany. Groves brags that on 17 April, 1945, as the war was winding down, Alsos recovered some 1,100 tons of uranium ore from Strassfurt and an additional 31 tons in Toulouse, France ..... And he claims that the amount recovered was all that Germany had ever held, asserting, therefore, that Germany had never had enough raw material.*

*Carter Hydrick, Critical Mass: the Real Story of the Atomic Bomb and the Birth of the Nuclear Age, Internet published manuscript, 1998 P13.

My personal response to Groves boasting that this was the only source of Uranium which Germany had is that the Czech mines at Joachimsthal produced roughly 45-50 tons of uranium ore annually throughout the war and then there was also the Erzebirge mines in Silesia of roughly similar production.

Historian Margaret Gowing, Bohr's biographer also drew attention that Germany refined 600 tons of uranium ore by summer 1941. This is more Uranium ore than could ever have been procured from Joachimsthal from 1938 to July 1941 under German occupation.

Former Auer Gesellschaft chief scientist for Uranium refining Dr Reihl disputed Gower's figures and said the Uranium refined was far higher. I have seen figures for Uranium refining year by year during the war and particularly in 1943 and 1944 the figure far exceeded 600 tons. Total uranium refined during the war was about 2,700 tons IIRC, however I can't at the moment recall the sorce where I read this. I believe it was either from an online book or from a PDF."
http://forum.12oclockhigh.net/archive/index.php?t-20105.html

as for d day going wrong not sure that would have slowed down the American that much.

Late 1946 would be the best date for America having 2 nuclear weapons.
German oil production had collapsed due to American bombing by the time of Day.

Enigma code not being broken after the Germans in introduce the German Navy 4-rotor Enigma along with the type xxi Uboats.
"
On 1 February 1942, the Enigma messages to and from Atlantic U-boats which Bletchley Park called Shark became significantly different from the rest of the traffic which they called Dolphin.[146]
This was because a new Enigma version had been brought into use. It was a development of the 3-rotor Enigma with the reflector replaced by a thin rotor and a thin reflector. Eventually, there were two fourth-position rotors that were called Beta and Gamma and two thin reflectors, Bruno and Caesar which could be used in any combination. These rotors were not advanced by the rotor to their right, in the way that rotors I to VIII were.
The introduction of the fourth rotor did not catch Bletchley Park by surprise, because captured material dated January 1941 had made reference to its development as an adaptation of the 3-rotor machine, with the fourth rotor wheel to be a reflector wheel.[147] Indeed, because of operator errors, the wiring of the new fourth rotor had already been worked out.
This major challenge could not be met by using existing methods and resources for a number of reasons.

  1. The work on the Shark cipher would have to be independent of the continuing work on messages in the Dolphin cipher.
  2. Breaking Shark on 3-rotor bombes would have taken 50 to 100 times as long as an average Air Force or Army job.
  3. U-boat cribs at this time were extremely poor"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptanalysis_of_the_Enigma#German_Navy_4-rotor_Enigma
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Type_XXI_submarine
U3008.jpg
entering the conflict resulting in a German victory against the convoys in the Atlantic is a more credible scenario.

A German victory at Stalingrad would have cut the Russian off from the oil fields leaving then dependant on the Americans supply the with oil.

This would have slowed down the Russian.

Dresden was the intended target for the atomic bomb in Germany.

American wanted to hit a city that was not damaged by convention bombing to better see the result of the new weapon.
 
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I do not see the Americans having to two nuclear weapons in October 1945 without defeating Germany first.

Much of the uranium 235 to make the nuclear weapons was captured from Germany.

Before the capture of the German uranium 235 the American were short of uranium 235 to make nuclear weapons.

According to The New World, by Richard G. Hewlett and Oscar Andersen:

Hewlett and Andersen said:
Adding up all his sources in late 1944, Nichols could see that he had in various concentrations almost 6,000 tons of uranium oxide, which then appeared to be enough to operate all the S-1 plants until the fall of 1945. Two-thirds came from high-grade Congo sources, a little more than one-sixth from Canadian pitchblende, and one-seventh from the Colorado plateau.

Edit to Add: I didn't edit his quote, he edited his post after I posted.
 
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In response to your modified post:

I haven't read Critical Mass. But, if you check it out on Amazon, you'll find this review:

Robert Norris said:
Not Real History

A close examination by myself and other historians of the Manhattan Project have found many of the claims in Mr. Hydrick's book to be without foundation. The main argument that captured German uranium taken from U-Boat 134 in May of 1945 ended up in the Little Boy bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima never happened. The best evidence to prove the case comes from General Leslie R. Groves' Appointment Book of August 13, 1945 (a week after Hiroshima) where in a telephone call a Navy admiral asks if the material from the German submarine was of any use to the program. General Groves "advised it wasn't as yet but it will be utilized." This would seem to undermine the major claim of the book.

Under General Groves' supervision a sufficient amount of highly enriched uranium (HEU), all from Oak Ridge, was supplied to Los Alamos to be shaped into the two sub-critical pieces that were at the heart of the Little Boy bomb and shipped by sea and air to Tinian between July 16 and July 28, 1945. Even if the German uranium were enriched (another of Mr. Hydrick's claims), which it was not, the amount was so small that it would not have contributed very much to the total amount of HEU in Little Boy.

It is even more outlandish to suggest, as Mr. Hydrick does, than other captured components from the German submarine were used for "a triggering mechanism" for the Fat Man plutonium bomb and that without these "infrared fuses" the project would have failed. This matter is discussed in detail in a review on this page by Mr. Coster-Mullen.

Another assertion by Mr. Hydrick is that General Groves diverted some of the HEU from Y-12 to fuel the Hanford plutonium reactors to speed up production. I am very familiar with General Groves and the Hanford reactors and can assure Mr. Hyrick that this never occurred. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of the Manhattan Project knows that the Hanford reactors were fueled with natural uranium. There is not one piece of evidence to suggest this diversion. What Mr. Hydrick offers as evidence does not hold up and is a good example of his twisting documents and making false connections to try and make his case.

...

Mr. Hydrick's basic problem is that he does not understand how the atomic bomb was made, a major deficiency for someone who claims to be rewriting its history. The book does not follow traditional practices that historians use and certainly does not alter the basic known facts about the Manhattan Project.

...

Robert S. Norris, author, Racing for the Bomb: General Leslie R. Groves, the Manhattan Project's Indispensable Man (Steerforth Press, 2002)

Robert Norris is this guy, and he knows what he's talking about.
 
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