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.
- The work on the Shark cipher would have to be independent of the continuing work on messages in the Dolphin cipher.
- Breaking Shark on 3-rotor bombes would have taken 50 to 100 times as long as an average Air Force or Army job.
- 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
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.
Last edited: