Japan surrenders before the A-bomb can be used

Thande

Donor
(I don't know by what POD). But let's just say that in 1945 Japan surrenders as per OTL, but merely in response to the firebombing of cities rather than the A-bomb.

Most important point: nuclear weapons have not been used in anger.

So the US can still explode ones for a test, but there won't be the same worldwide horror and respect for the real-world destruction wrought on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Furthermore the US might even keep the project secret for longer.

How does this alter the post-war situation? Can the US be as sure of getting its way on certain issues without the implicit threat? How does the USSR react? (You could say they'd go on to invade Western Europe, but I think Stalin at least knew about the power of the nuclear weapon through Fuchs and the other spies, so they wouldn't go through with it). Do Britain and France manage to remain closer to great powers if possession of nukes doesn't become such a mark of superpowerdom and thus they don't have to exhaust themselves producing their own so quickly?
 
Its takes a little longer for the radiation effects of nuclear explosions to become public knowledge?

You still have a situation where one bomb from one aircraft can flatten the centre of a city so the public reaction I think will still be the same though as I note above, the realsation of the effects of radiation take a bit longer to get acknowleged.

I cant see the US keeping it a secret, there was enough theoretical work pre war for people to work out the military possibilities.

I cant see the the shut off of US support and knolege transfer as soon as the war ended in the OTL being any different in this TL but the UK at least still has the knowlege it built up during the war.

What was the state of French nuclear physics pre war?


 
The U.S. won't keep the project secret for longer, because Stalin already knew at Potsdam what was going on. The Russians had infiltrated the Manhattan Project.
 

Thande

Donor
The U.S. won't keep the project secret for longer, because Stalin already knew at Potsdam what was going on. The Russians had infiltrated the Manhattan Project.
I mean secret from US public knowledge, not from Soviet intelligence.
 
I doubt nuclear weapons could go without being used at least once during war; maybe MacArthur gets his wish and Korea goes nuclear. That would be ... unpleasant.
 

Hendryk

Banned
I tend to think the geopolitical effect of nuclear weapons was overrated. The USSR only acquired the bomb in 1949, yet that didn't prevent Stalin from turning Eastern Europe into so many vassal states. So I would argue that the early post-WW2 years would be little different from OTL.

OTOH, HelloLegend may have a point: without any reason to treat nuclear weapons as qualitatively different from conventional ones, some may be used against North Korea in 1950 (retaliation by the USSR wouldn't be an issue at that point since it didn't yet have usable vectors). We would end up with a second-order counterfactual, with the world learning of the horrific consequences of nuclear bombardment five years later than in OTL.
 

Thande

Donor
I tend to think the geopolitical effect of nuclear weapons was overrated. The USSR only acquired the bomb in 1949, yet that didn't prevent Stalin from turning Eastern Europe into so many vassal states. So I would argue that the early post-WW2 years would be little different from OTL.

OTOH, HelloLegend may have a point: without any reason to treat nuclear weapons as qualitatively different from conventional ones, some may be used against North Korea in 1950 (retaliation by the USSR wouldn't be an issue at that point since it didn't yet have usable vectors). We would end up with a second-order counterfactual, with the world learning of the horrific consequences of nuclear bombardment five years later than in OTL.

I think that would be an interesting scenario.

My point was, if nuclear weapons aren't seen as being of vital importance - just another flashy weapon, desirable but not essential to guarantee national security - Britain (and France?) might not put so much effort into acquiring them straight after the war, and so their economies and colonial relations might not become as dire as OTL.
 
The Trinity test will probably still have the UK and France rushing to develop their own bombs.This assumes Trinity goes ahead with a Japanese surrender but what are the odds on it not being tested after so much money and effort have been spent 'just to see if the damm thing works'....
 
I think that would be an interesting scenario.

My point was, if nuclear weapons aren't seen as being of vital importance - just another flashy weapon, desirable but not essential to guarantee national security - Britain (and France?) might not put so much effort into acquiring them straight after the war, and so their economies and colonial relations might not become as dire as OTL.

On the other hand, the USA has a superbomb that can blow up entire cities and army divisions (add whatever extra hyperbola you wish), with no downside (no photos of Hiroshima victims in this ATL).

Once Britain, France, etc learn of its existance and capabilities, they may work even harder to get their own superbomb.


As a parallel, it took a major war using poison gas to create a backlash where no 'civilized' country would use it again (although most countries stocked it, just in case)
 
  1. As far as Britian goes. They would have developed the bomb, and maybe sooner, maybe later. Work on an atomic program was already underway in March 1940 in Birmingham UK by two German emigrés, Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls. With a knowledge that such a bomb was possible and with the US not wanting to share, and with the Soviet threat looming over the horizon, British leaders may have decided it was best, which is exactly what they did in the OTL.
2. I suspect that Truman would have used the bomb in Korea. Although, instead of a city, I believe he'd go after a military target. Korea was the first true 'political war' so I suspect that he'd have used the bomb to show and scare the Soviets and more importantly the Chinese what the effect could be, with out a massive civilian death toll.

3. Post Japanese life was affected by the bomb. Not in the form of radiation but pychologically. After all, wasn't Godzilla a monster born from the radiation of a nuclear blast..... so if no Hiroshima and Nagasaki... then quite possibly, no Godzilla. What, I ask you, would our world be like then??
 
A key reason for Japan to surrender earlier would be fears of the consequences of a likely Soviet involvement. If Japan surrendered before the Soviet declaration of war what does this do to Korea?
 
Actually if Japan surrenders early, the Red Army doesn't get in on the act (I mean they started their invasion round about the day of Hiroshima), the Kwangtung army hands Manchuria to Chiang Kaishek (bad for Mao) and Kim Il-Sung doesn't get to rule North Korea, so no Korean War.
 
The cultural implications might be interesting. As I remember, Nagasaki was a sort of focal point of Western culture in Japan before the war.
 

Thande

Donor
The cultural implications might be interesting. As I remember, Nagasaki was a sort of focal point of Western culture in Japan before the war.

You're quite right. This infamous pre-war ditty:

Hot ginger and dynamite, that's all there is at night
Back in Nagasaki where the fellows chew tobaccy
And the wimmen wiggy waggy woo

They got a way there to entertain
Would hurry a hurricane,
Back in Nagasaki where the fellows chew tobaccy
And the wimmen wiggy waggy woo

Fuji Yama you get your mama
Then your troubles increase boy
In each pagoda she wants a soda
Hershey, Milkshake, ten cents apiece

They hug you and kiss each night
By jingo boy it's worth that price
Back in Nagasaki where the fellows chew tobaccy
And the wimmen wiggy waggy woo

phonetic rendition of a vocal solo:
Pa-papa padapada, pa-papa padapada
Pa pa pa pa pa prrr Aaaah, pa pabadaba
Rr prpr prpr, pr prpr pr pr
Paba paba paba paba Aaaah
Pa paba pabapa pa Pa pabadaba
Hu! 4x
Rrrrrrr… (gurgle, gurgle)
Teedeleedap teedeleedap teedeleedap teedap teedap
Tap tap teedelee-oop k'dee-m-dai
Skat skat skeedelee-oo-p-dood'll day
K'deedeleedoodelee deedeleedoodelee dap
Haa!, ha!… cough, cough! haa.. cough!, a-cough!
Aa...cough, ah!

They say:
Hap ti baba tiboobab tiboob
I'm the hottest chicken in this coop
O nagi, o saki, o wiggy waggy woo
Haptibabab tiboobab tibibab
Tibabab tibibab tibadiladiladi
O nagi, o saki, o wiggy waggy woo

Fuji Yama you get your mama
Then your troubles increase boy
Ishkibadl Ishkibadl Ishkibadl
Ishkibadl Ishkibadl Nagasaki

They hug you and kiss each night
By jingo boy it's worth that price
O nagi, o saki, o wiggy waggy woo

Pa pa pa pa pa pa pa pa pa
Padabadabadabada
Hooh!

In Spike Milligan's memoirs, he heard about the bombing of Japan while he was recuperating in a military hospital, and he mused then about how to every future generation, all that 'Nagasaki' would mean was 'the place where the bomb fell' - it had effectively obliterated all the cultural identity that Nagasaki held within Western consciousness. :(
 
The US military would not be able to resist using the A-bomb, so it would be used in Germany instead. It might have been used against some target other than a city, but I wouldn't rule that out entirely.

After all, if all the US had wanted to do was to destroy Hiroshima (a city of no military significance) and Nagasaki, they could have easily done so with conventional bombing, the way they destroyed so many other Japanese cities. Japanese cities were mainly built out of wood and their air force was not up to the task of defending them. The cities of Kyoto, Hiroshima and Niigata were deliberately NOT bombed because the Americans wanted some pristine cities on which to test the effects of the A-bomb, even if they'd already destroyed all militarily significant targets (Nagasaki was a city on their "to do" list that they hadn't got around to yet).

WI the US used the bomb on German forces? It might make the future use of A-bombs more likely, if they were seen as things to be used to destroy armies, not cities.
 
I thought Kyoto wasn't bombed because a high-ranking American general had been there with his wife and had promised his wife that they would return again? Or is that just an apocryphal story....

Anyway, I disagree that the US only used the bomb because it wanted to- there was a very strong mindset (that persists today) that Japan would never surrender under any sort of conventional attack, and so an unconventional attack. Also, assuming Japan surrenders prior to Hiroshima, Germany has already surrendered as well, so if the US dropped the bomb there something would be off...
 
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