WI: Alternate interwar Germany gets nukes

Please note that this is not about Nazis with nukes. Indeed the common nuclear Germany world involves nuclear Nazis. However, it seemed to me more likely nuclearization may actually happen if Germany doesn't go down the Nazi route.

This is a what if and me wanting to share a sketch of an alternate history timeline to hold it to some scrutiny and get some pointers as to what to look out for. So far my focus has been on Germany but I intend to work out the timeline to 1947 for the other nations in this world as well. No Nazi Germany is the big deviation in this world so many of the butterflies are in the mid 1930's onward. Imperial Japan is unhindered, Stalin still in the USSR, Chamberlain still is the PM of Britain and FDR is still president. Weimar Germany however, goes down a radically different path as they fall into a de facto civil war and have a basically socialist government by the 1940's that gets the bomb first and upends the whole world.

Indeed, this is that big twist: Nuclear Socialist Weimar Germany.

-----------

How can that be?

Basically the core premise is that without Nazism taking power, Germany retains the likes of Einstein and manages to develop nuclear weapons in the 1940's under the noses of the League of Nations.

The Nazis managed to militarize under the League of Nations watch, having secret weapons programs that spies fail to catch onto soon enough I don't believe to be outside the realm of possibility.

The ideology of this Germany is not too important (this whole concept is in the sketch phase as is). Perhaps it's socialist as Einstein may be more likely to stick around and get talked into helping developing the bomb if it's a Democratic socialist Germany. However I also am not sure if a "democratic" socialist Germany would pursue the bomb. The incentive here is using the bombs as leverage against the League of Nations who had been continuing the reparations for over 2 decades now.

However it is hard to know if the bluff would be called, as while TV would be around the destruction of the bomb would be abstract at best even if Germany did a controlled demonstration of their new invention. And that is where I feel an interesting scenario lies- with the announcement of the bomb and demands the chancellor makes towards the LoN or risk the start of a new world war.

As to why Germany would carry out this radical action, the 30's I pictured still were terrible for them with militia and paramilitary violence being endemic and the Weimar Republic barely stumbling into the 40's with socialists coming to power. Nazi governance was butterflied in this scenario, they were a major militia faction in what was basically a low key civil war in the 30's but never were able to take power. Imagine dealing with that and ongoing humiliation from the LoN. The need to gain leverage was strong and the chancellor here had a gamble to make.

It's a sketchy concept so I'll probably need to research how they are able to build and test the bomb, circumvent regulations put on them by the treaty of Versailles (easy enough) along with keeping British and French spies from knowing about the program soon enough. This is a Germany that manages to retain many of its major nuclear researchers despite the instability of the 30's, imagine Einstein and Schumann working together in Germany on a Nuclear project.

The implications are huge in this world, in more ways than one. Einstein's legacy would be different, the world's relationship to nukes is totally different and Germany's post war resurgence is rather different. However, what would remain the same is the League of Nations being remembered as a failure.

Thoughts?

Update: This is very much a sketch. For instance with even early look ups I've been thinking that Germany being an obvious mess in the early 30's would butterfly chamberlain.
 
Last edited:

BigBlueBox

Banned
A country in "low key civil war" isn't going to develop the world's first nuclear weapon, especially if the reparations are actually significant enough to harm the economy. It's also pretty much impossible for France and Britain to not notice Germany's massive imports of uranium and heavy water and question what they are doing with it.
 
A country in "low key civil war" isn't going to develop the world's first nuclear weapon, especially if the reparations are actually significant enough to harm the economy. It's also pretty much impossible for France and Britain to not notice Germany's massive imports of uranium and heavy water and question what they are doing with it.

It's about the "yes and", not the "isn't going to happen".

This situation is at least worth looking at and seeing how it could happen even if it's not a likely route. I figure perhaps reparations are exaggerated and the low key civil war thing is more just lots of domestic unrest since you know, 30's. Like I've had interest in nuclear Germany TLs but they're usually about Nazis getting them and I wanted to consider a different route that doesn't involve Nazis or winning WW1 or some US-Soviet Cold War thing.

For instance yeah they may question what they're doing with heavy water and uranium, but you know, that is a hurdle that one can get over and I'm sure there can be decent enough cover stories to make. Not to mention even if it's something suspicious the prospect of it being used as some weapon may not get taken seriously enough at the time for action to be taken against it.

Domestic issues in the US may also hamper their development of the bomb and other countries may have less incentive to make one until someone not only figures out what Germany is trying to do but also convinces those in power to pursue the bomb themselves. Shutting the German programs down may prove hard, I struggle to see why or how they would be able to do that when they weren't even able to stop Nazi military build up which was a much less abstract danger than some hypothetical super bomb and well known by 1931.

Such errors happen in history and in hindsight seem like obvious red flags but at the time weren't taken as seriously as they should've been.

Perhaps it does mean there's an arm's race that occurs anyways, that this Germany got enough a head start in that they have the bomb first but the gap is narrow enough that the scenario ends up in nuclear standoff sooner than I first thought.

For those reasons I figured that even if Germany gets the bomb first somehow it is basically inevitable that the British, French, Russians, Japanese (assuming they didn't eat crow from over extension) and US also all would have them by the early 1950s at latest. A rather different looking atomic age emerges.
 
Last edited:
Your best bet is to get the Spartacist uprising to succeed and Commie Germany to immediately ally with the Soviets in 1920. This will terrify the allies, and quite possibly lead to France going revolutionary and/or fascist (and they will be even more reluctant to leave the Rhineland). An outright civil war is counterproductive since nukes are expensive and civil wars tend to drive scientists and other such well to do professionals out of the country.

Alternately just have Weimar hang on through 1933 and the economic recovery could allow the Republic to stabilize. IIRC there was a timeline with Eckner standing for office that took this idea and ran with it.
 
Building the first a-bomb requires a giant pile of cash.

Ironically the reason the civil war thing existed is since I wanted a way to incentive more sense of urgency in pursuing more fringe R&D ideas without that pressure existing as much for other countries into the 1940's. WW1 perhaps is still in the public consciousness into the 40's enough that you'd see a government with goals beyond rearmament that isn't fascist. Perhaps the reparations and some other scandals in the 30's with domestic unrest being more of the usual militia and class conflicts that were going on may be enough? I am under no illusion any German government would view the bomb as a huge gamble, that it pays off would be basically sheer luck.

Your best bet is to get the Spartacist uprising to succeed and Commie Germany to immediately ally with the Soviets in 1920. This will terrify the allies, and quite possibly lead to France going revolutionary and/or fascist (and they will be even more reluctant to leave the Rhineland). An outright civil war is counterproductive since nukes are expensive and civil wars tend to drive scientists and other such well to do professionals out of the country.

Alternately just have Weimar hang on through 1933 and the economic recovery could allow the Republic to stabilize. IIRC there was a timeline with Eckner standing for office that took this idea and ran with it.

Would a more stabilized Weimar Germany still be incentivized to pursue more R&D than other countries at the time into more experimental fields? Nazi super science without the Nazis, you know?*

-------------

*YES I know that is a myth and a media trope, i'm saying that in jest.
 
Last edited:
Is there anything in the Versailles treaty that might hinder a nuke program? If not you could do it quite openly, it's big enough to serve as a nation wide labor program to spend your way out of the depression, and as a bonus you get a Versailles compliant military that can actually do something.
 
Is there anything in the Versailles treaty that might hinder a nuke program? If not you could do it quite openly, it's big enough to serve as a nation wide labor program to spend your way out of the depression, and as a bonus you get a Versailles compliant military that can actually do something.

The Treaty of Versailles prohibited Germany from importing or manufacturing chemical weapons, so someone sufficiently ignorant in the French or British leadership might argue a nuclear program to be a violation of that clause.
 
Is there anything in the Versailles treaty that might hinder a nuke program? If not you could do it quite openly, it's big enough to serve as a nation wide labor program to spend your way out of the depression, and as a bonus you get a Versailles compliant military that can actually do something.

Well, if they don't say it's to make an atom bomb and is claimed that it'll help pay off the reparations that could be able to delay any actual actions taken.

Not to mention it seems by the 30's Germany could get away with a lot even with the treaty of Versailles and nukes would be rather abstract a threat, more than making guns, planes and tanks were.
 
Building the first a-bomb requires a giant pile of cash.

Weimar had some of the largest piles of cash ever built up by man. They filled building upon building with cash. Well, if it can’t be used to build a nuclear bomb at least it can still be used to keep the fires going all night long in Berlin. Piles of cash for all is one area Weimar managed.

weimar_hyperinflation-925ebb0d4b795418eaef1044d3a1c8c7db2b2e50-s1200-c85.jpg
 
Building the first a-bomb requires a giant pile of cash.

The cash used along with resources.

Calutrons are out, and even Centrifuges due to their high electrical demand
Germany is already utilizing the power generated by hydro and coal plants for existing needs.
It's not like the US, Canada or the USSR with a huge excess of hydropower.

So that leaves reactors, cooled by rivers or <shudder> aircooled like the British did.

without the US breakthru on making cheap, pure Uranium Metal from Oxide, many Marks will be spent on this first step.
 
The cash used along with resources.

Calutrons are out, and even Centrifuges due to their high electrical demand
Germany is already utilizing the power generated by hydro and coal plants for existing needs.
It's not like the US, Canada or the USSR with a huge excess of hydropower.

So that leaves reactors, cooled by rivers or <shudder> aircooled like the British did.

without the US breakthru on making cheap, pure Uranium Metal from Oxide, many Marks will be spent on this first step.
In the 20s Germany build up a huge electricity capacity as part of a nation wide labor program and anticipated industrial needs, the Manhattan project just needs a medium sized hydro power plant at that time, it's no magic and usually people playing it up never bother to look at the actual power needed. You can put aditional power plants basically anywhere you want judging by the post ww2 buildup of aditional power capacity.

Neither is Uranium an issue because Germany is sitting at the by fat biggest pile of it in Europe, barely 150 km away from Berlin.
 
In the 20s Germany build up a huge electricity capacity as part of a nation wide labor program and anticipated industrial needs, the Manhattan project just needs a medium sized hydro power plant at that time, it's no magic and usually people playing it up never bother to look at the actual power needed. You can put aditional power plants basically anywhere you want judging by the post ww2 buildup of aditional power capacity.

Neither is Uranium an issue because Germany is sitting at the by fat biggest pile of it in Europe, barely 150 km away from Berlin.

Uranium ore isn't the problem. Getting it to Yellowcake, UO, isn't a problem. Getting it to Metal, that was expensive. Separating U-238 to U-235 more so.

You just don't need a Hydroplant. You need big plants.

Gaseous diffusion was an energy hog, the reason why most everyone changed to gas centrifuges. Those are not there yet in the '30s

Eurodif’s Georges Besse plant uses Gaseous diffusion 1400 stages, uses 2000MWe to make 5% Enriched Fuel, good enough for Reactors.

K-25 at Oak Ridge had 3122 stages operating in 1945, to get to 20%

Postwar, with Y-12 mostly all shut down, the AEC added to K-25, the largest single building on the planet in 1945, with additional plants-- K-27, K-29, K-31 and K-33, for a total of 5,098 stages, to postwar enrichment of 93.6%, Bomb Grade.

Estimates I come across was 7300MWe power consumption for all those plants feeding Oak Ridge. I think it was K-33 that used more power than Chicago.

That's a lot of power. Hoover Dam is rated for 2080MWe
 
I would love to copy the link so the site with the info, but the phone wont let me do that - thanks Google for removing features and compensating us with bugs.

Basically it says Oak Ridge needed about 300MW.

I also never read that multiple ways of enrichment are needed, they did all proposed methods because they did not know which will work. In fact all worked and gave you higher enriched material than you fed into it, some more power efficient than others. The other nuclear powers later certainly did not repeat this spending spree to get to the same result. Until 64 the Soviets only did gaseous diffusion on a large scale.
 
I also never read that multiple ways of enrichment are needed, they did all proposed methods because they did not know which will work. In fact all worked and gave you higher enriched material than you fed into it, some more power efficient than others. The other nuclear powers later certainly did not repeat this spending spree to get to the same result. Until 64 the Soviets only did gaseous diffusion on a large scale.

K-25 was gaseous diffusion, and really was the worlds largest building for some time, 1945 till Boeing factory in Everett, Washington opened in 1968 to make 747s

The US tried all the enrichment methods, so S-50 Thermal Diffusion and K-25 Gaseous Diffusion fed into the Y-12 Alpha and Beta Calutrons.
As K-25 was built and expanded, was more efficient and S-50 and Alpha tracks were shut down at Wars end and plans made to make more gaseous diffusion feeder plants.

The US started shutting down all the Gaseous Diffusion plants in the early '60s, after the high water production mark of 77 metric tons of Bomb Grade U-235 in 1961, and finally ended production in 1992 with almost 860 metric tons of HEU made with gaseous diffusion
 
A few things to ponder from my own looking into it. The science is being developed by the late 1920s and through the 1930s is getting published. I think most of it gets into the open before any government can silence it. Thus I would assume that the theoretical side is effectively open to every great power, a few details here and there, but enough to know fission is possible, a bomb is buildable. Next, Germany has a first class chemical industry and a strong machinery industry. Chemical separation is likely tried first. I have an article somewhere that a researcher in Germany had already solved the centrifuge problem, if true, then Germany's machine building industry can resolve that step with that method, and if I understand it was almost cheap. Given the rushed nature and try "every approach" approach in the USA, that much of the costs was land acquisition, the actual cost might in a more tempered approach be not more expensive than other bigger projects. The bigger expense is the means to delivery a weapon the military actually understands and prefers. That likely means a bomber. Early bombs are big and heavy, so the budget buster is the bomber. Any stable government in Germany that is willing to spend the money could build a bomb. For me, Weimar could, Imperial Germany would, they have great scientists, good industry and all the other pieces to get there. Germany has uranium in the ground, power generation, metal working, etc., etc., it might be as slow as the UK or by luck as swift as the USA, timelines should have more to do with building plant and getting a big bomber in service.
 
You can also cut the US price tag in half by paying your German work force German wages, which at that time are about 50 % of their US counterparts if they're lucky.
 
Top