WI: Atomic Bomb Ready in June 1944

Your primary targets in June 1944 would likely be Chemnitz, Leipzig, Duisburg, Stuttgart, and Madgeburg. Leipzig would be best for showing how much damage could be done, Chemnitz if you wanted to show damage and start a focus on the oil infrastructure (which the Allies did in later 1944). Essen, Munich, or Dresden would be major targets if you were going for sheer casualty numbers or for larger industrial targets. There is also a chance of the bomb being used to clear Nazi defenses in Normandy, perhaps at Omaha Beach, and having soldiers come ashore afterwards. The French will not like it, but if the Falaise pocket from OTL were used as a demonstration, German troop strength is reduced by 30,000 to 45,000 in August of 1944, there is a chance that Market-Garden actually works and that Allied troops are on the North German plain and the eastern side of the Rhine by November 1944. At that point the question is do von Rundstedt and other German military leaders decide the war is worth fighting any farther, even if they do the soldiers are demoralized further. Taking out the Wolf's Lair in July 1944 has a similar effect and probably results in a coup by army officers and politicians, it may also kick-start a civil war with the Western areas being under a pro-peace faction and Eastern areas being under a fanatical SS state.
 
An atomic bomb on Hitler's mountain retreat on the 6th of June 1944 would eliminate the head of the Nazi government and several members of his inner circle, although not Himmler. A second atomic bomb two or three weeks later on whoever replaces Hitler would paralyse the Nazi government and might even result in the decision to surrender being left to individual army commanders.
 
It's not a few breaks, but completely rewiring the Third Reich.

It's ASB land

Actuallly the Nazis came pretty close in OTL. Had the Nazis put more funding an effort into their nuclear dvelopment then they might have been able to do it. This does not require a rewiring of the Thirds Reich which was capable of putting a lot of work into secret weapons. Hitler loved these so what was a pre-requisute for a succesful nuclear program was getting and keeping his interest in this particular development.

http://thevelvetrocket.com/2009/08/...-were-the-nazis-to-developing-an-atomic-bomb/

As for delivery a V1 rocket might have been the best delivery method available assuming a crude nuclear device could be mounted on the rocket and reliably detonated.
 
Actuallly the Nazis came pretty close in OTL. Had the Nazis put more funding an effort into their nuclear dvelopment then they might have been able to do it. This does not require a rewiring of the Thirds Reich which was capable of putting a lot of work into secret weapons. Hitler loved these so what was a pre-requisute for a succesful nuclear program was getting and keeping his interest in this particular development.

http://thevelvetrocket.com/2009/08/...-were-the-nazis-to-developing-an-atomic-bomb/

As for delivery a V1 rocket might have been the best delivery method available assuming a crude nuclear device could be mounted on the rocket and reliably detonated.
The early nukes were big and heavy. You'd need to design a brand new V weapon, maybe with dozens of pulse jet engines like the V1 and test it before trying to attach a nuclear weapon as a payload.

And even then, would Hitler allow its use? Hitler had refused to employ chemical and biological weapons, probably out of fear of retaliation, so even if Germany gets an atomic bomb and the means to deliver it, they still don't use it.
 
The early nukes were big and heavy. You'd need to design a brand new V weapon, maybe with dozens of pulse jet engines like the V1 and test it before trying to attach a nuclear weapon as a payload.

You would have to leave most of the safeties off. Vibrations from pulsejets were very severe.

USA got that worked out postwar with the Loon.

But then the USA made electronics that could survive being shot out of cannons, something the Nazis never accomplished
 
The problem with Valkyre is that the conspirators wanted to kill Hitler to negotiate a separate peace with the Western Allies so they could focus on the USSR.
So, if they succeed (or Hitler is killed by an atomic bomb) and a separate peace is refused (and will be), they may decide to retaliate with chemical and biological weapons against the UK ...

Rubbish. They wanted to end the war. They knew Germany couldn't win. Yes, they had unrealistic notions about a negotiated peace. But they are not going to do anything stupid. Using chemical weapons against Britain would be supremely stupid. It wouldn't even be effective. It wouldn't do anything to slow down the Soviet onslaught. It would provoke unlimited retaliation by the Allies, leading to possibly the total destruction of Germany - the one thing they want to avoid.
 
the firebombing of Dresden killed more than both nuclear attacks combined...

Well, no, actually, it didn't. The actual death toll at Dresden was around 40,000. This number was established by German authorities who had records of everyone living there before and after. Even with the disorders of the end of the war and movements of DPs, PoWs, slave laborers, etc, there was no possibility of many more killed.

The much larger numbers that were commonly cited in the 1960s-1980s (up to 250,000) were the invention of David Irving, who wanted to make the Allies look worse relative to Germany, and were repeated by left-wing historians and pacifists.
 
Rubbish. They wanted to end the war. They knew Germany couldn't win. Yes, they had unrealistic notions about a negotiated peace. But they are not going to do anything stupid. Using chemical weapons against Britain would be supremely stupid. It wouldn't even be effective. It wouldn't do anything to slow down the Soviet onslaught. It would provoke unlimited retaliation by the Allies, leading to possibly the total destruction of Germany - the one thing they want to avoid.
yes, the Allies could've only done one worse thing than that:

leave the country to the Soviets

Imagine Robert Conquest description of the rapist armies that followed the Guards being put into more of Germany.:eek:
 
Actuallly the Nazis came pretty close in OTL. Had the Nazis put more funding an effort into their nuclear dvelopment then they might have been able to do it. This does not require a rewiring of the Thirds Reich which was capable of putting a lot of work into secret weapons. Hitler loved these so what was a pre-requisute for a succesful nuclear program was getting and keeping his interest in this particular development.

http://thevelvetrocket.com/2009/08/...-were-the-nazis-to-developing-an-atomic-bomb/

As for delivery a V1 rocket might have been the best delivery method available assuming a crude nuclear device could be mounted on the rocket and reliably detonated.

No matter how much money the Reich threw at it, Heisenberg still botched the calculations. And despite the "wunderwaffe obsession," Hitler was very anti-atomic-project - he saw it as Jewish Science.
 
100 total B-29s, 15 of them airworthy, had been delivered by the beginning of 1944...

I don't think building a custom aircraft is very likely, because they will know that they have aircraft capable of carrying the weapon coming soon...

The B-29 was not operational at all tlll mid-1944, i.e. just barely in time for this scenario, and it had a lot of teething troubles.

The alternative I envision is the production of a handful of aircraft using existing proven technology (especially engines), but way overdesigned for the job. The design would be very specifically tailored to this one mission and nothing else. (Which was not true of the B-29 or the Lancaster.) Unit cost would be ignored.
 
2) Bombing Berlin first is a bad move, simply because the Allies would prefer an intact government that is capable of surrendering to one which is fractured and keeps fighting.

Except that Hitler will never surrender, and (unlike Japan) other Germans will surrender without being ordered. Especially if Hitler is no longer around to order them to fight on.

Besides which, it won't take Germany more than a day or two to form a replacement government. Germans crave order.
 
The problem with nuking Berlin or the Wolf's Lair to get Hitler is the as any same with any decapitation air strike (conventional or nuclear) against a countries national leadership: you don't know for sure that the enemy will actually be in the place your hitting. Witness the difficulties we've had in killing Saddam Hussein or Gaddafi through air power and keep in mind those examples occurred in an environment where the US and friends had the capacity to initiate much shorter kill chains then which existed in WW2.
 
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