how do they get off the "Japan crazy train?" get highly offended by the Japanese "intrusion" into Indochina in Sept.'40? (as they were trying to keep the French colonial holdings intact)
just IMO, the best possible scenario for Germany would have been some agreement with the Vichy regime and renewed relations with KMT China? (the economics certainly favor that over a relationship with Japan)
I am assuming you mean the Reich? That was very simple. The Tripartite Pact was, at best, a purely defensive alliance aimed specifically at the United States. The Reich had absolutely no obligation to go to war against the U.S. following Pearl Harbor.
Some members here would argue that it was Hitler's most serious unforced error (I come down somewhat on the other side, mainly because once the British became co-belligerents with the U.S. against Japan, the U.S. could use that as an excuse to ship pretty much anything and everything to the UK, assuming the UK "pledged" not to use it against the Reich).
I agree but what do you say about the idea that the atomic bombs would somehow be a magic bullet against Nazi Germany despite control of the continent and an abundance of resources due to no Barbarossa?
As I've argued in many other threads - First Generation nuclear weapons were not, on their own, war winning weapons. 20kT yield weapons are not the Wrath of an Angry God, "we must surrender instantly" game changers (2mT weapons? Even 500kT weapons? Whole different story)
Firstly, they required very unusual condition to even make their use possible, including virtually no serious opposition over the target or risk of interception en route. The Japanese had decide not to waste time, fuel, pilots, and aircraft to attack American reconnaissance/weather flights. They had reached the point that they saw a three B-29 formation as completely nonthreatening and with limited supplies of fuel and trained pilots it was better to save them for imminent invasion. Everyone "knew" that the bombers either came after dark or, rarely, came in huge numbers during the day with fighter escorts. At Hiroshima an air raid warning was given when radar first observed the approach of Tibbet's flight, the all clear was sounded once it was established that it was only the "regular" three plane recon flight.
The Reich never ceded the air to the WAllies. They sent up fighters and heavy AAA into last April of 1945 to defend whatever ground they had left. The bombing parameters for the early Special Weapons were very specific, and the flight envelope very tight. The bombing aircraft had to release, then go into an immediate 180° diving turn to increase speed lest the detonations shock wave swat the aircraft out of the sky. It was an impossible maneuver to make as a large, or even small, formation (over Hiroshima and Nagasaki both instrument aircraft broke away from the bombing aircraft to remain outside of the initial blast radius and allow the dropping bomber all the room it need to escape. Trying that over the Reich would have been close to suicide during the day, and not that much better at night (71% of all Bomber Command Lancaster were lost during the war, 55% of Bomber Command's personnel were KIA, that was despite almost exclusively bombing at night). It is likely that at least half, very possibly all, of early attacks would result in loss of the aircraft and "salvage detonations" when the armed weapon passed its preset triggering altitude.
Secondly (and probably much more importantly) why would even an entirely successful nuclear strike force the Reich to surrender in this scenario? There would be no Red Army rolling across Eastern Europe with Blood in its eye and Revenge in its Heart. It is very unlikely that th WAllies would even have a reasonable lodgement on the Continent. IOTL the Reich surrendered only after Berlin and pretty much every other city in the country had been occupied, Allied troops were wandering almist at will across nearly every inch of Germany, and the entire political leadership was either dead or running for their lives. Just weeks before the German eventual surrender the CBO had done a fair imitation of bombing a heretofore mainly undamaged city, Dresden, into the Stone Age. The Nazi's reaction was to make a propaganda story out of it. Otherwise the Party/national leadership didn't even blink. Could the Bomb have drive the Reich to Surrender? Maybe. In 1947.
One or two bombs a month wouldn't have done it. For one thing Germany would likely have already have had the pougies bombed out of it, you can only turn a city into masonry fragments once. After that all you are accomplishing is rearranging the rubble. You also need the Nazis to actually give a damn about the population. They didn't IOTL, in fact as the end closed in Hitler actually believed that if the Volk could win it didn't deserve to survive (fun guy, even for a fracking madman he was frackin' nuts).
People tend to forget that it wasn't just the use of two Special Weapons against Japan inside of three days that brought about the Surrender. It was also the entry of the USSR into the War (the Japanese had managed to convince themselves that they could get Stalin, of all people, to broker a negotiated end of the War with the WAllies) and the Red Army's virtually instant shattering of the Kwantung Army combined with the two Bombs and a wink/nudge exception on "Unconditional Surrender" that protected the Emperor that caused the Bitter Enders in the Government to blink just long enough to allow Hirohito to declare that things must end. Even then, with two nuked cities, with pretty much every city worth the title being burned out, with the Red Army simply obliterating what had been Japan's proudest Military formation, with WAllied warships conducting
shore bombardments of Japanese coastal cities, with WAllied fighters attacking anything that moved on the roads, literally down to handcarts, with the entire Japanese navy on the bottom of the sea, and looking down the gunbarrel of the post potent Military Alliance the world had ever seen, the Surrender was almost prevented by a Coup. A couple senior Japanese Army officers say yes rather than no and the Surrender is stopped cold by some Majors and Colonels.
