What if someone else got nuclear weapons first?

[Robrob]

"Planning" (and i use that word loosely here) and "doing" are two different things. The US probably "plans" for global thermonuclear war, but they haven't actually done it have they?

But according to CT's a plan = actually happened, just like a mistake = did it on purpose.

 

[catsmate]

Why did Britain plan using anthrax cakes against Germany?

Well Operation Vegetarian¹ was designed in 1942 to seriously damage the German food supplies and thus disrupt military and war related activities and thus shorten the war. However it wasn't possible until late 1944 and wasn't then considered necessary or justifiable.
Churchill advocated using chemical weapons several times, most notably after the V-weapon attacks in 1944, but was persuaded against this option.

However if Sealion had gone ahead the German troop would have been drenched in mustard gas, a weapon that favours the defense; operational planning for this was complete by the beginning of July 1940 though British HS/HT stocks were low, something Churchill ordered remedied.


¹ Someone had a sense of humour......

 

[Loss Leader]

Setting out from where, exactly? If Germany had had the ability to hit Britain with atom bombs prior to summer 1944, staging an invasion could have been extremely difficult.

Dave

I imagine North Africa.

 

[Debaser]

Why did Britain plan using anthrax cakes against Germany?

Why did innocent little Germany research and produce the nerve agents Tabun and Sarin?

 

[I Ratant]

As it was much of Germany was devastated due in large measure to the bombing offensive. How much more could the Allies have done?

.
Way back then, it was suggested that the males be castrated, and the country turned into a goat pasture, if memory serves.

 

[Corsair 115]

Why did Britain plan using anthrax cakes against Germany?

Plans to do something and actually executing that plan are two different things. Also, anthrax would technically be a biological weapon, not a chemical weapon.

 

[MaGZ]

.
Way back then, it was suggested that the males be castrated, and the country turned into a goat pasture, if memory serves.

Germany Must Perish! by Theodore Kaufman

http://en.metapedia.org/wiki/Germany_Must_Perish!

 

[catsmate]

Germany Must Perish! by Theodore Kaufman

http://en.metapedia.org/wiki/Germany_Must_Perish!

Wow, Metapedia, the wiki for loons, Holocaust deniers and Nazi believers.

 

[little grey rabbit]

Of course we know that the USA did get them first in some part because America was fortunate to be a refuge for many of the worlds greatest physicists during the terrible times of the second world war. And it's well known that Germany had a nuclear weapons program that floundered when a lot of their theoretical research went awry. Less well known is that Japan also had a nuclear weapons program that relied more on experimental research and may have been closer to an actual bomb than the Germans.

America has been vilified a lot over the years for getting the bomb first. Maybe some of that animus is justified. But what if someone else got it first?

What would the world look like if Imperial Japan had access to heavy water and uranium? What if Stalin had a program that gave him the bomb in 1942? Would London have been the first target of the Nazi bomb? And what if the Brits got it first at the height of the Blitz? Would anything of Berlin remain?

When they get the bomb is of course important. It's possible that Germany still loses the war if they get the bomb any time after mid 1944. The body count might have been higher but it seems like the ability to produce nukes in numbers great enough to thwart the double sided attack they were under is doubtful. Likewise Japan getting the bomb after its navy had been decimated might not have meant much either except to give them a new way to commit glorious suicide on battlefields when the Americans finally invaded the homeland.

And Italy........well with the incompetence of their top military ranks they might have accidentally used it on themselves no matter when they got it.

So, for everyone not named Italy, this question is pertinent to a hypothetical where they get the bomb at a time when it would have actually mattered. So what of it?

Does anyone think another nation would not have used it in much the same way the USA ultimately did? Would anyone have just settled for demonstration detonations? Or actually use them on a battlefield as part of a large conventional attack?

There seems to be some cartoonish views of other countries at play.

When America got the bomb they used it as a terror tactic "We will kill as many of your civilians as we can unless you do what we want." But then as what made sense in terms of the strategic situation that faced them. Maybe if they had the bomb a few months earlier they would have used it tactically perhaps on one of the islands they were taking.

In the same way Germany would have used nuclear weapons to achieve its war aims. Britain and its leadership could probably be influenced by a terrorist use of nuclear weapons, the USSR and its leadership less so. Germany bombed cities, but whether through lack of opportunity/capacity or ethics or strategy never attempted to level cities the way that Bomber Command did. So it is unlikely they would immediately leap to levelling London - as a first step.

Germany's war aims were a modus vivendi with Britain and pushing the Soviet leadership behind either the Volga or sometimes the Urals and creating a fortified frontier. The Germany leadership had no animus to Britain beyond the elite who were having their strings pulled behind the scenes - this would have influenced how they used such a weapon in the West. Most likely they would have used the weapon in the East and hoped the psychological impact enabled them to achieve the outcome they wanted in the West by negotiation.

How they would have used the weapon in the East would have depended on how it would have maximum impact, as the Soviet leadership had only limited interest in the fate of its captive nationalities. A tactical battlefield use might make the most sense in terms of achieving war aims, in a way in which it was not to America in August 1945.

 

[Corsair 115]

When America got the bomb they used it as a terror tactic "We will kill as many of your civilians as we can unless you do what we want."

Which conveniently ignores the connection between civilians and the military in an industrialized nation-stated involved in total war against another industrialized nation-state. Namely, this simple formula: no civilians, no economy; no economy, no military; no military, no war.

The tanks, planes, ships, guns, bullets, shells, radios, uniforms, and much more, are created by the civilian workforce. The raw resources needed for that military production is gathered by the civilian workforce. The soldiers, sailors, and airmen are drawn from the civilian workforce. The energy needed to power the factories as well as the machines of war is produced by the civilian workforce. And so on.

In Japan's case, due to its production often being dispersed, this meant have to raze much of a city in order to hit the military hardware and vital subcomponent production.

Germany bombed cities, but whether through lack of opportunity/capacity or ethics or strategy never attempted to level cities the way that Bomber Command did.

Yes, it did. The Blitz was precisely an attempt to level London. The problem for Germany was that it never developed an air force capable of doing the job—strategic bombing was a low priority. Germany's bombers were virtually all twin-engined types intended for the tactical role of supporting the army. And to conduct a strategic bombing campaign effectively you need a lot of four-engined heavy bombers—something which Germany never did.

As for "levelling cities the way Bomber Command did" this ignores the many real—if indirect—effects on the German war economy Bomber Command's effort had. Moreover, the Battle of the Ruhr (March to July, 1943), as Adam Tooze lays out convincingly in his book The Wages of Destruction using German records from the time, had a profound effect on German war production. The armaments "miracle" that Albert Speer had put together was stopped in its tracks. The RAF was within reach of achieving a significant victory—only it ceased the campaign against the Ruhr (for several reasons) and switched focus onto Berlin.