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Chemical Evidence Shows the Nazis Weren't At All Close To Having the Bomb
TheAlexKnapp writes: The Nazis winning World War II by getting the bomb first is a staple of alt-history and it's the reason why James T. Kirk lost the love of his life, Edith Keeler. Einstein also noted possible German efforts to build one in his letter to FDR urging the U.S. develop an atomic weapon. But it turns out there really wasn't a race to build a bomb at all. Materials from Germany's atomic weapons program have been studied by an international team of researchers, who determined that Germany never achieved a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction — something that Fermi and his colleagues had accomplished in 1942 — which was a key step to actually building an atomic weapon. This chemical evidence supports other historical accounts that the German atomic program never achieved this result.
Jáchimov (today's Czech Republic) was determined to be the source of the Uranium ore German scientists were experimenting with, and it's nice that they added a "fun fact" for the town, but the most important fun fact, they omitted. Silver coins minted since 1519 in Jáchimov (called St. Joachimsthal at the time) were so common that the name Joachimsthaler for the coins got shortened to Thaler which eventually lead to the U.S. Dollar.
Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June, 1941. The problem, which you note, is that Hitler was military dolt. He split his forces and decided to go south to capture oil fields. Things went great at first, but Hitler didn't understand that a map doesn't portray just how big the Soviet Union was or that Stalin was prepared to sacrifice untold numbers of Russian troops. Because Hitler didn't prepare for a long campaign, his troops were left unprepared for the winter of '41.
Great generals do not make the mistake of thinking the enemy thinks like they do. They are able to put themselves in their enemies' heads and think like the enemy. Hitler was more or less a pompous ass. The Soviet generals were not all that great either, Stalin had already purged the good ones. Their hero, Zhukov, was more or less a bulldozer driver. He'd have never risen in rank in pre-war Germany. Of course the Americans had their pompous asses, e.g., MacArthur. Admiral Nimitz was once asked why he kept a picture of MacArthur in his office given that they never got along together. His reply was something along the lines of, I want to remind myself what a real ass looks like.
No they couldn't. Not even close. They made a miserable failure out of trying to defeat a tiny force of Spitfires with their vaunted Luftwaffe in 1940 after the fall of France, when Britain stood alone. They didn't have a clue how to fully mobilize their economy on a war footing. They were ideologically opposed to harnessing the 50% of the potential economy that females represented: females were only supposed to spend their time bearing and raising teutonic warriors. Britain's blockade was strangling them. Their idea of efficiently harnessing workers in conquered territories was to beat and starve them to death wastefully and stupidly, as well as evilly. Their economy was not put on a full war footing until 1943, after they had lost the war.
German naval power on the surface was a sick joke, and the U-boats, even with gigantic industrial effort, fell short, even with Japan diverting much of the US's navy.
If Hitler hadn't gone for Stalin's throat, the reverse would have happened, and the situation would have been even worse for Germany.
Arguably so, but Hitler Invaded the USSR in June 1941, not the winter. The invasion went spectacularly well, and by September, despite stupid decisions to divert forces at the critical period, German forces approached to within 11 km of Moscow, reaching streetcar lines in the suburbs.
No way in hell. Britain plus the USSR would have finished it without us. Maybe one extra year at the utmost. And the US would have devastated Japan much faster without our own second front (which actually had priority). Then we would have swarmed into Europe in full undiverted force by 1944 or 1945.
Those weren't exactly WMDs. It took tens of thousands of them to do severe damage.
There was a much more easy method than that.
Nazi's were greeted as liberators by russian peasants. Who they started slaughtering.
If they had treated the peasants decently, they would have conquered russia easily.
But it just wasn't in their nature.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
If Hitler had supported Rommel in North Africa with as little as a few more battalions of ground troops and hardware, it's pretty likely that the Allies would have lost the campaign there, and Hitler would have been able to take the Middle East basically unimpeded. But Hitler didn't like Rommel, and he didn't trust him, which is one of the reasons Rommel was in North Africa in the first place... and because of that, Hitler wasn't going to provide the support that Rommel needed to succeed, since he believed he could easily seize the Russian oil fields. He saw the North African campaign as a minor offshoot of the war, and didn't realize the huge potential involved in being able to easily secure the most rich oil fields in the world without pissing off one of the more crazy dictators of the modern world.
The Americans had two Bombs ready to go. There was a third Bomb that needed another week or so of development. After that, with the current Tech, they could roll out one single "Atomic" Bomb every month or so.
That was the Plan. This is something simply not understood these days. The Manhattan Project wasn't simply about making a couple of Bombs to drop on Germany or later, Japan, and then the War would be over, and everybody could go Home.
One Bomb a month, and maybe a second Bomb a month... forever. It was an Industry, with thousands of determined workers.
(This is all second hand of course- but I have Primary Sources, now all dead.)
Germany quickly folded, and an isolated Imperial Japan would starve itself to death. Forget all that Invasion nonsense, it was just folderol for public consumption. Isolation was the ultimate goal, and the Bombs were then convenient.
Dropping the Bombs just gave the Saner Japanese an excuse to easily and quickly Surrender. Don't forget the Japanese Coup that led to this Surrender, and how the Emperor was then forced to grovel to keep his head. Others lost theirs.
So what happened to those other early Bombs? They became Science Projects, with a twinge of Security Theater added. My Best Source used to fly through those Mushroom Clouds, grabbing bits of them on Filter paper, to see what actually happens in the few seconds following a Nuclear Fission. Realize that Nuclear _Fusion_ is quite common, and it surrounds us every time we go outside. Nuclear Fission in Nature is rarer; Stars usually have to Explode for this to naturally occur at any great scale. This is Basic Nucleosynthesis.
My Best Source lived to be 94. He was so fucking Radioactive, (Mainly long lived Americium and Curium isotopes.), that he refused at some point to be studied any longer. But he had some great and very funny stories to tell, and his mind was sharp right up the very end. Thanks for everything, Al.
Another Source was the thoroughly Evil and Corrupt Edward Teller. We took an immediate dislike to each other, but that didn't stop his boasting. He actually was a Monster. A family member of his later divulged to me certain details...
Edward Teller was pretty much the worst Monster that a little kid can imagine. That he is now so fondly regarded by Republicans is no wonder.
I've always thought this would be a good twist for one of those "Oh, I've got a time machine, lets go back and assassinate Hitler." stories, where they screw it up and end up just getting him replaced by someone competent.
I read the internet for the articles.