I wish the atomic bomb had been developed a few years sooner. We could have nuked Germany.

[Nye Bevan]

D-day would have been unnecessary. The Battle of the Bulge would have been avoided. Many of the people murdered in the extermination camps would still be alive. More than one member of my family would have been saved.

[hrmjustin]

1. We would have nuked them. That was their orignial plan.

[Kolesar]

42. & That was Robert Oppenheimer's motivation

If the Nazis had taken control of the seas around Britain, we would have had to try to "nuke" them with a long range bomber after several years of a cold war.

[DCBob]

2. No doubt had we had the bomb earlier, it would have been used on Germany.

Interesting thought.

[usGovOwesUs3Trillion]

3. The carpet bombing of civilian populations was supposed to do just that

it didn't, and I doubt that a nuke would have changed any of that.

Think about it...

[Nye Bevan]

5. I have a sneaking suspicion that a nuclear bomb dropped on Berlin would have done the job.

Hopefully, dropping a nuke on Berlin would not have been necessary. Once the Nazis realized what we could do, it would probably have been over.

[usGovOwesUs3Trillion]

7. History doesn't bear that out

In fact the bombings caused the people to rally around their leaders even more.

[Lancero]

20. True, but...

Compared to a nuke, the bombing campaigns were child's play.

Thing about it - A single bombing run would use numerous bombs and kill about... say 50k people.

One nuke can do the same as a thousand or more of the conventional bombs.

While conventional bombing runs caused more damage, the fear for nukes was because it only takes one of them to match the damage caused by a bombing run that required the use of many, many, more bombs.

[usGovOwesUs3Trillion]

23. no, more people were killed with conventional bombs than nuclear bombs.

The german and japanese cities were leveled, before nukes, and the state continued fighting.

Japan was preparing for the land invasion even after the nukes were dropped... the main think that made them surrender was us allowing them to keep their emperor.

[Lancero]

25. Yes...

More people were killed with conventional bombs.

But then again, we also dropped many tons more.

Weight to weight, a five ton nuke (The size of one of the ones we dropped) will do more damage then 5 tons of HE or incendiary bombs will.

I don't know exactly how many tons of bombs were dropped on Japan, but Germany had more then 3 million tons dropped on them.

The numbers I've found put the total deaths for all of the bombing campaigns between 250 and 900 thousand. Using 900k and assuming that 3 million tons were dropped against them, like Germany, then this would mean that it took about 3 tons worth of bombs to kill one person.

The nuke dropped on Nagisaki weighed 5 tons and killed 60-80k people. Taking the high estemate, that puts the atomic bomb at killed 16k people per ton.

While bombing campaigns killed more people then the nukes did, weight for weight nukes killed more people.

[usGovOwesUs3Trillion]

26. you are going in circles

as i said, the whole destruction of cities did not have any effect in getting the state to surrender, so i doubt destroying them by another means would have any impact either.

[Lancero]

27. Whats more scary?

A city being destroyed by a massive bombing campaign, or a city being wiped out by one bomb?

This is my point - The immense power of a nuke creates more fear then a standard bombing campaign because it only takes one nuke to match the destructive power of many thousands of conventional bombs.

[usGovOwesUs3Trillion]

29. Do you think vietnam would have surrendered if we nuked them?

I don't.

And the ONLY reason we didn't use it then, or in Korea, is that we would have completely lost the hearts and minds of the whole world.

I guess we can agree to disagree.

[Lancero]

31. They would have.

It would have taken more nukes then we used in Japan, but yes. Replace 5 or 6 of the bombing campaigns we launched in nam with dropping a nuke and they would have surrendered.

But you are correct in that if we did nuke them, the world would have turned on us.

[usGovOwesUs3Trillion]

33. Nonsense. More bombs were dropped during Vietnam than all the bombs dropped in wwII

And they were fighting for independence even before wwII.

They, as Germany, would have continued fighting no matter how many cities were destroyed.

The facts are on my side that the war crime of indiscriminate terror and destruction will not necessarily lead to surrender as history has shown time, and again.

This OP is nothing but juvenile, ignorant nonsense.

[hack89]

55. If Hitler was in Berlin there would be no leader to rally around. nt

[One_Life_To_Give]

66. Factories and Sub-Pens

The Factories and Submarine Pens would of collapsed. Unlike Vietnam or Korea that were being supplied from afar. Germanys war machine relied on the factories located in country. Even if they didn't surrender the Tiger and Panther Tanks, heavy artillery and bullets would of run out. Bombing accuracy at the time was 20% got 1 or more bombs within 1000ft of the target.

[krispos42]

35. The damage would have been far greater from a nuke

Years worth of bombs compressed into one bright flash.

Not only that, but it would have contaminated the entire city. People could not have stayed there or in the area. It would have the entire government for a loop as all of the agencies would have had to rapidly relocate from the Berlin area.

[zappaman]

4. I've always wondered why we didn't use it during the Revolutionary War?

[nyquil_man]

6. If we'd dropped it on Mrs. Surratt's boarding house,

President Lincoln would still be alive today!

[greatauntoftriplets]

8. The War of Jenkins' Ear would have ended a lot sooner if the Brits had used it!

[Socal31]

9. This is kind of like dividing by zero. You are opening a parodox.

The problem with your otherwise air-tight wish is that we might have accidentally nuked the German scientists who we need to help us develop a nuclear weapon post-European theatre.

[sarisataka]

10. Odds are...

the Germany would have been the ones with the bombs

Early in 1942, German Army Ordnance completed a report which ranked weapons programs by how promising they were. Based on the information available at the time, it seemed unlikely that a nuclear bomb could be developed in less than two years. The German belief that the war would be over in two years steered the Army to only invest in weapons programs that could be completed within that period.

Nazi Science, by Mark Walker, Plenum Press, 1995- a good book. Germany was ahead of the Allies in many technical areas, nuclear research, radar, rocketry, jet development... Short-sighted views of the need for these technologies in the short term hampered their development allowing the Allies to pull ahead

[pkdu]

53. Germany was NOT ahead in Radar...the rest might be true, but not Radar. Nt

[anneboleyn]

70. Yes Germany was very behind w/radar. The RAF won the Battle of Britain

by using radar so effectively (I have read that German pilots could overhear RAF pilots figuring out targets and anticipating movements, etc., and that German pilots were baffled initially as to how this was being accomplished).

The irony: radar as a technological innovation have been developed in Germany but Hitler, Goering, and the Luftwaffe didn't realize the potential of the technology and failed to exploit it until it was too late for them to achieve/maintain air superiority.

[JVS]

11. I wish it had been developed in the 20s. We would have had MAD before WWII could happen.

[quinnox]

12. Nukes will be useless against any alien invasion

[delrem]

13. I like how many pro-nuclear war posts today!

Just think how cool a nuke dropped over Tehran would be, teaching those terrorist mullahs a lesson while saving lives.

It warms the cockles of my heart to login to DU and see how far Dems have progressed in just the last several years. DU has pro-NSA mass surveillance teams, now, going from OP to OP - we're so advanced over where we were in the W years. Just imagine, in the W years there was actually *doubt* about the goodness of the WoT, and there was fear of it expanding or, *gasp*, coming home. How quaint.

[msongs]

18. exactly. bush did it = bad, obama does it = good nt

[Kolesar]

36. Turn the thread to "hate Obama"

Quite a team you have there, msongs

[geek tragedy]

61. Textbook ODS nt

[dionysus]

69. another jump the shark moment, using a thread about WWII to slag Obama

quite the ODS...

[Kolesar]

37. And "chained CPI"

You forgot to complain about that.

[delrem]

44. No, I don't give a shit that you teabaggers want "chained CPI".

[Kolesar]

45. You need something "reality related" to focus on

Or go watch TV

[delrem]

48. Well, another for my ignore list.

I didn't come here to yak with wannabe freepers.

[Igel]

41. That's uncalled for.

There's a difference between saying something was horrible but it ended something that would have been worse and saying that the horrible thing was actually a good thing.

It's gratuituously smearing people to try to coerce by puerile name-calling what logic and facts fail to address.

[delrem]

46. It was called for by the OP.

I'm no fan of sophistry that uses cherry picked counter-factuals in an attempt to defend the indefensible.
But if it makes you feel better, as a person who defends the nuking of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and who gets offended when called out on it, I think the firebombing of Dresden was even worse.

[quinnox]

49. + a million

You are right on the mark.

[geek tragedy]

60. Are you comparing the threat from Iran to that posed by the Fourth Reich? nt

[Baclava]

14. that's one big holy hand grenade to go flinging around

you wanted to nuke Berlin?

[Nye Bevan]

16. I'm pretty sure Roosevelt and Churchill would have done it in a heartbeat, if they could have (nt)

[Lizzie Poppet]

15. If the atomic bomb had been developed earlier, it probably would have been BY Germany.

Kinda changes things, dunnit...?

[Nye Bevan]

19. The ironic thing is that perhaps they could have done this,

had they not murdered or exiled so many smart Jewish scientists.

[branford]

63. Indeed!

Albert Einstein (set the Manhattan Project in motion by letter to FDR warning of possible German bomb)
Leo Szilard (Manhattan Project)
Niels Bohr (Manhattan Project)
Lise Meitner (Manhattan Project)
Enrico Fermi (Manhattan Project)
J. Robert Oppenheimer (Manhattan Project)

Later:
Edward Teller (hydrogen bomb)

[AsahinaKimi]

17. Wait....

Didn't the US steal the plans for the atom bomb from Germany? Or..perhaps it came from German Scientists who we brought over to the US side. It would have been difficult to develop it without the German scientists..

[EX500rider]

24. The main scientists:

Robert Oppenheimer was an American theoretical physicist and professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, Edward Teller was a Hungarian-born American theoretical physicist, Enrico Fermi was an Italian theoretical and experimental physicist, Leó Szilárd was a Hungarian-born American physicist and inventor, Otto Robert was an Austrian-British physicist, Rudolf Peierls was a German-born British physicist.

[Cali_Democrat]

56. No. You might be thinking of the German rocket program.

American and other allied scientists were the ones who developed the nuclear bomb.

[AsahinaKimi]

62. oh yeahh...

okay, that's what I must have been focused on.. Thanks.

[JaneyVee]

21. What a terrible terrible OP.

[Moses2SandyKoufax]

22. But nothing out of the ordinary for the OP. n/t

[Nye Bevan]

40. I really should post the occasional cute kitties thread (nt)

[branford]

64. What "fun" would that be?

[Tien1985]

28. I can't tell if you're

Being sarcastic or not.

The only thing I wish for regarding nuclear weapons is that they were never made to begin with.

[ZombieHorde]

30. I wonder if "we" would have used one during the Civil War if "we" had them.

That would have been interesting.

[Pab Sungenis]

51. Go read Harry Turtledove's Southern Victory series

In the last four books, the CSA (allied with Britain and France and with a fascist government) is in a race with the North to develop the A-bomb. Interesting take.

[Trajan]

32. Let's take your statement at face value ...

" nuke Germany "

The Germany of World War 2 had a population of some 70,000,000 people .....

I presume that; when you said " nuke Germany", you meant the whole country ....

So .... you would be prepared to kill some large portion of seventy million human beings?

I'm not sure what is worse; Nazi Germany and it's awful war machine, or, Nye Bevan with a nuclear arsenal ...

[Nye Bevan]

38. Ummmm... I did not mean the whole country (nt)

[bravenak]

34. Nasty stuff.

Mind blowingly crass.

[Nye Bevan]

39. War is nasty. The German extermination camps were nasty. The SS-Einsatzgruppen was nasty.

Sometimes you have to be nasty to end nastiness.

[bravenak]

43. Horrible.

[Nye Bevan]

47. Indeed they were.

That's another good word for it.

[bravenak]

50. I am glad you agree.

[Pab Sungenis]

52. I have a sneaking suspicion

That the use of a WWII era A bomb in Europe would have followed the model prepared during the Cold War: take out advancing troops.

[LanternWaste]

54. If we're giving credence to wishes

If we're giving credence to wishes, wouldn't the most practical one simply be to wish the war never happened in the first place...?

Unless we simply have predilections towards apocalyptic violence, and then your visceral desire would have more context.

Easy-peasy, Chucky Cheesy...

[Cali_Democrat]

57. I don't wish death and destruction upon anyone

[branford]

65. I lost a lot of family in the Holocaust. I'll simply state, "No Comment." n/t

[SergeyDovlatov]

58. D-day was unnecessary anyway for US it was helpful to russia though

USSR was fighting 90% of the German forces. The rest of the allies were fighting the remaining 13%.
Just the treat that invasion from the west could happen forced Germans to keep some force on the western front.
So, if you speaking as an American, D-day was a waste of life.

If you are of Russian decent, as I am, than D-day was a good trade. American sacrifice some of its own population to keep some soviet citizens alive that would not have been otherwise.

Most of the concentration camps were on the territory liberated by Soviet forces, so depending where you relatives were imprisoned, D-day may or may not have helped.

Cheers,
Sergey

[geek tragedy]

59. Payback for their attack on Pearl Harbor.

Don't stop me, I'm on a roll.

[whatchamacallit]

67. Yes, too bad you couldn't holocaust them first

[jakeXT]

68. Churchill wanted to go back to old school methods, 4.25 million anthrax bombs on Germany

The previously unpublished documents show Britain's wartime leader was determined to stockpile huge quantities of poison gases which he was willing to use on any German force which set foot in Britain, and that he pressed his service chiefs for plans to gas civilian populations of 100 German cities long after the threat of invasion was over.

After his request to General Ismay to look into the possibility of gassing the population, the general submitted a report listing every German city with a population over 100,000 people. But Churchill's enthusiasm for the plan was dampened by the military, which saw it as a strategy that could hinder the Allied advance across Europe.

http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/smgpubs/access/60581031.html?dids=60581031:60581031&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=qD1PAAAAIBAJ&sjid=mgIEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6688,4975167