Alt History thread: WI D-Day fails

[frekk]

I don't see the US dropping said A-bomb on Germany without sufficient reason. After all, let's not forget there's a huge difference between Germans and Japanese: They're not Asian.

Yeah but that's not really the point. If it's a question of saving American lives, they're dropping the bomb, doesn't matter who is on the other end. Keep in mind that they don't yet fully understand radiation and especially not radioactive contamination - they know the gamma rays are poisonous and will kill and cripple people, but they don't know that the site will remain radioactive. In essence they didn't understand it to be alot different than a firestorm, other than the fact it could be delivered by a single plane and there was, therefore, no defence against it.

 

[Sharwood]

Yeah but that's not really the point. If it's a question of saving American lives, they're dropping the bomb, doesn't matter who is on the other end. Keep in mind that they don't yet fully understand radiation and especially not radioactive contamination - they know the gamma rays are poisonous and will kill and cripple people, but they don't know that the site will remain radioactive. In essence they didn't understand it to be alot different than a firestorm, other than the fact it could be delivered by a single plane and there was, therefore, no defence against it.

Of course, but Germany is a lot easier to invade than Japan. I think if you looked at the rest of my post, I mentioned they'd do it if necessary, but not unless they had to. Besides, nuking Berlin would kill Hitler, and they didn't want him dead, because they wanted an unconditional surrender. With Hitler and a large swathe of the Nazi leadership dead, there mightn't be anyone left to surrender. After all, Berlin wouldn't have been evacuated.

As for nuking a city that wasn't the capital, as they did in Japan, do you honestly think Hitler would surrender because Munich was nuked? Or Vienna? And Hitler managed to maintain his hold on power despite the fact the Russians were shelling Berlin, do you think atomic weapons, which the Nazis certainly would have known America was working on - their intelligence service was excellent, it was just the refusal of the leadership to listen to it, combined with the ideological nature of it to begin with, that created problems - would cause his underlings to overthrow him? Neither Himmler nor Goering worked up the balls to do so in OTL, I don't see them doing so just because a few cities aren't there anymore.

 

[Taras Bulba]

the sweep through North Africa still succeeds, pull up through Sicily and Italy with a new landing possibly being in the Balkans or the southern French border, or simply sweeping up through Italy, as Russia reaches Berlin on their own