WW11 The Soviet Union did not exist.

[icenine]

Originally Posted by donquixote99

Until much testing was done, the armed forces were very cavalier about the dangers of nuclear contamination. Plus the army ran the European campaign as a meatgrinder, throwing away lives, especially of replacements, quite stupidly. I regard the notion that they would have held back nuking Germany because of some danger to our troops as pretty wild, actually.

Given all we did, and proposed doing, to Germany (there were serious plans put forward to deindustrialize the country and relocate city populations to the countryside--think Pol Pot), I don't think there are any grounds to thinking we were according them any 'racial privilege.'

BTW, if Dresden was 'retaliation' for Coventry, it was way late. Coventry 1941, Dresden 1945?

You cannot argue about something that did not happen. An alien looking from the his spaceship on Titan through a telescope while waiting for spare parts to arrive from his home world would be presented with two indisputable facts:
1. The Allies invaded Europe.
2. The Allies did not invade Japan.

I am not 100 percent certain we would have dropped a nuclear weapon on Germany. No one can be of course. I am certain that since WWII the rest of the world knows one thing:that we did not drop a nuclear weapon on people who looked like us. Did we inter German-Americans?

I think Truman did the right thing because he saved American lives. I am not so sure what we would have done if it had been a question of Germany. That is all I am saying.

[donquixote99]

I am not 100% sure, but I think I'd go 90%.

Still, that's just a gut estimate, and i don't make any great claims for it.

As for what we were willing to do to people who 'looked like (some of) us,' who knows what the 'meadow camps' were?

[Dondilion]

Originally Posted by donquixote99

I am not 100% sure, but I think I'd go 90%.

Still, that's just a gut estimate, and i don't make any great claims for it.

As for what we were willing to do to people who 'looked like (some of) us,' who knows what the 'meadow camps' were?

I firmly believe that we would have nuked the Germans.
There was a race between the US and the Germans for the atomic bomb
so much so that General Grooves, the man in charge of the US effort was
given carte blanche for anything he wanted.

The US was under no illusion that Hitler would use his if he had it and was
scared of that scenario.

That fear I believe would have trumped any consideration of white kinship.

[donquixote99]

This map may represent German planning for a nuke attack on Manhattan:

[icenine]

I think if Germany had held on we would have nuked Japan like we did, and they most likely would have surrendered (or killed Hitler or began to ignore him) once they saw the destruction. I also think we would have held back after seeing how awful the destruction in Japan was.

You have to remember how close the Soviets were to Berlin and I think those guys who developed the bomb knew about fallout. That is assuming the same sort of time line for the development of the weapon. Plus they only had two bombs. And the tactical situation in Europe was certainly clear by the summer of 45 but not in the Pacific. In my alternate history we do not drop the bomb on Europe.

[Dondilion]

Originally Posted by icenine

I think if Germany had held on we would have nuked Japan like we did, and they most likely would have surrendered (or killed Hitler or began to ignore him) once they saw the destruction. I also think we would have held back after seeing how awful the destruction in Japan was.

You have to remember how close the Soviets were to Berlin and I think those guys who developed the bomb knew about fallout. That is assuming the same sort of time line for the development of the weapon. Plus they only had two bombs. And the tactical situation in Europe was certainly clear by the summer of 45 but not in the Pacific. In my alternate history we do not drop the bomb on Europe.

But we were not certain how far Hitler's atomic program had reached. We blew up his heavy water plants in Norway. However we did not know if the Germans had cotton on to high grade graphite as a moderator. It was only
after the war we knew that the Germans had discarded graphite; they did not realize that the graphite they had tried was not sufficiently pure.

[piece-itpete]

I read an excellent article years ago in the Plain Dealer outlining the situation regarding a ground attack on Japan.

Not only were the expected US casualties so high they were afraid the US population would actually revolt, the Japanese casualties were even worse - every man woman and child literally fighting to the death, so using A bombs saved Japanese lives as well. A lot of them. I wish I kept that article.

Regarding Japanese-American internment, it's easy to look back and tut But the then-current leaders remembered the German- and (some) Irish- American saboteurs from WW1 very well. Keep in mind the progressives fully supported it.

Pete