Quote from: kosmos1214;962326We didn't have them that early in the war not usable any way.

The subject is alternate history, however. One can extend the war in Europe or give atomic bomb develops a time table bump (meddling Time traveler perhaps? a few months would do) which would probably require less extrapolation aside from the "what if?" the question addresses.

Quote from: RPGPundit;964205Yes. It was keeping the emperor that let the Japanese feel they were able to accept the defeat and move on to become America-philes and modernize, and to move on from their militarist past.

If only we'd done that with the Germans after WW1 - blamed the General Staff and let them keep the Kaiser as a figurehead.

Quote from: Nexus;964213The subject is alternate history, however.

Prolong the war in Europe with some outstanding Nazi defensive victories in June 44. Overlord fails and Army Group Centre is not destroyed, thanks to pitch perfect deployment of Panzer reserves on both fronts thanks to unbelievable and unprecedented accuracy of German military intelligence. War drags on in Europe until August '45, and with the Allies/UN nowhere near the German national territory, the bomb is dropped on Berlin instead. Hitler obliterated or dies in the bunker buried under radioactive rubble. World is even more shocked because it's a major European city. Power struggle in Germany follows between true believers and pragmatics, throwing German defenses into confusion allowing for quick Allied ground gains and winding down of hostilities in October with a  general german surrender. Or something.

Quote from: Nexus;964213The subject is alternate history, however.

The problem is coming up with a plausible point of departure. Good alt history make a single change and works out things from there. What would the PoD be to in order for the United States to have the atomic bomb earlier. Or alternately prolong the war long enough so that Germany is still around in the late summer of 1945 when the bombs were ready.

Remember in OTL (our time line) the moment the physics community realized that a chain reaction was possible they jumped on to warn the US Government of its potential. It was discovered in Germany in December 1938 and the letter to Roosevelt was written in August 1939. The United States was in the grips of isolationism and still wrestling with the Great Depression. Furthermore the discovery of Nuclear Fission still had a bunch of unanswered questions to whether it would amount to anything. The work that Fermi did at the University of Chicago decisively settled the lingering questions about nuclear fission particularly when it came to atomic bombs. And that occurred in late 1942.

It hard to see how the program could have been accelerated to produce an atomic bomb early to have been used on Germany.

Quote from: estar;964293The problem is coming up with a plausible point of departure.

Check the original post.

Quote from: S'mon;964248If only we'd done that with the Germans after WW1 - blamed the General Staff and let them keep the Kaiser as a figurehead.

That might have turned out better, yes. Though it might also have led to a Soviet Germany too, it's hard to say.

Speaking of this subject. There is a youtube poster who does alot of these. AlternateHistoryHub. And he did one on this very subject.

[video=youtube;-Rrmqju74A8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Rrmqju74A8[/youtube]

Quote from: RPGPundit;964594That might have turned out better, yes. Though it might also have led to a Soviet Germany too, it's hard to say.

If commie Germany means no Nazis and no WW2, I am down with that. Even WW2 vs the USSR (a la 2000 AD Volgan War time line maybe) would have had less of a long term destructive impact, whoever won.

(Volgan War is nominally set in the 21st century but is basically WW2 with robot soldiers. Cool stuff.)

Quote from: Nexus;964294Check the original post.

The OP is not a point of departure. A POD would be a specific event at a specific time. From that event a chain of further events would led to the United States choosing to invade Japan over using the atomic bomb.

Quote from: estar;964836The OP is not a point of departure.

I meant my first post suggesting a different question, not the thread start. Sorry.

Quote from: S'mon;964633If commie Germany means no Nazis and no WW2, I am down with that. Even WW2 vs the USSR (a la 2000 AD Volgan War time line maybe) would have had less of a long term destructive impact, whoever won.

It would have been an interesting question, given that we're talking a revolution possibly as early as the early 1920s here, whether it wouldn't really have been the USSR that would  have become the center of International Communism or if a Communist Germany wouldn't have replaced the USSR as the central communist state.  If both Germany and Russia had gone Communist within even 10 years of each other, it's absolutely certain that the USSR would not have gone the way it did, and Soviet Russia might well have ended up as either a satellite state or at least poorer-cousin of Soviet Germany.

Quote from: Skarg;900751I'm not convinced that either the nuclear attacks nor a full-scale invasion were needed to prevent Soviet invasion, nor to get Japan to surrender. I also think a bomb dropped over water off the coast at a pre-anounced time/place would have been as good or better demonstration of the power of the bomb.

I was inclined to that view, but then I read Brighter Than A Thousand Suns, an account of the scientists involved in making the bomb. In that they mention a Japanese nuclear scientist (I think it was Nishina) who was sent to Hiroshima to figure out what had happened. The scale of the destruction, plus all the blank X-ray films in the local hospital being exposed, made him sure it was an atomic bomb. While he was visiting and writing his report, Nagasaki was bombed, too.

He presented his report to an intelligence colonel, who said, "If we gave you unlimited funds, labour and resources, could you build a similar bomb in 6 months? We could perhaps hold out that long." Nishina said no. Now, that one Intel colonel may have just been covering his arse with the inevitable questions he'd get from superiors, or maybe he was that fanatical - but it shows that even with atomic bombs dropping on cities every few days, some people seriously thought of fighting on.

The Japanese also had many plans to use chemical and biological weapons, grandmas strapping explosives to themselves and rolling under Allied tanks, and all that. Of course, the Nazis had similar plans and also a planned postwar guerilla resistance on top of it, and that all fizzled out. So maybe nothing would have come of it. In both cases, resistance to the Allies stopped suddenly when the country's leader gave up - Hitler by suicide, Hirohito by a radio announcement. Before that... they all fought very hard and brutally.

If the bomb had been demonstrated offshore, and they'd laughed at it, and a land invasion had proceeded, it would have been brutal and bloody, we're talking civilian deaths in the millions. The US did that to North Korea and those guys STILL hate the US. We would now have everyone second-guessing and saying, "If they'd dropped the bomb on Japan, it wouldn't have been as bad."

It's war. Whatever you do people will die, maybe in their millions. This is why some people retreat into pacifism.

Quote from: Omega;964613Speaking of this subject. There is a youtube poster who does alot of these. AlternateHistoryHub.

Heh, Space Marines in the video, that was good for a chuckle.

Quote from: Omega;964613Speaking of this subject. There is a youtube poster who does alot of these. AlternateHistoryHub. And he did one on this very subject.

This is one of the dedicated forums for alternate history.

Here one timeline dealing with an invasion of Japan.

A bunch of thread talking about a US invasion of Japan.

Quote from: RPGPundit;965169It would have been an interesting question, given that we're talking a revolution possibly as early as the early 1920s here, whether it wouldn't really have been the USSR that would  have become the center of International Communism or if a Communist Germany wouldn't have replaced the USSR as the central communist state.  If both Germany and Russia had gone Communist within even 10 years of each other, it's absolutely certain that the USSR would not have gone the way it did, and Soviet Russia might well have ended up as either a satellite state or at least poorer-cousin of Soviet Germany.

There hasn't been any fully fleshed out Communist Germany timeline on the alt-history forums. But it has been discussed from time to time.