Development of Atomic Bomb\Atomic Energy in Peacetime?

Discussions on alternate history, including events up to 20 years before today. Hosted by Terry Duncan.
User avatar
wm
Member
Posts: 8753
Joined: 29 Dec 2006, 21:11
Location: Poland

Re: Development of Atomic Bomb\Atomic Energy in Peacetime?

#31

Post by wm » 11 Nov 2017, 19:35

German itself is too small to play with nukes. it simply can't take it, but Russia can.
And it's an elementary mistake to attack non-military target before anything else, enemy's nuclear capabilities and its air power have to be suppressed first.
Spending own nukes over cities (which are going to be evacuated anyway), allowing the enemy to use its own on the battlefield is a sure recipe for defeat.

Weimar politicians always declared that Germany would not resort to war in their border disputes, and actually in any others too. They signed international agreements saying so. Of course they could have changed their minds later, but this seems rather unlikely.

hselassi
Member
Posts: 142
Joined: 04 Mar 2009, 02:57

Re: Development of Atomic Bomb\Atomic Energy in Peacetime?

#32

Post by hselassi » 11 Nov 2017, 21:37

wm wrote:German itself is too small to play with nukes. it simply can't take it, but Russia can.
And it's an elementary mistake to attack non-military target before anything else, enemy's nuclear capabilities and its air power have to be suppressed first.
Spending own nukes over cities (which are going to be evacuated anyway), allowing the enemy to use its own on the battlefield is a sure recipe for defeat.

Weimar politicians always declared that Germany would not resort to war in their border disputes, and actually in any others too. They signed international agreements saying so. Of course they could have changed their minds later, but this seems rather unlikely.
Well, nuclear weapons are not battlefield weapons(I thought it was the stupidest thing to fire nuclear artillery at the enemy and then have your army march through the fallout), they are terror weapons ("city killers"). In this scenario, in early 1971 the Abwehr finds out the USSR has started a nuclear weapons program, so Germany sends the Politburo a message that they have 48hrs to allow German engineers to walk in, destroy their nuclear weapons program, and stick around for 20-30 yrs to make sure it does not happen again. The USSR says bugger off, if a single Hun crosses our border its WAR. So the 650th Art Abt (mot) in W Prussia fires 2 A4+ MRBMs and Leningrad and Moscow are gone. At this point the USSR can capitulate and accept whatever terms the Germans offer, or mobilize and march on as nukes keep taking out cities, installations, troop concentrations, etc. If LeMay had his way, we would have done it in the 60s and probably in a far more massive scale.

While Germany would maintain the pro-Peace stance you mention, I think the idea of having a possible/probable enemy with nuclear weapons (and the ability to make more than them, not tied down by budgets, loss of life, etc.) would be an existential threat that could not be tolerated.


User avatar
wm
Member
Posts: 8753
Joined: 29 Dec 2006, 21:11
Location: Poland

Re: Development of Atomic Bomb\Atomic Energy in Peacetime?

#33

Post by wm » 11 Nov 2017, 23:04

hselassi wrote:Well, nuclear weapons are not battlefield weapons(I thought it was the stupidest thing to fire nuclear artillery at the enemy and then have your army march through the fallout)
Please, the Warsaw Pact was going to advance behind a hail of nuclear explosions. They were going to be used even at the battalion level. You have a few companies, they have a few companies, an assault is ordered, and a nuclear bomb is landing in their rear area where all their logistics are - just a few kilometers behind the frontline. No fallout - it's going to be an airburst. I've seen that with my own eyes when I was in the army - in old, obsolete training material.
And remember counterforce first, countervalue later - if needed.

hselassi
Member
Posts: 142
Joined: 04 Mar 2009, 02:57

Re: Development of Atomic Bomb\Atomic Energy in Peacetime?

#34

Post by hselassi » 11 Nov 2017, 23:45

wm wrote:Please, the Warsaw Pact was going to advance behind a hail of nuclear explosions. They were going to be used even at the battalion level. You have a few companies, they have a few companies, an assault is ordered, and a nuclear bomb is landing in their rear area where all their logistics are - just a few kilometers behind the frontline. No fallout - it's going to be an airburst. I've seen that with my own eyes when I was in the army - in old, obsolete training material.
And remember counterforce first, countervalue later - if needed.
I said it was stupid, I did not say it wasn't going to be done. Hell, the US atomic bazooka barely outranged its blast effect (or didn't depending on who you listen to). Both NATO and WARPAC would be marching through a sea of glass for the couple of hours before the ICBMs started flying, or not even that if the Soviets started with ICBMs, then I doubt if the conventional casualty count would reach 1000 before it was lights out.

In this ATL, it would be a terror bombing (top two cities wiped out), then a wait for a response (capitulation or conventional bombing (they would have to fight through Poland and/or Lithuania for a ground attack)), then a counterresponse (negotiations or mobilization and more terror bombing).

In the case of France, UK, or US, the economic ties and lack of threat (even a rearmed Weimar Germany would not lead to its neighbors breaking the bank to rearm) would make such a strategy unlikely. Probably negotiations, only the US could outbuild Germany so France and UK would have to deal, and, in this ATL, I don't see a military-industrial complex in the US pushing for MAD (before anybody goes off on a history of the Cold War, I am generalizing, I know it was more complex than that), so a deal would be cut there too.

User avatar
Markus Becker
Member
Posts: 641
Joined: 27 Apr 2005, 18:09
Location: Germany

Re: Development of Atomic Bomb\Atomic Energy in Peacetime?

#35

Post by Markus Becker » 12 Nov 2017, 14:16

hselassi wrote: Now, back to my question. What happens when the Germans get the "bomb" in the late 60s.
That Germany would not and IMO could not be remotly like the actual 3rd Reich. I'm guess at one point the scientific/commercial nuclear research get's results solid enough to start working on weaponisation. Which is most likely something done by several nations at the same time because you have two(?) decades of peacetime research during which scientists publish their findings and companies sell the products. So everybody except the USSR should be on the same level. The USSR could be ahead because they don't share their own findings.

User avatar
wm
Member
Posts: 8753
Joined: 29 Dec 2006, 21:11
Location: Poland

Re: Development of Atomic Bomb\Atomic Energy in Peacetime?

#36

Post by wm » 12 Nov 2017, 23:54

The USSR is not going to be much ahead without the knowledge and equipment gained during the occupation of Germany, and thanks to Lend-Lease. Soviet scientists were excellent, but their equipment frequently obsolete, and modern science required lots of really expensive and complicated equipment.
Without the WW2 Stalin is going to do more purging, especially among scientists. The WW2 was like smelling salts for him, he regained clarity of mind somewhat, and halted his purges till the fifties.

hselassi
Member
Posts: 142
Joined: 04 Mar 2009, 02:57

Re: Development of Atomic Bomb\Atomic Energy in Peacetime?

#37

Post by hselassi » 18 Nov 2017, 21:04

Markus Becker wrote:Which is most likely something done by several nations at the same time because you have two(?) decades of peacetime research during which scientists publish their findings and companies sell the products. So everybody except the USSR should be on the same level. The USSR could be ahead because they don't share their own findings.
While "university" research would be published, "military" research would remain secret, and while power generation would straddle both parts and some research might be publicized, weapons research would remain secret (and only Germany (incl. the Central and East European (non-Soviet) university systems) and the UK would have the establishments to benefit from such publications).
wm wrote:The USSR is not going to be much ahead without the knowledge and equipment gained during the occupation of Germany, and thanks to Lend-Lease. Soviet scientists were excellent, but their equipment frequently obsolete, and modern science required lots of really expensive and complicated equipment.
Without the WW2 Stalin is going to do more purging, especially among scientists. The WW2 was like smelling salts for him, he regained clarity of mind somewhat, and halted his purges till the fifties.
I figure without WWII and with a "friendly" Germany, Soviet history would progress with just 41-47 cut out, so the "Doctor's Plot" and associated "mini-Holocaust" would occur around 1946 and not be stopped by Stalin's death, depriving the USSR of its top scientific establishment.

Now I would like to clarify my "nuke the USSR" posts above, I believe that would happen IF the USSR acted in the way I described. But I don't believe a Stalinist USSR (without WWII Stalin would have ample time to eliminate all non-Stalin worshipers and thus no de-Stalinization until at least the 1980s, if then) would have gotten anywhere near nukes since that would imperil its relationship with Germany, which was not a threat AND they would have to build a nuclear establishment from the ground up, rather than depending on German-Soviet firms to handle power generation (this USSR (Stalin's "Socialism in One Nation") would not bother with a blue water navy, therefore there is no need for ship nuclear power).

Carl Schwamberger
Host - Allied sections
Posts: 10056
Joined: 02 Sep 2006, 21:31
Location: USA

Re: Development of Atomic Bomb\Atomic Energy in Peacetime?

#38

Post by Carl Schwamberger » 25 Dec 2017, 02:06

hselassi wrote:
wm wrote:German itself is too small to play with nukes. it simply can't take it, but Russia can.
And it's an elementary mistake to attack non-military target before anything else, enemy's nuclear capabilities and its air power have to be suppressed first.
Spending own nukes over cities (which are going to be evacuated anyway), allowing the enemy to use its own on the battlefield is a sure recipe for defeat.

Weimar politicians always declared that Germany would not resort to war in their border disputes, and actually in any others too. They signed international agreements saying so. Of course they could have changed their minds later, but this seems rather unlikely.
Well, nuclear weapons are not battlefield weapons(I thought it was the stupidest thing to fire nuclear artillery at the enemy and then have your army march through the fallout), ...
Long ago I used to be paid to know about this sort of thing. To make it short the optimal altitude for the detonation was above where the radiation producing event would contact the ground. The initial compression wave of the atmosphere would push the debris away from the rapidly shrinking & rising point of generation or radiation. The area near the detonation would be irradiated by short lived radioactives and a tiny number of longer lasting particles. Persons X distance from the detonation would be irradiated from the detonation itself and perhaps be contaminated by a few particles, but after the initial burst there would be little further contamination.

Once the compression wave lost energy a a return of air to the detonation point occurred dust would be brought back in and rise in the heat. However, the plasma or superheated air would be rising rapidly and shrink rapidly. the radioactive event would be over and the fallout distributed would have little danger.

If the detonation occurs low enough the plasma is in contact with the ground & you do get a mess of contaminated debris which are dangerous. I can't remember ever planning for such a detonation since it limited the other effects, and as you say created a danger area. As we saw it contaminated areas had little or no tactical or operational value. As we understood it in that era the Red Army & PACT forces were equipped and trained to operate in contaminated areas, so we assumed they would simply pass through them & continue with their merry s..t.

To digress... We never targeted front line combat forces for nukes. Perhaps others did, but I never saw it done in the exercises I participated in. At the school house @ Ft Sill & through the next 14 years the target priority started something like this:

1. HQ, Command nodes

2. Signals/communicatons nodes

3. NBC weapons storage sites & deployment positions.

Sometimes #3 would be placed at the top of the list. What we actually targeted depended on circumstances, but I never saw consideration to popping nukes off (or making a chemical attack) on a tank regiment or motor rifle division. The priority was to destroying the enemies ability to fight at the army level & above. Pissing with the shmucks riding around in the BTR or T72 was for after their ammo, fuel, and orders ceased.

User avatar
T. A. Gardner
Member
Posts: 3546
Joined: 02 Feb 2006, 01:23
Location: Arizona

Re: Development of Atomic Bomb\Atomic Energy in Peacetime?

#39

Post by T. A. Gardner » 25 Dec 2017, 04:48

The big breakthrough is really Rutherford in the US discovering Plutonium. Once you know about that and know how to mass produce it using a graphite moderated fast fission reactor of the sort Fermi was using, you can make lots of nukes relatively cheap. The only sticking point is getting the implosion system to crush the hollow sphere of plutonium. That's more an engineering than a physics problem though.

User avatar
losna
Member
Posts: 118
Joined: 25 Mar 2017, 09:13
Location: Insubria

Re: Development of Atomic Bomb\Atomic Energy in Peacetime?

#40

Post by losna » 26 Dec 2017, 11:47

T. A. Gardner wrote:The big breakthrough is really Rutherford in the US discovering Plutonium. Once you know about that and know how to mass produce it using a graphite moderated fast fission reactor of the sort Fermi was using, you can make lots of nukes relatively cheap. The only sticking point is getting the implosion system to crush the hollow sphere of plutonium. That's more an engineering than a physics problem though.
Did Soviets steal also the process to make plutonium or did they develope it independently?

User avatar
T. A. Gardner
Member
Posts: 3546
Joined: 02 Feb 2006, 01:23
Location: Arizona

Re: Development of Atomic Bomb\Atomic Energy in Peacetime?

#41

Post by T. A. Gardner » 26 Dec 2017, 20:01

losna wrote: Did Soviets steal also the process to make plutonium or did they develope it independently?
The US announced the discovery in 1948 and by then the Soviets had their first graphite moderated reactors in operation in any case. So, either way they would have gotten the knowledge early enough to not make a difference to their bomb project.

Post Reply

Return to “What if”