Re: What if no Manhatten Project

Berlin is scheduled to be divided into several different areas anyway.  The
Soviets turned large areas of it over to us at the end of the war in OTL.

What's important is the Nazi leadership and what happens to them (and who
gets captured) and what interesting bits of Germany the Western Allies
occupy first and therefore which stuff they get to steal rather than what
the USSR gets to steal...

Leading to Eisenhower ordering him to turn it over to the Soviets....

Almost certainly a lot more effort into ULTRA and more and better decryption
devices.

No B-29 probably means a jet fighter sees combat much earlier.

Possibly a US heavy tank reaches the battlefields before 1945.

Patton takes Berlin in March 1945...

From which we can conclude that the bomb was of limited consequence.  A
horrific thing in a long litany of horrific things but not sufficiently
different from what had happened before.

The Soviet declaration of war was on the 8th, the second bomb on the 9th
and the surrender on the 15th.  The first two events were a day apart,
the third a week later.

However the other Wiki article, Pacific_War, tries to be more
even-handed.  It notes, 'The effects of the "Twin Shocks" - the atomic
bombing and the Soviet entry - were profound. On August 10, the "sacred
decision" was made by Japanese Cabinet to accept the Potsdam terms on
one condition: the "prerogative of His Majesty as a Sovereign Ruler". At
noon on August 15, after the American government's intentionally
ambiguous reply, stating that the "authority" of the emperor "shall be
subject to" the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, the Emperor
broadcast to the nation and to the world at large the rescript of
surrender.'[*]

Clearly a decision taken on 10 August would be before the Japanese
government appreciated the rapidity of the Soviet advances in
Manchuria.  But in an ATL without the atomic bombings, where there is
but a 'single shock', there is time for the ghastliness of the Kwantung
Army's position to sink in.  This would still allow for a late August,
early September surrender.

But I have been overlooking a critical thing.

I can almost hear David Flin whispering in my ear that production
undertaken in one area is production foregone in another.  David used to
point this out in his Sealion debunking.  If a poster postulated a Nazi
Germany that, prior to 1940, spent more effort on landing craft,
aeroplanes and surface warships then David would argue that this would
come at a cost in tanks and artillery that would make the conquest of
France - a prerequisite for Sealion - impossible.

No Manhattan Project works the other way.  If we take the project out of
the equation of the US war effort, what do we add back in in the
project's place?  More conventional weapons: more, better bombers;
Sherman tanks with 85mm guns; more GIs with physics degrees?  Much of
the additional matériel will go across the Atlantic in line with the
Allies' 'Germany first' policy.  Berlin falls sooner in this ATL.  But
some will go to the Pacific; with more available after the fall of
Germany.  The USSR honours her Potsdam obligations, going to war 3
months after this TL's earlier VE Day.  Japan's downfall is accelerated.

Paradoxically, Japanese surrender could be sooner in a No Manhattan
Project timeline.

[*]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_War#Atomic_bomb_and_the_Soviet_invasion
quoting Sadao Asada - _The Shock of the Atomic Bomb and Japan's Decision
to Surrender: A Reconsideration_. The Pacific Historical Review, Vol.
67, No. 4 (Nov., 1998), pp. 477-512

- Syd

They could have surrendered right after the first nuclear bomb.  They
didn't.

They surrendered after the second bomb.

Their first reaction to the attack by the Soviet Union,  the strength and
power of which was unknown, was a strengthening of their resolve to fight,  
as evidenced by the minister of war laying plans for martial law on the main
Japanese islands.

This is not the reaction of a man looking to surrender

The one that says:

"Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's research has led him to conclude that the atomic
bombings were not the principal reason for capitulation. Instead, he
contends, it was the swift and devastating Soviet victories on the mainland
in the week following Joseph Stalin's August 8 declaration of war that
forced the Japanese message of surrender on August 15, 1945.[13] His claim,
however, has been criticized because it ignores the fact that the Imperial
Headquarters in Tokyo knew that a full-scale invasion had begun but were
unaware of how badly the fighting in Manchuria was going".

[snip]

I'd rephrase that as, "In the events leading up to the Japanese
surrender, two atom bombs were dropped."

I assume you are referring to the Battle of Khalkhin-Gol and its
aftermath.  The Soviet forces involved were an over-strength corps.  All
Stalin was looking for was a cease-fire.  He achieved his war-aim and
was rewarded with a free hand in Europe.  There was no further
Soviet-Japanese conflict for six years, until the USSR was ready to
crush the IJA.

This can be contrasted with the Soviet offensive of 9th August 1945.
Manchuria was invaded by twelve Soviet armies including 1.5 million men,
27 000 artillery pieces, 5 500 tanks and SPGs, and 3 700 aircraft.[1]

The Soviets had learnt from their former German foes and mounted a
classic blitzkrieg.  As Wikipedia informs us, "After a week of fighting,
during which Soviet forces were already penetrating deep into Manchukuo,
Japan's Emperor Hirohito read the Gyokuon-hoso on August 15, 1945 and
declared a ceasefire in the region the next day."[2]

The significance of Manchuria was that, "On economic grounds, Manchuria
was worth defending since it had the bulk of usable industry and raw
materials outside of Japan and still under Japanese control in
1945."[2]  With the loss of Manchuria there was no longer an Empire
worth fighting for, only the Home Islands.  Unconconditional surrender
was looking a loss less unpalatable, as long as the person of the
Emperor could be safeguarded.

I'm not saying that the atom bombs didn't have an effect, simply that
they were two of a number of disasters befalling the Japanese at the
time.

[1] Source: The incredibly useful wikipedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Manchuria

[2] Ibid.

- Syd

It took two bombs to make them surrender.  If they'd packed it in with just
one it would have been a bit different,  but it needed two...

The Japanese showed no inclination to surrender on the Chinese mainland when
trounced by the Soviets

The OPERATION ZIPPER landings took place on schedule despite the Japanese
surrender.

Without the nuclear bomb induced surrender this would have been opposed as
well.

In a delayed A-bomb timeline?  For the reasons given in my previous
post.  Navy destroyed by USN, Army being destroyed by Red Army, civilian
population being starved and killed steadily by HE bombs and
incendiaries.  More dead Japanese combatants and civilians in the ATL by
mid-September than in OTL.

- Syd

Why?

Assuming the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessary
preconditions to the Japanese surrender in August of OTL.  And it's true
that in OTL the surrender decision was not a universal consensus among
the Japanese leadership.

But in OTL the Home Islands were under siege by submarine, surface and
air.  The Imperial Japanese Navy was largely destroyed.  Tokyo had been
fire bombed.  The Imperial Japanese Army had been routed in Manchuria by
the Soviet blitzkrieg.  The Empire was lost.

ISTM a Japanese surrender in August/September 1945 is on the cards.  In
OTL Japan surrendered on 15 August 1945.  By 15 September in the ATL
both Japanese civilians and military will have suffered worse losses.
There isn't the fear of nuclear weapons in the ATL but the Red Army, the
USAAF and the USN are still to be feared.

If we do have TL with Japanese surrender before US nuclear ordinance can
be unleashed then I fear we have the position Pete Barrett described
elsewhere in this thread: a TL that does not have the precedent of a
small nuclear war.  In OTL the US unleashed her full nuclear arsenal
against Japan.  In an ATL where the first nuclear war is fought by a
power, or powers, with a large nuclear arsenal I fear they will drop the
lot.

- Syd

A lot of Allied soldiers die...

The Soviets know all about the bomb anyway.

Fuchs told them and gave them the vital information necessary to make their
own device.

I agree - so what happens if the Trinity weapon is not ready until the
US has landed in Kyusho - say around Oct/Nov 1945?

They don't spend the sort of money that the Manhattan Project cost if they
weren't pretty sure they were going to get a working weapon out of it at
some point.

There were an awful lot of other technology projects that could have used
the resources and brains swallowed whole by that vast endeavour.

Don't back-project.

Once the Bomb was built, the concept of an
absolutely decisive weapon was proven.

Before, it was blue-sky. Nobody _knows_
that it will work or how powerful it could be.

"The leader of one of the powers" cannot
decide on his own to spend billion$ on a
blue-sky project; nor is it likely that a
leader would make such a decision without
strong encouragement from the relevant
scientists.

Other players would be involved, mostly
in opposition: the "conventional" armed
forces, which want every available penny
to maintain as much as they can of their
wartime establishment and continue
acquiring the latest developments; the
politicians, who want to cut military
spending for domestic needs and to
reduce taxes.

Stalin, of course, could override all
such objections, but not Truman or
Attlee.

Yes, something like the Cold War
will develop. But not immediately.
There was no serious perception of
threat in the U.S. for several years.

I agree. The Cold war was going to happen anyway, and if you're the
leader of one of the powers, and there's a chance that you can develop
a new super waepon, then you're going to do it, because
a) war might break out any time, and it might help to win it, and
b) the other lot might get there first.

In this TL, where the A-bomb has not actually been used against
people, so that no one knows quite what it will do (some people will
have a theoretical idea, but theory is nothing compared to actually
seeing pictures of what it's done to a city and the inhabitants),
there must be a good chance that the Cold War will go hot. Mutual
paranoia, and the feeling that being nuked may be an acceptable price
to pay to win the war, could easily do that.

It's even possible that nuclear weapons won't be classed in the
'special' category. In that case they might be used against smaller
countries just as a big bomb. The US might use them in Korea or
Vietnam. The USSR might use them in Hungary or Czechoslovakia. Britain
might use them against Egypt.

All in all, not a nice world.

Question whether the post V-E day effort would be minimal, certain
areas like B-52 and B-36, nuke submarines, ballistic missiles all got
boosts over fears of Soviet expansion. Dominos.

Not in the sense of who won or lost.
But the use of the Bomb ended the
war a lot sooner than if it had been
necessary to invade and conquer
Japan on the ground. Hundreds of
thousands of additional deaths
would have occurred.

People were dying in large numbers
in Japanese occupied China and
SE Asia. Public health was on the
verge of collapse in Japan, with
massive outbreaks of typhus and
cholera threatening. The Soviet
campaign in Manchuria and Korea
was quite destructive. The continued
fighting and skirmishing in the
Philippines, New Guinea, and the
South Pacific was drawing blood.
There was a huge British campaign
in train to liberate Malaya. Japanese
HQ was contemplating the wholesale
slaughter of all PoWs and possibly
of all civilian internees as well.

All this is in addition to the enormous
casualties that would be almost
certain if the Allies invaded Japan.

So "the outcome" was deeply
affected by the Bomb.

Stalin was not in any particularly
aggressive mood at the end of the war.
He took what he was given (a lot),
helped Mao take China. It's not clear
how much he was deterred by the U.S.
Bomb and how much by the sheer
exhaustion of the USSR by WW II.

Probably around 1950 in the USSR.
Soviet scientists were speculating
on the possibility of atomic weapons
in 1940. In 1942, a young scientist
in Army service wrote to Stalin urging
research into what might be a war-
winning weapon. Stalin met with the
leading physicists; they told him the
Bomb was possible but probably
not achieveable during the war.  So
he decided to set up a paper project
to be activated after victory.

This decision may have been
influenced by intel from Soviet spies
in the Manhattan Project, which
provided confirmation - the Americans
and British thought it was possible too!

However, even with intel from the
successful MP, the USSR took until
1949 to build a Bomb. Without that
intel, it takes longer. And there is a
possibility that Stalin purges physics,
as he did biology, in which case the
Soviet Bomb is set back many years.
(OTL, Stalin _knew_ the Bomb was
for real, and left physics alone.)

Bomb projects in the US or UK won't
get much support after V-E Day if
they aren't already showing promise
of success. Besides the difficulty of
getting the necessary budget in
peacetime, a large proportion of key
scientists in the field would oppose
the project on pacifist grounds. OTL
they supported it out of fear of Nazi
Germany; that's gone.

I am reading a bio of Szilard.

I get the impression that a wrong turn or two in the early efforts to
engineer the nuclear chain-reaction might have led to no big US A-bomb
development effort during the war.

The Bomb was not important for the outcome of WWII.   But I guess it
might have slowed down Soviet agression in Europe and W. Asia.

If the project was delayed and there was no big push during WWII,
then when would the Bomb have been first tested, if ever?