If Russia failed to get to Berlin and the US had a few extra nukes laying around.
Would the US have dropped nuclear bombs on Berlin?
Assuming there wasn’t any prospect of a quick conventional victory, probably.
The bomb was developed for use against Germany.
If it had been ready in time it probably would have been used.
I would suggest not actually.
Dropping a bomb on an island in a situation where you suffer from mental breakdown every inch you conquer
is different than
Dropping a bomb on a European city (where lots of refugees to US came from) within a small range of your own well advancing troops with an enemy already suffering from desertion and low moral.
Or do you suggest accidentaly dropping it a bit to far on Russians?
Except all the evidence is that the weapons were originally intended for use on Germany, and there was no evidence of German collapse a the time. When Germany did come close to collapse, they were shifted to Japan.
Wow. I never knew that.
Starting in November 1943, the Army Air Forces Materiel Command at Wright Field, Ohio, began Silverplate, the codename modification of B-29s to carry the bombs. Test drops were carried out at Muroc Army Air Field, California, and the Naval Ordnance Test Station at Inyokern, California. Groves met with the Chief of United States Army Air Forces (USAAF), General Henry H. Arnold, in March 1944 to discuss the delivery of the finished bombs to their targets. The only Allied aircraft capable of carrying the 17-foot (5.2 m) long Thin Man or the 59-inch (150 cm) wide Fat Man was the British Avro Lancaster, but using a British aircraft would have caused difficulties with maintenance. Groves hoped that the American Boeing B-29 Superfortress could be modified to carry Thin Man by joining its two bomb bays together. Arnold promised that no effort would be spared to modify B-29s to do the job, and designated Major General Oliver P. Echols as the USAAF liaison to the Manhattan Project. President Roosevelt instructed Groves that if the atomic bombs were ready before the war with Germany ended, he should be ready to drop them on Germany.
When they started developing the A Bombs for use originally, Germany was still occupying large amounts of Europe. They did not know what the effects would be of the bombs, there were plenty of scientists who even doubted they would work. By the time it was developed into a workable weapon it was too late to use on Germany.
The weapons development carried on because it had the potential of being a very powerful and destructive weapon.
As for dropping an A Bomb near their own troops, Berlin may have been the probable target, I don’t know but the Western Allies never got too close to it. German refugees (who may or may not have wished to go to the US after the war) would also have had little bearing on a decision.
Of course, even if the Soviet Red Army wasn’t close to Berlin, the British and the Americans would be. I think I’ve read speculations that if Monty kept driving his forces as fast as he could have towards Berlin, Russians likely would have fired artillery near their positions as a shot-across-the-bow so to speak…
as i wrote in past, the germans were damn … lucky, the red army has broke the Berlin defence in april.If STalin delayed the Berlin offencive at least to …august.The Atomic Bombing committee might easy to sentence germans to terrible sufferings.
It was as much a consequence of the other Allies attacking from the west as the pressure from both sides forced the surrender.
If the attacks from the east and west had stalled and if in August 1945 there was no prospect of a quick conventional victory then it is most likely that Germany would have been the first victim of an atomic weapon.
It’s interesting to reflect upon the likely current attitude if that had happened and if what happened in Germany afterwards had been much the same as happened after the actual defeat of Germany in May 1945.
I think that, given Germany’s acceptance of its ‘war guilt’ and renunciation of Nazism, we in the West would feel much worse about unleashing atomic weapons on Germany than we do about unleashing them upon Japan which, at best, has been equivocal about or just downright denied its own ‘war guilt’, which is probably reinforced for Western Allies by the brutal and cruel treatment routinely handed out to their forces by the Japanese compared with the routinely much better treatment handed out to them by the Germans, both on the battlefield and especially in captivity.
There is also the underlying racial attitude that Germans are more like us, from the viewpoint of the English-speaking Allies, than Japanese, which makes the suffering of the Japanese less bad than if we inflicted it upon our own kind.
Still, …
It was accepted - even then - that Germany was collapsing already.
I’m convinced The West was far more concerned with the speed and impact of the Russian invasion than Berlin’s capitulation. Given the facts, the Soviet Union realized quite an effort, far more away from the western campaign. At the end, the West lost the race to Berlin.
Japan was collapsing, to the extent that it was isolated by air and sea and on the way to a degree of starvation for the whole population and unable to replenish its war supplies, before the atomic bombs were dropped on it. But the bombs were dropped just the same, because it hadn’t surrendered.
There is no reason to believe that the same approach wouldn’t have been taken to Germany which, unlike Japan, was resisting Allied forces on its home ground while refusing to surrender. The main home islands on Japan hadn’t even been invaded when the atomic bombs were dropped.
Berlin’s capitulation was irrelevant.
It was about Germany surrendering.
How does this bear on whether or not the Americans, who had the atomic bomb, would have dropped it on Germany if Germany was still fighting when the bomb was available in August 1945?
that was synonym to me
How does this bear on whether or not the Americans, who had the atomic bomb, would have dropped it on Germany if Germany was still fighting when the bomb was available in August 1945?
It’s your believe they would have dropped it and it’s mine they would have been reluctant.
since 1943 the cold war was growing already. It was not about Germany’s capitulation. it was about slicing the pot in as few parts as possible. And the Soviet slice was big.
In Japan there were no Russians (yet).
This is just my point of view, but since Germany had a development program for Nuclear weapons of which the Allies had knowledge, it would not be such a struggle to decide to use, or not to use. Germany, had it not surrendered could (even if only in my estimation) still possibly have the ability to deploy some manner of nuclear weapon against an allied force, or nation. Add to that the " Germany first " prosecution of the war. As others have pointed out, the original plan for use of the A-bomb was Germany. Circumstances of timing might give one the impression that muscling out the soviets was the intent, but had the bomb been available,I’m thinking it would have been used before Barbarossa. (which is complete speculation on my part.)
Actually, the Western Allies largely halted and allowed the Red Army its prize of Berlin. It’s been a while since I’ve read about it in Beevor’s Downfall book, but I believe a Allied pincer movement of Patton and Monty could have been into the suburbs, at least, before the Soviets were close IIRC. Ike decided it wasn’t worth the cost in blood and treasure, and a possible confrontation with the Soviets…
If to believe to Beevor, the germans has almost stopped the resistense in the west since the march. They surrendered by the entire divisions. Except the few SS units which still resist fanatically- wermach was in hury to surrender to western allies as soon as possible.Just one interesting fact- when Hitler was demanding the 12 army of Venk to leave the western front and “come and save the Berlin” - Venk nowhere move. He prefered to surrender to the allies:)
how this hypotetic “race brothershood” might be in agenda, considering the facts above ( see the Rochard’s post), when Rosewelt argued the Gover that the bomb shold have been drop on …germany?
While the Japane , from point of day, should look like much more danger (and dastard) enemy.
Sad 
if true
realy sad.
It completely ruins all what’s left of the “benevolent saviour” character of Anglo-Saxon war effort.
That’s not entirely correct. Walther Wenck’s 12th Army consisted mainly of 17 and 18-year-old unexperienced recruits. He refused to sacrifice them for a senseless attempt to reach Berlin against superior Soviet forces. He instead tried and managed to unite with the 9th Army to establish a bridgehead on river Elbe’s eastern bank and lead as many troops and civilians to the west.
It comes back to the ‘Germany first’ policy.
All Allied resources were to be devoted primarily to the defeat of Germany, which included development of the atomic bomb.
Japan didn’t figure much in that view. At most only about 15% of America’s war effort was devoted to fighting Japan. While it was a vicious war for those fighting it, from a larger strategic viewpoint it wasn’t as important as defeating Germany.
Germany was probably just lucky that it surrendered before the atomic bomb was available for use.
If atomic bombs had been available in late 1944 when the western advance of the Allies stalled, I expect they would have been used against Germany. As they probably would have if they were available earlier in the war.