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To: Sherman Logan
WW2 was closer than you think. If Hitler had gotten jet planes into production, or missiles that reached the US, or had not stupidly given up on nuclear weapons, the war could have gone the other way. He may not have been able to invade and hold the US, but he could have won the rest of the west, with Japan holding the east. We had a little bit of good fortune.

If you look at it only in terms of industrial production, then victory was inevitable. But the Germans almost got modern weapons before us, and that would have changed things.

38 posted on 02/17/2014 1:11:54 PM PST by Defiant (Let the Tea Party win, and we will declare peace on the American people and go home.)
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To: Defiant

Except that the US would still have had nukes in the summer of 42, which would have ended the war just as easily against Germany as they did against Japan.

Jet planes, or ICBMs would not have changed the equation as much as you think. Missiles in particular were remarkably ineffective as actual weapons of war unless topped by nukes. V2s landed on UK for quite a long time, but militarily were at most a nuisance. Jets had the potential to make bombing of Germany impossible, and provide Germany with command of the air above Europe. But they would not of themselves have changed the course of the war greatly.

The big issue is of course the A-bomb, an issue I’ve read up on to a considerable extent. Germany never came remotely close to developing even the theory necessary, much less the immense industrial infrastructure. Ironically, many if not most of those who developed our Bomb had fled Europe to escape the Nazis.

Even more ironic is that the Nazis were resistant to the very idea of the Bomb, as they considered the physics behind it to be “Jewish science.”


46 posted on 02/17/2014 4:51:28 PM PST by Sherman Logan
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