“Particularly in light of Germany’s development of the V2 and ME-262 - had Germany still been fighting, their nazi-a$$es would have been lit up.”
I just don’t see it, sorry. America had a solid idea as to how long the war would last after the success of Overlord. Bradley and the American R+D and supply chain was set up to use what they got at Overlord and stay with it to the end of the war.
Again, the cutoff for the effectiveness of a nuclear weapon in Europe was Overlord. If it wasn’t ready by then - the war would be over before it had a chance to come to bear.
Sure - the R+D would continue at that point of the war as a hedge, but at least in a logistics and operation sense, America believed that Overlord would be decisive at ending the war in their favor.
Development of the bomb in ‘45 makes perfect sense to me given Truman’s understanding of the war. He believed and invasion would be necessary after the 3 month battle of Okinawa and the difficulty the American forces had in taking the Island. If Okinawa was difficult, than Japan would be even harder. It all fits together. Okinawa didn’t end until June - Trinity was in July and the atomic bombing of Japan a month later.
But Germany was going to be a cake-walk? Your reasoning seems to be based very much after-the-fact.