Would Hitler have used a nuclear weapon ?

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I think all tyrants would use a nuke if they could. The Romans would have used a nuke if they had one.

im not sure the romans would immeadiatly desire to use a nuclear weapon. simply because they tend to want to occupy the places they conquer and destroying an areas ability to sustain a population runs counter to that. also while they did have some less than stellar leaders very few of them were completely unchecked power wise. the senate was not completely powerless even after rome became an empire instead of a republic.

hitler however i believe would definitely use a nuclear weapon. he had no beliefs that limited him from attempting to destroy those he found undesirable and has a history of doing just that. i think given the kind of escalation we saw from him whenever anyone fought back it seems par for the course that he would use something as extreme as a nuclear bomb on his foes.

The UK didn't have nuclear weapons capability until 1952. So I don't know what you are talking about here.



That's not true. The UK has its own nuclear program called trident and it is independent of the U.S and its oversight.

UK nukes- It’s theoretical like the question I know the UK didn’t have them back then

That’s possibly true it’s long been a claim made, however it’s unlikely the UK would launch without US guidance

The other principles are true

The Russians launching on US will see a retaliatory strike on Russia back, but maybe on China too as would they allow China to dominate with the U.S. destroyed probably not.

China would possibly consider India a threat as they are in a sort of Cold War with them too, so may launch on them as well as back on U.S.

India will have to consider Pakistan as it’s in a Cold War with them. Does a destroyed India allow Pakistan to take Kashmir so may launch on them as well as China.

Will Pakistan launch on Israel? They have a kind of support for the Palestinians so may say what the hell.

Israel will then launch at Iran its enemy that would take advantage and so on

So this kind of chain reaction is likely in a nuclear war

Well that's the problem. He couldn't do half the things he wanted to because his resources were spread too thin and (contrary to his plans to blockade Britian) Germany was under blockade.It would have been more useful for him to nuke Stalingrad than London but 1945 would have been too late for that to be useful as well.

As for stopping an invading army, you don't nuke their capital city, you nuke the army itself. True you'll never get the whole army to stand in one place but you could still take out sizable chunks of them or use the bomb to deny them access to strategic positions.

I don't know...there were some pretty crazy Roman leaders, but I suppose they never had the option of absolute power so they didn't bring about total destruction.

I don't think he actually would have. Even if Germany at the time could develop and construct nuclear weapons, their stockpile would have been very limited and they would have acted better as a tool of intimidation than actually blowing up a city.

I think that even if modern terrorist organisations get hold of a nuke, they would rather use it to bully than destroy as they would still be very weak compared to an entire western state. The intimation factor is second to none.

That's not true. The UK has its own nuclear program called trident and it is independent of the U.S and its oversight.[/quote]

It's surprising how many countries have capable nuclear stockpiles now. France, UK, India, China, the US and Russia (obviously) but many nations who are not nuclear armed also have the materials and expertise needed to quickly make nukes if they need them. Japan, Australia, Brazil, South Korea, Germany, possibly South Africa.

I think all nations know the deterrence factor of them.

This statement makes less than zero sense.

When our Manhatten Project crossed the finish line and succeeded in making A bombs...the US ALSO HAD A LIMITED stock of A bombs(we only made about as many bombs as you have fingers on one hand). We tested one to see if it works on our own soil. And then we Americans dropped two on Japanese cities killing tens of thousands of civilians. Did so to demonstrate the power of the weapon. And it worked and the enemy surrendered.

So you're saying that if Hitler's nuke program had crossed the finish line first so that Hitler had a nuke and we didnt... that Hitler would have been...kinder and gentler than the allies and refrained from using it? And that he would have just DESCRIBED the power of his new weapon in letters to Stalin, Churchill, and FDR, and not have done what we did, and demonstrated its power by using it?

And what you're saying about modern terrorists...is like saying "modern terrorists would never use fertilizer truck bombs to level buildings and kill a 150 people because even with a fertilizer truck bomb a terrorist group would still be weak compared to the US army", or like saying "a terrorist group would never hijack an airliner and use it as a suicide weapon against a tall building and kill thousands because even if they hijacked an airliner they would still be weaker than the U.S. Army".

I think, possibly for the first time ever, I agree with Nades. I don't think he would have.

Mainly because for me, nukes make no sense in a war where your primary objective is to expand your territory. Which is what Hitler was doing. It's effectively nuking yourself.

Nukes are good for limiting an aggressive enemy's ability to attack you. That's what Hiroshima and Nagasaki were about. They were tactical targets, not purely displays of military might.

In modern times with massive nukes all over the place, I can imagine someone like Hitler put on the backfoot in a war and deciding if he can't have what he wants then he's going to take everyone down with him. That's what makes Putin scary.

But even if Hitler had access to nukes, they would have been much smaller than current ones and far fewer so it wouldn't have had the same impact. It wouldn't have been the same calculation. I think Nades is right that their value would be greater in intimidation than in use.

All this assumes he wasn't just completely deranged by the end.

In 1945, Hitler would have definitely used nuclear weapons. No leader in 1945 would have held back with them. It was just a super bomb with a different explosive device. Initial understanding of the long-term radioactivity dangers of nuclear weapons was sorely lacking. MAD didn't exist as a concept yet.

Would Hitler use nuclear weapons nowadays? 1945 paranoid delusional Hitler probably would. 1940 Hitler, still with one foot in reality, probably wouldn't, except maybe if invaded by Putin's Russia.

You cant intimidate anyone if you dont USE ONE OR TWO OF THEM FIRST to prove you really have a superweapon. The allies would not have just assumed that if "Hitler says he has a super weapon it must be so.. so whoooooahhh...we cant mess with him anymore".

Thats why we used them on Japan. So why would Hitler be different?

I'm taking into account the state Germany was in throughout much of the war. Enriching uranium or making plutonium back then was a massive endeavour and Germany could have ill afforded a sizable nuclear weapons program.

At best they would have one or two bombs with little resources left to replace them. Obviously a test would have been needed and that alone would have made the allied forces crap their pants without killing a soul. They would have probably detected one going off even back then.

i just shudder to think what could have happened had hitler's heavy water experiments were not interrupted.

Still doesnt make any sense.

Nazi Germany was on easy street for most of the war. Women didnt have to work in factories and remained homemakers in Nazi Germany (while Japan, the US, and the UK, all depended upon "Rosie the Riveter" to build their weapons ships and planes while the men fought). It didnt get desperate until near the end.

Heisenburg was the ruff equivalent to Oppenheimer (pivotal to the Nazi program). And Heisenburg told Hitler that "the critical mass of uranium for a chain reaction is likely twenty tons of uranium, we couldnt drop a bomb that big and heavy even if we could build one" (huge overestimate) so that persuaded Hitler to invest less in that and more into other stuff...like the V1 and V2 rockets...which were rather useless... killed a lot of enemy civilians but did nothing to slow the allied war effort. IF Heisenburg had been more accurate and been a better salesman for the program Hitler wouldve invested less in rockets and more in the A bombs (for example). If Hitler had tested a bomb, and made a newsreel of it maybe it would have scared the allies. But if it were 1945 the allies were already at his doorstep so they would have pressed on anyway. And knowing Hitler he probably would have tested it ON enemy POWs or on concentration camp prisoners (dont know where you get the idea that Hitler was about saving lives).

A weapon like that...you test it in secret because it might fail and cause you humiliation. You dont test it in public. You make sure it works first -in secret-- THEN you flatten an enemy city for your coming out party. Thats what we did. Thats what Hitler would have done (if he had the bomb first and we didnt have one to retaliate with).

There are other reasons too why I don't think he would have used it. Germany had fairly advanced biological and chemical weapons but never used them on the battlefield or civilians, likely because they knew about the retaliation that would have happened. I think Hitler would have been equally indecisive on using a nuke.

The US's use of the nukes might have been partially because they knew the axis forces couldn't retaliate with nukes or much in general.