I am not familiar with how nuclear weapons developed and how fast you could produce them, but "Fat Man" and "Little Boy" didn't cause more damage than the firebombing of Hamburg, Dresden or Tokio. These were not the nuclear weapons of the cold war. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are still two densely populated cities. These bombs did not turn these cities into Chernobyl.
Nuclear weapons, Bomber Command managed to create about 4 fire storms during the war, nuclear weapons reliably create city destroying events, add the higher casualties at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were in part due to an unwarned population, think of how productive the economy becomes if everyone needs to take shelter from single or small formations of enemy bombers or just aircraft in the area. Arthur Harris reported 370 attacks on 70 German urban areas, pre war population of around 22,800,000, resulted in 49% of the urban area destroyed, Hamburg listed as 75% destroyed, Dresden 59%.
Also: apparently 1930 Me262 were produced, but only 1433 were taken into Luftwaffe-service. Most of them were destroyed or damaged in transport, usually by allied aircraft who at that time could roam free. Only 100 were operational at a time, 232 were lost to enemy fire, 727 lost in accidents, and according to most sources I found only 100 were shot down. Inexperienced pilots were a major problem. The lack of fuel did not only keep the Me262 on the ground, in prevented adequate training. And apparently the R4M-rockets were very effective against bombers. In Ziegler's "Hitler's Jet Plane: The ME 262 Story" you can read that on march 18, 1945, 6 Me262 engaged 1221 bombers and 632 escort fighters. During the battle, the Me262's launched 144 R4M-rockets. Result was that 25 bombers were lost, for just 2 Me262. Now imagine what 60 would have caused, and this happening more often.
Actual US bomber losses on 18 March 1945 were 13 MIA and 15 category E according to Roger Freeman, total 28, 2 B-24, rest B-17, the 24 losses I have the cause for have 7 to fighter (mostly jet), 5 battle damage, 11 flak, 1 collision, once again someone is giving the total loss figure without noting causes. 37 Me262 in the air and most made intercept, JG7 lost 5 aircraft including 2 that collided with each other, known claims 11 B-17 and 3 P-51. When it came to the Me262 experienced pilots were the main problem, they were used to roughly handling the throttles, new pilots initially did better, by March 1945 the veterans were learning better.
The Wehrmacht 1944 was never fully operational because of the severe fuel shortage, and low morale because of the lack of air support.
If German oil output was higher pre war then the German economy would be more oil based, requiring a higher level of fuel to operate, think of diesel powered fishing boats instead of wind or coal as a simple example, the increased need for rubber for tyres, the US Synthetic rubber program was I believe bigger or at least comparable to the Manhattan project. The US only managed to make a small cut in its civil fuel use in WWII which was commendable given the major increase in economic activity, to a first approximation US military fuel consumption came from increased output. Look at Romanian fuel consumption as another example. Other problems include the higher the octane the less per barrel. The military can only squeeze the civilian economy so far before it becomes counter productive.
To mid 1944 no German operation was fuel constrained at the strategic level, and late 1944 for the army, there were inevitable local shortages. Italian Naval operations could have usefully done with more fuel. More fuel supply pre war gives the possibility of more mobile forces being created and therefore a better quality army if the funds can be found. As the US found truck supply beyond 200 miles does not work, you need working rail links, in late 1941 the Germans could try one last offensive to end the war in the east by taking Moscow or remain around their rail heads, where the supply system could better cope with demands like winter clothing. However as the original plan was fighting ends before winter there was going to be a clothing problem, the US had this in 1944, the allied advance went further than planned, into colder areas in Germany instead of around half way across France. Failure to knock out the USSR in 1941 means Britain has another year to prepare defences, Dowdings' 60 odd day and night fighter squadrons in 1940 had grown to 83 in October 1941.
In mid 1940 the Luftwaffe could use captured aircraft to provide the hardware for major expansion of the training system, historically it took until 1943 for day fighter pilots to graduate in the numbers needed to handle the Battle of Britain losses. The trouble was to find instructors. The 1940 fighting showed the Luftwaffe needed to become larger, this was ignored even as it became clear the USSR was going to be invaded. Assuming expansion the Luftwaffe would have to cut the average experience in its combat units for Barbarossa to provide instructors, given it took a year to train a pilot for example and it would not change the outcome of Barbarossa.
Germany's war ability was declining as the 19th century coal/iron gave way to steel, light metals and oil as vital supplies. Capture of the French Bauxite deposits etc., along with rigging occupied country's currency exchange rates, and charging security/occupation fees, often in kind like food, removed key financial constraints from German production. One short cut everyone tried was to reduce maintenance and keep older equipment like locomotives in service for longer. By 1944/45 that had reached its limits, Britain was drafting men into the coal mines, many preferred the infantry. Add pest control and irrigation system neglect as problems for growing food.
Finance, the Nazis embraced deficit spending, plus off the books loans, to create the 1930's German military, German standards of living were still below the late 1920's and stayed there. It meant in 1940 the German government spent more money in loan repayments and interest than on the war. Despite all the stimulus in numeric terms the Germans in the second half of the 1930's were building about as many aircraft as the depression mired US industry, though the German types were on average heavier and more sophisticated. In the middle/late 1930's the Royal Navy thought total cost of ownership of a naval aircraft over its 5 year life was 11,500 pounds per year, or about 5 to 6 aircraft to a J class destroyer. Ark Royal with its 72 aircraft around 1,308,000 pounds a year over its 20 year lifetime, a Nelson class battleship was 706,800 pounds a year over its 25 year lifetime.
Medium tanks cost around the same as a fighter as a first approximation, then comes running costs. WO 169/3861 (Eighth Army), a document from the G(AFV) Branch dated 'End Sept.' [1942] headed "Tank Overhaul Programme." It gives the overhaul mileage limit/annual mileage rate/time in workshops for overhaul (weeks) as:
Crusader 1200 / 3000 / 8
Valentine 2500 / 3000 / 8
Matilda 1000 / 3000 / 8
Stuart 3500 / 3000 / 4
Grant 1500 / 3000 / 8
Which firstly shows how few miles per year the tanks were expected to do, and the distance they could travel before they needed a major overhaul. You would expect the time between overhauls to be at least basically related to the great "reliability" tag. And indeed looking at the above the Stuart became the Honey, and the Valentine has a good reputation for reliability. Lots of tanks soak up lots of money.
As Germany was at full employment in 1939 the mobilisation caused economic problems, as over 4 million were called up, the civil work force dropped by about 3.5 million, even after another 0.9 million foreigners/PoW were used.
The Germans drafted plenty of non Germans into the military and into the civil workforce. As the official figures count working family members in the agriculture sector, German women in the work force went from 14.6 to 14.9 million 1939 to 1944, men went from 24.5 to 13.5 million, foreign/PoW 0.3 to 7.5 million, so the work force shrank and as the war went on the conditions for foreigners deteriorated and so did their productivity.
Food, the 5 WWII famines, Greece, Holland, Bengal, China, Indo China. The US cut rations to its ETO non combat personnel in early 1945 and extended the cut to the rest after VE day. Putting economies back together again proved hard, Italy had plenty of problems even after a year to allied control. Allied relief supplies to The European Theatre of Operations, long tons, by quarter, excluding liquid fuels,
Q2/44 727 (In other words 6 to 30 June 1944)
Q3/44 157,639
Q4/44 588,968
Q1/45 1,359,657
Q2/45 2,336,556
Q3/45 2,211,080
Total 6,654,627 long tons, in addition a further 6,853,313 long tons was sent to the Mediterranean in the same time period. Overall the mix was roughly 50:50 food:coal, with England supplying more coal and the US more food, all up the US supplied 6,788,765 tons, England 6,098,902 tons and Canada 620,273 tons.
If the fighting in Europe continues into late 1945 expect famine in German controlled areas and real problems in allied ones without some meaningful changes to food supply. Norway was having problems for example as the Germans were exporting most to all of its fish catch. Japan had people starve to death in its 1945/46 winter and received food aid from the US in 1946. To obtain V-2 fuel seed potatoes were used to make alcohol.
This lack of morale led to millions of them surrendering without a fight. The western allies took about 7-8 million POWs between the landing in Normandy and the 8th of may 1945, the soviets 2-3 million. Imagine these 10 millon men putting up a real fight. You probably would have had Verdun/Somme instead of the Falaise Pocket.
No. I think just US ETO Prisoner take, Jun-44 21,195, Jul-44 69,309, Aug-44 80,015, Sep-44 119,374, Oct-44 48,216, Nov-44 77,945, Dec-44 57,447, Jan-45 51,071, Feb-45 81,238, Mar-45 371,861, Apr-45 1,878,898, May-45 2,623,798. The US ETO lost around 57,500 men captured.
Try Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth Century by Colonel General Krivosheev for the Red Army's idea of the figures.
PoWs taken by the USSR, 1941 10,602, Jan to Jun 1942 6,683, Jul to Dec 1942 172,143, Jan to Jun 1943 364,881, Jul to Dec 1943 77,742, Jan to Jun 1944 256,415, Jul to Dec 1944 948,530, Jan to Apr 1945 1,305,344, 1 to 8 May 1945 634,950
Total 3,777,290, composed of 2,389,560 Germans, 156,682 Austrians, 513,767 Hungarians, 201,800 Romanians, 48,957 Italians, 2,377 Finns, with the remaining 464,147 made up of French, Slovaks, Czechs, Bulgarians, Spanish, "etc.".
It notes some 450,000 Germans, 54,700 Hungarians and 40,000 Romanians died in captivity. The table that footnotes the deaths in captivity gives a figure of 182,000 PoWs from men from Austria, Sudeten German, natives of Alsace, Lorraine and Luxembourg serving in the Wehrmacht. Note the figures do not include men taken prisoner post 8 May 1945.
Most of the millions of people captured were done so in the final 2 months of the war.
I don't think the American public would have accepted such losses. And sorry, I don't see the American military as this epic fighting force, their wars since 1945 don't indicate that at all.
The dead of the US civil war are estimated at 2% of the population, 620,000 men, which is a marker for what the US could sustain, it is similar to WWI+WWII, and in the 19th century there were higher disease tolls as well.
These atom bombs were probably very expensive and time consuming to produce. They would have to transport them by ship, unless they produce them in Britain, and a lot of them would get lost at sea.
According to the USN the allies lost 51 merchant ships to submarines January to April 1945, Rohwer notes at least 10 of these in the Arctic. Both the USN and RN had cruisers able to do 30 knot voyages US to UK.
Post war tests of the type XXI U-boats showed up a number of problems, including build quality and optimistic diving depths
They also had just executed people like Canaris, his co-conspirators, and about 2000 other suspected traitors, spies, resistance members or whatever you want to call them. Canaris was the chief of the German military intelligence service Abwehr and a British agent.
Canaris was anti Nazi, passed plenty, or allowed plenty, of information to the allies, but not a foreign agent.
A fun topic to research is how often German aircraft with new technology accidentally landed on British airfields, totally undamaged, so that the British can study them. When the British were having trouble with the new Fw190, a pilot accidentally landed his fresh-out-of-the-box Fw190 on a British airfield. The British could then study it's design, strengths, weaknesses.
And allied aircaft did the same, usual errors along with radio beacon interference, I think at least one trans Atlantic B-17/24 flew to Europe for example. The Fw190 arrival was 23 June 1942, second arrival on 17 April 1943, third on 20 May, fourth on 20 June
Now maybe this can happen by accident, but in case of the Lichtenstein-radar, it clear what was going on there:
In April 1943 a Ju 88 C-6 equipped with a FuG 202 B / C had landed in England,
On April 28, 1944, a Bf 110 with the registration C9+EN with the Lichtenstein SN-2 radar landed at Dübendorf Airport in Switzerland
On 13 July 1944 the improved version of the SN-2 fell into Allied hands after a fully equipped Ju 88 G-1 accidentally landed at RAF Woodbridge in south-east England
Ok, three times? That is not a coincidence. For more of these look up "Oslo Report" for example.
Ju88C in May 43 was a defection. The Bf110G landed in Switzerland on 15 March 1944, tested by the Swiss, their report says it was the older set, not SN-2. The British were working on the new radar wavelength in May 44 from things like gun camera footage of shoot downs, and knew from their own night fighters the Germans had changed wavelengths, the Ju88G landed in error July 1944, when the allies had a reasonable handle on SN-2 wavelength but how good the Flensburg (Monica) and Naxos (H2X) homers were was unknown. Before that signals interception had revealed the Germans were tracking IFF and H2S at least but not enough for action to be taken. See R.V. Jones
Oslo report was a comprehensive report on German military research and development.
General Halder, German Army in the east cumulative casualty figures to
06-Nov-41 6,017 officers and 139,164 men killed, 496 officers and 28,355 men missing, 15,919 officers and 496,157 men wounded
10-Dec-41 6,827 officers and 155,972 men killed, 562 officers and 31,922 men missing, 18,229 officers and 561,575 men wounded
10-Jan-42 7,337 officers and 173,455 men killed, 674 officers and 38,611 men missing, 19,564 officers and 628,325 men wounded
10-Feb-42 7,872 officers and 191,276 men killed, 729 officers and 43,730 men missing, 21,130 officers and 681,236 men wounded
10-Mar-42 8,456 officers and 210,595 men killed, 805 officers and 47,954 men missing, 22,551 officers and 750,634 men wounded
31-Mar-42 8,827 officers and 223,553 men killed, 855 officers and 51,665 men missing, 23,541 officers and 799,389 men wounded
In the first 4.5 months to 6 November around 686,000 casualties, in the slightly longer time period 7 November to 31 March 1942 422,000 casualties, plenty of winter casualties, plenty of casualties before winter. In 1941 a near all German force attacked all across the front, in 1942 half the front was kept quiet and 4 axis allied armies were deployed. The Luftwaffe largely gave up interdiction to do battlefield support given the weakness of the ground troops. The Heer was in trouble from 1942 onwards maintaining unit strength.
The Red Army performance moving into Poland and the winter war gave it a poor reputation, overall not as bad as Hitler chose to believe but bad enough.
US Jet fighter orders, the J program, approved June 1943,
500 P-80A, contract AC-2527
K program approved June 1944
500 P-80A, contract AC-2527
3000 P-80A contract AC-8388
1000 P-80N contract AC-7717
25 YP-84 and 75 P-84 contract AC-7687
As of end April 1945, 1,000 P-80A on formal contracts, the rest of the jets on approved letter contracts.
The air forces played a fundamental part in ensuring ground combat in WWII was more mobile, apart from the combat effect and the much bigger size of the air forces compared with WWI, the need for large AA defences well to the rear of the front line, back to the factories, meant less manpower available for the front line.