Re: Hitler had 5 Atomic Bombs on April 1, 1945
Talk of "destroying" London, Birmingham, New York, Moscow etc is a bit far fetched with 1945 nuclear bombs.
I've attached a map of London, laying the blast effects of a 20 kt bomb, about the same as used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The inner circle is severe damage, the outer moderate damage.
Certainly this would be hugely damaging, but with the allies so obviously in a position to crush Germany, there's no way Britain would surrender at this point. Don't forget, in 1940/41 Britain had endured the Blitz, which saw about 50,000 tons of bombs dropped, and 40,000 civilians killed. And they endured that at a time when victory was a very distant prospect.
And that's if the weapons could be delivered, which seems highly unlikely. Before he became a holocaust denier, David Irving wrote a history of the German nuclear projects. He describes the situation at the start of April:
"By now, the American troops were held up only five miles
from Stadtilm. On April 3, Gerlach reached Munich and tried
to contact Stadtilm. It was impossible. He wrote in his diary:
“Radio communications with Thuringia interrupted,” and
added “All my chrysanthemums are flowering on the balcony.”
He tried to contact the group through the local army headquarters,
again with no fortune. He resolved to drive to Stadtilm,
but the military situation made this impossible. Gradual
paralysis was overtaking Germany’s internal communications.
He could not even contact Erfurt, the nearest big city to Stad-
tilm. On April 8 he tried again through the local army headquarters,
but they could not contact northern Germany at all,
not even Berlin."
In circumstances like that, the idea that planes could be found and modified for the mission, and the bombs got to the airfields, seems far fetched.
|
