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Where would you drop the bomb?

Kipper

Grizzled Veteran
Mar 25, 2006
707
114
Connecticut, United States
As I posted on another forum:

It's December 1944. The Western Allies have advanced all the way up the to Rhine river and have captured several key locations including the deep water port city of Antwerp. In the east, the Soviet armies have pushed through the Ukraine, through Romania, large parts of Hungary and are just outside of Warsaw in Poland.

The situation looks grim. The Wehrmacht is desperately holding on in the east and has somewhat stabilized the front lines in the west. The Heer and Waffen SS units are badly mauled but still pack a significant punch and can still manage to mount two or three more major offensives. Your army is tired. They're akin to an aging heavy weight champion. He's slower now, tired, more sluggish but if his punch connects, it can still knock someone out. What you need is a decisive blow. Something to shatter your opponents with, disorient them and allow your punch to connect to buy you time or knock someone out of the war.

Good news. Werner Heisenberg and the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute under the direction of the Heereswaffenamt have made a major breakthrough in the field of atomic weaponry. You've been presented with two, fully functional, atomic weapons. Their yield is approximately 10-15kilotons (more or less what was dropped on Hiroshima in reality).

Now's your chance. Can you win the war? Can your force a peace? Where do you drop your bombs? How do you get them there? Bomber? Experimental V2 ICBM being developed by Hans Kammler of the SS? Where do you drop them? Do you attack Moscow, London, New York, or Washington D.C.? Maybe you bomb Antwerp in the hopes of seriously disrupting the Western Allies' logistics or maybe you bomb Soviet troop and supply hubs in the east? Will you use one bomb or both bombs? Will you coordinate your nuclear strikes with ground offensives by the Wehrmacht and Waffen SS?

For the scenario, you need to explain where, when and how you use your bombs and the remaining troops at your disposal. You don't have to use the Wehrmacht or Waffen SS. The Wehrmacht (Heer, Kriegsmarine, and Luftwaffe) and Waffen SS are at your disposal. You may use secret weapons projects that are reasonable for the time period and are known to have had working prototypes by this time period during the war.

Here are your situation maps for the Eastern front and the Western front . You may note the army groups present and move them around. Assume that whichever groups you choose to move can be outfitted for a proper offensive.

Edit: Just for the record, you get to pretend you're not a genocidal asshole killing Jews, Gypsies, and all other "inferior" people. We all know Nazis are pricks.
 
The post reads like you've donned a widebrimmed dictators hat and stocked up on high sugar drinks (This is not intended as an insult btw, it just reads this way to me:))

In answer to the dillema you have presented......if two such bombs were available then I would sue for conditional peace negotiations on the strength of the threat.
Logistically a counterattack would fail, munitions and personnel and associated materiel could not be deployed in sufficient numbers to present a sustained threat.
Pull all troops back to the border, ease supply lines and hope that peace ensues.
 
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Hitler probably would have dropped one on London. Since it was the target of most of his vengeance weapons. If his negotiations failed (if he tried any) his next target would probably have been New York. Moscow was out of reach, but a sub may have been able to get to New York undetected.
 
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Okay, I'll play the game (in the words of the immortal Joshua from WarGames).

I disagree with the two earlier posters. Threats of a nuke strike would have probably been ignored by both the Western and Eastern Allies. Hitler and his propaganda machine had been blowing smoke up everyone's arses for over two years in regards to wonder weapons. They just would have ignored it short of some conclusive proof of the weapons themselves, which the Nazis would not have divulged anyway.

So, keeping in mind that Hitler's number one personal enemy was the Soviets, I could see him diverting all effective forces to the East, except for holding forces on the Rhine. This shift in forces would have included the Luftwaffe and certain strong Heer and SS Panzer divisions. He might have made one huge push to get a portion of the First Byelorussian Front back across the Vistula, resulting most likely in another Bulge-type situtation, yet larger in scale. By no means would they have re-established lines resembling those before Operation Bagration. Remember, that by December/January the Soviet armies were pushing the end of their supply lines. That's why Zhukov couldn't follow through on an Oder offensive into the Reich in January.

Once having a deep bulge established back into Byelorussian (and possibly Ukrainian territory), Hitler would have sent a long range bomber force launched from forward bases in the Bulge, escorted by ME-262 jets to nuke either Minsk, Kiev, or Leningrad; all cities much closer than Moscow. This would have had both a strategic and psychological effect on the Soviets. Hitler may have paused for a few days to see what the Allied reaction would would be.

If they were all brought to the table he may been able to work out a conditional peace accord, thus initiating an alternative version of the Cold War. If not, he may have proceeded with Plan B. Five nights after the bombing of the Soviet city, he would have sent a similar strike force to nuke Paris - the location of a large portion of the Allied command and a very symbolic target indeed. Threats (most likely false) would have issued from Goebbel's ministry that more strikes were imminent: London, Antwerp, Moscow, Murmansk, etc. The result would have been likely the same as Plan A. The Allies would have come to accomodation in Europe. Whether the Germans would have extended any protection to the Japanese is still open for speculation.

Likely, the Reich would have been able to retain territory in the Low Countries, Germany, Prussia, Pomerania, Czechoslovakia, parts of Hungary, parts of Poland, and possibly in the Baltic republics.
 
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The problem is that Germany is failing economically at this point, and the end is inevitable. The bombs are too small to be back-breaking over large troop formations, the only hope would be for a shock-value attack against allied command or populations.

Problem with this is that the Western Allies, with the US, have an absurdly vast amount of industrial capacity, strong knowladge of what it takes to make an atom bomb, and a runaway program of thier own. Even if Ze Germans nuke two targets, the Allies would, in my estimation, bet that thier nuclear capacity was exhausted or near-exhausted and fight on. It would be a big hit for morale, but it would by no means end the fight or force peace at this late stage in the game.

Now it would be more interesting if the Germans had the bombs back in June of '44 and could crush the Normandy landings. Then it might be possible for them to hold on in the East and foce a stalemate with the Russians. I think a failed Normandy landing and a nuked London in June of '44 would force the Western allies to an armistice more than a nuked London and Paris in December '44.
 
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I'm going with Mocba.

Stalin's control over the Soviet Union was just as monolithic as he could make it, and just as centralized as he could make it. With the head out of the way, the rest of the snake loses a lot of its ability to do damage.

With no central planning, the supply lines for the troops on the front lines vanish. You're likely to have a power struggle between the senior military commanders over who gets to be the new head honcho, with the consolation prize being Excedrin Headache Number 7.62.

Yeah, Zhukov would probably win the contest, and he'd be a deadly threat in charge of the whole Soviet Union, but it would take him time to (a) consolidate his power and (b) re-establish supply lines, and (c) redeploy the troops that he would probably have had to pull off the front lines to discourage competition for the prize.

Effectively, destroying Moscow would more than likely eliminate the Soviets' ability to effectively make war for an extended period of time, allowing more concentration of German forces on the western front.
 
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I agree with you to an extent Steele, but can you honestly see Germany having the capability to deliver a warhead to Moscow?

ICBM technology was in it's infancy, if you had only two functional atom bombs would you trust them to a missile system which may or may not hit the target? I wouldn't. The Luftwaffe was not an option in my opinion, it just would not have the capacity to get an aircraft all way through the Eastern territories to Moscow.

So where does that leave you? I'd say the only feasible options for use of these bombs would be the strategic bombing of enemy forces/command centers or for terror strikes against an allied target. I don't think either option would be a war winning or stale mate inducing move, in fact I think it would be quite the opposite. I honestly can't say that an atomic strike would have broken either the Western or Eastern allies resolve. I think it would have spurred them on to defeat Germany with even greater haste and ruthlessness. It would have been more a case of completely sealing Germanys fate to total destruction.

The Western allies at this stage were not far off operational atomic weapons themselves, they had the industrial capacity to produce many more and the military capacity to deliver them effectively. I can see a Germany subject to massive atomic retalliation, a Germany which would cease to exist after the the war.
 
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If Germany made such a weapon, they would have shared the technology with Japan who had more industrial strength at this stage in the war!

They would have gone on to improve the design, increasing its effective range and destructive power. They would have unleashed it on Northern Australia and the Pacific Fleet off-course!

I think the japs getting hold of WMDs is more scary a thought then the germans tbh!
 
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Yes, waste a perfectly good nuke on Dawin, why not. I know it was used as a staging point for US troops till they got a foothold in the pacific. But still a waste.

I am under the assumption that if Germany had two atom bombs and used both it would have hardened peoples resolve and make them fight that much harder. Both Russia and the US and Allies would have known strategically that the end of the Wehrmacht was just a matter of time and the bombs would only delay the inevitable. Unlike the US atom bomb were they not only had the weapons but also the force.
 
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Reddog - there's more than one way to skin a cat. ICBM's and heavy bombers are not the only way to deliver an atomic weapon. If a 20 kT truck bomb went off in front of the Kremlin, it'd be ... well, slightly less devastating than a mile-high airburst, but it'd still decapitate the Soviet command structure.


Deterio- Yeah, Tojo with nukes ... that's a scary freakin' thought right there.

Luther - Use one, hold on to the second one. That first detonation will give pause to the allies, especially considering the fact that the Soviets would likely be on the verge of a new civil war. In December '44 the war was far from over, and with the ability to pull some heavy forces away from the eastern front, it would have been even -further- from over.
 
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If I were Adolph Hitler I would have nuked Antwerp in order to deny the allied forces that port and then on Paris just in spite,I mean as Hitler you would have to make at least on irrational decision when faced with a strategical dilemma and why not something irrational as nuking the french capitol city just to them that even if they win they still lose.
 
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If I could get it there, 1 target only. Paris.

The idea being to force peace neogations. The Western Allies are no longer being directly threatend at this point by the Germans. Nuking a major US or UK city would only force them to want personal vengance.

Nuking Paris is a good and very visible locale.

1- You need to prove you have the device and are willing to use it.
2- It would prove you can deliver the weapon at a medium distance (V2 or such). This would reinforce the vulnerability of the UK.
3- Any target you hit needs to be very visible so that your enemies will know what actually happened.
4- There's spite factor in Paris, plus it'll demostrate what will happen to a large population center.

So doing all of that, you could probably get a cease fire at least from the West.

The problem is the Sov's.

Back then even if you nuked a major Sov city, I don't think it'd cause them to back down at all; and I don't think you could convince Stalin of a cease fire; let alone sue for peace.
As with nuking a major western power's city, it would only steel the soviet people against you and serve as a accelerant.

In no case would you be able to do enough damange with 2 atomic weapons to FORCE a power to back off. Neither the USSR, US, or UK where centralized enough that 1 city would break it's back. You might be able to cripple someplace like the UK with 2 atomic weapons, but even that's a crap shoot.

The big difference here is that when we dropped the bombs on Japan, it was used as an acceleration.

Dropping atom bombs on the Allies in 1944 wouldn't do anything decisive The situation was already to grim for the German forces. You'd just be dropping bombs out of spite.
 
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