Would the United Stated have used the bomb on white, West-European Germans?

[monkspider]

Boris' interesting thread on Hiroshima has got me thinking. Would America have dropped Atomic bombs on the cities of white, European Germans if the war in western europe lasted longer than it did? Would it have been Hamburg instead of Hiroshima? Certainly there are few that would dispute America at the time (and most likely now as well) would have felt less guilt about dropping the bomb on dastardly, east-asian, slanty-eyed "japs" than a country that we have much in common with culturally such as Germany.
What do you think, if the Germans stuck it out until September '45 and were still a considerable threat, would we have dropped the bomb on them?

[DinoDoc]

*points to Dresden*

[Ethelred]

Yes they would. That was the reason for building the bomb after all. I think Berlin would have been the target considering the terrible losses that Russia had taking the city.

If it was only a matter of a short time before the Nazis surrendered that would be different but you did say "considerable threat".

Try reading King Rat. James Clavell is certain he would have been murdered at Changi prison if we had invaded Japan. There were 10,000 prisoners of war there and more elsewhere and all the prisons had recieved order to kill the POWs should Japan be invaded.

Even without that invading Japan would have been a major undertaking with at least much death and destruction as the invasion of Europe not counting the Japanese tendency towards suicide tactics and just plain suicide in general.

Once the concentration camps were liberated no one had any good will for Germans anymore. I think few Americans thought better of them after that then they did the Japanese.

[Kontiki]

I would say almost definitely. I don't think the cultural differences matter. You have to remember that the general thinking at the time was much different - I mean, civilian populations were considered legitimate targets in attempts to demoralize and reduce the working population. Also, the effects of radiation were not as well understood then (certainly not as widely, anyway), so the a-bomb was probably viewed as just a huge explosion by many in the government, really no different than large-scale carpet bombing, only more concentrated.

[Ramo]

*points to Dresden*

Or Hamburg.

[KrazyHorse]

Yes. They would have bombed them as much as possible in order to get them to surrender. It's just that the "bandy-legged Nips" held out long enough while the Krauts had already given up...

[Shi Huangdi]

Yup. Americans at this time hated Germand just as much as any colored race.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Shi Huangdi
Yup. Americans at this time hated Germand just as much as any colored race.

Not quite.

Germans in the US never faced the same type of antagonism that Japs did. Germans were whites who had let themselves be led astray; Japs were born that way...

[Q Classic]

i think there's a chance it could have happened... but i also believe that had such a bombing occured, there would have been a lot more furor over it.

why? it's easier to empathize with someone who looks like you. and although we're all "human", the slanted eyes we asians have kinda set us apart from all the caucasian folk from europe.

[Grrr]

To be honest, I don't think so. The cities were in ruin anyway; it was britain's problem; and should the bomb fail, the germans would be more able to copy the American technology.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Grrr
should the bomb fail, the germans would be more able to copy the American technology

No they wouldn't. They were still missing massive quantities of Pu or U235...

[KrazyHorse]

And they'd never even managed to build a functioning reactor...

[DinoDoc]

Was that due to Heisenberg's incompetence or a genuine lack of resources, etc.?

[Lord Merciless]

German Americans faced less trouble in WW2 because they had already proven reliable in WW1.

I have no doubt that the US would have dropped the Bomb if there was reason to do it.

Dresden, Hamburg, and Morgenthau Plan were brutal enough.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Was that due to Heisenberg's incompetence or a genuine lack of resources, etc.?

Supposedly Heisenberg incompetence, but Germany simply wasn't pouring enough resources into it. Their project was orders of magnitude smaller than the American one, and as soon as they hit a snag, they basically shut down...