Also that's a little too politard territory for this forum IMO.

Reporters were kept out of the area during the fighting which allowed the Military to control the message of the reporting.The US had intelligence failures,lack of maps for the troops on the ground,an unwillingness for different branches of the military to work together and an inability to communicate between the different arms of the military involved in the operation.The Invasion of Grenada actually showed how little the US had learned from actions like the attempted rescue of hostages from Iran.

What if you address what I wrote and the US didn't enter the war at all? You still think the bomb is only delayed a year? Also, it's my understanding that the US didn't really increase efforts to make the bomb until 1944--which you cite yourself below.

See above.

Again, if America in not in the war, they don't have the motive to increase the priority, as you put it.

Yes, the idea is that Hitler would have to coordinate with the Japanese. And for the sake of the discussion we can assume that the Japanese have the motive to attack Russia and not the US. So they use land forces out of China as well as their navy directly on Russia in the east.

No, you're getting too bogged down in what actually happened. You have to allow for some facts to be different to pursue a "what-if" scenario. If Japan attacked Russia, then by definition some of history must have been different. They didn't actually do so for one or more reasons. The original premise in post #3 was that Japan attacks Russia in 1941. If they coordinate with Germany and Germany waits until 1941, then can Russia win? Can Germany now survive, even if Russia is not defeated?

Russia attacked Poland et al because Germany did, or at least when they did. If Germany holds off until 1941, then what?

If Germany attacks before Japan then Russia is probably more concerned with its west than its east. But, as you pointed out, it may lock up the forces they ultimately sent west from the east. And we don't know exactly what would have resulted.

Huh? Why the snotty remark? It's your opinion that the UK would not have sued for peace. I don't necessarily agree. Since overlord pushed back the launch sites out of reach the UK was spared additional attacks from the V2. But if overlord is delayed a year or more, how much additional damage can the UK withstand? And what if overlord doesn't happen? What if Germany improves on the V2?

Wasn't the UK given the bomb in 1949? Didn't Truman keep it from them until then? Even with the US effort combined with theirs they didn't develop it by 49. The Manhattan project was largely a US effort and they kept everything for themselves when it was over.

My understanding was the the US was grabbing up as much as they could even while the war was still in progress to keep the Russians from getting it. I suppose there was some facilities in the areas the Russians conquered that they might have gotten their hands on.

What if no US entry?

Again, how many V2s can they take before giving up? I think you are relying too much on what happened and not giving enough weight on what could have happened.

What about a Japanese attack both from China and from the sea?

Hi Everyone:

There's an almost war that I believe had significant consequences.

After the US Civil War ended, there was an emperor, Maximillian, that many entities, including the US wanted out of Mexico. Quoting from Wikipedia:

Anyway, in 1866 Napoleon III withdrew his troops from Mexico and Maximillian's government soon collapsed and he was executed.

Best wishes,
Mason

What were the big consequences? I'm hardly a Latin American expert, but my understanding is Maximillian's empire was a crude and short-lived attempt at reviving traditional European colonialism. Were the consequences that it was never really tried again? Because by this point, most European nations lacked the relative power to feasibly do this, or fared better through economic relations with Latin America, or both.

What makes you think V2's would be enough to make Britain sue for peace? The RAF could, and did, drop more explosives in a single night than all the V2's launched during the entire war. Also, the V2's were a huge drain on German resources.

Um, I did address what you wrote:

Two hypothetical's and two conclusions.

My analysis applies whether the US enters the war late, or never enters at all, because their primary motivation is the same in either case, and has nothing to do with being at war. I agree with your first conclusion, but suggest it is immaterial because there is no delay relative to other significant events, and I reject your second conclusion because there is no evidence to support the notion that Germany retained the capability to produce a Bomb as fast as the British and Canadians working without the US, or as fast as the Soviets, let alone as fast as the US would have proceeded even if they were not at war.

You quoted the following but don't seem to have considered what it actually says, because it directly addresses the issue of what happens if the US stays out of the war, and their motivation in that case:

I've added emphasis to point out how that paragraph addresses no US entry into the war, and what their motivation would have been in that case.

Meh, it could be two years, it could be six months. But it's on the order of magnitude of a year, because they would want to be sure to beat the Brits if they went ahead separately, and AFAIK they didn't have a clear idea of what progress the Soviets were making. And even if the US wasn't at war, what you suggest - the Nazis getting the bomb first - would have been, in the minds of the US leadership, the worst possible outcome, so they would have worked hard to make sure it didn't happen.

What I cited was the project didn't get its highest official priority rating until 1944. Even then it wasn't given the highest possible priority. I cited this to show that going to war didn't suddenly move the project from non-starter to top priority. In fact the AA-3 rating the project had had almost since inception until promotion to AA-1 in August 1944 was a very high rating. The project didn't need a state of war to get a high priority. Despite not having the highest or second-highest priority, the project went through several serious expansion phases. The massive construction projects which were necessary for the fast production of a Bomb were authorized in 1942, generally begun in 1943 and mostly completed before the increase in priority in 1944.

The problem with hypotheticals is that one can never be too sure what impact the assumed changes will have. The farther you move the hypothetical from reality, the harder it becomes to make reasonable predictions. Eventually one might as well say "Yeah but my 13th level wizard would cut off Hitler's head with his +3 Flaming Sword of Doom". I had enough difficulty with the original hypothetical which was Japan making the choice to go after Russia rather the SE Asia. After expressing my concerns, I decided to play along, since that hypothetical was at least an alternative that elements within the Japanese leadership actually considered. The notion of Hitler coordinating his attack on Russia with the Japanese is just too far from what was reasonably possible for me to handle, unless you put some reasonable constraints on the coordination.

The notion that Hitler would delay the attack on Poland (and therefore the attack on France) until the Japanese were ready is even further removed from plausibility. While Hitler would have preferred to never have to fight the British and only felt a need to defeat the French in order to secure his rear for the attack on Russia, he was realistic enough to know that he had a limited window in which to act. In 1939 Britain and France were in the early stages of rearmament. If he waited until 1941 to attack Poland, he risked facing a much stronger military threat from his west.

Even if Japan attacks before Germay, Russia would be more concerned with its west than its east. What I point out is that a Japanese attack may delay the transfer of some Russian forces to the west front, but only to the extent that this may delay or weaken the Russian winter counter-offensive. This, combined with the possible effects on the 1942 campaigns of continued Japanese pressure is why I suggest the result of Japanese attacks on Russia would be be a delay of the Russian victory in the west by one year.

The notion that the V-2 would cause the British to sue for peace was Hitler's fantasy. It has no relation to realistic possible outcomes. The V-2 could only reach a small portion of Britain, but the part it reached included London. London was a very large city and an important transportation hub, administrative and financial centre but not necessary for Britain's continued war effort. The vast majority of Britain's industrial production capacity was out of range to the V-2. The actual V-2 attacks didn't cause Britain to surrender. Why breaking London's rubble into progressively smaller bits would cause a British surrender is beyond me.

If Overlord doesn't happen, the Russian take France in the aftermath of defeating Germany in 1946. Germany doesn't get enough time to develop an IRBM capable of knocking out Britain's industrial capacity.

IDK about the US giving Britain any Bombs in 1949. What I do know is that in 1952 the British exploded a bomb they had developed on their own, without benefit of the Manhattan project research, which the US denied to them despite earlier agreements to the contrary. The UK essentially suspended their own research program for over two years in order to instead support the Manhatten project. When they resumed their own project after the war was over, in response to America's refusal to share, they did so at a much reduced rate of urgency. I think that the 2+ year suspension and the lower urgency of development mean that the 1947-49 completion estimate for an independent British-Canadian in-war project in the absence of US involvement as an ally is quite reasonable.

Yea, but how relevant was it?

If the US isn't in the war, then the Japanese aren't fighting the British either. This frees up more Indian and Australian and New Zealand forces to fight in the Mediterranean theatre. Without US involvement, Churchill's preferred Mediterranean focus gets implemented and the British Commonwealth forces invade Italy, the Balkans, and Greece. This might keep the Communists from dominating Yugoslavia, but only their own choice could keep the Russians out of France.

An infinite number, since those V-2s cannot reach enough of Britain to significantly degrade its warmaking effort. If the Russians wiped out New York and Washington, but couldn't do anything to any other major US city, do you think the US would surrender to Russia?

On the contrary I am giving weight to what could have happened under the terms of the hypothetical already agreed, but not to what couldn't have happened - like the Germans getting the bomb first or the V-2 significantly degrading British war production. And of course guidance for what could have happened is based on reality, not imagination alone.

It is already assumed in my earlier responses.

I think it is clear that the main consequence was to send a message through time to Communist Cuba that the only Empire that would be tolerated in the Western hemisphere was the American one. Even in 1866 it was obvious that the only raison d'etre for the future Cuban revolution was the megalomaniacal ambition to establish a unified Latin-Communist Empire to oppose the US.

Read about this war in a magazine a few months ago - it did not have world wide impact but did have huge regional impact for South America and the future history of a number of its countries.



The Paraguayan War also known as the War of the Triple Alliance and in Paraguay as the "Great War" was an international military conflict in South America fought from 1864 to 1870 between Paraguay and the Triple Alliance of Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay.

It caused approximately 400,000 deaths, the highest rate of fatalities related to the number of combatants of any war in modern history. It particularly devastated Paraguay, which suffered catastrophic losses in population and was forced to cede territory to Argentina and Brazil.

Wiki Link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraguayan_War


The war began in late 1864 with combat operations between Brazil and Paraguay; from 1865 onwards, Argentina and Uruguay entered, and it became the "War of the Triple Alliance."

The war has also been attributed to the after-effects of colonialism in South America, the struggle for physical power among neighboring nations over the strategic Río de la Plata region, Brazilian and Argentine meddling in internal Uruguayan politics, Solano López's efforts to help allies in Uruguay (previously defeated by Brazilians), and Solano López's presumed expansionist ambitions. Paraguay had recurring boundary disputes and tariff issues with Argentina and Brazil for many years; its aid to allies in Uruguay in the period before the war worsened its relations with those countries.

The outcome of the war was the utter defeat of Paraguay. After the Triple Alliance defeated Paraguay in conventional warfare, its people conducted a drawn-out guerrilla-style resistance that resulted in the destruction of the Paraguayan military and much of the civilian population. The guerrilla war lasted until López was killed by Brazilian forces on March 1, 1870. One estimate places total Paraguayan losses—through both war and disease—as high as 1.2 million people, or 90% of its pre-war population. [not a reliable number - my note]

A different estimate places Paraguayan deaths at approximately 300,000 people out of its 500,000 to 525,000 pre-war inhabitants. According to Steven Pinker, the war resulted in the deaths of more than 60% of the population of Paraguay, making it proportionally the most destructive war in modern times.

It took decades for Paraguay to recover from the chaos and demographic imbalance. In Brazil, the war helped bring about the end of slavery, moved the military into a key role in the public sphere, and caused a ruinous increase of public debt, which took a decade to pay off, seriously reducing the country's growth. It has been argued that the war played a key role in the consolidation of Argentina as a nation-state.That country became South America's wealthiest nation, and one of the wealthiest in the world, by the early 20th century [See a recent Economist article on how Argentina wasted away since- my note] It was the last time that Brazil and Argentina took such an interventionist role in Uruguay's internal politics.
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Hi Prophet:

I probably know less about Latin America than you do. Again from Wikipedia:

and

Now to be fair, I've cherry picked this stuff, but it does sound like Max wasn't that bad, and his downfall did lead to a very autocratic government, and then years later to The Mexican Revolution. So would Mexico be a better country today than it currently is?

Best wishes,
Mason