The Man in the High Castle

Rhinocrates

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The Man in the High Castle, Season 3 has a release date: October 5.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6haXll5wFc&t=1s

Of interest to forum members would be the designers' projections of 1960s Nazi and Imperial Japanese equipment. As a bonus, some might be reminded of the TV series, The Time Tunnel... Anyway, we have a Yamato-class battleship under the Golden Gate and a Kamov-like helicopter with Japanese markings (presumably in this universe it's a Mitsubishi).

My background is in architecture, so I was quite fascinated to see the rendering of Speer's Germania and the Volkshalle last season.
 

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To be honest, i HATE stories were Nazi won WW2 and become dominant World power for next Tausend years

But i have to admit that Phillip K Dick Novel and Amazon do very good Worldbuilding here.
Producer Ridley Scott and his team dig deep in archives to found Hardware that Match the Story
https://youtu.be/hx3VWr2RGpE

Like German Supersonic Airliner, looks like Concorde, who real Aerodynamic shape was made by German engineers, Johanna Weber and Dietrich Küchemann
CI3Ikr8WwAQG0fk.jpg


or ALWEG monorail (yes, Axel Lennart Wenner-Gren is Swedish, but his company is german)
https://youtu.be/GPk9fSLq-PI
 
Albert Speer's designs have inspired architects in some unusual places. Does this church in the English city of Milton Keynes have a slight air of a mini Volkshalle?
 

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Michel
Thank you for pointing me to the French Jour J series of alternate histories some years ago.
I am not persuaded by most Nazi Japan worlds of tomorrow, though the film and book of Fatherland by Robert Harris does make a good exception.
 
A major influence on Speer was the French architect, Étienne-Louis Boullée. The Cenotaph for Sir Isaac Newton leads clearly to the Volkshalle and was itself inspired by the tomb of Augustus. Boullée though did intend his designs as theoretical exercises rather than actual plans and it can be argued that the clean, geometric simplicity of his work and advocated in his writing had some influence on modernism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89tienne-Louis_Boull%C3%A9e

Leon Krier, a modern neoclassical architect, has written a book on Speer's oeuvre, including proposals for super-wide gauge trains. http://www.monacellipress.com/book/?isbn=9781580933544 As Minister of War Production and Armaments, Speer is significant to a lot of the discussion on this forum of course, but this offers a look into the other half of his career.

I agree that most stories of a Nazi victory in WWII are pretty awful, facile things fetishising the aesthetics alone. Harris' Fatherland and PKD's original novel do depict the soul-corrupting atmosphere of such a regime and its crimes.
 

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Rhinocrates said:
I agree that most stories of a Nazi victory in WWII are pretty awful, facile things fetishising the aesthetics alone.

I suspect that "aesthetics" is just about the sole interesting thing about "Nazis win." Because the Nazis were the rough equivalents of the Imperial Japanese, and apart from some Japanese nationalists, there really doesn't seem to be a whole lot of literary interest in "Japan wins WWII" alternate history... perhaps because the Japanese were, aesthetically, not very interesting. And the Soviets under Stalins were nearly indistinguishable from the Nazis in terms of evil and wackiness, and not far off in terms of policy, and there's very little interest in "USSR conquers Europe in 1946" alternate history, so far as I can tell. Quite possibly because the Soviets looked like they wore potato sacks.

The Nazis also had the "occult" thing going for them, which makes them interesting Because Reasons. Of course, how much of it is "The Nazis were into the occult, so they're interesting," and how much of it is "the Nazis were interesting, so let's exaggerate their occult goofiness," I can't say. But there is a lot of literature/comic books/movies where the Nazis slap together a portal to Hell or invoke some demons or some such; the Soviets and Japanese seem to have been incapable of that.
 
Michel Van said:
Like German Supersonic Airliner, looks like Concorde, who real Aerodynamic shape was made by German engineers, Johanna Weber and Dietrich Küchemann
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CI3Ikr8WwAQG0fk.jpg
Well, at a time when the De Havilland Comet 1 had never flown (and crashed because of square windows), were the square windows compatible with a supersonic aircraft ? ???

OK, it's a fiction ::)
 
Very interesting topic. I've watched "The Man in the High Castle" show and enjoyed it (not as much as some other shows tho). But still can't get away that "bad taste" feeling when seeing swastikas every two seconds. They tend to use a lot the trick of "lets have a lot of handsome SS offizers in Ugo Boss uniforms, and with matters of conscience "… which makes the watching a bit disgusting after some time. I believe general nazi thugs where much less "aesthetic" than that. A good example being the one played by Harvey Keitel in the movie "the Grey Zone", fat, depressed and alcoholic… I know it depicted a camp under-officer, not a high ranking bastard, but I prefer to have that kind of image of a nazi than a handsome guy in pretty uniform, find it more realistic.
Worst film I saw using nazi "aesthetic" just for the sake of it was "Iron Sky", completely stupid, and not even funny.

About the occult thing, it was also used in the game "Return to Castle Wolfenstein".

btw, Don't find the nazi sst very well done too...
And using a Ka-32 as a Japanese helo in a alternative universe, well... that is cheap. I suppose buying a all done Ka-32 3d model was easier than imagining a late 40s -early 50s Japanese designed helo.
 
"Fat, depressed and alcoholic officer" is a realistic description for someone who suffers from combat stress. A high ranking officer from a triomphant empire obsessed with racial supremacy can't be nothing but handsome.

About the Japanese fleet entering San Francisco, it can be seen interesting details in the carrier: shape of the flight deck and the jets of unknown identity. The Yamato class and the cruisers, however, show no modernizations like an enhanced electronics suite. Anyway, the artists have made a nice and realistic job. Updated Yamato class, angled deck Taiho or post Taiho classes, USN fighters profiles disguised in Kaigun markings: recreating hardware for that alternative reality could be a topic for our friends from whatifmodelers. BTW, does anyone the year where the action takes place?

I've seen the trailer many times and I feel impressed. The nuclear test is disturbing.

In the last years alternative reality is a recurrent argument for screen writers and I celebrate it.

Scott has offered interesting ideas here. A Soviet Europe idea is a really disturbing one.
Should we open an alternative realities topic?
 
I watched the first session then bailed.
While visually and theoretically interesting (the opening credits for example should be seen) dramatically it was threading water with few interesting characters/ actors to latch onto during the dull narrative (some notable exceptions such as Tagawa and Sewell, but just not enough).

Recent BBC series SS-GB that covers similar ground suffered similar issues.
 
pometablava said:
"Fat, depressed and alcoholic officer" is a realistic description for someone who suffers from combat stress. A high ranking officer from a triomphant empire obsessed with racial supremacy can't be nothing but handsome.
...

That Fat, depressed and alcoholic officer in "The grey Zone" is not at the front but in a concentration camp.
As for triomphant empire obsessed with racial supremacy, even at their height of victory, say after they took power or in 1940-41, I hardly found Himmler/Georing/Hitler/Hess/Geobbels and co very handsome... :) I find they insisted too much on that in the show.
43853402351_021dcc22de_b.jpg
 
pometablava said:
"Fat, depressed and alcoholic officer" is a realistic description for someone who suffers from combat stress. A high ranking officer from a triomphant empire obsessed with racial supremacy can't be nothing but handsome.

My understanding is that when Herman Goering was a young war hero just after WWI, he was considered quite handsome by the German ladies. Pain from injuries and subsequent chemical dependence upon painkillers led to him becoming less so.

If you look at Nazi propaganda films, there are two types of Nazis shown: high ranking officials, who looked like, well, schmoes; and "idealized" Nazis, who looked like they came from Central Casting. The specific individuals running the show are going to look like whatever they're going to look like, but when it comes time to fill out the PR ranks, you go for the visual ideals.


In the last years alternative reality is a recurrent argument for screen writers and I celebrate it.

Alternate history has been around for a while. A popular one is "the South wins the Civil War." For an alternate history to be interesting, it has to have important differences (not "what if Trump won ten extra votes in South Carolina"), and the easiest way to do that is to flip the outcome of a war. Since by definition the good guys generally win wars, the result will usually be an alternate history where the *bad* guys win a war.

Note: Alternate history was part of at least two episode sof the original Star Trek series back in the sixties, so it's been out there for a good long while.

A Soviet Europe idea is a really disturbing one.

One easy way to get a Soviet Europe: Send Deadpool back in time to whack Baby Hitler. No Hitler, no Nazis (as a meaningful, successful force in politics). No Nazis, the German Communists (may) win hearts and minds and elections. Germany goes commie, you'll either have Commie Germany tangling with Commie Russia, or you'll have Commie Germany absorbed into the USSR. Either way, it's bad for Europe, and by extension the rest of the world. Maybe the USA goes commie after the Depression, in which case humanity is pretty well doomed. Or the USA and Commie Europe *eventually* get into a shooting match, but chances are without nukes. This would be a meatgrinder far beyond both WWI and WWII. So... hurray for Hitler, I guess?
 
It is worth remembering that Philip K Dick's book has our reality as the alternative to the nightmare of a Nazi and Imperial Japan partition of the USA.

For all the fantasies that can be built around the Nazi paper plans for Berlin or the Sci Fi Wunderwaffen, the reality was that the Allies, including the Soviet Union, had the stuff and people it took to win. In the Man in the High Castle, the Spitfire, the B17, the T34 tank, and the citizen soldiery would be dazzling the readers of the "alternate history". We have the luxury of imagining the "bad" guys winning because they didn't.
 
uk 75 said:
It is worth remembering that Philip K Dick's book has our reality as the alternative to the nightmare of a Nazi and Imperial Japan partition of the USA.

It's been a few decades, but IIRC, the alternate history book written in TMITHC was sort of a *third* reality. It was one where the Allies won, but it was very different from ours.
 
Orionblamblam said:
uk 75 said:
It is worth remembering that Philip K Dick's book has our reality as the alternative to the nightmare of a Nazi and Imperial Japan partition of the USA.

It's been a few decades, but IIRC, the alternate history book written in TMITHC was sort of a *third* reality. It was one where the Allies won, but it was very different from ours.

Yes, the book represents a different "reality" and it is a speculative book, not movies, meaning that it's entirely a production of his imagination and not evidence of some sideways time-travel. At the end of the novel Mr Tagomi is briefly transported to our real timeline, though there's none of the family interaction seen in the TV series.
 
Orionblamblam said:
uk 75 said:
It is worth remembering that Philip K Dick's book has our reality as the alternative to the nightmare of a Nazi and Imperial Japan partition of the USA.

It's been a few decades, but IIRC, the alternate history book written in TMITHC was sort of a *third* reality. It was one where the Allies won, but it was very different from ours.

Yes it is, someone on DeviantArts called QuantumBranching made an attempt at mapping it out in 2015, how much of what they created came from Dick and how much is their own speculation I have no idea.

https://www.deviantart.com/quantumbranching/art/The-Grasshopper-Lies-Heavy-523255247
 
Orionblamblam said:
One easy way to get a Soviet Europe: Send Deadpool back in time to whack Baby Hitler. No Hitler, no Nazis (as a meaningful, successful force in politics). No Nazis, the German Communists (may) win hearts and minds and elections. Germany goes commie, you'll either have Commie Germany tangling with Commie Russia, or you'll have Commie Germany absorbed into the USSR. Either way, it's bad for Europe, and by extension the rest of the world. Maybe the USA goes commie after the Depression, in which case humanity is pretty well doomed. Or the USA and Commie Europe *eventually* get into a shooting match, but chances are without nukes. This would be a meatgrinder far beyond both WWI and WWII. So... hurray for Hitler, I guess?

Which was kinda like the backstory(?) for Norman Spinrad's "The Iron Dream" - a book written by Hitler after he emigrates to the States after WWI. The world in which the book is "written" has the Soviets controlling a large swathe of the world.
 
pometablava said:
"Fat, depressed and alcoholic officer" is a realistic description for someone who suffers from combat stress. A high ranking officer from a triomphant empire obsessed with racial supremacy can't be nothing but handsome.

About the Japanese fleet entering San Francisco, it can be seen interesting details in the carrier: shape of the flight deck and the jets of unknown identity. The Yamato class and the cruisers, however, show no modernizations like an enhanced electronics suite. Anyway, the artists have made a nice and realistic job. Updated Yamato class, angled deck Taiho or post Taiho classes, USN fighters profiles disguised in Kaigun markings: recreating hardware for that alternative reality could be a topic for our friends from whatifmodelers. BTW, does anyone the year where the action takes place?

I've seen the trailer many times and I feel impressed. The nuclear test is disturbing.

The PKD novel is set in 1962. Watching the trailer (My current bandwidth prevents me from watching the series itself, so I'm hoping it will be released in an offline form.) I get the feeling that there are a couple of other stories mixed in there as well, 'Sam Hall' a short story by Poul Anderson and James Hogan's 'The Proteus Operation'.

As to the nuclear test, well the choice of lyrics didn't help. I will also add as a student of such things, Monument Valley is the wrong place. Everyone who carried out atmospheric nuclear testing (America, Soviet Russia, United Kingdom, France China (Peoples Republic)) all picked locations that had wide uninterrupted views in all directions from ground zero, as this shot of the American Fizeau test shows:

PbFizeau3.jpg


Monument Valley does not to my knowledge provide that (It's still an impressive piece of CGI work.).
 

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The Dornier Do 31 is shown in Season 3, Episode 10.
 

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Interesting, I see they even got the table covering right, if I remember Kubrick wanted it to look like a poker table in Dr Strangelove.

Of course the first time I saw it in color was thanks to the band Muse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2IuJPh6h_A
 
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-drive/reviews/classics/the-cars-in-the-high-castle-behind-the-scenes-with-a-picture-carco-ordinator/article36724224/
https://www.hagerty.com/articles-videos/articles/2017/03/20/man-in-the-high-castle-cars

https://www.citylab.com/design/2017/03/visions-of-alt-berlin-in-the-man-in-the-high-castle/518322/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPk9fSLq-PI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A9TYoymCi0
 
That SST scene play at Tempelhof airport

The poor Inhabitants of Berlin, they got Airport with noisy SST middle of City...
For there runways the must have demolish allot residential area in Tempelhof and NeuKölln...
 
Interestingly, it's implied that the SST engines are turborockets, or possibly turboramjets.
 
A compilation of scenes from Series three featuring that Yamato Class Battleship, the CGI people did a nice job on her.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhdQtwZDkGs
 
now that hit me like a surprise

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uzdxf_5e-JU

more on Atlantropa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5s4ywsCFAI
 
You can play a mission on that bridge/dam between Africa and Gibraltar in the first-person shooter video game Wolfenstein: The New Order from 2014.
 
uk 75 said:
It is worth remembering that Philip K Dick's book has our reality as the alternative to the nightmare of a Nazi and Imperial Japan partition of the USA.

This is impossible!
USA could not be conquered by Germany and Japan.
The best plausible scenario for third Reich is the "Fatherland scenario".
Germany win in Europe,USA defeat Japan and start a cold war between these two blocks.
 
carmelo said:
uk 75 said:
It is worth remembering that Philip K Dick's book has our reality as the alternative to the nightmare of a Nazi and Imperial Japan partition of the USA.

This is impossible!
USA could not be conquered by Germany and Japan.
The best plausible scenario for third Reich is the "Fatherland scenario".
Germany win in Europe,USA defeat Japan and start a cold war between these two blocks.

Out of curiosity, would WWII have ended in at least Germany's favor if they made nuclear weapons operational first?

I remember someone on...a very politically incorrect imageboard...stating that it's a miracle the USA didn't tell everyone after they nuked Japan "Hey guys, I got nukes, everyone bow down to me or else!", because if they did the world would have belonged to them and them only, never mind their former allies in Britain and the USSR. I doubt Germany would've been that conservative after vaporizing a city with such a newfangled weapon.

(For the record, I don't go there anymore and don't plan to ever again)
 
GWrecks said:
Out of curiosity, would WWII have ended in at least Germany's favor if they made nuclear weapons operational first?

Setting aside for the moment the difficulty Germany would have had with actually producing nukes... who would they have nuked? Their biggest enemy was always Stalin. If the Nazis had nuked Moscow or Stalingrad at the height of the war, they'd be just sorta reheating the rubble. And I suspect all it would have done is piss off the Soviets even *more.*

If they'd nuked Britain, chances are good that they could have gotten the Brits to decide to bail. But nuking a couple of already trashed Russian cities? General Turgidson had some wise words about that: "I mean, you take your average Russkie, we all know how much guts he's got. Hell, lookit all them Nazis killed off and they still wouldn't quit."

If the Nazis had *enough* nukes, they could turn western Russia into a dead zone and the Russian army into a historical footnote. But the Germans had little access to uranium and didn't have the physics infrastructure to make it work, nor the industrial infrastructure needed to process uranium ore into weapons grade uranium or plutonium.

My suspicion is if the Nazis had actually managed to pop out a couple of nukes of dirty bombs, all that would have happened is that Germany would have been utterly erased... either by a rain of American nukes a little while later, or by an army of radioactive commiezombies.
 
Orionblamblam said:
... Their biggest enemy was always Stalin. ...

As always between expansionist totalitarian empires as projected through the self-interests of their opportunistic leaders, defining "allies" and "enemies" is more transactional than absolute (or rational in a societal sense). This is as evident today as it was then. Lest it not be forgotten here, for a substantial period of the duration of/in the run up to WWII, Stalin and Hitler were in agreement about "dividing" the nations between their respective empires without a shot being fired (upon one another) as codified in the so-called "Molotov-Ribbentrop pact". This followed an already extended period of tentative co-operation, save for some comfortably distant and useful proxy conflicts like the Spanish civil war (somewhat analogous to the tragedies of current-day Syria).

Readings:
SOWING THE WIND: THE FIRST SOVIET-GERMAN MILITARY PACT AND THE ORIGINS OF WORLD WAR II, Ian Johnson, June 7, 2016, War on The Rocks
Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Wikipedia, didn't proofread this but on a cursory glance seems ok
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, 1939, text, Fordham university Modern History Sourcebook
GERMAN-SOVIET PACT, Holocaust encyclopedia
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact In Pictures, Radio Free Europe, November 11, 2009

Orionblamblam said:
... But the Germans had little access to uranium and didn't have the physics infrastructure to make it work, nor the industrial infrastructure needed to process uranium ore into weapons grade uranium or plutonium. ...

I thoroughly enjoyed viewing a dramatization on this subject, "Kampen om tungtvannet" (Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation NRK, 2015). How much of Werner Heisenberg's efforts depicted in the mini-series was based on hard documentation and how much was educated conjecture, I couldn't quite tell. It is strongly implied in the plot that his team came close to a practical device, or at least had a workable solution towards that.
 
UpForce said:
It is strongly implied in the plot that his team came close to a practical device, or at least had a workable solution towards that.

Nope. Nothing ever found indicates that the Nazis had clue one about how to make a practical nuke. Their rather vague conception required a bomb with something like *tons* of weapons grade uranium, which they were nowhere near to being able to produce. The story goes, however, that after VE Day Heisenberg & Co.were kept in a British farmhouse that was bugged up one side and down the other. They were allowed to hear the initial reports of the a-bombing of Hiroshima; the second bananas expressed shock that the US was able to produce a practical device and, the story goes, Heisenberg more or less immediately went to a chalk board and showed how it could be done with far less uranium than the Germans had been planning on. The implication is either:
1: Heisenberg knew all along how to build a bomb but ran the program in circles to keep Hitler from getting one
2: He'd really believed in the bad design, but had a brainstorm when he knew for a fact that a far smaller and more practical device had been built.

The Germans probably could have made a *radiological* dirty bomb with what they had, but they could have achieved much the same with chemical weapons. Most of the claims of just such weapons, like the V-2 modified for that purpose, have proven to be either misunderstandings or outright BS.
 
Orionblamblam said:
1: Heisenberg knew all along how to build a bomb but ran the program in circles to keep Hitler from getting one
2: He'd really believed in the bad design, but had a brainstorm when he knew for a fact that a far smaller and more practical device had been built.

It's been a while since I saw "Kampen om tungvannet" so my recollection is not perfect. The thesis in the series definitely veered towards option "1" as you presented it - at least it had Niels Bohr discouraging Heisenberg in their interactions from delivering a bomb to the nazis, "bad design" elements (both "naive" and "purposeful") and finally a pointed scene where a (I presume) disillusioned Heisenberg wiped a compact design off a chalkboard. There are scenes of some reactor experiments and the depiction of whole effort seems well resourced and determined on the political side at least. Where the series is likely most factual is the sabotage effort of the heavy water plant as that is a point of (resistance) pride in Norway.
 
Let face it, the Nazi nuclear weapon programs were a mess

And i mean programs, up to 39 different groups were trying to build the bomb in The Third Reich
one of them was german reich postal service !

But the Programs suffers the lack material and scientist, who were jewish and understandable left The Third Reich direction USA
Next to that the main program under Carl Fredrich von Weizsäcker went from complete wrong assumption
His calculation for Bomb went into 50 tons of light enriched Uranium as core and He ignored the need for Plutonium

In mean time Jewish scientist in USA, were cooking Plutonium for the first US Atomic Bombs.
While USAAF was getting with B-29 and B-36 bombers the means to get Nukes to targets
ahh yes, the Göring Luftwaffe and issue of long range heavy Bomber or there lack of them...


That explain why Phillip k. Dick were so vage about use of german Atomic weapon in novel.
 
Operation Steinbock is pretty revealing about the state of the Luftwaffe by the end of the war and its ability to strike at Britain.

Assuming Hitler's mania for destroying London pencils it in as target number one, that means hoping an He 177 is going to get through, bombing at night. Accuracy during Steinbock was mixed, some success was seen using Ju 88S as pathfinders, but the early raids were inaccurate.

Even assuming a best case scenario, that the He 177 gets through the night fighter and AA defences and drops its bomb (which works), and that the drop is accurate and falls somewhere near or on Westminster to have a chance of destroying the main governmental heart the effects would not be terminal. London is a big target and military and political headquarters are scattered all over the city and outlying areas. By 1944 the state structure is decentralised to some extent and there are Allied military commands all over the country.
Destroying London does not stop a couple of thousand USAAF and RAF bombers heading out to deliver retribution the next day and night and carrying on the bombing campaign relentlessly. And if D-Day has already taken place, it has no impact on the land campaign as long as Allied resolve holds. Public morale may have slumped depending on the scale of the devastation and if the PM and Royal Family are killed plus the effect of unconfirmed rumours and false stories if the BBC and national press is unable to function in the immediate aftermath. But the counter is the desire for revenge that may have balanced this morale loss. Britain (or the USSR) in 1944 or 1945 is not in the same position same as Japan in 1945, who was industrially, logistically and militarily crippled and unable to take any decisive counter-action.
 
Trailer for the fourth and last season of the series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtGqjxECVe8

This is pure speculation on my part, but I'd say we are going to see what happens when a waveform collapses...
 
GWrecks said:
Out of curiosity, would WWII have ended in at least Germany's favor if they made nuclear weapons operational first?

I remember someone on...a very politically incorrect imageboard...stating that it's a miracle the USA didn't tell everyone after they nuked Japan "Hey guys, I got nukes, everyone bow down to me or else!", because if they did the world would have belonged to them and them only, never mind their former allies in Britain and the USSR. I doubt Germany would've been that conservative after vaporizing a city with such a newfangled weapon.

(For the record, I don't go there anymore and don't plan to ever again)

I have read that the German "atomic" scientists captured by British Army and spied by microphones were completely stunned after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Nazist Germany were behind USA in atomic bomb development.
So,if at a certain point the war had gone a little better for Germany,war in Europe would be over in august 1945 with a atomic mushroom over Berlin (or another couple of German city).
 
Hood said:
Operation Steinbock is pretty revealing about the state of the Luftwaffe by the end of the war and its ability to strike at Britain.

Assuming Hitler's mania for destroying London pencils it in as target number one, that means hoping an He 177 is going to get through, bombing at night. Accuracy during Steinbock was mixed, some success was seen using Ju 88S as pathfinders, but the early raids were inaccurate.

Even assuming a best case scenario, that the He 177 gets through the night fighter and AA defences and drops its bomb (which works), and that the drop is accurate and falls somewhere near or on Westminster to have a chance of destroying the main governmental heart the effects would not be terminal. London is a big target and military and political headquarters are scattered all over the city and outlying areas. By 1944 the state structure is decentralised to some extent and there are Allied military commands all over the country.
Destroying London does not stop a couple of thousand USAAF and RAF bombers heading out to deliver retribution the next day and night and carrying on the bombing campaign relentlessly. And if D-Day has already taken place, it has no impact on the land campaign as long as Allied resolve holds. Public morale may have slumped depending on the scale of the devastation and if the PM and Royal Family are killed plus the effect of unconfirmed rumours and false stories if the BBC and national press is unable to function in the immediate aftermath. But the counter is the desire for revenge that may have balanced this morale loss. Britain (or the USSR) in 1944 or 1945 is not in the same position same as Japan in 1945, who was industrially, logistically and militarily crippled and unable to take any decisive counter-action.

I think that if London had been destroyed by nazi "dirty" atomic bomb, Germans would be now a species extinct.
 
Hood said:
Destroying London does not stop a couple of thousand USAAF and RAF bombers heading out to deliver retribution the next day and night and carrying on the bombing campaign relentlessly. And if D-Day has already taken place, it has no impact on the land campaign as long as Allied resolve holds.


This points out one of the problems of alternative history: chaos. Assume that Hitler didn't go stupid on December 7, 1941, and instead of joining the Japanese and declaring war on the Us a few days later, he called the Japanese ambassador and told him "y'all is dumb and on yer own" (or words to that effect). If the US had stayed out of the European war and devoted its efforts almost entirely to defeating Japan, the war in the Pacific should have gone faster. the Manhattan Project, on the other hand, probably ran about as fast as it could have. So by the time the US had nukes, we probably would have utterly trashed every Japanese city, and likely would have had a million men swarming through the Japanese hills. There'd be no useful targets left to nuke. We might well *still* be embroiled in a never-ending insurgency.

This is why the Nazis coming up with a nuke wouldn't help them, unless they'd come up with it *really* early, or had the ability to make a lot of them. By 1945, , they had few targets left to nuke apart from Britain... and it wasn't Britain that controlled the Red Army.
 
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