How different would events had transpired if nuclear weapons weren't a physical possibility?

And the U.S. and the various European powers would sit there with their thumbs up their proverbial asses watching the Soviets roll over everything? You're kidding, right?

maybe we would see a unified korea under north korea's government, and this could change vietnam war with a communist korea, also japan is a greater worry for USA with it being next to japan and having their chinese communist allies as supporters. who knows, maybe korea attacks japan after US leaves their army bases to return home, and japs lose to unified korea (north korea had a decent economy back then) which makes japs commie

how can america intervene against USSR with weakened economy from japs fighting them without nukes? their economy would not be as strong, with weakened military force. the tiny baltic peoples wouldnt object to USSR invasion since they are weak, and britain's losing its empire, france lol and germany is defeated. america could intervene, but they had isolationist attitude, western euro wont want to intervene with crippled economys, USSR isnt badly affected but still #2 superpower in the world, invading shitty places like bulgaria is a possibility

we can never know how things will change, since one small battle could become a heavy casulty battle, meaning everything becomes weaker and this snowballs to effect every little thing. you would have to state the event OP and then say there are no nukes, we cant say what will happen in cold war or korean war cuz we need to firstly break down WW2 without atomic weps.

>how can america intervene against USSR with weakened economy from japs fighting them without nukes?

Downfall projected 134,556 dead and missing, and another 350,000 or so wounded. That won't cripple the U.S. army of 8,267,958, nor will it impact the economy.

> america could intervene, but they had isolationist attitude,

After WW2? Are you nuts? What do you call the UN? The Korean war? NATO? The Marshall plan?

>USSR isnt badly affected but still #2 superpower in the world, invading shitty places like bulgaria is a possibility

They already had that you twit.

>It would almost certainly be land and air forces centered on Germany,
india could become an empire with relations with the commonwealth and rule her sea, china could do the same eventually if asia ever unified without the bombs in her respective one of the pacific while europe and america focus on land and air in the european theatre of war and try to control every roadway on the planet. HAH

meanwhile from moscow rules the world island under the red flag.

deaths and loss of weapons, military vehicles and aircraft wont affect the economy? america wont have an attitude of intervening as much as they have now, even if the still want to intervene. korean war would change, there would be no paper tiger theory so fighting between north korea people's army and south korea+mcarthur+nato forces would change, possibly chinese and USSR fighting them without fear of nucleur threat. this would make policies that america have with intervning in poor western europe different, marshall plan will still happen. my bad, i think US will intevene but not the way that it worked out in reality. North korea could win with superior economy against south korea, if US does not pour in its army. india would not have an empire, british still ruled if for a long time, in the past after indian independance, they did not gain a strong economy, also pakistan would lose the indo pak wars with pakistan being re united (pakis cant threat indians with nukes) but i dont believe india will be an empire, just a poor but populous country

>india could become an empire with relations with the commonwealth and rule her sea, china could do the same eventually if asia ever unified without the bombs in her respective one of the pacific while europe and america focus on land and air in the european theatre of war and try to control every roadway on the planet

I have no idea what you're even trying to say. Please be clear.

>deaths and loss of weapons,

>deaths and loss of weapons, military vehicles and aircraft wont affect the economy?

Not in any significant respect, no. As horrific as it sounds, about 150,000 people dying isn't going to crash the American economy, or be anything more than a barely perceptible blip on its growth.

>america wont have an attitude of intervening as much as they have now, even if the still want to intervene.

[citation needed]

> korean war would change, there would be no paper tiger theory so fighting between north korea people's army and south korea+mcarthur+nato forces would change, possibly chinese and USSR fighting them without fear of nucleur threat.

And without fear of nuclear escalation in kind (Since you know, the Soviets had their first bomb in 1949) you have less of a fear of NATO escalating either.

There wouldn't be a Cold War. It'd be WW3

but america will want to intervene in the korean war, lets say the north koreans invade south korea like they did, america will fight with the poor south koreans, basically supplying them with weps and everything they need. the same will happen with the north koreans, russia and china will support them, with no fear of nucleur retaliation from anybody, i believe that russians would try to spread communism by having their soldiers fight with the koreans, trying to display to the world they are the #1 superpower. idk who would win though, if its north korea, then japan is under serious threat. if america wins, it will require many lives and lots of money. regardless of nucleur weapons existing, north korea would still have invaded the south. i believe ussr and china would be much more aggressive with its support of north korea, meaning the korean war wouldnt have ended on the 51st parallel, but imo, with a unified korea under nk government

ww3? which countries would fight? ussr and america were the only ones left with any real power. it wouldnt be a world war, just a war between them for who is the strongest nation, another world war needs more countries to be involved, how can france, split germany, economically devastated british empire, militarily weak poland fight in another war? ww3 would not happen straight after, it would happen after a war between USSR and USA (influence for US, control for USSR) over western europe

usa
european allies
ussr
some asian block
india
some remenant arabian/african block, israel wouldnt exist

european allies arent much of an army, even combined. arabs we not rich until oil, actually turkey is a powerful country now, forget about them. iran is not muslim yet, no islamic revolution. north africa is also populated and strong force compared to post ww2 europe. india has pakistan still, regardless of weak economy they can fight with huge numbers. asian block? japs are weak, china is split between war lords, thugs ruled manchuria prior to jap invasion so i imagine china is relatively weak if their biggest province had thugs to fight japanese army. middle east is shit still. ottomans leave behind wealth for turkey, turkey would ally with USSR. this ww3 would be absolutely shit in numbers though, but possible. i think europe would not be in a place to fight a real battle, norsemen are the only people in europe who arent crippled economically, but theyre nothing special. african colonies fight for britain/france?

forgot*

also, what about germany? bizonia trizonia etc. would be diff without nucleur arms, possibly soviets controlling all of germany, not just east germany?

north africa got checked gidaffi.

shit in numbers? imagine a mobilised militant nationalistic india, or china for that matter. they'd populate to the borders of the perma frost, both sides

>Millions of japs and hundreds of thousands of GIs would have perished trying to topple the Japanese regime.

Or, you know, maybe the Americans would have accepted Japan's conditional surrender that they were offering.

actually, now that i think about a split germany, the war would start there i believe, with US and USSR disagreeing over how to rule the four zones. britain and france would side with US and from there we would have some sort of conflict of ideals, then a real battle. a mobilised india is still india, a state of corruption which has a very weak economy. if they had arms, then things would change alot, but some people dont have food to eat there like in germany. if germany is ultra poor, how the fuck is india gonna fight a war?

I take it you mean "nuclear weapons, or any weapon of similar destructive capability and range." Basically, WWII would have ended in just about exactly the same way - Berlin falls, Japan surrenders unconditionally. Japan's surrender might have been a little bit less humiliating but they would still have ended up a US puppet and an un-nuked Japan would probably look pretty similar. The rest is far harder to predict. Without the threat of MAD, the cold war might have got a bit hotter. There would probably have been a direct US-USSR war sometime before the 70s, and the US would probably have won, albeit not crushingly. In all likelihood it would be a proxy war, but one where both sides have boots on the ground in a contested country. Either country is just about impossible to invade properly, due to the fact that both of them are gigantic and geographically inaccessible (USSR because winter, US because ocean). So yeah, not a crushing victory, but probably a total victory in the war's primary theatre. There would likely be a series of similar proxy wars, depending on how the first one goes, going on until America wins handily enough to properly humiliate the USSR. I say this because the US fleet was always better than that of the USSR, meaning in almost any country a US victory is inevitable in a total war scenario. Which is another point: public opinion would be very much for the war in the case of direct confrontation with the Soviets, as public opinion is much easier to sway when your opponent is a superpower than when it's a rural bumfuck literally where country the size of one of your 51 constituent states. So neither side would pussy out without actually losing.

If enough proxy wars were going concurrently, it might evolve into a full-fledged world war 3. The chances of this happening decrease with time after the end of world war 2, as the USSR's military just couldn't keep up the pace of advancement.

Just for WWII?

Well there'd be a whole lot less Japanese people. Because we would have had to go in there and kill every last stinking nip in that country to get them to surrender. So I guess it'd just be Hawaii 2.0 with a shitload of US colonizers moving in.

Russians may have been able to seize some northern islands too. Maybe for a N-S Japan thing similar to Germany.

perhaps something greater would have been developed rather than this wresting lorals bs post a bomb?

like something that destroy space-time itself, u just step into a blackhole that was dropped and get de-materialised in certain patches of the world/spacetimereality

un nuked japan similar? what the fuck? hold on a sec, hiroshima and nagasaki were their most populated areas, so economically, those atomic bombs devastated them. their surrender would leave them in a much better place, they would be no where near as poor after the war.

Gas.

If organophosphate nerve agents still exist, there's still a great deal of destructive power around.

This has the added, unpleasant effect that military personnel would be among the last to die, on account of their access to superior air filtering.

When will this meme die? That is literal war propaganda you're spouting. All the US would have had to do is park a few carriers around Japan and wait till their oil runs out. The Japanese I mean. I mean hell, what is Japan going to do if they can't even cross the straits between the home islands? There was never a need for American boots in Japan.

>Or, you know, maybe the Americans would have accepted Japan's conditional surrender that they were offering.

Operation Downfall was locked, cocked and ready to rock all they were waiting on when those bombs fell was the go-ahead.

i think op means no WMD's, atleast if he does, then these alien stupid anti matter black hole destroy space ideas arent possible

ok so we get that jap falls, but these proxy wars youre talking about, plz explain what you mean. hot or cold war? you mean actual battles or the rush to increase agriculture, population, technological advancements (like in cold war) etc. cuz i dont get what you mean by proxy wars

>All the US would have had to do is park a few carriers around Japan and wait till their oil runs out. The Japanese I mean. I mean hell, what is Japan going to do if they can't even cross the straits between the home islands? There was never a need for American boots in Japan.

Operation Starvation had already created a very close blockade, and if the straits between islands weren't' completely closed, you were still running a roughly 1 in 4 chance of hitting a mine and exploding on every trip. For some reason, things like Olympic still went forward in planning.

america would have invaded the japs, there were sikhs fighting in japan so i dont believe america would just wait out the japanese

Its literal Japanese war propaganda that Im spouting. While Japan still stood, they would not surrender. Look at Okinawa, there were mothers throwing their babies off of cliffs and charging machine gun nests with sharpened bamboo spears so they wouldnt be captured.

The level of fanaticisim in WWII Japan was insane. The God Emperor belief that had been around since the unification of Japan had a lot to do with that.

starving out japan isnt as effective if honshu was isolated from the smaller islands. there were already allied forces dying in japan, why would america or the allies wait them out when theyve already sent troops to fight?

youre 100% right, the loyalty to the emperor caused kamikaze on pearl harbour, the japs would never surrender, maybe coward soldiers would lay down their arms, but the japanese would never officially surrender

>caused kamikaze on pearl harbour

wut

kamikaze planes which bombed pearl harbour, im saying that japs would never surrender as they were loyal to emperor

maybe some post HAARP PRISM ECHELON type stuff where everyone alive hears everyone elses thoughts, no barring, no stopping it, nothing to hide behind, everyone hears everyone elses thoughts at once permanently, species forever attached to one another, like starcraft zerg mind

Not him but you're definitely overstating things.

Tarawa, by the time the island was secured, you had 4,690 dead vs 146 captured .

Eniwetok: 3,380 dead, 105 captured.
Kwajalein, 4,300 dead, 166 captured.
Roi-Namur, 3,500 killed, 87 captured.

Saipan had 29,000 dead to 921 prisoners, and 5,000 of those were suicides.
Guam: 18,337 dead, 1,250 captured
Tinian: 5,542 killed, 252 captured
Peliau, 10,695 killed, 202 captured.

Banking on a Japanese surrender seems like a very bad bet.

soviet, chinese and north korean forces push america out of south korea, south korea is unified under north korean government. north korea wants to invade japan and asks russia for permission like they did with invading south korea in reality. korea lands in japan, US supports japan with soldiers and supplies to fight back korea, east germany invades unified west germany when duetschmark is introduced and trizonia forms, war starts between communist forces (USSR china + allies) and USA + western europe + japan starts

in reality i mean in the real timeline we are living in*

"Hey guys, your emperor can retain his divinity and such, the Japanese home islands remain in the hands of the Empire of Japan and no other. All the clay we took off you in the Pacific remains ours and we require you to disarm and allow the US to handle your foreign policy for the next 20 years.

At least the last wave of diplomacy before the bombs dropped had the Japanese wanting to hold onto their territories in Korea, Malaya, Indo-China, and what's now Taiwan, so again, seems like a bad bet.

Good luck holding onto those territories with no supplies from the home islands. No reinforcements either. Give it another half a year of blockade. The Japanese didn't want to lose face. And in the end, from the US's perspective, the Japanese holding onto Korea would be fine as long as Japan is turned into a US puppet. Remember, in this world, a direct confrontation between the US and the USSR is guaranteed to happen.

why still talking about japs? either they are starved out, or invaded or both. in the end japanese empire collapses and with that, they become the puppet nation there once were with america's hand up its blah blah blah

exactly, now explain how that starts, i believe it will happen with korean invasion of japan and soviet invasion of west germany, escalating everything slowly into a full blown war with turkey, north africa, korea, china and the soviet states (mongolia kazakh etc.) fighting through eastern europe to west europe and a smaller fight on japan's coast

also, a big factor in ww3 will be whos on what side. with european, japanese and soviet economy weakened so badly, this will put countries like greece, turkey, algeria, india, china and korea in a position where they become significant allies compared to the poor europeans

>Good luck holding onto those territories with no supplies from the home islands.

And who is going to take them? Outside of yet another costly and bloody invasion, which I thought was the whole point we were trying to avoid.

>No reinforcements either.

When was the last time reinforcements were sent from the home islands to Taiwan? Or to the Marshalls, or the Gilberts, or the Marianas? Truk was isolated for 2 and a half years, and was still in Japanese hands when the war ended.

>Give it another half a year of blockade.

Of the Home Islands? That would kill way more people than the nukes did.

>Remember, in this world, a direct confrontation between the US and the USSR is guaranteed to happen.

No, it isn't. It's only based on your rather dubious assertion that without nukes, conventional deterrence doesn't work for some reason that makes a clash inevitable.

when has any other method of deterance worked in history other than nucleur? a clash was very likely since they would fight for the future of western europe and global dominance (economically)

>Truk was isolated for 2 and a half years, and was still in Japanese hands when the war ended.

Thats a very big point. If we didnt personally drive in and forcibly remove the japs off of a speck in the pacific. They dug in like ticks and survived off of coconuts and rotten rice until the day the treaty was signed, even though we decimated their forces with bombings and blockades.

If you think that starving them off of an island the size of Japan would take any quicker you're kidding yourself.

huge population with little places to grow food. mountains everywhere

>when has any other method of deterance worked in history other than nucleur?

Throughout quite a bit of history. Why did China never invade India? Why did the Inca and Aztec empires never fight each other? Why did the Ottoman Empire never invade Poland? The Sassanids never expand into the Russian steppe? The Egyptians never attack Mesopotamia? Why did Britain not invade the U.S. during the ACW to get their colony back? Why did Russia never invade China? Why didn't the U.S. invade North Korea in between the collapse of the USSR and their own nuclear development? Why did you have massive fights between Spain and France in Italy over Italy, and not invasions across the Pyranees? Why didn't England invade the Netherlands as soon as they declared independence from Spain? Why didn't Poland invade Brandenburg back in the 16th century when it would have been a piece of cake? Why did nobody invade Sweden in WW2; and while we're on that war, why didn't the British invade the Azores, or America invade Argentina? Why did Germany never invade Austria-Hungary pre-WW1 to achieve Großdeutsche Lösung?

States are rational political actors. They want to achieve goals, and they want to do so at a minimum of cost. If the expected cost of an action is greater than the expected benefit of the action, said action isn't taken.

Nuclear weapons will raise the cost of an action if they're expected to fly, but they don't alter the fundamental equation: Too costly/risky/bloody means that it will not go if it's expected to be bigger than the gain. Given the enormous difficulties militarily operating in Russia, as well as an overall balance of potential military power being in favor of NATO, it's not hard to see how that balance could have been achieved, and all out confrontation avoided. You might have had some proxy wars, but it's not like nukes stopped those.

cont.

Without the support of nuclear arnament in the invasion, and its deterrent effect on the Soviets globally, they might have reconsidered launching such a costly operation.

Nuclear deterrence was necessary because of a strategic decision made by NATO: That they would not try to match Soviet conventional forces in Europe, and instead rely upon atomic weapons to make up the gap. If you suddenly took away every nuclear weapon on earth in 1970, and prevented more from being made, yes, there would have been war within the month.

But that in and of itself was only done because they had nukes and could rely upon them to deter Soviet aggression for the same reasons as above. In a world where nukes don't exist, you're going to see an enormous western build-up in West/Central Europe, so that you don't get such a soviet predominance in conventional force. No sane country would take that risk that they could be invaded and overrun within weeks.

america doesnt invade countries because they believe countries should rule themselves, woodrow wilson said something about germany governing itself. self determination i think, one of his 14 points. before he said that. US had felt what it meant to be a colony, why would they invade other countries after experiencing first hand the horrors that colonisation causes under the hands of the greatest empire ever?

i dont understand what you mean by build-up? economy or miltary?

isn't eastern europe under threat more than west, why did you not mention eastern europe (theyre poor but not dirt poor) as they arent all under soviet influence after ww2

>america doesnt invade countries because they believe countries should rule themselves,

Except for all the times they do, like the Mexican war in the 19th century, the other time they sent troops into Mexico from 1914-1917, the Spanish-American war, the invasion of Canada in the war of 1812, the creation of an independent Panama state in 1903 to make the canal a reality, and all those post WW2 invasions to "keep them from falling to the reds".

> why would they invade other countries after experiencing first hand the horrors that colonisation causes under the hands of the greatest empire ever?

Because again, for whatever reasons are local to the case, the expected benefits of invading are greater than the expected costs. You want to keep other European influence in Latin America to a minimum, you want a nice canal to link the Atlantic and the Pacific, you want a base in the Carribean, etc.

Military buildup.

Because I'm assuming (perhaps wrongly) that the U.S. and allies will be unwilling to go to the expense and trouble necessary to free them, especially if it means that you'll be going into Russia proper and have to deal with all the fun involved in campaigning there as a hostile force.

There wasnt any real expectation of nuclear support during a land invasion of Japan.

1. They knew about the fallout from the bombs, they wouldnt be used in any tactical capacity with US boots on the ground.

2. They knew how many bombs we had, and that we were using all of them before the invasion would take place.

Not him, but that's not really true.

nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/72.pdf

>H: That is the information I wanted. The problem now is whether or not, assuming the Japanese do not capitulate, continue t on dropping them every time one is made and shipped out there or whether to hold them up as far as the dropping is concerned and then pour them all on in a reasonably short time. Not all in one day, but over a short period. And that also takes into consideration the target that we are after. In other words, should we not concentrate on targets that will be of the greatest assistance to an invasion rather than industry, morale, psychology, etc.

>S nearer the tactical use rather than other use

>H That is what it amounts to, what is your own personal reaction to that?

>S I have studied that in detail. Our own troops would have to be about six miles away. I am not sure that the Air Forces could place it within 500 feet of the point we want. Of course, it is not that "pinpoint" then the stage of development has to be considered. The work it is liable to be used for the more or less has to be the explosive effect. IT would just be a gamble on putting or sending those troops through.

>H Not the same day or anything like that .We might do it a couple or three days before. You plan to land on a certain beach. Behind which you know is a good road communication and maybe a division or two of Japanese troops. Neutralization of that at now time from H hour of the landing back earlier, maybe a day or two or three. I don't anticipate that you would be dropping it as we do other types of bombs that are in support of the infantry, I was thinking of neutralizing a division or a communication center or something so that it would facilitate the movement ashore of troops.

They were definitely at least considering using it tactically, and seemed to think 6 miles and 3 days was enough of a safety margin, which we now know is laughably inadequate.

ok, i guess since USSR has huge influence over the states which are close to or are in the iron curtain are too hard to free (and too costly), the US would protect western/northern (excluding finland) europe. building a military makes sense, but i dont see how they can with trade being so much more difficult with the split between the democratic countries of the western world and the communists in the east (excluding puppet japan). building an army means population, which means food, which requires agriculture (marshall plan i will assume will happen anyway to stop communist influence over west EU) and arms are costly too, only america will sell arms since the other communists will cut all trade relationships. it seems like building an army requires too much for it to be feasible within 10-15 yrs post ww2. i wonder how this changes economic prosperity that germany and japan underwent in the real timeline, maybe a war will start in the 70s at the height of proxy wars in east eu with a strong japan and germany. this question is too hard to answer without OP giving us specific detailed sub topics like ww2, korea, east eu, west eu (after marshall plan)

>ok, i guess since USSR has huge influence over the states which are close to or are in the iron curtain are too hard to free (and too costly), the US would protect western/northern (excluding finland) europe. building a military makes sense, but i dont see how they can with trade being so much more difficult with the split between the democratic countries of the western world and the communists in the east (excluding puppet japan).

Precisely. In a world without nuclear weapons, the standard of living in "The West" is markedly lower. Nukes are way cheaper than a couple of million soldiers and proper artillery, air, armor, etc. support.

> it seems like building an army requires too much for it to be feasible within 10-15 yrs post ww2.

I mean, the Western Allies had close to 6 million troops in Europe by the time WW2 wound down. America would have to shoulder the bulk of the load, but honestly, that's not really that different from the nuclear buildup, where America had thousands and Britain and France had a couple of hundred each.

>this question is too hard to answer without OP giving us specific detailed sub topics like ww2, korea, east eu, west eu (after marshall plan)

oh, to be sure, it's enormously complicated. I just wanted to respond to the knee jerk assumption that nuclear deterrence created peace and nothing else possibly could have; especially in light of how many actual historical strategic decisions were made with the knowledge of nuclear weapons which would have to be thrown out the window.

Would nuclear energy/power be a possibility?

>Would nuclear energy/power be a possibility?
no, that would mean they could be used as a weapon like how iraq supposedly used nucleur power to create weps.

Immediately? Operation Downfall would likely have gone forward, the northerly home island of Japan (Hokkaido, I think) would likely have been overrun by the Soviets and perhaps annexed directly, unless they managed to seize a large portion of the northern mainlaind to found a puppet state in. Japan would have had a much harder time getting back on her feet, proving a less useful ally of the US, after the bloody occupation of the home islands.

North Korea would likely have still invaded the South, with China directly intervening when the Americans began to make true headway against the North. From there, it's entirely possible that the Soviets intervene and launch a war, if the Chinese are overly successful or face devastating failure.

>the northerly home island of Japan (Hokkaido, I think) would likely have been overrun by the Soviets and perhaps annexed directly,

This part is unlikely: The Soviets lost almost a third of their landing craft trying to take out the far less well defended Kuril Islands. To have a chance at Hokkaido, they're going to need more landing craft, and if the U.S. and Soviet tensions proceeded apace as they did historically, Truman's not likely to be interested in lending them.

Everything else seems spot on, at least to this amateur.

It was actually so ready to go that the purple hearts had already been minted. 50 thousand I believe, and we're still issuing the surplus to this day.

war, war, war, war, war

Anime wouldn't happen desu senpai

There would be no life on Earth, since the Sun could not exist.

Impossible to say. We might not even exist.