Why Did Germany not Attack America

Originally posted by TheNockerNox
I thought that the Nazi war machine was looking in to multi-stage V2 type rockets, these would have been the first ICBM's and would have been used to bomb the US.

Not even close. They could maybe hit GB from very close, at best.

While it’s all history now it is noteworthy that the Weimar Republic continued rocket development until Hitler came to power in 1933. They made great strides that could never have been duplicated during the war years of 1939-45 alone no matter how much effort was expended. This is a mirror of what a nuclear program might have been had it begun much earlier. Had the likes of Albert Einstein explored the nuclear questions with funding during the 1920s in a program equally serious to the rocket one we must shudder to think of the results.

The study of nuclear power in Germany began far too late and was far too fragmented amongst multiple groups working blind relative to their counterparts. Had they all worked together it makes sense that the probability of success would be increased. Also the fact that had those other esteemed scientists had been working in close quarters with Wernher Heisenberg they would have recognized his reluctance to produce serious results. For example Kurt Diebner and Paul Hartek worked on uranium enrichment for a uranium-based bomb while Heisenberg tried to create sustained fission reactions and possibly a plutonium breeder reactor.

Of course the modus operandi of the Third Reich was rivalry fostered by Hitler himself. All factions and individuals involved in any undertaking or plan were in competition with peers which produced back-stabbing dramas, deceit and secrecy. The infighting between Munitions Minister Albert Speer and the SS is a good example. As Speer withdrew funds from atomic research projects the SS covertly funded them.

It is a very outside chance that given different circumstances it all would have come together with Germany possessing a nuclear bomb and a vehicle capable of delivering it to the USA. But history as we know it was often decided by the slimmest of margins. A different decision or a fortunate breakthrough within a razor’s edge of variance would have produced a different outcome. It is historical fact that the US developed a nuclear bomb but it took several more years before it had a missile to deliver it. And that came from von Braun!! It’s not difficult to see how a program begun several years earlier could have produced results in Germany.

Did the 2-stage A-9/A-10 get into space though? An existing hazy photo shows a swept-winged A-9 on top of a cluster of rocket boosters, flames pouring out of five nozzles on the array. There is no way to place the object relative to anything for size comparison.

The October 10, 1952, edition of the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet reported that a space rocket had been launched from an SS facility near Prague in February 1945. The vehicle described sounded like an A-9/A-10. We note this is the same area/facility that is associated with UFO-like Nazi disc tales that flood the internet today.

"On January 8, 1945, the first version of the A-9 took off. The control failed about 30 meters (100 feet) above the firing table (launch pad)," Dornberger wrote about the Prague launches, "A few days later, we were unable to launch another missile because the alcohol tank had developed a leak. At last, on January 24 (1945), we had our first success. The rocket, climbing vertically, reached a peak height of nearly 80 kilometers (50 miles) at a maximum speed of 4,300 kilometers per hour (2,700 miles per hour)."

Perhaps the A-9/A-10 missile is what roared into the heavens and has been convolutedly described as a saucer. We know test flights of the A-9 alone were made.

Dornberger said that von Braun was a problem solver extraordinaire. So if there was any alternate historical reality to ponder we can rest assured that von Braun would have achieved any goal laid down.

There was never any doubt that manned space travel was Wernher von Braun's life goal. The technology needed for manned flight presented many technical challenges. He realized early on that only multi-staged, liquid-propelled rockets could achieve this dream. Rockets certainly needed light-weight propellant tanks. And there still had to be a payload. Von Braun knew that liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen was the ultimate propellant combination but also that learning how to handle liquid hydrogen would be a long-term affair.

The Advanced Projects Group planned to develop a stratospheric rocket that could travel from Europe to America in 40 minutes after the war. Then the target was orbital spaceships that could reach 8 KPS and 500 km orbital altitude. Beyond that it was orbiting space stations including an observatory in space and a space mirror. Manned expeditions to the moon were also a popular theme for research. Finally, the use of nuclear energy to achieve interstellar travel was studied by the Advanced Projects Group.

The Nazi rocket program was very costly. The same amount of Reichsmarks could have funded equipment and weapons production that would have had a more immediate positive impact on the German military. On the other hand rocket attacks against England and the Low Countries were the ultimate terror weapon. No one knew how many the Germans had. Allied resources had to be diverted to study the rocket weapons and attempt to plan defenses against them plus gather intelligence and analyze it. There was a lot unknown at the time and fear of that unknown can’t be dismissed. Psychologically they were an impact on the population.

We will probably never know everything about the German rocket and nuclear programs. All the principle people are gone and even when they were here they downplayed things. Most documents on the subject were destroyed at the end of hostilities. No one wanted to have proof that they’d worked on sinister Amerika rockets made to carry nuclear weapons. That might have hindered post-war job offers!

The remarkable progress that was made after Hitler gave the A-4 full support in July 1943 would have been taken much farther had funds and personnel been dedicated in late 1939 or early 1940. Thankfully, the world was better off for his indecisiveness, mind changes and his control freakiness. Otherwise it is highly likely that the A-9 would have been seen over America.

Once classified documents warned of the nuclear threat from Germany via rocket. We simply didn't know back then.

Cruizer I have conducted more than three years of in depth research on the topic and learned some amazing things.

About the U-boat war first. In early 1942 about half a dozen U-boats off the east coast of the USA had a field day. Indeed my father's ship was sunk by U-653 on 17 May 1942 in that area.

By 1944 however allied air patrols by aircraft with radar and accoustic homing torpedoes prevented all but the bravest U-boat commanders from surfacing near the US coast.

At the very end of the war however one u-boat U-873 is thought to have towed a Lafferenz (aka Lafferentz) capsule close to New York with a V-2 rocket. The 300 odd tonne capsule had been used in Baltic trials with U-1063 but disappeared and was unaccounted for at the end of the war.

There is huge debate about the Ju-390 flight to within 16 km of New York from Mount de Marsan in France early 1944. The unit based there FAGr5 did have a Ju-390 on strength, but the unit's records don't record the flight.

There are surviving photos of a second Ju-390 which is said to have been employed on test flying at Pargue however critics argue this second Ju-390 aircraft could not be found at the end of WW2. A polish diplomat however observed a Ju-390 being disassembled at an airfield in Uraguay in 1946. Skorzeny had an airstrip built at Cordoba in Northern Argentina during the war by the crewmen of Graf Spee resident in Argentina.

Yes the Ju-390 could have performed the mission with a 4 tonne bomb load according to calculations which I have made.

Then the question becomes why didn't they ?

Well if one was developing a nuclear weapon, why would one tip off the enemy with a conventional attack ?

Many speculate that Nazi scientists could not build an A-bomb and that Werner Heisenberg, nuclear physicist of the Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft never came close.

The truth is there were several different Nazi nuclear projects and one at least had ten times the funding given to Heisenberg's KWG team.

There was a Kreigsmarine nuclear team. There was another team under a guy called Dr Fritz Houtermanns who was trying to create a Plutonium A-bomb who depended on Heisenberg to create a successful reactor design.

Then there was the Heereswaffenamt team under Dr Paul Harteck, later taken over by the SS in August 1944. Harteck perfected the uranium centrifuge invented in 1942 to enrich uranium to bomb grade.

A Uranium A-bomb is actuually very easy to build with sufficient enriched Uranium. problem is that British MI.5 managed to penetrate the Nazi nuclear program through operation Epsilon based in Stockholm. This led to successful allied bombing of Nazi Germany's centrifuge projects.

Had Germany succeeded, then a Dr Kurt Diebner working at a laboratory in Stadtilm, near Leipzeig was going to develop a Uranium A-bomb.

What happened however was that Dornberger and V2 engineer Werner von Braun apparently with discreet backing of the SS went to Lisbon in October 1944 and negotiated with the US authorities for surrender by Germany's scientific elite of their rocketry and nuclear programmes.

Thus in the end there was a secret capitulation which saved the USA and UK from nuclear attack.