Quote:
Originally Posted by billywatson
Russia is lucky the US didn't behave like the Russians -- or Germans -- would have behaved if they discovered the Bomb. Hitler would have bombed the Russians into oblivion, and wouldn't have taken a second to make that decision.
Some argue the US's biggest mistake wasn't continuing through Berlin to Moscow and taken Russia as well. With 25 million plus Russian casualties and the US the only country to have a nuclear arsenal, it would have been a cake walk.
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This could not happen. Those bombs were experimental and hard to make yet their destructive power was not as big as you imagine. It was quite impressive to blow up a couple of cities with mostly wooden buildings, but it would not cause much casualties to the armies, spread out and mostly covered.
For example, in Hiroshima 70'000 people died from the explosion and 60'000 from radiation poisoning after. But they did not know what to expect, they did not take shelters from just one plane. And during the bombing of Dresden where only conventional weapons were used about 25'000 people were killed. Obviously most of the population took shelters then. In other words - atomic bombs did not give that huge advantage over conventional weapons then, except for their demoralizing effect.
Effective radius of 20kt a-bomb is about 1km. In the field you can wipe out one military division with that, but there will be plenty left.
And at the end of war soviet army was well equipped (for essential part it was thanks to USA, I give you that) and very experienced. I doubt USA could win over them considering they were fighting overseas and would have to bring everything into Europe at large expenses.