Stardate 20020214.2039

(Captain's log): Sometimes battles and even wars hang on small events. What would have happened at Midway if the Tone had managed to get Scout 4 off on time and had spotted USS Yorktown an hour earlier? What if Chamberlain's desperate charge at Little Round Top had failed? What if Stonewall Jackson hadn't been shot by a nervous picket? Things like that.

I'm sitting here watching a show on the History Channel which is discussing aircraft which were being developed in Germany near the end of WWII, including a high altitude fighter which would have been armed with air-to-air missiles to attack B-29's or other Allied heavy bombers. And the show keeps asking "What if?" What if the war had actually gone on for another six months, and the Luftwaffe had been able to deploy those aircraft and turn around the air war?

There are a lot of What-if's about the European theater in World War II, and they all have the same answer: if the war in Europe hadn't been finished by August of 1945, the first nuke would have been dropped on Berlin. The war in Europe would have ended a week later, perhaps after the second nuke had destroyed something else big. (That's also the answer to "What if the Normandy invasion had failed?")

The US was geared to begin delivering a couple of nukes per week starting in November of 1945; the first of those would have been dropped on Japan and the war would still have ended in 1945.

By 1943 three events had happened which determined the outcome of the war: the US nuke program was on track, the B-29 program was also on track, and the German nuke program had failed (and Germany was going to lose the race by at least a year). At that point, though they didn't know it at the time, victory was certain. The only thing which changes in various "What if?" scenarios is how our side wins and who has to be killed to do it.