Thanks for these questions! I tried to answer your first in my reply to Christian.
On your second, “delaying development” makes it sound like the natural outcome/null hypothesis is a sprint—but its remarkable how the more ‘natural’ outcome was to not sprint, and how much effort it took to make the US sprint.
To get initial interest at the beginning of the war required lots of advocacy from top scientists, like Einstein. Even then, the USA didn’t really do anything from 1939 until 1941, when an Australian scientist went to the USA, persuaded US scientists and promised that Britain would share all its research and resources. Britain was later cut out by the Americans, and didn’t have a serious independent program for the rest of the war. Germany considered it in the early war, but decided against in 1942. During the war, neither the USSR nor Japan had serious programs (and France was collaborating with Germany). All four major states (UK, Germany, USSR, Japan) realised it would cost a huge amount in terms of money, people and scarce resources like iron, and probably not come in time to affect the course of the war.
The counterfactual is just “The US acts like the other major powers of the time and decides not to launch a sprint program that costs 0.4% of GDP during a total war, and that probably won’t affect who wins the war”.
The big difference is Japan doesn’t even exist as a nation or culture due to Operation Downfall, starvation and insanity. The reason is without nukes, the invasion of Japan would begin, and one of the most important characteristics they had is both an entire generation under propaganda, which is enough to change cultural values, and their near fanaticism of honorable death. Death and battle was frankly over glorified in Imperial Japan, and soldiers would virtually never surrender. The result is the non existence of Japan in several years.
This assumes nuclear weapon caused Japan to surrender, and without nuclear weapon Japan would not have surrendered. Such assumption is plausible but by no means certain.
The surrender was really the Emperor having a way out, and giving “the most cruel bomb” statement via a discontinuous power scale. Even so, a group of 20 year olds tried to continue the war, and the reason it failed was the Emperor chose surrender, and to Japan, the Emperor was basically as important as the God Emperor of Mankind has in the Imperium of Man from 40k. Japan had up to this point despite steadily getting worse still couldn’t surrender, and I think it was the fact that everything got worse continuously, there was no moment where it was strong enough as a rupture moment to force surrender into their heads.
I’ll grant you this though, this isn’t inevitable as a scenario. Obviously without hindsight and nukes it’s really hard to deal with, but it may not happen at all.
Thanks for these questions! I tried to answer your first in my reply to Christian.
On your second, “delaying development” makes it sound like the natural outcome/null hypothesis is a sprint—but its remarkable how the more ‘natural’ outcome was to not sprint, and how much effort it took to make the US sprint.
To get initial interest at the beginning of the war required lots of advocacy from top scientists, like Einstein. Even then, the USA didn’t really do anything from 1939 until 1941, when an Australian scientist went to the USA, persuaded US scientists and promised that Britain would share all its research and resources. Britain was later cut out by the Americans, and didn’t have a serious independent program for the rest of the war. Germany considered it in the early war, but decided against in 1942. During the war, neither the USSR nor Japan had serious programs (and France was collaborating with Germany). All four major states (UK, Germany, USSR, Japan) realised it would cost a huge amount in terms of money, people and scarce resources like iron, and probably not come in time to affect the course of the war.
The counterfactual is just “The US acts like the other major powers of the time and decides not to launch a sprint program that costs 0.4% of GDP during a total war, and that probably won’t affect who wins the war”.
The big difference is Japan doesn’t even exist as a nation or culture due to Operation Downfall, starvation and insanity. The reason is without nukes, the invasion of Japan would begin, and one of the most important characteristics they had is both an entire generation under propaganda, which is enough to change cultural values, and their near fanaticism of honorable death. Death and battle was frankly over glorified in Imperial Japan, and soldiers would virtually never surrender. The result is the non existence of Japan in several years.
This assumes nuclear weapon caused Japan to surrender, and without nuclear weapon Japan would not have surrendered. Such assumption is plausible but by no means certain.
For people unfamiliar with this debate, I consider Debate over the Japanese Surrender a good introduction.
The surrender was really the Emperor having a way out, and giving “the most cruel bomb” statement via a discontinuous power scale. Even so, a group of 20 year olds tried to continue the war, and the reason it failed was the Emperor chose surrender, and to Japan, the Emperor was basically as important as the God Emperor of Mankind has in the Imperium of Man from 40k. Japan had up to this point despite steadily getting worse still couldn’t surrender, and I think it was the fact that everything got worse continuously, there was no moment where it was strong enough as a rupture moment to force surrender into their heads.
I’ll grant you this though, this isn’t inevitable as a scenario. Obviously without hindsight and nukes it’s really hard to deal with, but it may not happen at all.