Comments by "Scott Franco" (@scottfranco1962) on "Military History Visualized" channel.

  1. I suspect if Japan had not surrendered, we would all have paid the price. America would not have wanted to invade, and had a new toy. We would have leveled the island. Nuclear proliferation would have been much greater, and it might have led to a nuclear WWIII.
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  2. A delay in the start of WWII might have had a good chance that the outcome would be decided by nuclear weapons, since by any stretch that work would have been further along. I don't think the winner of that would have been clear, but it certainly would have increased the risk that WWII would have ended with a significant nuclear exchange. It probably saved the world that things went the way they did. Certainly conventional technologies would have advanced, for example WWII might have taken place with radar and jet aircraft in place. However, the realization that nuclear weapons were a real possibility might have set off a nuclear arms race between at least the USA/UK and Germany, and possibly the USSR as well. At that point the world's safety would have relied on the development of MAD doctrine between players who were not as ready for it as post WWII players. From this point of view, the many dead of WWII could well have been to save the world from extinction.
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