TL-191: Postwar
- Thread starter kernel
- Start date
-
- Tags
- continuation tl-191
kernel
Gone Fishin'
I'll probably have a few maps in between posts, as well as a major one at the start of each decade. he next major map will probably be around 1950.Will there be a map later on?
Uhh this would force everyone and their hat to rush for superbombs. While the great powers might be able to stop some of them, they won’t be able to stop all of them. I mean look at how China in OTL managed to get nukes. And that’s not accounting for great powers that are hostile to another great power deciding to make trouble for the latter by passing on nuclear secrets.
Yep or if are not superbombs there are other WMD that are destructive the same, expecially in a concentrated territory like Europe.
Already the entire new world order had begin with tons of problems as the intention of stop other nation to get superbomb will be considered a too big interanl interference from other powers and unlike OTL all the nations involved in the war are spent, need to rebuilt and had other serious problem to solve while independent great powers exist outside the 5 power agreement like Italy (that very probable will try at the moment to get as many Entente nuclear scientist as possible) and Brasil
bguy
Donor
Well doubtlessly nations in the 19th century that were being bullied by the navies of the Great Powers would have liked to build their own battleships to counter that threat too, but sometimes there is a massive gulf between what a nation would like to do and what it actually can do.
(And even if it's inevitable that other nations will eventually get nuclear weapons, that doesn't mean that the nuclear powers won't exploit their nuclear monopoly for as long as they can.)
China though probably would have been nuked in 1969 if not for Nixon placing it under the US nuclear umbrella.
That's a mug's game for the Great Powers though. It's unlikely to happen for the same reason that the Great Powers in the 19th century didn't encourage colonial rebellions in each other's territory. They're all equally vulnerable to it (if Germany passes on nuclear tech to Japan or Brazil for instance than what is to stop the US from doing the same to Russia or Italy), and it's not really in the interest of any of the Great Powers to let others into their club. (After all today's ally can quickly be tomorrow's enemy, and even if you are 100% certain that the nation you are giving nuclear tech to will always be your good and faithful ally, it is still better to have an ally that is dependent on you for nuclear protection.)
Doesn't that make nuclear gunboat diplomacy more likely though? The US and the German Empire are both going to be incredibly paranoid about foreign threats (given that both nations lost millions of people to a foreign invasion in GW2.) Thus they really won't want to risk a hostile nation getting nuclear weapons. And while they may be too overstretched and exhausted to invade or blockade a foreign nation that starts developing nuclear weapons, dropping a nuclear bomb on that nation's nuclear research facilities is a much easier operation. Is that at a nasty way to do things? Of course. But TL-191 is a nasty universe.
I expect Japan to get nukes by the late 40s and early 50s.
Japan certainly had capable physicists, far more than most people imagine. Also in OTL, Japan was starting to research nukes in 1939. Japanese researchers were also quite advanced in isotope separation techniques. From this, it's clear that Japan was well advanced in the scientific expertise needed for nuclear weapons development. Given time, they would probably have succeeded in building a basic fission bomb -- something like a gun-type bomb. And look if the Soviet Union which was devastated by WW2 could manage to build a nuke in 4 years (admittedly with a lot of espionage) then Japan which has won WW2 should be able to do the same.
Brazil and Italy on the other hand will prob get nukes in the 50s. I expect Italy to get nukes around a similar timeframe as Japan if not a bit later due to similar factors and I expect Brazil to get them in the 50s. Not having large swaths of your nation destroyed in a world war helps a lot.
The thing is, it's not the poor bumfuckstians you have to worry about getting nukes, it's the semi-prosperous regional powers who have the time, expertise, and possible desire. Also, you state that both Germany and the US both lost millions of men in WW2 and in that case how would they stop Brazil or Japan from getting nukes? For some reason, I don't think that the exhausted populaces of America or Germany would start another war to get someone like Japan to stop a nuclear program. Neither America or Germany are naval powers while Japan is. And I'm using Japan as an example, we could substitute them with Brazil (which considering that they're still a monarchy is prob much more industrialized than OTL Brazil) or Italy (For some reason I don't think that Germany would want a meatgrinder war in the Alps that fighting Italy would be).
First you need to found that research facilities, second you need to hit it with a bomb and till you have reliable missile you go with bombers and third and more importantly you need to have the will and capacity to bear the retaliation as you don't fight a third world country far far away you fight (in case of Germany and Italy) the only fresh great power in the continent and that have the capacity to hit your city with bomb both conventional and with chemical agent (if not worse).
This is not OTL 1945 with the USA as the only nation that not only had nuclear weapon but is untouchable by all the others and also untouched by the war and so with full industrial capacity, nope here all the winners have suffered their fair share of destruction and need to rebuild badly and i doubt that their productive capacity of nuclear weapon have reached OTL level
This presents some very good points. Add to it no one has developed an intercontinental bomber like the B36 because enemies were within the range of B29 like transcontinental bombers. Therefore you have to build one from scratch or have a build new air bases for B29 equivs. Germany has Europe covered but would need to build them in existing Chinese concessions to "handle" Japan. LIkewise the USA would have build them in the Carribean to "handle" Brazil.
Throw in air to air refuelling and the both dominant powers might control "proliferation" by superbomb. However southern Africa and Australia are sources of uranium so a well paying ally would set up some Uranium Citys under mountains in one of those area. Good luck trying to take them out.
bguy
Donor
Even if they get nukes that doesn't protect them from the US, if they lack the means to reliably deliver them to American targets (or if the US has 100 times the nukes Japan did.)
The US or Germany wouldn't be fighting a conventional war against those powers though. They would declare something along the lines of "the development of nuclear weapons will be regarded as an act of war against the United States/the German Empire.") And if any nation defies that proclamation and develops a nuclear weapon anyway, they would just unleash their own nuclear forces on that nation. There is no real sacrifice or difficulty on the American/German populace if the war is over in a day after Japan (or Brazil or Italy) gets devastated by nuclear strikes. Thus it just comes down to whether the US/Germans are willing to devastate a defenseless country to keep it from getting nuclear weapons, and given the brutal nature of TL-191 (where we see the US government routinely authorize acts that would be considered appalling crimes by OTL US), I don't see the TL 191 US or Germany showing a lot of restraint if a hostile power (or even a potentially hostile power) is developing weapons that would give them the ability to destroy them.
(Just look at what the US strategic bombing campaign did to North Korea during the Korean War. That wasn't even an existential conflict for the US, and the US still flattened pretty much ever human settlement in the country and that was done without any significant objection by the American people. Public opinion was vastly more accepting of devastating bombing campaigns on civilian populations in the 1940s and 50s than it is today, and that would be even more true in TL-191 where the US is much more paranoid and militarized than it is IOTL. If the US was willing to devastate North Korea IOTL, why would it hold back from doing the same to Japan, in TL-191, a country that has already attacked it 3 times in the last 30 years, that has recently betrayed its allies (showing it can't be trusted), and which could quickly become an existential threat to the US if it is allowed to develop nuclear weapons?)
I would disagree that the TL-191 US isn't a naval power. In GW2 it held off Japan and the UK at sea at the same time, so it obviously has a powerful navy. But regardless any war with Japan isn't going to be a conventional conflict. Naval forces will only matter as a means of delivering nuclear weapons.
Is that really going to be that difficult though? Nuclear weapon development isn't something you can do in your garage. It requires staggering amounts of energy.
And anyway even if the US/Germany can't find the research facilities, it's not as though they are just going to throw up their hands and say, "well I guess there's nothing we can do." That just changes the scope of their reaction from (nuke the research facility to devastate the entire country.) Just look at some of the OTL US nuclear plans from the 1950s. That was the era of Massive Retaliation (IIRC US nuclear war plans didn't even have an option for excluding China from getting hit until the Kennedy Administration). It was a very bloodthirsty time in strategic planning, and that would be far more true in TL-191. (Where the US was nearly destroyed from being too trusting of a foreign state and will never want to be in that kind of position again.)
Strategic Air Command Declassifies Nuclear Target List from 1950s
Declassified Strategic Air Command (SAC) Nuclear Target List from 1950s Includes Contingency Plans to Strike Major Cities in Soviet Bloc and China
nsarchive2.gwu.edu
1100 Declassified U.S. Nuclear Targets - Future of Life Institute
1100 Declassified U.S. Nuclear Targets from 1956 on the interactive NukeMap. Choose a city and a bomb size, and detonate. See what happens.
futureoflife.org
Do you really think the TL-191 US isn't developing intercontinental bombers? Even before the SGW it faced overseas threats in the form of the United Kingdom, Japan (and the German Empire), so it definitely had a need for such weapons platforms and we know the TL-191 US has a robust R&D program (in the books we see them develop not just nuclear weapons but also ballistic missiles and jet fighters, all of which are achieved earlier than they were IOTL.) I would be shocked if the US doesn't have a B-36 equivalent in service by 1950 in TL-191.
If Italy is throwing conventional munitions and chemicals agents, while Germany is throwing nuclear weapons that is not a fight that Italy will be able to sustain for long.
I would agree though that of all the non-aligned powers, Italy is probably the one the US and Germany would have the least problem with allowing the bomb, since neither nation has had any significant problems with the Italians (and the Italians are a fairly large voting block in the United States which gives them some extra protection that the Japanese and Brazilians don't really have.)
Even with the devastation of Operation Blackbeard though the US has an immense economy (most of which wasn't touched by the war.) And unlike IOTL, the US doesn't have a president that is going to take a meat axe to the defense budget in the post-war period. (Indeed just the fact that the US and Germany do have strategic rivals (most particularly each other) all but insures they will be developing nuclear weapons (and the platforms necessary to deliver them) faster than IOTL. Thus I would expect the US nuclear arsenal to be bigger by 1950 than it was IOTL. (And SAC certainly won't be allowed to atrophy like what happened to it IOTL in the late 40s.)
I would think Australia at least would want to cozy up to the US for protection from Japan. And would the African countries really want to make themselvestargets of the US and Germany just to help a different country get nuclear weapons?
How would they do it in this day and age? First off transcontinental stragatic bombers are fucking expensive. The B-29 bomber cost around twice that of the Manhattan Project and took untold 1944 to get into production. Until then how are the US and Germany going to prevent other great powers from getting nukes without fighting a war. BTW early nukes weren’t a war-winning bomb, just something that could replace a large bombing raid. Also the Korean War was just a proxy war, a war against someone like Japan would be true war against a peer power, aka something that the populace would not want. Finally for the Korean War, the majority of the American public didn’t even know it was going on. A situation which would be the opposite against a nation like Japan or Brazil
By the end of the war the USA need to rebuild entire cities, retool the economy from wartime to peacetime, occupy the former confederation where unlike OTL Japan and Germany there is an active resistance and better remember that all the toys of the war have been payed by the american taxpayer unlike OTL where the USA ended the war with the rest of the world owning her enourmous amount of money.
So getting more bomb and more bomber faster or even at the same pace of OTL is so totally out of the question that's not even funny, sorry but while the USA had an immense economy they are not a bottomless moneypit expecially in this scenario where they have not been the arsenal of democracy but more an active participant at the war separate from the other front
More probably the contrary, this are first generation device not doomsday weapon, their capacity is limited and they will also be less efficient against italian city than the american one agains the japanese one as in Italy (like the rest of Europe) the building are build on brick. Germany will need time and money to build a stock of weapon and money will be tight for them like it will be for the americans while chemical and biological weapon are extremely easy to produce for modern industrializated nation and if Germany start to use atomic bomb against civilian target the same will be done by Italy towards Germans cities and frankly even if Germany destroy Italy it will lose so much people that it will feel hardly a victory.
This is not the TBOverse or the AANW, here the other side can hit you and make you really feel the pain so deciding to go full genocidal will be hardly the first, second or even tenth option.
Not considering again that for getting OTL SAC capacity you need time and money and not only ITTL USA seem that don't have any of the OTL experience in long range bombardment but her and Germany will be focused on rebuilding for a lot of time
Developing? Sure, having on a reasonable time? When hell will froze, again the big enormous problem is money, people and a lot of things to rebuild. This is not the OTL post war USA they are more OTL postwar UK, sure in a better situation but not by much
Old Hogwashes and Young Nationalists: Mid-Century Factionalism in the Democratic Party
kernel
Gone Fishin'
Old Hogwashes and Young Nationalists: Mid-Century Factionalism in the Democratic Party
Edmund Levine, American Historical Review, Vol. 38, No. 2, Development of the Three Party System (Aug. 2014), pp. 186 - 197 (11 pages) "The genesis of the "Old" and "Young/New" factions of the Democratic Party can be traced to the Progressive Era and the rise of Theodore Roosevelt. While much of the old party bosses were content to rely on their city and state machines and leave reform-minded policy to the Socialists and Republicans, it was Roosevelt that introduced anti-trust legislation and worker protections into the mainstream of the party as Governor of New York. [....]
Roosevelt's selection as nominee at the Democratic Convention of 1912 saw the first fissures between the conservative guard and "Half Breeds", who advocated for a "Fair Deal" to reduce the allure of the Socialist Party. The 1890s and 1900s had seen widespread worker unrest and violence, including labor strikes that often devolved into riots and anarchist bombings targetting political and business leaders. It was a common fear among the Democratic Party, and members of their middle class and upper class base, that a Socialist Party victory would bring "an orgy of violence not seen since the Jacobin Years of France, in which our faith, our prosperity, and the very existence of out American civilization shall perish." Thus, in the logic of the Half-Breeds, moderate reform had to be enacted in order to stifle revolutionary sentiment [...]
Ironically, it would be Roosevelt who would lose to the Socialist Party and usher in a period of almost-complete Socialist dominance at the presidential level until 1944. The First Great War had left many of the Half-Breed priorities, such as anti-trust legislation and unemployment insurance, to the wayside, allowing these issues to be picked up and enacted by Socialist politicians. By the early 1920s the reform wing of the Democratic Party would lose much of its influence, with members either adopting more conservative stances or leaving the party altogether. [...]
The return of reform-minded ideology to the Democratic Party would not occur until the 1930s and 1940s, when a new generation of Democratic leaders and politicians would rise to the forefront. These "New Democrats" were not a unified ideological bloc, but rather a dispirate group of individuals who challenged the Democratic Party orthodoxy in various ways. It is therefore difficult to describe accurately the ideological nature of the New Democrats, as historians have applied the label to both nativist reactionaries such as Gerald L.K. Smith as well as liberals such as then-Representative Henry "Scoop" Jackson. However, we can note some commonalities. Several New Democratic politicians were former Soldiers' Circle members, which primarily attracted working class youth and thus made these politicians more favorable to the idea of a welfare state. While the Soldiers' Circle was a shadow of its former self during the 1920s and 1930s, it rose to prominence once more following the signing of the Richmond Agreement as well as the Second Great War. Despite their moderation in the economic sphere, several New Democrats were more extreme than their Old Democrat counterparts, espousing anti-immigrant, anti-semetic, ultranationalist, and hardline attitudes towards Featherston's Confederacy and later the occupied South. Curiously, it was the New Democrats that were more friendly towards Black people both in the North and the South, and often voted in favor of President LaFollette's bills to establish racial equality in the armed forces.
The New Democrats would achieve their triumph with the nomination and victory of Thomas Dewey in 1944, but had to swallow the nomination of Old Democrat Harry Truman as Vice President and the selection of several Old Democratic cabinet members. Dewey, while a reformist New Democrat, tied to achieve a balance between the two factions that made up his cabinet, but could not make them come to a consensus over the most controversial issue that divided the Democratic Party: the Southern Dilemma. Old Democrats had viewed the South as an integral part of the United States torn away by foreign meddling, which would return into the arms of the Democratic Party relatively soon. The New Democratic attitude was the polar opposite, with calls for the complete subjugation and destruction of the South becoming ever more common. These differing outlooks lent themselves to the rival Truman and Morganthau plans, which were favored by the Old Democrats and New Democrats respectively. Within the Dewey cabinet, the debate over the South had become so divisive that Secretary Morganthau and Vice President Truman were no longer on speaking terms. [...]
Yet the South was not the only issue that divided the Old and New factions. Economic reconstruction had been a key plank on Dewey's platform, yet he faced resistance from Old Democratic members of Congress over his attempts to increase state intervention into the economy, and had to rely increasingly on Socialist Party support to pass his agenda. [...]
Last edited:
Intercontinental bombers aren't reliable either dude. Wake, Midway or Honolulu is a very long flight to Japan and the Japanese will see them coming and be prepared while they're still thousands of miles out.
Granted they won't be able to shoot every single bomber down if the US attempts to send them all at once but it's going to be a tough sell to justify losing almost all of your nukes just to get a handful of hits at most if even that.
A reliable means of the US hitting Japan and vice versa won't exist until ICBM's and Ballistic Missile Submarines become a thing.
Last edited:
Agree. Given that TL191 USA does not start the post war era with B36s by the time they have finished developing them Japan will have a very high altitude fighter ready to shioot them down. If they wait until they have an ICBM or the Germans have a rocket that could be launched from say China the Japanese may have a completed superbomb progra with a few hidden away in the hills.
Looking at Japan broadly:
-It is one the few world powers that did not suffer a nuclear attack. Besides the irony of that, this is a Japan that does not have the trauma of Hiroshima and Nagasaki coloring its culture.
-It is the only power that did not see war on its own shores. In a sense, it's like the America of OTL: all the other powers got wrecked, but their own infrastructure remains intact, allowing them to gain economic dominance. Can you imagine Japan's economic position in TL-191? Europe and North America are both in ruins, but Japan itself is, for the most part, unscathed. Is it possible that the still-intact zaibatsu conglomerates will invest heavily in Europe and North America, and achieve a strong business hegemony?
-I wonder about the overall national identity for Japanese in TL-191. This is a Japan that went through the Meiji Restoration and, put simply, became undefeated on the world stage and one of the world's major military powers. It did not have the shocking, humbling cultural experience of being defeated so drastically in WWII.
Last edited:
bguy
Donor
B-36s were operational by 1949 IOTL. Even by your estimate that is well before Italy or Brazil will have nuclear weapons and comparable with when Japan will start having them. The likelihood that any nation other than Germany will have a significant number of nuclear weapons before the US can start deploying intercontinental bombers is virtually nil.
War weariness only gets you so far. The populace may not want a war with Japan but they are going to want Japan (the country that has already attacked the US 3 times in 30 years) having nuclear weapons a lot less. Japan in TL-191 has shown itself to be extremely hostile to the United States and unwilling to abide by any agreements it makes (witness them attacking their own allies.) That combination makes Japan with nukes an almost existential threat to the United States. The American populace is going to expect its president to neutralize that threat and post-Operation Blackbeard isn't going to be too squeamish with how he does it.
As for nukes not being a war winner, by 1950 the OTL US had 300 nuclear weapons. If even a quarter of that number is used on Japan, it would utterly devastate the country.
Most of the damage was in Ohio and Pennsylvania. The rest of the US was barely touched saved for nuisance bombing and rocket attacks. Thus most of the US economy is going to be perfectly intact. And it would be insane not to properly fund the American nuclear forces (and the Strategic Air Command) when faced with one hostile continent spanning empire to the west and another potentially hostile continent spanning empire (that already has nuclear weapons to the east.) You are going to have to deter those enemies somehow (the American people aren't going to stand for anything less after Operation Blackbeard), and nuclear weapons are far cheaper than building up a huge navy or a massive conventional air force.
Chemical weapons have never been particularly effective in any war. (And even if they were, Germany has a vastly larger and more advanced chemical industry than Italy has, so that's not a fight that ends well for Italy either.) Likewise as to biological weapons, they are a notoriously unreliable weapon system (since they can easily blow back on whoever unleashed them.)
Dewey's Inaugural Address literally has him commit the US to keeping other nations from getting nuclear weapons. It is obviously an extremely high priority of his administration, and if Dewey recognizes and prioritizes keeping nuclear weapons out of foreign hands then why would he neglect the US's own nuclear arsenal (or the US's ability to effectively employ that arsenal.)
The UK was on rationing until the 1950s. There is no indication the TL-191 US is in anything like that kind of shape. (Quite the opposite in fact as we see Flora sitting in on congressional hearings about funding the national parks and meeting with utopian city planners, so the US clearly isn't operating on a shoe string budget.)
And even if there are resource constraints on the US, the idea that it would choose to cut its strategic forces makes no sense. This is four years after Operation Blackbeard and less than a year after the nuclear attack on Philadelphia. If the US at this time has to choose between guns or better, it is going to choose guns.
The US was pretty confident of its ability to hit the Soviet Union with intercontinental bombers IOTL, and I haven't seen any indication that confident was misplaced.
SAC IOTL in 1949 estimated it would lose 35% of its bombers in a nighttime strike on the Soviet Union and 50% in a daytime strike. There's no reason to believe Imperial Japan in TL-191 would do better than the OTL Soviets were projected to do and considerable reason to think they would do worse. (Remember US bombers would have had to fly over the Soviet Union (a continent spanning nation) for a lot longer than they would have to fly over Imperial Japan (a relatively small island where most of the targets are near the coastline.) But even if we imagine the Japanese are able to inflict losses at a rate comparable to what the Soviets were projected to do, if even only half the US bombers get through that's still more than enough to utterly devastate Japan. (Indeed if even only a quarter of the US bombers get through that is still going to put a serious hurt on Japan.) Seriously, hoss how many nuclear hits do you think Japan can take?
What good do superbombs hidden in the hills do the Japanese if they have no way to deliver them to the United States/Germany?
You're underestimating Japan's size in TL-191, It's not just the Home Islands, they have Manchuria, Indochina, the Duch East Indies, Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines. For the latter three, they'd had them before 1910.
You know, I actually see Japan by 1950 actually having more cash than they know what to do with and this is with the costs of the SGW and large-scale industrialization projects that they will likely undertake due to the flow of income from extracting resources from within their empire. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if the Japanese actually build a rig on Reed Tablemount near the Spratly Islands and go looking for oil, the logic being that Oil is everywhere in Southeast Asia, surely there has got to be some that they can access (there's an utterly titanic oil reserve in that area).
I wouldn't be surprised if Japan has ended up in a positive feedback loop of sorts for the majority of the 20th century. The more they invest into improving industrial capacity and resource extraction, the more Yen they make and so on and so forth until finally they have an economy worth the name of the territory they have.
There definitely won't be the sort of squabbles that there was OTL over steel and stuff between the IJA and IJN as they would definitely have the industry to the point that they could mass produce the stuff.
If anything, a more industrialized Japan means that the IJN/IJA split definitely won't be as bad as it was historically simply because there are more resources to go around. Thus its quite plausible that the IJN/IJA split will be more around making sure both sides play nice during wartime, a significant hurdle but likely a surmountable one.
End result being a more industrialised, prospersprus and much less dysfunctional Japan that is the Hegemon of East Asia and a true rival to America
Concerning the New Democrats’ anti-immigration policy, is it anti-immigrant across the board or only anti-immigrant from some parts of the world (Asia/Africa/Eastern Europe etc)? Also, anti-Semitic? I got the feeling from TL-191 that anti-Semitism was very muted due to anti-Confederate sentiments. It still exists for sure and many New Democrats might be anti-Semitic but to embrace it as a policy plank I feel would hurt their chances at seizing power and the US has become very aware of racism going too far (I.e the Population Reduction)
bguy
Donor
How many of those regions are likely to be placid under Japanese occupation though? I would expect significant resistance movements to Japanese rule in Manchuria, Indochina, and the Dutch East Indies at a minimum and probably Korea and the Philippines as well.
And from a US nuclear strategy perspective, there really isn't much need to divert much effort to targets in those countries. Japan isn't going to be able to maintain control of its colonial holdings if the home islands get pulverized and any Japanese air or fleet bases in those countries are actually further away from the US (and thus less of a threat to the US) then Japanese bases in the home islands or the Central Pacific islands.
Again though that supposes that Japan won't be fighting massive guerilla wars in most of those countries (and isn't bogged down in a war in China.)
It's called: huffin, puffin and bluffing till we have the resources to really do what we menace; because surely neither Germany and the USA can announce the world that they are too spent to really act if some other power decide to do what he wants so we get Dewey big announcement and proposition and the building of the capacity to do what menaced but realistically no, they don't have the mean.
But it's all an hollow menace, just looking at Japan and we can see that really don't have the mean and will to really follow up.
The big difference is that OTL the USA had not payed all the money for the war by itself, not have vast zone of his territory devastated by the war, see his city bombarded and also in need to occupy the entire south (except Texas) where unlike OTL Germany and Japan there is an active and nasty resistence...so making comparisation with OTL is not possible even because unlike OTL there is no previous experience in building long range bomber like the B-29 (that as other pointed costed the double of the entire Manhattan program) so getting something similar to the B-36 will be even more difficult (and IRC it was a b..c for the maintenance crew).
Germany is in a similar position plus there is the attached corpse of A-H that will drag her down, so again for now their attempt to scare other nation to not develop atomic weapons is that an attempt because frankly they don't have the real mean to back up their threat, at least for some years
Ehh nope, strangely at as it seem people want to eat, having an house, etc. etc. and with the CSA out and the rebels in Canada and Utah suppressed people will desire go bact to normality or better go back to their home as millions of people will have been displaced by the war. Japan is a distant menace for another day, the immediate is a warm plate full of food and a roof under your head, maybe even a job, etc. etc.
Frankly the people that choose guns instead of butter are usually the people that they don't really need to choose between the two merely skipping the equivalent of the second breakfeast, here we are talking about an USA that had much more similarity with Europe post ww2.
Sure, but see your entire strategy is based on the axiom: do as we told you or you will be obliterated if we can't do a surgical strike. Great powers but any nation in general don't take this kind of menace very lightly and usually care a lot about their independence, so even if unreliable will be used...after all the other option is dying in a nuclear fire so why care for the consequences? Plus as i said, Germany will win but will lose so much that she will not really feel like a victors and this is deterrence, so again no, Germany will surely not start immediately go for massive retaliation against nation that can fight back because fighting an enemy that can hurt you is a lot less funny, there is a reason why massive retaliation was dismissed when the URSS started to have enough nuclear weapons and there was the real danger of being hit
There have been the Utah rebellion with terrorist attack all over the nation, millions of displaced, great damage to the most industrializated zone of the nation, bombing all over the nations and that can be much much more than a nuisance as OTL Europe can attest so no the american economy will not be perfectly intact even because the passage from war to peacetime will cause your regular economic downturn not considering the enourmous debt necessary to pay the war.
Regarding SAC, well SAC for now don't exist, this USA don't have any experience or equipment for something akin to OTL SAC and while congresswoman Flora and his committe can discuss about utopian city and national park financement all they want, another matter is really obtain that money as the numerous postwar project dismissed or delayed for lack of resources can demonstrate...expecially if Dewey want to concentrate in the veterans welfare and reconstruction