The Nazi Scheme to Bombard New York City With Rockets and Other Unfinished Military Plans

8. Alexander the Great’s Plans to Conquer the West

Philip II of Macedon’s lifelong ambition was to conquer Persia, but he was assassinated before he could try. It was left to his son, Alexander the Great, to accomplish his father’s dream. Alexander conquered the Persian Empire, then pushed beyond through Central Asia and into India, before his soldiers finally had enough and refused to march any further.

Thwarted from further conquests in the east, Alexander began planning to conquer the west. Reportedly, the travels of the pioneering Greek geographer Pytheas, in the 4^th century BC, were actually a scouting trip and spying mission on behalf of Alexander.

7. How Would Alexander Have Conquered the West?

Ancient sources disagree on the details. Some contend that Alexander planned to march westwards from Macedonia to Ilyricum, thence into Italy, before continuing on to Gaul and Hispania. Others claim that he had a more ambitious plan to circumnavigate the Mediterranean by land, marching west from Egypt to conquer Libya, Carthage, Numidia, and Mauretania. He then planned to cross the narrows near the Pillars of Hercules to invade Hispania, then Gaul, before turning east to conquer Italy, and finally back to Macedon. Either route, Italy, and the small but rising Roman Republic therein, were on Alexander’s agenda.

If Alexander had invaded Italy, he probably would have won, and in the process perhaps extinguished the Roman Republic when it was still in its cradle. In addition to being one of history’s greatest conquerors, Alexander had in the elite Macedonian phalanx and Companion Cavalry the world’s best infantry and cavalry at the time. Rome back then was simply not in Alexander the Great’s league (see map above).

6. Alexander’s Macedon Was Significantly More Powerful Than Contemporary Rome

Roman legions bested the Macedonian phalanx in the 2^nd century BC’s battles of Cynoscephalae and Pydna. However, in the 4^th century BC, the Roman legion had not yet evolved into the ancient world’s best military unit. In Alexander’s day, the legion was still a spear-based force, a mixture of Greek and Samnite influences, more akin to the traditional phalanx of Sparta, albeit more flexible, than it was to the 2nd century sword-based legions that conquered Macedonia.

Two generations after Alexander, the Macedonian-type phalanx proved superior to the Roman legions during the war against Pyrrhus, a competent general but not Alexander’s equal. Fortunately for Rome, it never had to confront Alexander, for he died in Babylon in 323 BC, before he got around to launching his campaign to conquer the west.

5. The Nazi Plot to Wreck New York With Radioactive Sand

In what turned out to be one of his worst decisions, Hitler inexplicably declared war against America on December 11^th, 1941. It did not take long after the US was thus brought into the war in Europe for American heavy bombers to join the RAF in raining devastation upon the Third Reich.

The Germans wanted to return the favor, but aside from lacking aerial superiority to go on the offensive, the US homeland, all the way across the Atlantic Ocean from Nazi-occupied Europe, was too far away. So German scientists set about trying to solve that problem, and one of their proposed solutions was to render New York City uninhabitable by sprinkling radioactive sand all over the Big Apple.

4. Flying Over the Atlantic in a Silver Bird

To reach America, German scientist Eugen Sanger proposed a Racketenflugzeug – a rocket airplane. Known as Silbervogel, or Silver Bird, the proposed aircraft was to be propelled at 1200 miles per hour off railroad tracks from a rocket powered sled, then fly to a height of 90 miles. There, at the edge of space, the Silbervogel would use a series of roller-coaster-like “skips”, entering and exiting the upper atmosphere en route to the Big Apple.

Upon reaching its destination, the Silbervogel would detonate a bomb packed with radioactive sand, to devastate New York City with a radiation cloud. It sounds cartoonish, straight out of one of those old time comics, but the theory was actually sound, and it just might have worked. Luckily for NYC, the Nazis were defeated before either the space plane or the villainous plan became a reality.

3. The 1962 American Invasion of Cuba

In 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Pentagon strongly urged John F. Kennedy to invade Cuba in order to remove Soviet nuclear missiles from the island. The Joint Chiefs of Staff were in unanimous agreement that a full-scale invasion was the only solution. They presented the Presidents with two versions: Oplan 316 for a full invasion, and Oplan 312 for aerial strikes to take out the missiles, followed by an invasion if necessary.

The hawks, led by Air Force general Curtis LeMay, had a clear preference for Oplan 316. They contended that there was no guarantee that air strikes alone would take out all the missiles, or that one or more of the missiles would not be fired at the US. Fortunately for everybody then and now, JFK had the moral backbone to resist getting railroaded into a military solution, and managed to solve the crisis without an invasion.

2. The Expected Butcher’s Bill

The Pentagon’s planners expected 18,500 American casualties in the first ten days of an invasion of Cuba, assuming no nuclear explosions. However, unbeknownst to planners, the Soviet forces in Cuba had tactical nuclear weapons, and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had preauthorized the local Soviet commander to use them at his discretion if he deemed it necessary. As the crisis intensified, Khrushchev withdrew release authority and forbade their use without his express permission. However, whether the modified orders would have been followed, is debatable.

In practice, tactical nukes were dispersed throughout Cuba to various Soviet units, physically controlled by officers as low down the chain of command as captains. Soviet forces had drilled in the use of those weapons as part of their defensive plan. In the heat of battle, the custodians of those weapons would have been under intense pressure as they were subjected to overwhelming US aerial strikes, naval bombardment, and ground attacks.

1. The World Dodges a Bullet

If JFK had accepted the Pentagon’s advice and invaded Cuba, the results could have been horrific. It is not difficult to envision a desperate local Soviet commander in such a scenario, perhaps cutoff from communications with higher authority, resorting to the tactical nukes at hand to save his command, or at least ensure that its demise did not come cheap. The Red Army, with victory in WWII only 17 years in its past, did not lack military pride or an ethos of defiance unto death.

If the Soviets had used nukes in Cuba, the US intended an overwhelming nuclear response. Things could easily have escalated from there to a full blown nuclear exchange that would have devastated both countries and Europe, irradiated the Northern Hemisphere, and set humanity back centuries. Fortunately, JFK resisted the pressure from his generals and admirals, and relying on diplomacy, back channels, and blockade, successfully diffused the crisis without triggering WWIII.

_________________

Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

Automatic Ballpoint – Operation Tannenbaum

Battles of the Ancients – How Close Was Alexander the Great to Conquering Southern Italy?

Bentley, Matthew A. – Spaceplanes: From Airport to Spaceport (2009)

Blair, Clay Jr. – Hitler’s U-Boat War: The Hunters, 1939-1942 (1996)

Blair, Clay Jr. – Hitler’s U-Boat War: The Hunted, 1942-1945 (1998)

Imperial War Museum – The Operation Hush

Keegan, John – Intelligence in War: Knowledge of the Enemy From Napoleon to Al-Qaeda (2003)

Manchester, William – American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur, 1880-1964 (1978)

Miller, David – U-Boats (2000)

National Archives, UK – Operation Unthinkable

National Security Archive – Pentagon Expected 18,500 Casualties in Cuba Invasion of 1962, But if Nukes Launched, “Heavy Losses” Expected

Plutarch – Parallel Lives: Caesar

Summers, Harry G. – On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War (1995)

U-Boat Aces – Rocket U-Boat Program

Wikipedia – Napoleon’s Planned Invasion of the United Kingdom

Wikipedia – Operation Tannenbaum

Wikipedia – Operation Teardrop

Wikipedia – Rocket U-boat