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

Khalid Elhassan January 16, 2020 32 min

South Vietnam - United States — American troops in South Vietnam. USA Today

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.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.