Uwe, is that supposed to be a 1940's era Manhattan skyline? Wow, you guys were optimistic! ![Mr. Green :mrgreen:](https://bassoutpost.com/Smileys/default/mrgreen.gif)
Bordering on the belief in the supernatural more like! Yes, there were plans to bomb New York (there is even a claim that one of the Junker 390s made it to New York and back on a secret test flight and there was a confirmed test flight to Cape Town, SA, and back), even with a nuclear bomb or some bio-warfare "
Vergeltungswaffe". I don't believe though that even with the Nazis there could have been someone who believed that the US' economic might could be bombed into submission, but a painful counterstrike was deemed possible to then force the US to the cease fire bargaining table. Frankly, that was pie in the skies and ignored how the US acts under such circumstances. The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor too to bring the US to the negotiation table to accept Japan's desired influence in Asia, crippling the Pacific Fleet was deemed as a demonstration "we little yellow men can show you white colonialists where it is at, better talk to us and take us serious", well, we all know how the US reacted to that. Couple of years later the little yellow men had graciously served for nuclear testing and were taking bows on the deck of a US ship signing capitulation papers.
The Third Reich's initial
Blitzkrieg successes, unorthodox tactics and modern to futurist weapons tend to overshadow that, at its core, the
Wehrmachtsheer was an old-fashioned land army with
Marine and
Luftwaffe relegated to tactical support. Send in the midrange-bombers and
Stukas, send in the tanks, conquer with the army units. Job done,
jawohl! Next bordering country please. There was not even the faintest concept of a strategic navy (U-Boats excepted, they were comparatively cheap and quick to produce; building the super-battleships Bismarck - sunk by a WW I biplane - and the Tirpitz without a fleet to embed them in was a huge material waste, the lack of German aircraft carriers unfogiveable for any meaningful naval operation) or a strategic airforce like the US or Great Britain both had. The Wehrmacht was utterly ill-equipped for long-distance wars, laughably so, it couldn't even invade the puny and embargo-starved British Isles (while the Allies would invade North Africa, Southern Europe and the Atlantic Coast within less than two years!) nor conduct a long range war in North Africa or Russia (once German troops were at the outskirts of Moscow and supply lines overstretched), much less bring war to the US. Great military Allied achievements such as D-Day or the reconquest of the Pacific could not be replicated by the
Wehrmacht because it hadn't been created and honed for those types of military operations.
All that
Wunderwaffen mythology is just a small aspect of that. Wartime Germany simply did not have the resources and time to ever create a meaningful fleet of Arado delta wing jet bombers to sweep over Manhattan, all technology issues aside. And even if it had done so, that wouldn't have stopped the production of myriads of Liberty ships and B-17s. Except in bad sci-fi B movies, the US was and is inconquerable.