I have always wondered what the world would be like without the nuclear bomb especially since i started doing research into the cold war, i would assume that there would be a cold war of some proportion but i would expect it to be a far hotter than the one we all know due to the lack of a nuclear deterrent. but aside from that whats your opinion peace and prosperity or a war between capitalism and communism.
WW2 would have continued for quite some time, that is for sure. The atomic bomb and its usage in Japan made the Russians get involved on their eastern border with Japan again, because they saw that they could gain some territory as the victory was sure to happen soon. Out of the two front situation Japan surrendered unconditionally quite quickly as a result of that. If memory serves me right it were like 10 days or something like that... Capitalism was alive and well only in the US. The involvement of the US into WW2 came quite late. Also compared to other (major) countries involved got bombed significantly during the war and lost far more troops than the US. If memory serves me right, the US lost around 500,000 soldiers. Nearly no civilian casualties as well. Russia at that point had lost 25 million people of whom 15 million were civilians, not to mention the destruction on their territory. The geographic isolation of the USA insured her victory, and that's why the US in the late 40s early 50s dominated in pretty much any statistic you look at. The cold war really didn't start right after WW2. It is therefore hard to tell what would have happened. If the war had continued for another 2 or 3 years before Japan was beat and the US would have been the sole major power fighting, because others were clearly exhausted, the situation of the US would be worse and the situation of Russia better, because they'd have time to rebuild. The fact that FDR died and Truman took over would have also politically created changes. You see, during the war the US had regular elections, while in democratic areas like the UK power was seized by a military council due to the crisis and there were no elections. Therefore it is questionable if the citizens of the US would have the war going on with more and more casualties coming home and the war raging on and on. It could well be that the people would have protested and the Japanese and US would have signed a peace agreement prematurely, which might have insured Japan as a major player in the pacific and without China getting restored. The cold war was a reaction to NATO, to the Russians getting nuclear weapons and opposing US rule world wide. Of course there are many many other factors, but these all evolved out of the result of WW2 ending and the US winning rather quickly in the Pacific against Japan. It is impossible to tell really what would have happened, since there are so many factors which would have redirected the cold-war into something completely different. Maybe an established Japanese superpower in Asia and no Chinese communism? Maybe a weaker US and Russian position and hence giving the UK and France opportunities or reestablishing their colonial might? Who knows...
