@CWO:
I am not sure what the British government’s back up plan was anyways if Sea Lion was successful.
The British government may not have had an actual “backup plan”, in terms of something serious and concrete and specific. My impression is that Britain’s civilian and military leaders were focussed on preventing an invasion in the first place, and on defeating it if it did actually occur, and that they were sufficiently confident that they could accomplish one or the other of those goals that they didn’t need to give any detailed consideration to what to do if Britain ended up facing defeat. Hitler, similarly, didn’t give serious consideration to invading Britain until he was forced to admit that Britain wasn’t going to come to terms with him after the defeat of France.
It’s quite possible that British government considered the possibility of setting up a government-in-exile in Canada (or elsewhere), but “considering the possibility” isn’t the same thing as preparing a functional contingency plan. And in fact, there would have been two good reasons NOT to work on such a functional plan. First, it would have taken up time and resources that could have been better used elsewhere, even if it only amounted to a small number of staff. More importantly, preparing such a plan – even in secret – would have been politically very dangerous. Churchill had famously been proclaiming in the House of Commons that “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.” If word had somewhow reached the public that the same Churchill was secretly preparing plans to decamp to Canada, it would have had two very serious negative effects: it would have told the public that Churchill believed that Britain genuinely risked being conquered by Nazi Germany (which would have been very bad for morale) and it would have convinced people that Churchill was hypocritical on a monumental scale (which would have ended his political career). It would also have destabilized the British government, which was the last thing Britain needed at that time.
No, I completely understand why Churchhill did that, he was a very ballsy man and someone who was needed for UK but you’d still think you want some kind of back up just in case. I am sure his staff and the Royal Family would AT LEAST retreat to Ireland if need be.
