@FieldMarshalGames:
Why don’t you hear it from Winston Churchill himself. Read his Pulitzer Prize winning History on the Conflict The Second World War, Vol 2 ALONE. Then you will discover just how un-prepared and at the mercy of the enemy Great Britain was. Second to the Military support received by the UK in the Early war from Canada was the Moral support that England was not Alone… Winston Churchill would not have been called to form a Government after the fall of Neville Chamberlain, but rather Lord Halifax, who was committed to a peace settlement with Germany in the face of what seemed impossible odds for victory and utter defeat and destruction.
Churchill also said, “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.” [the full version expounds this idea of ultimate determination in typical Churchillian speak.]
To say the absence of Canada’s military in the British effort against Germany would have led to Lord Halifax as prime minister is just too much speculation to argue on. How would that occur? Remember, Churchill became prime minister a month before the French surrender, so at that point Britain was not alone (if I recall right, Churchill was named prime minister on May 10, 1940, the same day as the German invasion). While the French Army was resoundly beaten in the first few weeks of battle, there was much hope on the British side that the French would invoke the elan that saved them from defeat two decades earlier. At least on paper the combined Franco-Anglo army possessed a numerical advantage in almost everything but aircraft, and some equipment, like the latest French tanks, were superior to what the Germans developed themselves and captured from Czechoslovakia.
In any case, I am not convinced that Britain would have capitulated or been captured without the military and moral support from Canada. Canada’s vast resources would still have been available (like Mr. Marachi said, there was money to be made by selling those resources and Britain was buying). Octospire said something about Britain losing all its money and America being lost, which doesn’t make any sense unless he thought this is an old AA strategy thread. Besides, Swedish armament companies supplied arms to all sides during the war, and made bank in the process. To the managers and factory owners and the people who needed the paycheck to survive, it didn’t matter who won or lost as long as they paid. :roll: Also, the cost of occupying Britain would have far outweighed whatever booty the Germans received, and would have left Germany spread even thinner in the approaching war against Russia.
Back to the topic, in those early pre-Pearl days the U.S. was still providing limited, but effective, convoy services for ships inbound for England, so the loss of the RCN in convoy escort operations would not have meant a West Atlantic devoid of Allied warships. Furthermore, it would seem unlikely for the U.S. to stand by as Germany mounted an invasion of Britain (which would not have been an easy operation to disguise). From all the determined and patriotic rhetoric heard in England during those days after the Fall of France, I don’t believe capitulation was even an option despite the loss of its official allies.
You must ask yourselves, could Germany have staged an invasion of Britain in the summer of 1940? To see even the slightest chance of success Sea Lion needed to commence right after the Dunkirk evacuation, when Allied forces were still licking their wounds in humiliation. Waiting any longer would have allowed the British to rearm and fortify the Island (as happened in real life). Since Germany had no strategic bomber capability, British factories were allowed to operate unimpeded and quickly made up the losses suffered in France.
Nor did Germany possess the dedicated landing craft or the innumerable support craft to aid an invasion fleet. How could the Germans land enough troops to matter? Would they swim?
The invasion would have required the Luftwaffe and the small Kriegsmarine to win superiority over both the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy - an impossible feat. Even if the transports made it thought, the Germans would face opposition from an enemy more numerous than themselves who were fighting on their own soil (or for some, like the French soldiers fighting to recapture theirs) and had nothing more to lose. Such an operation would have made the losses at Tarawa insignificant in comparison.
FM, you say the Allies could have lost in 1939-1940 (I assume you mean by losing England). Germany couldn’t have done this without knocking France out of the war, so 1939 is out of the question. In 1940 Germany did not possess the craft necessary to invade Britain or to supply its forces when it got there (any invasion would probably have been a one-way trip), and it would taken months at least to refocus the country’s factories towards producing the necessary equipment, and I doubt that would have even been a possibility. By then its probably 1941, Britain would be impregnable and the threat from the USSR could no longer be ignored. At that point, Sea Lion would be forever dropped from the war plans shelf and the conflict would progress much like it really did.
