Short answer: No
Long answer: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
There is simply no way the germans could have suppiled there forces after the landings.
The British Empire During World War II
- Thread starter Godwynn
- Start date
Short answer: No
Long answer: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
There is simply no way the germans could have suppiled there forces after the landings.
innonimatu
the resident Cassandra
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With the resources of continental western Europe to throw at it, against those of the British Empire? I know that this has been discusses several times and most people insist that the germans could not pull off an invasion, but I still think they could. Especially if they had planned for it all along. They could seize the french fleet instead of trying an outright land grab after France fell, add the Italian fleet, and with the Luftwaffe control the Channel. Even the Home Fleet could not hold it against that combination - they'd have to either fight possibly destroy the german force at the cost of most of the british fleet - then they would be unable to escort convoys and germany could win an attrition war in a few years - or withdraw and let the invasion happen.
During the armistice treaty, Germany had to allow the French Fleet to demobilize (outside of the ships need for defense of colonies) and then promise to only use the fleet as coastal defense units. If they didn't do this the French navy would have been working with the Allies instead. The Italians first have to get Hitler to agree in letting them join Op.Sealion and then secondly need to find way out of Mediterranean while also avoiding more battle like Taranto. Cape Matapan, and Cape Spartivento. While Germany may have the army to pull off Sealion they still simply don't have the ships too do so. Before you say they can go into large scale ship building campaign remember that England would have time to do so too and also you have Royal Canadian Navy about to increase in size dramatically too.
Knighterror1013
Chieftain
Sharwood
Rich, doctor nephew
Germany simply could not pull off a successful invasion of Britain without approximately a decade of shipbuilding. A decade in which the British severely lowered their own shipbuilding quota. In other words, not possible.
Regarding whether the US and Britain could have defeated Germany with the USSR: Hell yes! It would have been longer, bloodier, and nastier - think nukes in Europe - but it would happen. Also would lengthen the war against Japan.
Whether Britain could have defeated Germany on its own... That's more difficult to answer. Certainly, despite the frenzy Churchill whipped his people into, the British Isles were safe from invasion. Any German program to build an invasion force would be countered by Britain with increased shipbilding of its own. Britain's main danger was starvation, and the simple fact is that if it became desperate enough, Britain could get its food from areas other than the US. So Britain itself was safe.
Assuming the US still wars with Japan, just not Germany, the Pacific War would actually end sooner, freeing up British forces to fight in Europe. If America doesn't get involved, but Japan invades British territory, then we're dealing with a scenario so out there I don't want to discuss it here.
Liberating the continent was not something the British Empire could do through military force. However, they could force a stalemate, and in the end, Germany probably would have collapsed under the weight of maintaining a large war machine to both protect its borders and keep oppressed peoples under control. It would be a very long, bloody, and horrific occupation for Europeans though, particularly Jews, and later, Slavs.
Regarding whether the US and Britain could have defeated Germany with the USSR: Hell yes! It would have been longer, bloodier, and nastier - think nukes in Europe - but it would happen. Also would lengthen the war against Japan.
Whether Britain could have defeated Germany on its own... That's more difficult to answer. Certainly, despite the frenzy Churchill whipped his people into, the British Isles were safe from invasion. Any German program to build an invasion force would be countered by Britain with increased shipbilding of its own. Britain's main danger was starvation, and the simple fact is that if it became desperate enough, Britain could get its food from areas other than the US. So Britain itself was safe.
Assuming the US still wars with Japan, just not Germany, the Pacific War would actually end sooner, freeing up British forces to fight in Europe. If America doesn't get involved, but Japan invades British territory, then we're dealing with a scenario so out there I don't want to discuss it here.
Liberating the continent was not something the British Empire could do through military force. However, they could force a stalemate, and in the end, Germany probably would have collapsed under the weight of maintaining a large war machine to both protect its borders and keep oppressed peoples under control. It would be a very long, bloody, and horrific occupation for Europeans though, particularly Jews, and later, Slavs.
silver 2039
Deity
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However if the war dragged on too long Britain faced the very real possibility of colonial rebellion, most of the colonies aren't going to sit around for 8-10 years waiting for Britain to fight Germany to a stalemate.
Sharwood
Rich, doctor nephew
True, but many colonies were more afraid of Germany or Japan than they were of Britain. Many people in your motherland, for instance, supported Britain in the hope of being granted independence later.
I can see states declaring independence from Britain, but still fighting on their behalf, such as Egypt, but I don't really see Britian's empire breaking away. The Poms simply would not allow that to happen, and were more than capable of being just as brutal as the Nazis to maintain their control. After all, they'd faced colonial rebellions before. Without a great degree of organisation, they don't work.
achilleszero
Emperor
I completely agree. Except on the point of the USA having more people. Russia's population was always larger than the USA's until their breakup. Over 10 million MORE people served in the red army during the war than did in the USA's. However as you stated the US and British armed forces were vastly superior to Russia's.
He was talking about how American population was vastly greater than that of Nazi Germany.
achilleszero
Emperor
He was talking about how American population was vastly greater than that of Nazi Germany.
Oh. That makes sense. If thats the case then i retract my previous statement. (I was apparently read his post completely backwards. Thats what happens when you read stuff way too fast, you wind up saying dumb stuff.)
EnglishEdward
Deity
No. With the exception of WW1 and WW2, Britain has always had a small army and had no chance of liberating continental Europe.
British strategy relied as always upon securing allies and building a coalition. In this respect British prospects against Hitler and the Germans were strategically comparable with those against King Philip (of Spain) and against Louis XIV and Napoleon (of France).
Defend and seek allies.
Yes. This was the strategy.
As other posters have indicated, maintaining the Royal Aair Force was necessary too.
Yes, and the British were ahead. Churchill started the program with project Tube Alloys to be undertaken in Canada because Canada had hydro-electric power available to produce heavy water (D2O). Adolf Hitler was prejudiced against E = MC2 considering it to be suspect Jewish physics.
If Hitler had not declared war on the USA, the British empire would have continued its own project probably using the same refugee European refugee scientists. However with far less economic resources available, it would have taken longer. How much arguable is debatable. At least 1 year, possibly 5 years longer.
And if longer, Hitler might have managed a successful invasion by then.
Quite so.
Yes, the British did use Indian troops in SE Asia.
jessiecat
Divine Monarch
From a Canadian perspective, can I add a couple of factors?
Of course Lend-Lease and addition of the US Navy in the North Atlantic in 1942 helped solve the supply problems that Britain had at the time. But at the same time Canadian productive capacity particularly in aircraft-building became crucial in resupplying the RAF after the Battle of Britain.
Something like 1100 Mosquito fighter-bombers were produced by De Havilland in Toronto and ferried across the North Atlantic via Labrador, Greenland and Iceland, often by female pilots. And as another poster mentioned, The Royal Canadian Navy quadrupled in size after 1940 and was very active in convoy and anti-submarine work. So much so that most convoy escort work in the Western Atlantic was done by the RCN, resulting in the sinking of dozens of U-boats. In fact, by the end of the war, Canada had the 3rd. largest navy in the world, after the US and the UK.
For me the crucial turning-point came in the defeat of the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain, partly because Goering failed to wipe out the Allied fighter squadrons on the ground and committed his best aircraft to futile bomber escort work in the Blitz on London and other cities. After that, Britain was never really vulnerable to invasion at all. A constantly-resupplied RAF and the Home Fleet were enough to hold off the Germans indefinitely until more Allied reinforcements and resupply began to flood in from America..
Of course Lend-Lease and addition of the US Navy in the North Atlantic in 1942 helped solve the supply problems that Britain had at the time. But at the same time Canadian productive capacity particularly in aircraft-building became crucial in resupplying the RAF after the Battle of Britain.
Something like 1100 Mosquito fighter-bombers were produced by De Havilland in Toronto and ferried across the North Atlantic via Labrador, Greenland and Iceland, often by female pilots. And as another poster mentioned, The Royal Canadian Navy quadrupled in size after 1940 and was very active in convoy and anti-submarine work. So much so that most convoy escort work in the Western Atlantic was done by the RCN, resulting in the sinking of dozens of U-boats. In fact, by the end of the war, Canada had the 3rd. largest navy in the world, after the US and the UK.
For me the crucial turning-point came in the defeat of the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain, partly because Goering failed to wipe out the Allied fighter squadrons on the ground and committed his best aircraft to futile bomber escort work in the Blitz on London and other cities. After that, Britain was never really vulnerable to invasion at all. A constantly-resupplied RAF and the Home Fleet were enough to hold off the Germans indefinitely until more Allied reinforcements and resupply began to flood in from America..
Sharwood
Rich, doctor nephew
Actually, even if the Luftwaffe had won the Battle of Britain, there was still no danger of invasion. It was simply logistically impossible at the time.
privatehudson
The Ultimate Badass
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Jessiecat
It may interest you to know (if you didn't already) that Liverpool renamed the road by the famous Pierhead Canada Boulevard in honour of the important role Canada played in the Battle of the Atlantic. I believe they also planted maple trees along it. Liverpool of course was the home of Western Approaches from where much of the planning and organisation of the Atlantic convoys were carried out, and the city's docks were the destination for many of the convoys.
So your country's contribution hasn't gone entirely unoticed over here.
It may interest you to know (if you didn't already) that Liverpool renamed the road by the famous Pierhead Canada Boulevard in honour of the important role Canada played in the Battle of the Atlantic. I believe they also planted maple trees along it. Liverpool of course was the home of Western Approaches from where much of the planning and organisation of the Atlantic convoys were carried out, and the city's docks were the destination for many of the convoys.
So your country's contribution hasn't gone entirely unoticed over here.
Verbose
Deity
The WWII bomb project history prior to the Manhattan project is pretty fascinating.
Initially the first and most dedicated nuclear bomb project was the French. The French ministry of defence was approached by the Collège de France physicist Frédéric Joliot-Curie, who proposed that he might eventually be able to build them a bomb. This was back in 1938 or so.
So Jolliot-Curie got the comission, made the first controlled nuclear chain reaction in his lab, scored heavy water from Norway and Uranium ore from Belgian Congo, and looked pretty much set to go, at least as the early stages of development were concerned. As it was early days still, it was mostly about how to control the power generated by a fission reaction, but from the French Ministry of Defence's pov the goal of it all was a nuclear device eventually.
And then Germany invaded in the summer of 1940...
At that point the French physicists handed all the work they had done so far over to the British. The British integrated it with their own efforts and developed it all further. Eventually everything was all pooled wtih the American stuff and went into the Manhattan Project.
As for Hitler not "believing" in Einsteinian physics, I really don't think that's true. What happened in the 1930's was that a bunch pf opportunistic second-rate physicists launched something they called "Deutsche Physik", claiming the theory of relativity etc. was somehow erroneous for being "Jewish". They got some play out of that, but it's not as if Werner Heisenberg at al., the first rate minds, had any truck with that kind of nonsense. (The Jewish physicists forced into exile, like Lise Meitner, being a liability for Germany is another matter.)
The reason the Germans didn't get cracking at the Bomb was probably rather that the problems and costs involved were overestimated by the German physicists who would have been tasked with building the thing. The British had a bunch of the more prominent ones rounded up in a comfy villa just after that war's end, wiretapped 24/7. These printouts have been published after the war. The interesting bit is the German physicists' reaction to the detonation of the bombs over Japan; they were frankly astonished, and immediately began frantic activity, organising seminars and things, to try to work out how the devil the Allies could have accomplished that. They didn't really think it possible until it was done it seems.
(There seems to have been an allied agent sent to Heisenberg in Switzerland at one point during the war, with the task of feeling Heisenberg out as how far any German bomb-plans had proceeded. If they could be regarded as sufficiently advanced apparently he was supposed to kill Heisenberg on the spot. Fortunately for Heisenberg, it dawned upon the agent that the Germans had so far made more or less feck all to build a bomb.)
Moe Berg was the agent in question, right?
No it wasn't, at least not in the short term. The Luftwaffe was not built to sink ships, it could, but not efficiently enough to counter the Royal Navy with any air support (and the British could easily stash fighter and bomber squadrons out of reach of the Germans for defence.
Maybe in the long term with new tactics, aircraft, weapons, and ships they could have held out long enough, but as it was they may have been able to land troops, but they weren't supplying them.
Leifmk
Deity
Also, the Third Reich was actually pretty damn ineffective as an empire. By which I mean that they made rather poor use of the resources and manpower of their conquered territories while they held them, and consistently needlessly alienated local populations, even the most Germanic ones (hell, even actual German minorities in eastern Europe). When they occupied Soviet territories, they quickly managed to breed anti-German partisans from populations that had initially welcomed them as liberators from Stalin.
In the (extremely unlikely) scenario where there was no Barbarossa and Germany stopped to consolidate her conquests and fight it out in the long term against the UK, they'd probably run into serious difficulties. Since the Wehrmacht could not walk on water, Germany's only real hope was to starve the UK into submission (well, an armistice, anyway) which would take no less than several years of intensive U-boat warfare (the only thing Germany could really do to the UK that cost the UK more than it cost Germany). Meanwhile, the machinery of the German state and its economy was largely designed and run by paranoid wrecks (it truly combined many of the worst features of a free market and a command economy, and was made that way on purpose to prevent any internal challenges to Hitler's power).
1941 and 1942 and maybe 1943 drag on. The German economy starts throwing up in its mouth a little despite having suspended payment on foreign loans. Pesky resistance movements in the occupied territories aren't causing significant damage but keeping the areas pacified still requires a lot of soldiers and keeping them all supplied isn't free. Hitler's health is starting not to look so good to those close enough to notice (and who's the designated successor, again?). Germany is still dependent on foreign trade for various important resources, especially oil. And the only place they can get enough oil is from the Soviet Union; what fun.
In the (extremely unlikely) scenario where there was no Barbarossa and Germany stopped to consolidate her conquests and fight it out in the long term against the UK, they'd probably run into serious difficulties. Since the Wehrmacht could not walk on water, Germany's only real hope was to starve the UK into submission (well, an armistice, anyway) which would take no less than several years of intensive U-boat warfare (the only thing Germany could really do to the UK that cost the UK more than it cost Germany). Meanwhile, the machinery of the German state and its economy was largely designed and run by paranoid wrecks (it truly combined many of the worst features of a free market and a command economy, and was made that way on purpose to prevent any internal challenges to Hitler's power).
1941 and 1942 and maybe 1943 drag on. The German economy starts throwing up in its mouth a little despite having suspended payment on foreign loans. Pesky resistance movements in the occupied territories aren't causing significant damage but keeping the areas pacified still requires a lot of soldiers and keeping them all supplied isn't free. Hitler's health is starting not to look so good to those close enough to notice (and who's the designated successor, again?). Germany is still dependent on foreign trade for various important resources, especially oil. And the only place they can get enough oil is from the Soviet Union; what fun.
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