The Royal Navy is on record as saying they would sacrifice themselves in the channel to prevent Sealion.
Given that and an undefeated RAF there is no way Sealion works, Dunkirk or not.
I strongly disagree with this. What delayed the 262 was Hitler’s desire to build an impenetrable factory underground after the above ground factories were bombed. Germany could (and did) build them as a cottage industry which was easily spread out around Germany and concealed. What slowed down German production was Hitler’s insane crusade for mega-weapons. He diverted tremendous resources building them.
He killed more people digging out a mountain for the ME262 factory than as a fighter jet in combat. This is true of the V2 which suffered the same fate. He ordered an impenetrable underground facility to assemble and launch them. That one couldn’t be destroyed directly but the British figured out they could collapse the mountain around it.
His mega-weapon program included fixed long guns (V3) that would have flattened England with continuous bombing if they got them up and running. He also had a train mounted mega-canon built that was a rediculous waste of resources and man-hours. it was only good for 75 shots and the barrel was done. It was used once to great effect and then it needed to be rebuilt (which it never was).
Hitler went to war with 3 million soldiers and battle-tested fighting techniques that were devastating. Britain and France had less than 1 million soldiers between them and Britain didn’t have fighter aircraft that could cross the Channel with enough fuel to engage and return.
If Germany had stayed out of Russia it would have been a route in the UK. All Hitler had to do was secure France and build JUST the mega weapon V3 long gun in large numbers and forget the V1, V2 and ME262. their regular fighters were a high production weapon and were very good. Had he defeated England then the US would have no bases from which to launch attacks.
Germany spent more on the V2 alone than the Manhattan Project and FAR more when the other failed mega-programs are added in.
I can’t find any source that supports this claim. You may be misinterpreting a line I’ve read that it cost more relative to the size of the German economy versus the US economy.
Not building the V weapons would simply not have made enough of a difference to matter. Germany could not have won the war.
The Allies wasted a hell of a lot of money on dumb ideas too. They could afford to, many times over.
That may be possible. I don’t know if they took in the cost of building a facility inside a mountain or how you value slave labor.
I still disagree. They devoted a crap-ton of resources and time building their mega-weapons. Had they focused those efforts on building more of their already well established weapons they would have leveraged that with an overwhelmingly larger and superior army.
The US needed the UK to stay in it long enough to ramp up production and new weapons. The Battle of Britain was a razor thin win. It easily could have gone the other way if Hitler had focused on it more.
They had no way of taking the war to North America and would have eventually lost the nuclear race.
I would like your thoughts on that. I thought the UK was the best at resource management. And I’m trying to think of some really bad ideas from other Allied countries. There were a lot of experimental aircraft that didn’t make it to production but that’s the cost of trying to build the best aircraft in real time.
Some bad ideas from the US:
Torpedoes that don’t work
Ten fast battleships instead of more fleet carriers and more subs
B-32 Dominator
I mean, I can see why these were built; they didn’t have a crystal ball.
Yeah from what I’ve read, the Germans could have landed and held ground. It would have basically been a Gallipoli for the Germans, but they could have gotten a foothold into England when it was at its weakest and forced valuable British reinforcements that were required in critical theaters to be rerouted to deal with them.
It was hard and heroic and required a huge effort of man and machine but the Luftwaffe didn’t come anywhere near gaining superiority.
The command and control systems of the British forces was a work of true genius. There was also the ability to fight over your own land within a comfortable combat range and also recover pilots and machines, plus a really well run repair and return system and a ramped-up production of aircraft.
The Luftwaffe already had more than enough in terms of numerical superiority, short of dedicating and diverting even more resources, competely changing their tactics and compleletly changing the location of the battlefield, I’m not convinced that another outcome was plausible.
Yep. (I must use at least five letters.)
“The index of military strength in September 1939 was the number of divisions that each nation could mobilize. Against Germany’s 100 infantry divisions and six armoured divisions, France had 90 infantry divisions in metropolitan France, Great Britain had 10 infantry divisions, and Poland had 30 infantry divisions, 12 cavalry brigades, and one armoured brigade”
The prevailing view among historians is not that Germany had far more soldiers and weaponry than the Allies in the early stages of the war (the Allies also had almost as many tanks as the Germans), but that the Germans were more organized and efficient at using their forces and had superior strategy.
By the time the V weapons were in production they did not have a larger army, and their superiority was mostly gone, too.
It was not. Britain was not going to lose that battle and was never close to losing; it was hopeless for Germany, and much of the Luftwaffe brass knew it and fought it under protest. It was a stunningly stupid decision by Germany and simply wasted planes and men they struggled to replace. Sealion was never going to happen. Britain didn’t even bring in all the fighters they had available; they had substantial reserves outside of 11 Group, which did most of the fighting. They had MORE fighters at the end of the battle than they started with; Britain’s aircraft industry was incredibly productive, far more so than Germany. Pilots were harder to produce but they still had reserves and German losses were terribly high.
The Battle of Britain was a crushing defeat for Germany.
The text of Hitler’s ‘Second Book’ shows that he regarded war with the United States, which would probably be allied with the British Empire, as both inevitable and necessary at some point. Hence his desire to knockout Russia quickly, and avoid major war on two fronts.
What was Hitler’s “Second Book”? I’m puzzled here.
Ah, thanks, interesting and I had never heard about it. But it seems like most of it got published in his lifetime, and the summary doesn’t provide views that are surprising, at least to me. (I only skimmed the article).
It is questionable, yes, but not impossible. It is much more likely than a successful German invasion of the UK, I think. The resources that the USSR had in the field at the start of Barbarossa were unmatched. Poorly deployed and dismally led, yes, but numerically superior to any other nation. I think a man like Stalin would have deployed them if he thought he had any sort of chance at victory against Germany. And as time went on, the Soviet forces would only get stronger while Germany would be weakened on its other fronts. Of course it is not a foregone conclusion, but it seems likely.
The US was already subsidizing the UK war effort, prior to officially joining the war, although the UK were no slouches themselves, being the current global superpower. They had extensive colonies and dependencies to draw resources from, even if the UK mainland was subjected to bombing. 1) So, Churchill: He was very charismatic and certainly galvanized the British war effort in a way nobody else was doing. But that does not mean he was essential. 2) Dunkirk: a loss here would be the worst outcome of all of your scenarios, a very serious moral blow and a major loss of men and supplies. Except, it was a major loss. Almost all of the materiel was captured, and many men were captured as well, especially if you include Allied troops. British propaganda, the best in the world, made a retreat sound like a victory. They still managed to continue the war. 3) The US joining the war: Not a total game changer, as the UK still enjoyed extensive aid from the US and naval supremacy due to its vastly superior Navy. 4) North Africa: while the Axis did put up a solid fight in North Africa, they never had the ability to resupply that the UK did, due to its naval superiority. The Axis had to win every battle, while the UK could lose, retreat, and resupply. 6) The invasion of Great Britain: Naval superiority made that impossible. I am genuinely curious how on earth anyone thinks Germany could have invaded the UK in 1940 and conquered it.
Very true, and if Halifax made a deal to get all their boys back, not lose any territory, etc, not disarm, he would have taken it.
Ironically, the Norwegian campaign was a great success for Germany but they lost many badly-needed ships for an invasion of Great Britain.
Operation Sealion has been wargamed a few times, including by the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. The Germans manage to land some forces, but the Royal Navy cuts them off and it turns into a disaster.
I agree that their ability to identify incoming aircraft and quickly disseminate that information up and then down the chain of command was true genius. the British excelled at asymmetric warfare. They excelled at recognizing and advancing the right technology in the most efficient way. Probably the only single weapon that they missed early on was the Mosquito. It was almost a de Havilland one-man show until they realized what a versatile plane it was. If they had that for the Battle of Britain it might have shortened the war.
Hitler needed to defeat the UK to keep the US from using it as a base of operations Failing that was his downfall.