It’s worth pointing out that a German invasion of Britain in 1940 is widely regarded as completely impractical. To take one point only, all those invasion barges were river barges and did not have enough freeboard to cross the channel in anything worse than a dead calm.
This has been debated several times on the board but I am afraid I can’t find any links at this moment.
Curtesy of Google advance search:
german invasion britain site:boards.straightdope.com
What happens without Dunkirk?Jul 12, 2017
What if: Nazi Germany invaded Great Britain.Aug 1, 2012
Operation “Sealion” (Invasion of England)-Would It Have Worked **… **Jul 17, 2003
And while I’m at it: Who did the Swiss really want to win World War 2?
Even if they had, launching an invasion of an undamaged, highly defensible country at the edge of badly damaged supply lines in violation of agreements with other nations, including the only one with nuclear weapons, when your own country’s economy is in dire shape and your armies are only able to maintain 60% strength despite conscripting 16-year olds is an utterly stupid idea. They didn’t do it because it would be a completely idiotic disaster that would quite possible destroy the country for very little gain, the exact border position was not the issue.
A recently released, or maybe recently discovered, book(s) detailing Hitler’s invasion plan for England is available, but they’re pricey. The original German title is “Militargoegraphiscke Angaben uber England Sudkuste” (German Invasion Plans for the British Isles 1940). The plan to date called for locating German ships, and boats, that could be used to ferry troops across the Channel. Kinda like a Nazi version of the Little Ships at Dunkirk? I assume that French ships/boats would/could also be used if the plan had progressed that far.
Militargeographische Angaben Uber England Sudkuste Text Und Bildheft Mit Kartenanlagen Abgeschlossen
Nazi invasion ‘A to Z of Britain’ maps sell at auction
*More information about:
Hitler plans the invasion of Britain
…On 16 July, he issued ‘Directive Number 16’. This authorised detailed preparations for an invasion landing in Britain, codenamed Operation Sealion. It stated: “The aim of this operation is to eliminate the English motherland as a base from which war against Germany can be continued, and, if this should become unavoidable, to occupy it to the full extent”.
Defeat the RAF, then invade
Initially, Directive 16 envisaged a landing along the southern coast of England, from Lyme Regis in Dorset to Ramsgate in Kent. The German navy would contain the Royal Navy in the North Sea and the Mediterranean, and would sweep the English Channel for mines
Other preparations for the invasion included locating all available sea and river craft in Germany and training troops in amphibious landings.*
Also, having a plan doesn’t require you to use it immediately.
Creating a specific plan forces you to look at specific issues and possible, specific solutions. “I’d like to upgrade my kitchen” is very different from “I want to change the heater, remove the oven, put in a dishwasher and update the decor”, which is again very different from a complete list of models and materials. Once you’ve gone through the exercise, reviewing the plan some time later is much quicker than the original planning was. Updating in 1946 plans made in 1941 to take into account the new capabilities on both sides would have been a lot faster than coming up with a plan from zero.
I had a very good Swiss friend who told the same story as Dissonance above (post #4) and added one more detail. The Swiss allowed unrestricted train travel between Germany and Italy and that would have been disrupted immediately by blowing up the rails had Germany invaded. There was simply no upside for Germany to invade Switzerland.
Indeed, the Royal Navy could have sunk most of the German invasion fleet without firing a shot simply by sortieing destroyers in the Channel, which would founder the invasion barges in their wash. Not an exaggeration.
Regarding the creation of plans, it’s noteworthy that Germany had no plans of any kind for dealing with Britain until Hitler issued the entirely vague and implausible Fuhrer Directive 16 on July 16, 1940, more than three weeks after France had surrendered. The absurdity of the notion that the Kriegsmarine was going to somehow contain the Royal Navy in the North Sea and Mediterranean while it swept the channel for mines is compounded by the fact that the Royal Navy was already in the channel and never left it; light cruisers and destroyers remained stationed at channel ports and were on their own sufficient to defeat any German crossing attempt without even considering the heavier ships at Scapa Flow and Gibraltar.
Though people do still like to give themselves a bit of a thrill reading the handbook prepared for putative German occupation troops and the “black list” of people to be arrested on sight. If it was thrown together in a hurry, it still gives an impression of some considerable effort.
As others have noted, no doubt in a more articulate fashion than me, there wasn’t a lot of upside, but quite a bit of downside.
What was the gain? Does he really need Switzerland? Are they are threat? No. Will the defeat of Switzerland enable him to launch into another nation that he wants to do battle with no? And while it’s a minor issue, Hitler still needed to sell the war, and subsequent invasions to the people. Selling the German people that their brethren in Poland or Czechoslovakia needed to come into greater Germany was on thing, but I the case for Switzerland was much more difficult.
What was the risk? As has been noted, it would have been although fight. Not only to defeat Switzerland, but to hold it. Why bother? And if all of his other plans fell into place, Switzerland would always be there later.
Hitler’s focus was the Soviet Union. Not England. Not France. Not Poland. But the Soviet Union. Everything else was just a side show to get to the Soviet Union. Hitler was evil. But he wasn’t stupid and he had a plan. Switzerland wasn’t helping him with his plan.
This is because Hitler never wanted to invade England. He felt England and Germany should be / were natural allies. A belief that many German statesmen had since Bismarck.
I once participated in a huge miniatures battle, 2/3s of a hotel ballroom, that was Operation Sealion. I commanded a KM destroyer squadron in a side show, a blocking force in place to prevent the arrival of reinforcements from Scapa Flow. We managed to do it, but the invasion failed anyway. I don’t recall if the barges’ freeboard was a factor or not.
Invading Switzerland was on Hitler’s To-do list, right after he got done taking back his Pacific colonies – the Carolinas, Marianas, and Marshall islands. Thing was, Japan had been awarded them after WWI so he was waiting for the USN and RN to take them from Japan first so he wouldn’t piss off his ally. That plan didn’t work out. 
Yes, Hitler’s main goal and entire point of the war for him was the Soviet Union. But he did not have any kind of coherent plan.
Consider just how absurd and at odds with reality this is. His plan for dealing with a hostile England with total control of the seas that had a history going back centuries of exercising this power to prevent any one nation becoming or remaining the sole power on the continent was that England and Germany should be natural allies? No plan, no consideration with any basis in reality on what to do about England once he had conquered France? It wasn’t just Barbarossa that he should have look to Napoleon for lessons on what not to do.
It’s also not a question of Hitler not wanting to invade England. Its a question of Germany lacking any ability to invade England, regardless of Hitler’s wishes.
I thought Hitler’s main plan (after taking France) was to invade England (the aforementioned Operation Sealion) but having been defeated in the Battle of Britain they lacked the air superiority necessary to do so. In other words, barges or whatever notwithstanding, they would have lost the naval battle due to the air defences Britain could provide. Hence the “Never has so much been owed by so many to so few” Churchill speech, referring to the Battle of Britain pilots. It was a close-run thing, too - basically, Germany ran out of planes/pilots just before Britain did. Or have I got all this horribly wrong?
While I don’t know much of the actual history, it strikes me that high-ranking Nazis might have found Switzerland very useful, even without considering defeat. Corrupt officials always like foreign places to stash loot (especially secrecy-in-banking countries), and I imagine having a border with a neutral country would make it easier to get foreign luxury goods for someone with money. Hitler of course didn’t care about either of those, of course, but I think most of his cronies might have.
Hitler remained convinced to the end that the British were near cousins and should be allies against the lower races to the East, and that they would come to some strategic agreement soon after the fall of France - Germany to be left alone on the continent, Britain to be left alone on the high seas. He never wanted or *seriously *planned to invade, but did need to defend “United Europe” against the RAF and Royal Navy until they came to their senses.
The Swiss aren’t hardline, legalistic neutral in WWII. They’re pragmatic, quietly doing favors for Germany as they must to avoid the threat of invasion.
The threat of invading Switzerland is extremely useful. The Swiss will probably bend to further favors (Allow Germany to recruit Volunteers? Not Revoking Franz Burri’s Citizenship?) if pressured. The action of invading it? Not so much.
Germany clearly didn’t run through all of its ‘diplomatic options’ with the Swiss. I could imagine a scenario where Germany has won an advantageous peace with the Soviet Union decide to annex German Switzerland but that’s a lower priority. And the Swiss historically were never any kind of threat to Germany.
You’ve got it sort of horribly wrong. Germany was never going to be able to invade Britain, regardless of how the Battle of Britain went in the air. The German Navy was entirely outclassed by the Royal Navy; there was no possible way they could prevent the Royal Navy from entering the Channel and obliterating the invasion fleet, which was going to consist mostly of Rhine ferries which had no business leaving the river and entering the open sea in the first place. Air power could make the Royal Navy pay for sinking the invasion fleet, but it could not prevent them from doing it. The Luftwaffe could not have defeated the RAF in any event; if the RAF started taking unsustainable losses during the Battle of Britain they planned to withdraw to airbases in Northern Britain outside of the range of Luftwaffe fighters. As it was, Britain was out-producing Germany in fighter aircraft and losing fewer fighter pilots than the Germans during the Battle of Britain.
Hitler didn’t have any plan for dealing with Britain after defeating France should Britain refuse to capitulate or come to some accommodation with Germany. He didn’t even issue the orders to begin planning Sealion until six weeks had passed after the defeat of France, and the plan for Sealion was entirely unfeasible.
Which illustrates why this ‘England’ crap is so irritating in threads like this. Scotland was of massive strategic importance in WW2, Scottish soldiers died at a higher rate in WW1 than those from most other countries, Northern Ireland and Wales were both fully involved in WW2, etc, etc. And then there’s the rest of the British Empire.