Giving Churchill the WWII cheat sheet

In My Humble Opinion
1

Forget tanks, planes and Reaper drones, they didn’t work. I’m off to July 2nd, 1940 (the date Hitler ordered Operation Sealion, the invasion of Britain) to give Winston Churchill all six volumes of his The Second World War, along with a copy of a sports almanac so he knows that I’m from the future and not playing a joke. Just got to make sure I take my copy of Oh LàLà out of the dust jacket…

The volumes are quantum locked and ripple effect proofed, meaning that they’ll stay the same even if Churchill deviates from history and thus alters the events described therein.

With a cheat sheet written in his own hand, how many months can we shave off WWII? Or even years? The Allies will save themselves a lot of bloodshed especially after Normandy; the Falaise gap will be closed, Operation Market Garden nixed and the Battle of the Bulge wipes out the German armour reserves even quicker. I also reckon that bombing operations would be toned down a bit as the effects weren’t up to the effort Britain in particular put into it.

Anyway, those are just off the top of my head. With his future volumes in his hands, what other changes would we see?

2

I think its possible that given the defeat of Germany is a certainty he might have more interest in dealing with the Soviet threat, after all, he doesn’t know long term how that turns out, just that a very dangerous period of history has begun.

But how he would achieve that I don’t know.

3

Interesting choice of arrival date. The best chance for the allies to have ended the war quickly would have been for Britain and France to have launched an offensive into western Germany in the opening weeks of the war. Germany had pretty much committed all of its front-line troops to the campaign in Poland and its western frontier was essentially defenseless. Hitler was gambling that the allies wouldn’t attack.

4

The idea of agreed occupation zones would probably go out the window - knowing Allied troops withdrew to allow Soviet troops in really stuck in his craw even back then, although it was deemed necessary at the time.

@ Little Nemo, being English I hate the French as I hate the Devil, so can’t have them claiming any of the glory. Just kidding…it was to allow Churchill and Airstrip One alone more free reign with the information rather sharing command with the French.

5

I’d imagine the specifics of individual battles would soon turn useless given how fluid war is once he’d start using the books. There’d be no Falaise gap, no real opportunity for Operation Market Garden etc - after years of changes to the war plans the whole Normandy thing would probably be completely different. What would be very useful would be any parts about technology and tactics, how the happy years ended for the Wolf Pack and what fighters and bombers worked and why and which ones weren’t that good. I have no idea how much those books talk about stuff like that though.

6

Ah yes, wasn’t thinking fourth dimensionally enough, the further from the point of divergence the more worthless the information becomes.

However I’m almost certain Normandy is still invaded. The British were very touchy about it fearing a WWI style bloodbath in France, seeing that this didn’t occur might make Churchill commit to it whole-heartedly rather than suggesting other invasions almost everywhere else.

On the U-boats, even my abridge copy has a map of the Atlantic showing losses to them in the ‘U-boat paradise’ of December 7th 1941 - May 21st 1943 and he writes extensively about the Battle of the Atlantic - the threat of Britain’s slow strangulation being the only thing that scared him.

He’d also know that Japan is reduced to cinders which might bode better for the Empire in the east, all they have to do is defend, defend, defend and wait for their homeland to end by nuclear fire.

7

One thing I never understood about the Normandy Invasion. Did the naval bombardment just miss the German defenses on Omaha Beach?

8

Rear Admiral John L. Hall, (Commander Task Force 124, the “Omaha” Beach Assault Force), strongly disapproved of the amount of air and naval bombardment used. Hall was recorded saying “It’s a crime to send me on the biggest amphibious attack in history with such inadequate naval gunfire support.”[69]

Omaha naval support was pitiful and badly done. The pre-invasion bombardment was much less than needed, and wasn’t aimed at the right areas to boot. Then, when it became evident that more was needed, the navy concentrated on the flanks of the beach rather than the center out of fear of hitting Allied troops. This totally wasted the shells that could have blasted open the beachhead. It wasn’t until well into the second wave that destroyers came close in and started directly shelling the exits.

9

A “paradox” of such time-travel scenarios is that once Churchill deviates from the history he is reading, the rest of the history is no longer valid. So for that reason, he might be reluctant to deviate at all, unless the rewards for doing so were huge.

Horrible as it all was, some of the War “needed” to play out as it died. For example, the huge number of bombs dropped on London? Better there than on British factories.

Ignoring that, two simple obvious changes:
[ul][li]arranging a better defense of Singapore – he called its fall “Worst Disaster Of British History.”[/li] Assigning Harold Alexander to the North African command replacing Auchinleck sooner than he did.[/ul]

10

The Pacific [del]War[/del] Skirmish lasts about six months, tops. With 18 months to prepare, the ABCD Alliance waits until it’s completely prepared before implementing the oil embargoes, moving the Pacific Fleet to Hawaii, etc.

In the aftermath of the war, one strategic planner for the air force made the case that having 2,000 planes on PI spread over 10 bases would have prevented the war. While he, like the writers for other branches, was overselling the importance of the weapons and tactics of his service in order to preserve funding, I believe he was right.

All it would have taken to have prevented the Japanese from successfully invading the territory they took over was the understanding that the Japanese were a real military, had topnotch planes and pilots, and a serious navy.

It would not have taken that much to completely change the Pacific War. PI would not have fallen. Had the [del]US Army[/del] MacArthur not been an idiot, there would have been sufficient food in Bataan to last, at the very minimum. That’s with zero extra time.

With 18 months of a heads up, a Japanese invasion of PI, Wake and Guam would have been impossible. Likewise, Hong Kong and Malay would have been been able to be defended, and obviously Singapore would actually be impregnable. HSM Prince of Wales would have not been on the bottom of the ocean and the Japanese would never get to the DEI.

Without oil, tin and other resources, there would be a countdown on the Japanese ability to wage war. It actually would take longer than six months to defeat them, because the US wouldn’t be ready to invade or firebomb them for that long, but it would not be the bloody war which it was in reality.

11

What is PI? What is DEI?

12

Phillipine Islands, and Dutch East Indies.

13

I’m not sure Churchill would be the one to warn. If you went back earlier, and warned Chamberlain, Baldwin, or MacDonald, you might get better results.

14

This is exactly right, although I believe the the single most important thing to convey would be the strategic intent of the enemy. Knowing that Japan would plan on invading SE Asia when the US cuts her oil, for example, allows the Allies to dictate the pace of the war, as I outlined above.

For the European war, knowing previously about Operation Barbarossa would be the game changer. Having the USSR prepared would end the war at least a year earlier. Of course, Germany may become part of the East Block so you have to think carefully.

The third question would be how much sooner could the US start to prepare for the war. That really would be the major question. The sooner the US could start producing planes, and the more they make, the better. While the UK did in fact share technology with the US, sharing more and sooner would have really helped. Lend-lease didn’t begin until March, '41.

15

Is the OP assuming that Churchill is sharing with Roosevelt, Stalin, and all the senior military leadership of the Allies? How is he able to convince them that he’s not insane?

16

Why wouldn’t Churchill go straight to Hitler and go, “Dude, we have a bigger problem: There are time travelers from the future coming back to take over history. Here, you keep this area, I’ll keep this area – no, I’m serious, look at these sports predictions – ok, now can we worry about how to save the whole fucking universe from an attacking future?”

17

France could have fought on in North Africa.
The Anglo-Saxon invasion of Normandy could have been made as early as 1942.
The Allies didn’t need strategic bombing, they needed massive tactical strikes against German front line forces.

18

Well, that’s why I dropped off the sports almanac, if the information itself wasn’t proof I’m from the future. In any case I doubt he’d share much with Stalin - at the time we’re talking the USSR and Nazi Germany were allies. Roosevelt was doing his best to help out Britain though. I think he would share the intelligence with Roosevelt, particularly about Pearl Harbor, so that it’s still attacked but the Japanese attackers head straight into the maws of a prepared U.S. fleet.

I think he’d see meddling time travellers as a far lesser evil - if it is an evil at all - than Herr Hitler. As he said, *“If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.” *

The British did do their best to warn Stalin as did his own intelligence services, but he was convinced that all such sources were “angliiskaya provokatsiya”.

19

The USSR and Nazi Germany were not allies at all. They had a nonaggression pact but that is a far cry from being friends. Stalin didn’t trust Hitler but didn’t believe he would attack them, at least on the time frame he did.

Churchill would have given all the information to Roosevelt, not simply about Pearl Harbor but about the entire war. The US was the single biggest reason the Allies won, and having an additional 18 months would have made a complete difference.

Even if the US couldn’t be persuaded to join the fight earlier, the thing it could have done in the meantime would have made an incalculable difference. Why wouldn’t he give all the information to Roosevelt? It makes absolutely no sense to only warn about Pearl Harbor without discussing the entire attack and the events leading up to it.

But that was without the benefit of the certainty of knowledge he would have. He would be a fool to hand over a copy of the volumes, but the British and US could have gathered enough information to make certain what was happening.

As for knowing specific battle plans, knowing the history of the Italian invasion of Greece would have completely changed that front. By knowing the events six to 10 months prior, and knowing how and more importantly, why they failed, Greece could have been saved, even if the Germans intervened. With that protected, the UK could have bombed the Romanian oil fields, from which the Germans received most of their oil.

20

Right up to the point Hitler invaded the USSR had supplied Germany with over 900,000 tons of oil, 1,600,000 tons of grain and 140,000 tons of manganese ore. A fairly substantial show of support given German aggression. Oh, and they carved up Poland between themselves of course.

While Britain and the Empire were already at war, the US wasn’t and Roosevelt was already pushing as hard as he could to aid Britain, it’s harder to see how he could have entered the war without Pearl Harbor. Unless they went public with the information that ‘some dude gave us these books, trust us on this that they’re legit’. Although I suppose he would push even harder on getting US forces up to scratch knowing the exact date of US involvement, so America doesn’t give quite a poor showing of itself at Kasserine Pass.

Agree with the rest of your points, having a free Greece from which to attack the oilfields would have seriously damaged Germany.