Yeah, the war would go on much longer, the USSR would take heavy losses and without Lend-Lease would either lose or withdraw behind the Urals.
But why would the USA get involved once Britain decides for peace? The US would be involved obly vs Imperial Japan.
Altho without significant lend lease (The USA might send some food or medical aid) the USSR would have a tough time of it, but the war would drag on. Since Britain never entered the war, there’d be no reason for Germany to turn against it.
If you read Shattered Sword and others, the Imperial Japanese, once thwarted vs Russia in the North, almost certainly would attack the USA and Britain. Thus the British would have it’s hands full with that theatre anyway.
That’s not my understanding. My understanding is that Chamberlain wanted Halifax to succeed him. The problem was the same political forces that were pushing him out of office also meant he had very little influence in the decision about his replacement.
Hitler was planning to conquer Britain at some point; he didn’t really need a reason.
My understanding is that Japan’s main goal was to seize the British and French colonies in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, and declared war on the US only because they were convinced that attacking those colonies would draw America into the war anyway. If Britain wasn’t at war with Germany, it’s unlikely America would have gone to war just to protect someone else’s colonies. OTOH, if Britain wasn’t at war with Germany, it would have been much more effectively able to fight Japan.
Overall agree w your comments throughout the thread.
But …
Maybe.
The British would certainly have been more effective in prosecuting a Pacific war if they didn’t also have an Atlantic and continental Europe war to fight at the same time. No debate there.
In the actual timeline the USA had to prosecute that Pacific war. With some significant UK / Commonwealth help, but not a tide-turning amount.
The USA struggled mightily with the distances and logistic demands. Working from a country with a Pacific coast and a comparatively vast industrial base.
The UK, even with no involvement w a European conflict, would have been very hard-pressed to defend their Pacific colonies and defeat Japan mostly on Japan’s home court. At least on anything resembling the actual 1940-1945 time frame.
Some historians disagree. Besides, we know one thing for sure- Operation Sea Lion would have been a failure.
Good point- and even with peace, the UK couldnt risk sending a lot of their fleet to the East. Still, those ships used for convoy duty, etc could have been used.
Churchill’s account, AIUI, is that when the Tory Chief Whip called Halifax and Churchill together to thrash out the issue, Churchill stayed silent and let Halifax speak first, and Halifax mentioned the apparent difficulty of having a PM in the Lords. If he was hoping for someone else to come up with some scheme to get round that, I don’t know, but it seems to have sealed the deal for Churchill. And in the crucial Cabinet debates later in May, Chamberlain certainly supported Churchill against the possibility of peace feelers.
It’s much more complicated than this, and many of the events and factors in actual history were a result of the war in Europe.
Japan’s overriding goal was to keep China, of course but that was causing problems with the US.
Japan’s war goals included seizing Dutch and British territories, mainly to secure oil, but the oil embargo by the US was partly because Japan was allied with Nazi Germany. Had there not been a war in Europe, it’s impossible to say what would have happened.
It’s possible that Japan and the US were on a collision course anyway and many Japanese believed that was was inevitable. They knew that the US was rearming and it was better to attack sooner that later. However, without a threat in Europe, would the US have started to build up its fleet?
Britain could have prevented Malay from falling to the Japanese but there are too many what ifs involved. With more resources, it would have been simple, but it would also have required the British to recognize the danger, and everyone was discounting the Japanese.
Likewise, the push to Go South was adopted by the Japanese military because the European powers were distracted by the war or already defeated by Germany. Without a war, who knows what would have happened.
It seems this is a hijack to the main discussion, and quite frankly it’s impossible to made meaningful guesses. I suggest that people stick to the war in Europe in this thread.