From my understanding, once the decision to plan for Overlord was made, it took the industrial might of America roughly 1 year to produce enough landing craft. (Apart from the lion’s share, which was going to the Pacific theatre.)
In some alternate reality, where Germany decided well ahead of time to equip itself for an invasion of England, of course it may have worked. But Sea Lion? Not a chance. Unless, of course, England ‘panicked’ at the first signs of invasion. Not very likely.
Of course, in WW2OL, we ‘simulate’ Sea Lion on a almost weekly basis. Dover or bust!
I think the Germans would have been slaughtered. Obviously the big wildcards are the RN and the German ability to capture and build airfields in England. With their short range fighters and bombers, airfields would be crucial. Launching an amphibious invasion without clear naval and air superiority is suicide, IMO.
The German plan for post-conquest Britain was outlined in a document called “Informationsheft GB”. I can’t turn up an awful lot of information on this online, so I’m just going on memory here.
This volume detailed prominent people most likely to collaborate and, in the sizable appendix document “Sonderfahndungsliste GB”, those to be arrested and/or executed. There were also extensive notes on the functioning of British society and where the conquering troops could fit themselves in.
C.S. Forester wrote a fictional account If Hitler had invaded England. The (long) short story was published posthumously in 1971 (he died in 1966) as part of the Gold from Crete anthology.
The outcome of the engagement was much as detailed in the account of the wargame (gold star to CSF), with the additional speculation that the loss of so many barges crippled inland shipping and degraded the continental economy to such an extent that the war came to an early end.
Waiting would have been a worse move. At the time (late summer/fall 1940) the British aircraft industry was out-producing German aircraft production about three to one. The British built as many fightes in a good week as the Germans were building in a month. The odds were never going to get any better for Germany than they were at that moment.
I think Eolbo’s fascinating account of the Sandhurst exercise sums it up. The details would likely have been different but the result would have been the same; a total catastrophe for Germany with the loss of almost everyone unfortunate enough to get to England. The D-Day invasion was hard enough for the Allies with complete air and naval supremacy. A cross-Channel invasion against an enemy with a better navy and a powerful air force would have been total suicide.
The only scenario I can think of allowing a possible victory for the Germans would start with a massive air strike, submarine attack, and ?who knows? what else in an effort to destroy the RN. It would have been critical for the Germans to destroy the bulk of the Royal Navy. Otherwise naval gunfire would tear their troops and fragile supply lines to pieces. If you grant out this possibility, then I guess the possibility of a German victory isn’t impossibility. Maybe someone other than myself can imagine a scenario under which the Germans could have pulled off such a feat. The Scapa Flow Scenario,* or something.
Second the Germans would have to capture or build airfields in Britan, and keep those bases supplied, and defend them from British counterattcks, and win the bulk of the combat in the air. All of the above would have required the element of surprise and luck on a grand scale.
None of any of that was likely to happen. Hitler, known for taking crazy gambles resulting in mass casualties, even thought better of this one.
*Very interesting. A quick internet search involving “Scapa Flow Sealion” turned this (Why Operation Sealion Wouldn’t Work) up. One small–no kidding–part of the argument that I think is relevant to the discussion so far I’ve excerpted here:
There’s more from politics to logistics if you’d care to read it. I think the author makes some good points.
My opinion is that the real bottleneck would have ended up being logistical support for the invasion army. While it’s conceivable that Germany might have gotten enough troops across the Channel to secure beachheads, and maybe even a minor port (sabotaged by retreating Brits, no doubt), and make some menacing advances towards London, in order to have held on to any territory for more than a few days they would have needed massive supplies of armaments and fuel. If you look at the scale of the efforts put forth by the Allies in Normandy, and you look at the naval transportation resources available to the Germans, it seems pretty obvious that German invaders would have been pushed back into the sea in relatively short order.
Now, if Hitler had refrained from switching the targets in the BoB from RAF assets to London, and had refrained from launching Operation Barbarossa, then with a year or two of preparation, building appropriate naval assets, pumping resources into gaining and maintaining air superiority, then maybe an invasion might have been successful. However, that also gives GB lots of time to bolster defenses, replace hardware lost at Dunkirk, bring in reinforcements from its sprawling Commonwealth allies, and possibly even convince the US to join the fight. I have no clue who wins that fight, but there are a host of reasons to believe the German/Soviet conflict was inevitable, making a single-front war in the west staggeringly unlikely.
Amatures talk about tactics, professionals about logistics. As evidenced in this thread, the logistics of such an invation were impossible. The only way I can see it being successful is if the following had happened:
All British troops killed or captured at Dunkirk.
No war with the Soviet Union.
German industries immediately shift to full wartime production mode, something that they didn’t actually do until 1945 ( which is staggering when you think about it ), consentrating on naval and air assets. The German army was fine. Longer range bombers and fighters, naval forces capable of holding the channel against the RN and specialized landing craft for troops and supplies are needed.
Continued attacks from the air on British industries, hopefully, from a German POV, assisted by the introduction of heavier bombers. You’ve got to prevent the other guy from matching the buildup of your forces.
The U.S. can NOT enter the war and ally with England. If the guidelines above had been followed, Germany could likely have outproduced an England on the defensive with her industries under constant attack. Germany has no hope of out producung the United States. It couldn’t be done.
IF everything above happened, then Sealion would have a realistic shot at succeding-in the late summer of 1942 at the earliest.
I was reading about the Battle of Britain earlier and the author mentioned that a help for the British was that the German pilots always followed the same routes and patterns of behavior, which plays on the cliches about Germans. (No, not the ones about them liking scatological humor. The ones about their love of obeying authority.) Was this true? Did they ever do ANYTHING right? Could they, in 1940, have beaten ANY countries but Poland, France, Belgium, and a few neutrals? Where did they get their wonderful reputation?
I suspect the use of same routes would be related to the very short range of German fighters rather then cliches about German behaviour. The fighters didnt have enough fuel for a lot of leeway in regards to routes, and bombers if they were to have fighter escort were constrained accordingly.
The Germans had a very powerful army utilizing advanced armored tactics. In the early days they had premier ground support pilots flying overhead, and some very modern equipment. The luftwaffe was excellent, with the proviso that they didn’t have any long-range four engine bombers. If the soldiers at the front needed a bomber to shoot some cannon shells or drop some bombs on a tank, the luftwaffe was the best air force in the world at the time, by far.
If you flip the scenario around, UK invades occupied Europe, the UK faces a similar result, IMO. It’s the inherent disadvantages of being the attacker (1), from a distance (2), over the sea (3) without a clear air power or naval advantage (4&5).
If the RN had tried to conduct massive operations out in the open where the Germans could assemble a large number of airplanes in response, the RN could have been slaughtered also. Despite the numerical superiority over the German navy, their ships were vulnerable to air attack like any others.
Dieppe is a good example of an Allied amphibious attack that failed with heavy casualties.
I think the problem with the question is that it seems to assume that there is something called “the invasion” as an isolated event and asks “would it be successful?”
However, such an operation is part of a huge and ongoing system that involves a logistical support system going all the way back to such things as farmers working in a field to grow crops and a truck driver to deliver it.
The Germans were able to maintain supply and replacement, sort of, in North Africa but there is considerable doubt in my mind that they could supply materiel and replacements over water so close to the British home grounds.
The Me-109, which was the only (useful) fighter that Germany had at the time, had a very short range. Cliches about various nations aside, the overrunning of France and the Low countries was quite a feat. Germany was outnumbered by the Allies in manpower, tanks, artillery and numbers of divisions. A lot of it of course had to do with poor Allied deployment to face the sickle stroke through the Ardennes, but the German reputation is well deserved. At a small unit level, German tactics, flexibility and adaptability to the tactical situation at hand was very good. It continued to give the Allies headaches throughout the war. More often than not they fought outnumbered and gave at least as good as they got.
And, FTR, in spite of what many people who just look at the surface details will tell you, Germany came within a hairsbreath of beating Russia decicively. If they hadn’t delayed in Yugoslavia, they would have taken Moscow, Lenningrad and Stalingrad. I don’t think they could have held those lines indefinitely, but it is possible that Stalin might have ben forced to make peace-temporarily. After a year or so, when the production capabilities of the Soviet Union beyond the Urals were brought up to speed, they would have built up their forces and launced an attack west. This would prolly be the opening shots of what we would call WWIII had it happened that way. WWII would have ended with Germany holding all of Europe except England and the Soviet Union pushed back to their Asiatic landmass.
I see no mention of British submarines in this wargame scenario.
At the time the British actually had more of them than the Germans, 60 altogether although there were only around 30 of them in home waters at the time, plus there were others such as the Dutch and possibly French to add to that total.
It’s also reasonable to assume there would have been more available if Sealion had gone ahead.
Since the speed of the German barges was going to be less than 4 knots, and some have put it as low as 2 knots, they and their escorts would have never made it within 5 miles of the English coast.
Surface operations would have been seriously hampered as Germany did not have any A/S measures installed, and this continued until early 1941 when they finally fitted depth charge systems to some of their smaller patrol boats,even then such weapons were not widely available to the German Navy.
The German fleet would have been virtually destroyed by subs alone.
That leaves air operations, and without the means to bring in armour and without the capacity to bring in the necessary supllies to a force capable of decisive action against British forces the Germans would have suffered a complete defeat.
The British would have fought off the Germans without breaking sweat.
You know, that is the first mention of British submarines I’ve heard in years.
As for the Germans and their rep outstripping the reality, Nova this week is about Colditz, the “escapeproof” prison for Allied POWs who were too troublesome in the regular camps and the whole thing makes Hogan’s Heroes sound believable. I mean, these guys were building an effing GLIDER in the attic! Too bizarre.
Also, how about the French Navy, surface and below; might they have joined the mayhem in the Channel ?
I actually have no idea of their preparedness or the effectiveness of their chain of command at that stage (summer 1940) but, given they were still scuttling themselves at the back end of 1942 (Toulon), they still had the potential to contribute long after Paris fell ?
Can’t think of any other potential naval contributions at that point . . . ?
dropzone - IIRC, The French came up with some of the weirder/better plans at Colditz
The talk of the French navy brings up a question I’ve been mulling over. When the French fell to the Germans, much of their navy ended up in Vichy hands or was otherwised interned. Please correct me if I’m wrong. In any case, by the time SeaLion would have been undertaken, the French navy would have been out of the picture.
The question I’d have had was what would have happened to the British navy if Sealion was successful? Would there have been a large flotilla headed west over the Atlantic to constitute the beginnings of a “Free British Navy”?
Sounds like a new alternate history series shaping up.
A good part of the French fleet that wasn’t interned by the British was either sunk or disabled by the British navy after the Fall of France and before the Battle of Britain. The British weren’t willing to allow the possibility that the Royal Navy could find itself facing the French fleet in the hands of the Germans.
