So the BEF and the French Army have committed to defending Belgium in 1940. Let’s say the Germans who have cut through the Ardennes forest encircling the French and British preventing their escape to Dunkirk. How long would it take to rebuild the allied forces? Could Hitler have invaded Britton directly? Did the British have any sort of reserve ready to defend the island?
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Germany could never successfully invade Britain, Dunkirk or no Dunkirk. Islands are exceptionally difficult to invade; the British Isles had and have never been successfully invaded since William, Duke of Normandy, won at Hastings in 1066. Germany was already fully booked on all quarters with Scandinavia, Africa, France and the Eastern front soon upcoming.
But D-Day would probably have been delayed a year or two, and Russia would have rolled further westward at war’s end, than it did - possibly taking all of Germany and maybe even a bit of France and the Netherlands, etc.
Completely agree, and from what I know/read about speculation, if the Isles actually were a landlocked country, they would have fell to the Germans eventually. It was the British Isles only saving grace, even though they apparently could put up a really good fight.
My understanding is that Hitler wasn’t really keen on a war with Britain, both for reasons of difficulty (as discussed) and also ideology reasons (he saw the Anglos as similarly pure). Chamberlain had been contemplating a conditional surrender (Churchill only replaced him as PM two weeks before Dunkirk) so I can certainly imagine a scenario where the British agree to a surrender that allows them to safely pull their troops out. If Britain and Germany have a peace (or at least a cease-fire) I wonder if that allows the Germans to use more military might and succeed elsewhere, such as Africa or the Eastern Front.
Certainly if Hitler could prevent British and especially American supplies from reaching Stalin Russia would have fallen.
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Britain might have sued for peace.
Now then peace would have been like then many “peace” during the French Revolutionary-Napoleonic Wars, basically a temporary ceasefire.
I fully expect Britain to re-declare War in a year or so, perhaps during the Greek crises.
Had German forces landed, by hook or by crook, in England right after Dunkerque, it would have been a walk-over. The Brits had only 3 fully outfitted divisions fit to fight after the BEF left all its equipment in France. That was in June 1940. But Britain was a highly industrialized country then, and by September they had organized and fully outfitted 16 divisions ready to repel any invasion, by anyone.
Germany had not yet built themselves into as much of a military powerhouse as seems to be the case, given the French collapse, that many people today believe.
And one thing in particular they did not have at that time, was a navy capable of mounting a serious assault on a world maritime power. More narrowly, no one had, at that time, invented landing craft of any kind.
That was why Germany tried to bomb Britain into submission. They also played around with a rather bizarre idea of building submersible tanks, to try to drive directly UNDER the channel, but couldn’t bring that off either.
I suspect America would have gotten into the War earlier and/or tens of thousands of American men would have gotten to the UK to help out and replace the captured troops.
Probably this, an agreement with nazi germany might have been reached and it certainly would have freed up their forces for deployment elsewhere.
Several points.
Germany had no way to deliver troops, let alone tanks and guns to invade the Uk.
The Royal Navy would have provided a strong deterrent to German ships.
There were well documented plans, and equipment in place to use Mustard gas to repel an invasion. Churchill was a supporter of this plan.
At that time there is no way America would have provided assistance let alone man power. Any backup would have been from Canada, Australia and India.
As people have said, any attempt by Germany to invade Britain would fail. The Royal Navy alone was an impenetrable wall, even without air power.
That said, losing the BEF would be devastating for Britain. Dunkirk was the silver lining in a year full of disasters, and allowed the British to keep up morale despite now being alone in Europe against the Axis (not alone globally of course, the Empire/Commonwealth were supporting).
Without Dunkirk that morale might not have been quite so unshakeable, as a large number of fathers, mothers, and sisters would be fearful of what was happening to their sons and brothers who are being marched to PoW camps somewhere in Europe.
More to the point, it would cripple Britain’s long-term ability to wage war. In our timeline, Dunkirk saw the BEF return intact, but virtually stripped of all its equipment - few tanks, few artillery, few trucks, all left on the beaches. And there were so few rifles and grenades in the country that for a few months afterward, the Army drilled using props and wooden tanks.
But equipment can be rapidly and cheaply replaced, and replaced they were by the Autumn of 1940. But men? Men are much harder to replace. Losing a third of a million soldiers would take years to overcome, and would mean tough choices between impacting industrial output in favour of men in khaki, as well as having to completely replace all the experience, training and expertise that the small professional volunteer British Army had now lost.
Britain might have opted to continue to fight, but it would be less confident and less effective for much longer, and would have been less effective in taking the fight to the enemy.
One thing that may have happened is that the British may not have had the manpower to hold into Suez, giving Italy access to the oilfields of the Middle East. That may have been a key ingredient to keeping the Germans’ war machine able to crush the Soviets, and start a southern flank via the Caucasus.
So not an immediate collapse of Britain, but it may well have become more of a liability than an asset to the Allies.
There would have been no collapse in Africa. Britain had a large Army in India. There would also be a few troops coming from Australia and NZ and South Africa. I suspect they would have transferred large amount of the 80,000 British troops in Egypt to the UK, along with 2 or 3 Indian Divisions. Probably also raid India for more troops, both British and Indian to replace those from Africa sent to the Middle East. And the UK had two centuries of experience in moving troops quilcly from one theatre to another.
The effect of this is that some places might have to be given up temporarily; like East Africa was historically in 1940 (retaken in 1941), which would have knock on effects for the conduct of war elsewhere. I suspect the Japanese advance becomes much more successful than it was, and mught come earlier.
As I stated above, a cesesfire would only last a few months,… at best. By 1941, Britain would be at war again and most likely in both the Mediterraian and the Far East.
You may be right, AK84, although from what I know of Indian politics in WW2 there was but grudging acknowledgement from leading Indian politicians of British leadership and needs during the war. The ‘Quit India’ Movement was as strong as ever, and Gandhi, as admired as he is, had some strange ideas about how Japan viewed and would treat India if the British left and the Japanese moved in. If Britain raided India for troops, would it stoke the flames of the independence movement further?
How would invading England by the east coast be different from invading Europe by the west coast, as in D-Day?
Gandhi was not the universally beloved figure of Western lore in actual fact. He was disliaked in many places (the place he was disliked the most is now called “Pakistan” and was also incidentally, the main recruitment area). Nor was he he uniqulely influential.
BY 1940, the Independance movement was gathering steam and was probably inevitble; however Quit India was a spectacular failure; most politicians, like Nehru, Jinnah, Patel etc, accepted that Independance would come a**fter the war, ideally on the day the Germans capitualted.
Of course, the British might end up exacerbatung conditions, like Churchill did historically with the Bengal famine.
I don’t think the Royal Navy was as unstoppable as you may think. Airplanes are very effective at taking out ships, see battle of midway, and had Germany been able to achieve air superiority, which they almost did until Hitler decided he could bomb London into surrender, the Royal Navy would have been a sitting duck.
The Germans didn’t have any means to land tanks or heavy equipment, or to get fuel and ammunition to them if they were magically transported there. The only transport the Germans did have were barges that could be sunk by a destroyer sailing within a few miles of them (that’s just the wake, the destroyer doesn’t even need to fire guns). 3 fully outfitted divisions plus whatever militia forces can be scraped together pulling out all the stops (including chemical weapons) against a bunch of infantry with no artillery and only the food and ammunition they carry on their person is not a fight the Germans were going to win.
German cross Channel shipping woulds still however have been vulnerable to RN ships at night though, and fast RN warships could operate there but stay out of range of escorted strikes during daylight. However I’d agree a cross Channel invasion would have been a lot more feasible if the Luftwaffe gained solid daylight air superiority over the Channel and southern England. But they didn’t which is, obviously, why the outcome of the Battle of Britain was important, and damaging, to the prospects for ‘Sealion’.
And the fortunes of the RN and RAF were key, and interdicting ongoing supply and reinforcement would have been key, rather than necessarily being able to completely defeat an initial German crossing.
It still required an army to contain the invasion force even if it was limited in size, but again the limit was mainly a function of the effectiveness of the RN and RAF sinking German shipping, as well as the constraint on the Germans finding (all remotely suitable French merchant ships actually were requisitioned in preparation) and building (quick and dirty landing craft) enough shipping to begin with.
Aside from that big German constraint, Britain didn’t have an Army comparable to Germany’s in that period with or without recovery of most of the BEF’s personnel (most of the equipment was lost as it was). Germany had definitely built itself into a ‘military powerhouse’ on land in comparison to Britain once the French Army was neutralized. The force which defeated the Anglo-French was of ca. 140 divisions, and not the partially equipped thrown together organizations of the British home defense effort even in late 1940. The big problem was how many the Germans could get across and kept supplied in the face of RN and RAF. And it was important for Britain to build a larger Army to meet the fraction of the German Army that could sent across.
Though statements that the German Army was tied down elsewhere in 1940 are not correct. After June 1940 the Germany Army regrouped and reinforced itself further till spring 1941, when it went to active war once again in Yugoslavia/Greece and North Africa to help the Italians, then against Russia. And there was no serious armed resistance to German occupation in Europe till later, occupation duty per se didn’t tie down a lot of forces in 1940. There would have been some risk to committing almost the whole Army away from the still quasi-ally but still potentially threatening Soviets, as there was with the May 1940 campaign to begin with. But again the Germans couldn’t have projected and resupplied their entire army across the Channel anyway.
If they captured a port early on, might change the equation?