It is more interesting in my opinion to presume Britain defeated as well. Without that the most likely outcome is merely a prolonged D-day and a harder fight on D-day but similar results.
Britain defeated forces a change in the “Europe first” strategy.
Some say Germany could not have mounted a cross-channel invasion. Perhaps with no other enemy, that would have changed. I see no reason, since the allies proved it possible, that Germany could not have also proved it possible.
The O.P. suggests a defeated Soviet Union, not a partially defeated Soviet Union, or massive underground resistance, therefore, I presume a minimal German occupation of the U.S.S.R. with largely cooperative citizenry. Defeat contemplates no further fighting.
With no further fighting in the east, the Germans could have massively defended the west, and surely by 1944 would have mounted an invasion of Britain.
German production temporarily emphasizes aircraft over tanks which eventually overwhelms the R.A.F. because Britain was always focused on aircraft over tanks and is outstripped. The British navy is defeated in the channel vs aircraft attacks. Nothing stands in the way of a German invasion. American help would have had to be reinforced many times over what we actually sent, taking resources from the Pacific war effort.
So many different things could happen from this point it is really very hard to say with any confidence what would happen.
How? Don’t forget that Britain was a leader in RADAR and could have had production facilities in Canada, South Africa, and India, all well out of German reach. At very best you’re going to get a stalemate in the air.
Stalemate in the air was what we had during the battle of Britain while Germany was occupied using massive resources in the east. Aircraft production was at full tilt already by Britain and her allies, and the result was the stalemate you speak of. Eliminating the eastern front gives Germany massive resources to tilt the scales in her favor. Without the United States shifting nearly all resources to Britain, I seriously doubt Britain could have held out.
In two words: Royal Navy. The idea that the Royal Navy was going to be defeated by airpower is a flight of fancy. Nothing airpower could do would stop the Royal Navy being able to put enough power in the channel to stop an invasion attempt dead in its tracks. There’s a lengthy dissection of why Sealion was never going to work here.
Sealion in 1940 wouldn’t have worked. Some other plan in 1944 may have been different.
I cannot understand why you are so sure that aircraft cannot destroy navies. The whole advent of the aircraft carrier was based on the idea that they can. Arguably, that’s how we defeated the japanese navy: mostly by airplanes.
Kurita , with battleships and cruisers at Leyte gulf turned around when he could have destroyed the invasion beach head because he did not have the land-based air support he was promised. His opposition was light carriers and destroyers. He didn’t destroy them because he thought the carriers were the main fleet capital carriers. Without air support he believed his destruction was assured, not from the destroyers, but from aircraft. Aircraft sink ships much more efficiently than other ships do.
The royal navy in the channel is a goner, if Germany brings all her strength to bear, which Germany could have with done with a peaceful east and a far lesser need to build tanks rather than aircraft.
The Germans had to win air superiority. They didn’t do that in 1940 and it seems a long stretch to think they would have by 1944.
Also, the Luftwaffe was really not that good at attacking ships- the Stuka could, but as they found at Dunkirk it is difficult to sink fast moving destroyers. The Japanese were far better at Naval air combat than the Germans.
Are we talking about the same Battle of Britain here - the one that came a year before Barbarossa? What “massive resources” was Germany using in the East?
Making it costly for the Royal Navy to operate in the channel was not going to be close to enough. The Kriegsmarine was so weak compared to the Royal Navy that the Luftwaffe would have to make it impossible for the Royal Navy to operate in the channel at all. This was beyond the capabilities of any air force at the time, much less the Luftwaffe which was not geared or trained towards anti-ship work. Despite their best efforts, they did not stop the evacuation from Dunkirk, or even inflict appreciable losses on the Royal Navy. Dunkirk was much easier than what would be required to support Sealion; the ships at Dunkirk had to spend a lot of time immobile loading troops from the beaches, greatly increasing their vulnerability to aircraft.
Even if the Luftwaffe was somehow to manage to become massively more powerful than even the US Navy at anti-ship strikes and the Royal Navy was somehow intimidated from operating in the channel in daylight by the thought of losses in what was a do or die effort on its part, nothing was stopping them from operating at night. It would be very easy for them to operate their light forces in the channel at night and be gone by daybreak, and even that would have been overkill for what was needed to stop the Germans cold.
A more apt comparison from Leyte Gulf was Surigao Strait, with the realization that even that small of a force was more than enough to smash a cross-channel invasion, and unlike Nishimura the RN wasn’t going to have to run a gauntlet of PT boats and destroyers only to be engaged by a force of battleships and cruisers six times his strength and with the advantage of effective radar.
Waiting from '40 to '44 was not going to improve the German’s situation, even the implausibly ambitious Plan Z was on paper going to take from 1939-46 to complete, and all work on it stopped with the invasion of Poland.
What if Hitler had managed to get his hands on the French Navy, instead of him allowing it to spend most of the war in port (btw, this disinterest or “sacrifice” of such an asset definitely reinforces the idea that Hitler wasnt interested nor had really thought about invading Britain)?
My argument is possible with a belief that the Germans could actually learn from what doesn’t work and come up with something that does work in a few years.
I can’t think of much else for the Germans to do with no Soviet Union to fight besides focus on aircraft and making aircraft more effective.
And everyone seems to forget all the havoc the U-boats caused. With U-boats and Britain’s big dreadnaughts in the narrow confines of the channel, plus ramped up German aircraft production, I think the royal navy would have been a goner.
You mean that device we had at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese smashed our battleships?
One thing you are forgetting is the limited range of radar of the day. By the time they know its coming, the British had time to scramble to fight over the British Isles. By the time fighters get to where the Luftwaffe is attacking a ship in the channel, the ship is sunk and the Luftwaffe on its way home.
we had lots of RADAR warning of an attack coming to Pearl, but the blips were so huge they were mistaken for a flight of US bombers known to be heading in.
Actually, being forced to operate in the narrow confines and shallow water of the channel would have been deadly to U-boats. They didn’t like operating there at all. They were also not very effective at sinking warships.
Do you really imagine that the RAF was going to sit on its duffs and wait to take off until it would be too late to intercept? Not do something remarkably simple like provide a CAP for the RN?
The British, particularly Churchill, were worried about this, leading to Mers el Kabir, disabling most of the French capital ships. When the Germans did try to seize the French navy at Toulon in November 1942 the Vichy government scuttled the entire fleet before the Germans could get to them. Even if the Germans had been able to capture the entire French fleet intact in 1940, they would face two major problem: manning them, and Gibraltar. Considering they scuttled rather than be taken historically, it’s hard to imagine the French Navy would be willing to man their ships for the Germans, so the Germans would have to train up entire new crews. Even once manned, they would be stuck in the Mediterranean as long as the British held Gibraltar.
A thought…
Most arguments assume that any invasion of the German Empire after the fall of Russia would be launched from England. This happened because it made sense at the time, but if there was no eastern front and German troops were re-deployed into western Europe, might the US invade into eastern Russia from Alaska (short distance, but have to build roads through difficult terrain) or Seattle (long distance, but excellent staging area)? Sure, the geography makes logistics a challenge, but the problems would be an order of magnitude greater for Germany at that distance across occupied Russia for a net advantage to the allies.
That would be a logistical nightmare. Even with the Wehrmacht spread out, you’d need to deploy an enormous number of tanks and aircraft to contend with the Germans in the east. If Japan was still in the war, they’d have to be brought up from India or Iran into the Russian territory east of the A-A line. I’m not sure the Russians would be comfortable with that plan with their military crushed and the Germans on their borders.
If the Allies invaded through the Balkans, liberated Greece, and were able to slog their way up the coast of the Black Sea, they could create enough room to land forces in Romania or southern Ukraine, where the land is flat and good for mobile operations.
