Could Britain have repelled Germany without American Aid?

Well, the topic of whether Russia could or couldnt has repeatedly been beaten to death... so how about Great Britain? Do you think The British Isles could have successfully stood against Germany without American aid, particularily lend lease... After all, lend lease given to the UK tripled that given to the USSR, and I imagine that without American supplies in 1940 the Battle of Britain may have gone differently; there may have been fuel/ammunition restrictions and such. But i do not know much about the Battle of Britain, so tell me... Could the Battle of Britain have been won without American supplies?

 

Short answer or long answer?

Short answer - BoB could probably have been won, but we'd have been starved into submission shortly afterwards.

Long answer - the same, but using more words.

 

i agree with Ricky. without the Americans the germans would have won the battle for the Atlantic. the germans almost won it, and they were fighting both the american and the british fleet. only the American mass production in destroyers prevented the german victory.

 

Hmm... more important was the mass production of Merchant ships, and big advances in anti-sub work coupled with increasingly good intelligence work.

The Big problem from Britain without America as an Ally is not so much winning the Battle of the Atlantic, but the battle for credit. In the 1940s Britain could not adequately feed itself, and needed a lot of imports to keep industry and armed forces running. Without imports, no war. Without Money (or bottomless credit like Lend-Lease) we could not buy imports. Britain did not have the money, and if America decided that we were a bad prospect, why would they have extended any credit?

btw - any figures on what/how much aid the US gave (or sold) to Britain in 1940?

 

the value given to Britain was approximately $31 billion (of $48 billion being given in total, $11b of that being given to the USSR), accounting for 18% of all British wartime production in monetary terms.
this included...

30% of all munitions
7,411 aircraft
5,128 tanks
13,000 trucks
50 obsolete WW1 era destroyers
4 Submarines
almost 750,000 small arms
420,000 tons of food

This includes vehicles/supplies sold to Britain as well. most vehicles were sold, but the destroyers, steel and food were given freely.

 

All of that in 1940?

 

Hell no in total

 

an impressive list

 

you brits have fdr mostly to thank for lend lease and pushing japan into action...he knew amerca needed to join the fight but it was no go with the voters until pearl harbor......winston said that after dec 7 41...at last he could sleep the sleep of the saved.

 

I believe the British could stand and repelled the German from the British Islands. But couldn't defeat the Germans. But, then...the germans would invade USSR, and the British could restore their forces by the commonwealth.

 

You are forgetting that the British had large numbers of preperations incase of enemy attack. Let me name a few:
-common for road sides taken down
-anti glider ditches dug in field that could be used by gliders
-kioskes were armed with machineguns, sometimes made out of concrete
-supposedly secret partisan groups were created(history chanel not the best source)

 

Yeah but if Operation Sealion had become possible (which according to everything I've heard here is impossible) would Britian been able to defenc against the Panzer IV's and thousands of German troops suddenly on thier home soil?

Probably more than I think.....

And beside what about the Zindi who helped them get to the States (Star Trek: Enterprise)


BTW....Yay, I made leutenent (yes I realize nobody really cares about those....ya gotta have fun sometime)

 

The Germans probably would have won. Seeing as the American Shermans were mass-produced, and numbers may have won the ground war, and America had the P51, one of the best WWII escort fighters, and I wonder if the Britains could get past D-Day without American battleships.

 

i read somewhere that despite the "we shall fight them on the beaches speech " the brits had no intention of fighting a land battle on british soil ,,that if it appeared the germans could land their panzers in the summer of 40 ,the brits would throw in the towel as they really had no way to fight german armour haveing left almost all their tanks and at guns at dunkeirk...of course first the germans would need air superiority over the channel , this was of course , never realized..

 

First, congrat....(aargh, forgot how to spell the word) with your promotion Siberian Black to Leutenant. But i still outrank you (Fun with the ranks, why didn't we never do that?)

Back to the topic. Beating the Brits wasn't all that hard. So, the germans lost the Battle of Britain. So what, one lost battle doesn't mean a lost war (exept for Stalingrad).
The germans would win the Battle of the Atlantic (maybe at high price but still win it)
Or, the battle in north africa. When i read tanknames like Stuart, Lee, Sherman i read american tanknames. So, less (American) tanks for the eigth army means that Rommel has more tanks and thus can easier defeat the British over there. So long for Suez. Major defeat + Starvation can be enough for the British people to demant a peace (and some food)

 

But in Africa, the battle was won by the Brits at the Mediterranean sea, cutting off Rommel's supplies.

And the battle of the Atlantic was so long that I believe it would have the same finish.

Now I have a question...What could happened, if the british were annihilated at Dunkirk?. The Politic and Morale strike would be enormous.

 

A hypothetical invasion of Britain would take place before the Americans even join the war, though. They would not play a part.

In a land war with Britain it all comes down to the abililty of the Germans to supply their troops overseas. With the mighty RN on watch, even if they slip by them or beat them for the initial invasion the Germans will not be able to keep their supply lines open. Even though the British home forces weren't very impressive they would do just fine against an army without ammunition or fuel.

 

Based on what exactly? It's true that Halifax and some amongst the establishment weren't exactly keen on fighting to the bitter end, but I've yet to hear of anything reliable to suggest that the country as a whole was about to pack it all in and surrender.

 

Then read Ellis's "Brute Force". Its clear that Ironside had all but given up any hope of surviving if the Germans got ashore in force...which is why the Cabinate replaced him with General Brooke. He was only marginally more optimistic claiming that only 1/2 his divisions were in any condition to fight the Wehrmacht veterans and how could he hope to defend a front line twice the size of France with a fraction of the forces. Churchill was so depressed about the situation that he ordered Brook to with draw his forces inland to act as a counterattack force while he planned to gas the landing beachheads.

Many pin their hopes on the RN/RAF, but you should know from Churchills memours that both he and the Admiralty conceeded to each other that they could not prevent upto 100,000 german troops landing on UK shores without being intercepted. They hoped that they could concentrate enough force in the channel to delay such a crossing or failing that interdict the supply lines.

People often forget that aircraft and warships were not very good at finding other ships at night or bad weather and sinking those ships during this period. The accuracy technology just wasn't developed sufficently at that point. Even wargames decades after the fact, with fabled tales of warships swamping entire fleets of barges , seem very doubtful and wishful thinking at best.

The example some claim at Crete in 1941 was far from successful. Only 1/4 of the barge fleet was sunk by a similar number of attacking cruisers and destroyers. The maths for doing the same to a much larger force of 3000 invading barges, trawlers and motor boats just is not there. It ain't going to happen in the real world!

I've personally spoken to people who were their at the time . While they would have resisted corrageously, they were under few illusions to their succes. They where just universally thankful for things like Radar and the RAF , but also for the fact that Hitler made so many mistakes and didn't even try.

 

There was an incident when some E-Boats created havoc during training for D-Day. If a few E-Boats could do that then I have little doubt that the very large and powerful Royal Navy of the day backed by an undefeated RAF could have stopped an amphibious invasion - having been stopped once it is unlikely that it would have been attempted again. I think you are grossly underestimating the difficulty of such an invasion and grossly overestimating Nazi Germany's ability to pull it off - bearing in mind that they had not prepared to do so, their navy was hugely inadequate for the task and the RAF was undefeated after the Battle Of Britain. Also, even with the VAST resources that the Allies ploughed into D-Day there was still a very real chance of failure - one which was almost realised at Omaha Beach. I'm sure that a great many German servicemen were very relieved that they never had to try it.