Most decisive European battle of WWII??

Re: What??

Yes Roel you are correct, Britain at that time had no resources, and being and island we had to be re-supplied by sea. So even after the Battle of Britain without outside intervention we would probably have had to talk peace or surrender. Yes a lot of aid from the US did keep Britain afloat and Yes without their help (as enough aid could not have been found) would have probably gone under. So as I have said before one victory could not have happened without another. And finally if Europe had fallen in it's entirety then the us would have lost a great deal of trade and income from the War. So by them keeping out until they had built up a decent force, they became the next superpower.

So to cut a long story short, Europe could not have survived with the US and the us would not be as great as it is with out Britain surviving. I Britain fell then the US probably wouldn't have been able to supply the Russians (Britain also re-supplied the Russians too), possible removing Millions of troops of the red army and thousands of tanks and guns from the eastern front, etc.

 

The German plans for occupied Britain was actually much harsher than in any other occupied country including Poland. All men between 17 and 45 years old were to be tranferred to the continent, all supplies, including food, were to be confiscated, hostages were to be taken and all who didn´t submit to German rules would be shot at sight. Six Einsatzkommandos were allready established by August 1940, and the whole operation were to be supervised by the SS man dr. Franz Six.

 

IF Britain had been occupied.

Remember outright surrender and occupation wasn't necessarily required...

 

I don't think the Germans, operating from the mainland and without an invasion, would have enough weight to force upon Britain an unconditional surrender. No invasion, no occupation.

 

Without food and fuel from abroad we would have had to surrender Roel.

There are no two ways about it, then one we fell all the other resistance mocements would have been starved of weapons too.

 

Franz Six would have been in charge of the Einsatz but the man in overall charge would have been Gen Braunscheitsch (please excuse spelling). Yes the 17 -45 year old males were to be sent to France for the duration of the war. Then maybe returned later (maybe, that we will never know). The big problem for Hitler was losing the rest of the emipre to the us or Japan, so to treat Britain would be as bad idea as he wanted the abdicated Prince to return to the throne.

So I do agree with part of your words but not all.

I'm not saying it would be nice in Nazi Britain (depending on your position) as you knoww the Quislings in Norway had a reasonable good life until the fall of the Reich.

 

If indeed. I don´t believe for a second that the Germans could have achieved that. My point was only made towards the opinion some have about how nice the British would have been treated IF Britain had been occupied by the Germans. Any resistance or reluctance by the British people was to be broken by all means available.

GP, the common Norwegian was probably better off than his German counterpart during the occupation of Norway, and I´m not thinking about those who collaborated with the Germans, just the ordinary man and woman. My point was simply that there is no reason to believe that the population of Britain could expect to be treated equally well.

 

Worse then Poland! That us very hard to believe but also a very disturbing thought. Poland was cut into 3 sections, and one of them was to be filled with the dirt in Germany's Aryan Empire wheels, e.g. the Jews, Slovaks, Russians. That would have been a terrible fate for the British.

 

Absolutely! Britain was totally dependent on imports for much of her food and all of her oil requirements. Had the U-boats succeeded in cutting the Atlantic lifelines, then Britian would have had no choice but to sue for peace on Germany's terms. Even Churchill knew that, for he feared the U-boats more than anything else the Germans threw against the British.

 

I fully agree with you that any resistance would be met with harsh consequences, but the reason I don't believe that we would have been treated as bad as anyone else, is because Hitler wanted our empire. Therefore he couldn't afford to show the rest of the world how bad he was, hence he had to impose the old abdicated king Edward to the throne and try to get the rest of the Empire/Commonwealth to accept him as the head of it.

When the Germans took over the channel islands, the only part of Britain occupied, the Soldiers were courteous and waited in line at the shops to buy their goods. They paid as anyone else and didn't abuse anyone, who behaved.

Who is to say that later things would have changed is anyone's guess but the only people to be persecuted would have been the Jews and intellectuals perceived as a threat to Nazi doctrine. So yes some people would have been tortured and some not but no worse than any other country and better than most if not all.

I believe France was treated better than most and this would have been similar to Britain. He wanted Germany to be accepted and if the Empire acknowledged him then he would have used this to further his cause. 8)

 

Here's another typical forum digression. This used to be about the most decisive battle of WW2, but now it's about what would happen to Britain if occupied! :lol:

 

OK

There were many important battles but the most decisive was either Kursk or Stalingrad, possibly Kursk as I believe the Germans lost more there.

Please correct me if I am wrong.

 

Agreed! In fact, they lost so much at Kursk that they were for once unable to recover, as they had been every time before then. Kursk finally killed them.

 

Stalingrad= First shoveful of dirt taken from Nazi Germany's grave.
Kursk= Final nail in coffin.

 

Oh no! Not another grave metaphore, I can't take that anymore... Corp's usual statement was that the East dug the grave, Italy nailed it shut and North-West Europe shoveled on the dirt... Aaargh!

 

But how effective would the Soviets have been at either without the flow of Lend-lease arriving via the Atlantic and Britain, plus all those guns pointing skywards in the west could have been being used to knock out Soviet tanks in the East.

Essentially without victory in the Battle of Britain, either victory is a lot less certain (Especially as an alternative history Britain then may well have been an Axis co-beligerent).

So the Battle of Britain, followed by the Battle of the Atlantic are the two most crucial "European" battles. Zitadelle and Stalingrad are important, yes, but Soviet success in either was heavily influenced by the flow of food, trucks, jeeps and clothes from the United States, and via Britain.

 

I don't know if their influence was that great. Remember, 80% of the German army was active in the East anyway; the other 20% wouldn't have been a major difference and in any case they couldn't have been supplied because the Germans had enough trouble getting this doen for the troops they did have.

By the way, the battle of the Atlantic was officially won in January 1944, when the Soviets had long started their unstoppable counteroffensive; this doesn't match your theory.

 

Yes, but if the Germans had won it in 1941...

 

Roel, it's not really the influence on the German Army that's all that significant, although a large number of fairly heavy cannon would be freed up to participate in the battles in the East, plus like I say, I could see a sort of Vichy-Britain becoming an Axis co-beligerent personally, there were a lot of influential people in Britain at the time which remained pretty pro-facist, and even then many that weren't saw the Bolsheviks as the greater of the two evils.

The difference I see is that without the impact of lend-lease, or a greatly reduced lend-lease being moved via the ice packed Bering Straits, the Soviets would be forced to adopt a less military economy, this would mean more people having to work on farms and clothing factories (Giving an army guns is one thing, clothing and feeding them is at least as important!), but also more of the heavier industries would have to be geared to producing trucks, jeeps and farm machinery, so you have drastically fewer tanks, fewer people available to serve in the forces, up to 20% more Germans heading Eastwards (Plus probably the entire fighter force, not just most of it), along with what I'll nickname the "Vichy-British", and a lot of heavy cannon that can either be employed in the anti-tank role, or mounted on older tanks, or even impressed British ones as tank-destroyers / SPGs.

OK, it may not have made that huge a difference, Stalingrad and Kursk may have been lost by the Germans anyway, but it would have been one hell of a tougher fight...

 

The most decisive battle was the entire operation Barbarossa. The Germans did not manage to achieve any for their objectives in time, choosing instead to revel in Pyrrhic victories such as Kiev, thereby allowing the Russian war industry to enter full production with an intact infrastructure. This in itself was failure - with the inability to complete the conquest of Russia in time, a weakened German army had to fight a Russian army re-equipped with modern weaponry. From then on the logistical war had effectively been lost (At least until Speer could work his magic). A quick and decisive victory was the only viable option, and far less feasible now that the Russians were not the same obsolete army of 1941. Hitler had failed to recognize the flaws of Barbarossa by setting out to achieve too many objectives with too little troops. Perhaps if the Germans had pulled out of Stalingrad once they realized that a quick victory was impossible, they might have managed to sieze the Caucasus (a major objective) and cut of Russian oil supply, thereby starving them of the lifeblood of any motorized (and therefore modern) army.

So, World War 2 was just one big German mistake. In fact, one can say that Hitler lost the war for the Germans. If he had let his generals (who were at any rate more competent than he was) take control of the campaign, the world probably would have been completly Nazified by now.