what if germany invaded britain - Sealion

Gordon, where the populations of France, Belgium or Holland treated as a whole as forced Labour. I don't think so. And of course British Jews were treated the same as any other Jews, including German Jews. But the non Jewish population were not shipped off to labour camps were they. Where is the evidence that the British population would be treated just like the Jews or slavs. They would have been treated the same as the other Northern Europeans, and possibly better. Hitler admired the British. If he had had his way he would have formed an alliance with us instead of Italy.

 

Go to the Military Archaeology thread and look at the pics I posted of the V2 site at The Blockhaus at Eperlecque, near St. Omer. One of them is of a memorial to Belgians deported there as forced labour and killed in an air raid. It happened-'Nuff said. France introduced compulsory forced labour in February 1943-can't remember the details for Holland, Belgium etc.. It defies all logic-even the Nazi variety-to suggest that the Nazis would have turned over a new leaf in Britain and NOT treated the population as any other conquered people.
Any admiration Hitler might have had for the British would have vanished the minute his armies landed in Britain.

[ 10. September 2005, 06:16 PM: Message edited by: The_Historian ]

 

Gordon, i did ask if the populations of these countries were, as a whole, treated as forced Labour. I don't now the numbers, but i would guess it was only a small percentge of the none Jewish populations. How many of these were Gypsies, communists, Unionists and other so called enemies of the state.

 

Under La Releve in France, ALL men between 19 and 32 were liable to be deported for forced labour. Don't have figures for anywhere else, but that sounds a pretty general forced labour policy to me.

 

How many were actually deported

 

Bearing in mind that the law resulted in vast numbers of Frenchmen disappearing, either into the hills to join the resistance, over the sea to Britain, or to Switzerland etc, the official figures of 150,000 French deportees of ALL classes seems suspiciously low to me. And that is only France.

 

If the Germans had successfully occupied lower Great Britain the Scotland problem would have been difficult. I am unaware of how the economic interaction between Scotland and England was in the 30s and 40s. Would a blockade of the seaports and cessation of trade with England and Wales have created a way to starve out the Scots?

To me that seems like a likely strategy. Use airpower to contiually harrass the population, use incindiary raids to burn off crops and housing. Make small campaigns advancing steadily into the territory and leaving no one behind in their wake to act as resistance. Take everyone you capture and deport them somewhere else for forced labor, say France. Then populate the areas with either German citizens or forced labor from other countries that would be unfamiliar with the lay of the land and hence less able to play the hide and seek games a resistance force requires.

Gee, this sounds familiar. Didn't one of the English kings do something like this somewhere in the British Isles?

 

Well, William Wallace and Robert the Bruce used guerilla tactics in Scotland, and Owen Glendower & Llewellyn ap Gwiliam (I think! ) in Wales, both against the English. You may be thinking of that.
There's a long tradition of guerilla warfare against invaders in the British Isles though, 'way back to Roman times.

 

Well, if 150,000 is correct, and thats the total number of french people, thats not a high percentage of the population. And my guess would be that most of these are Jews and other so called sub humans. I wounder, how many of these were jsyut ordinary Frenchmen, none Jewish, none Gypsies, none communists and so on.

 

look we are not talking about jews. We are talking about how the war would have been faught in britain. And just forget scotland. Just say that if the british pulled all their forces from other theaters to come fight at home ( which they would)then they would have plenty o armourd divisions and infantry to make a line of defense around london. PLus for all those people talking about scotland and resistence why are you so convinced england will lose. and by the way it is a known fact that there was a defense line prepared in england if the germans attaked there were machine gun posts, walls of sement to stop enemy tanks, bunkers the lot the real battle of britain would then have begun exept thank god the russian defeated the germans on the eastern front. and for all those people who think that there was not anough room in england for manoeuvres you are wrong.

 

Now admittedly, my knowledge of the European Theater is pretty scant but as was pointed out earlier in order for this scenario to occur the Royal Navy would have had to be decimated to point where it would be impotent as a fighting force. If the Royal Navy is in this condition how do you propose they are going to get their forces from the other theaters back to England with their equipment? If the German Navy is strong enough to launch this invasion in the first place they would certainly be strong enough to wipe out enough of the shipping needed to return these forces to England.

 

I have to agree with Bill. If the Germans invaded right after Dunkirk, with the RAF reduced to a nuciance force and the Royal Navy impotent, the colonies are not going to be able to support the defense of the British Isles.

Why are we assuming the British lose in their bid to defend England? Because they would have been behind in technology and without adequate air cover. They would have been undermanned and desperately low on morale after Dunkirk, the RAF being beaten and by the Royal Navy being beaten. They would have been mercilessly bombed day and night. The network of fortifications that you refer too, come on. It was nothing even close to the Maginot Line. If the Germans attacked with swords and pitchforks they might have repulsed them, but they were no match for Panzers and shock troops. I think there are very few people in the forum who, once you accept that for the point of argument, believe that a successful landing of a German invasion army in England would have been anything but a disatorous defeat for the British. There would have been resistance and guerilla warfare, but that only happens after you lose the real battle.

 

And what makes you so convinced Britain would win. You seem to be blind to some events from History.

Germany to had defensive lines. Fortress Erupoe and the West wall in particular. Both of this were far stronger than a lind of pill boxes with machine guns.

As for pulling troops home from around the world, thats just laughable. Was this acctually started, no, not that i'm aware of. Do you have any understanding on what it what have taken to get all those troops, tanks and other things home. I'm in the army, i know what it takes to get just one armoured battalion out to Iraq. And your on about bringing the whole British army home, 60 years ago, with German U-Boats recking havoc in the sea around the island.

And you also seemed to notice that the war was 3 years old before the British Army inflicted a defeat on the German Army, at El-Alemain.

Yet in 1940, you have a British army with few weapons, and already badly beated, faceing the best army in the world, highly experianced, highly motivated, well equipped, deploying new methods of war. Once the German troops are ashore in strentgh, and thats the hardest part, whats to stop them.

 

Dark,
Last time I looked Scotland was still part of Britain, so no, she can't just be forgotten about. The Nazis weren't in the habit of only conquering half a country.
There were stop lines -lines of fortifications- all over BRITAIN, not just England, but many of them were built AFTER Dunkirk. Have a look at this . I was involved in this as a site surveyor, and I still have to correct people who think there were no defences built north of London -ten years later.
The British would have been fighting a Nazi invasion with half-finished defences which wouldn't have stopped the rain, let alone a Panzer Division. Remember too that many coastal artillery batteries in Britain were disarmed and abandoned at the end of WW1, resulting in the building of 'emergency' batteries in WW2. So there would have been precious little to stop an invasion getting ashore in the first place.
The only chance the British would have had would have been to stop the invasion dead on the beaches-extremely unlikely. After that, it would only have been a fight to the death for the British.

 

I just found this on Wikipdia. Though i ahven't been able to fined a link to cabinet documents. So it seems we may have have just thrown in the towel.


A mass invasion by sea however, may not have been necessary. In British wartime cabinet documents released in 1998, it was revealed that after the failure of the British Expeditionary Force in France and its evacuation at Dunkirk, Winston Churchill had lost support in the cabinet and in Parliament. Had the Royal Air Force been defeated by the Luftwaffe, Churchill would have been replaced as Prime Minister by Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax, who was known to be in favour of peace negotiations with Germany rather than face a civilian bloodbath on British soil.

 

The japs would'nt have minded Britain pulling her troops....less fighting for themselves.

Just remember Dagger, the Germans had some 250,000plus troops at Stalingrad.
No one came home til after the war.

No supplies = no fighting.
IMO, in this what-if;
Hitler would/should do a seige[aka Lenningrad] instead of city fighting.Let the
artillery, Stukas ,battleships,etc. do the work.

 

If the German's had invaded after Dunkirk and Britain had no air or sea defense, the Wermacht would have walked throu Britain in next to no time. We're talking about the best army the world had ever seen up to that point. The only resistance left would have been the type the French used.

As for Scotland, I'd say the German's would have taken up as far as the central belt. It had/has a large population and plenty of coal for synthetic fuel. The highlands wouldn't have been much use to them and was scarcely populated anyway. This area may have been a base for a resistance, but like the French resistance it wouldn't drive the German's out, it would just bring punishment to the British people that were under Hitler's rule. Set up puppets in power like in France, and it's checkmate.

And that, realisticaly, would be the end of the war in the west. Hitler could then turn most of his attention towards the east and Russia.

 

Let us take this what if another step further since we seem to have a majority opinion.

Hitler takes Great Britain. The only parts of Europe outside his clutches are the neutral countris and his allies. Maybe Brtish colonies on other continents continue to fight but this is now a side stage. Operation Barbossa goes off as planned and the Germans march into Russia. I have been schooled enough on the German infrastructure to realize that despite early success they would never be able to cope with the resources the Soviets would eventually throw at them. So here is the real question.

What does Europe look like when the Russians get done handing Hitler his hat? Do you think Berlin would be the final battle or do you think that Hitler would retreat to the British Isles and try to hold out there? How would the Russians deal with the previously soverien countries that were outside the Iron Curtain if they had been inside it?

 

Whoa, Nelly! Brilliant question!

Ok, here's my tuppence-worth.
a) Europe looks extremely red! I think the only neutral state left would have been Switzerland, and they would have spent their days looking over their shoulder in case Stalin changed his mind.
b) The Soviets install puppet regimes in formerly sovereign states, then send in a few divisions later when they change their minds about giving thewm autonomy; Hungary '56, Czechoslovakia '68, Poland '79 for example.
c) Would Hitler hold out in Britain instead of Berlin? I think he would, but only after finishing off the defensive lines and fortifications planned earlier by the British. His North Sea flank would have been protected by forces in Norway. I think he probably would have made Britain his last stand, knowing that he had a convenient escape route to neutral America and South America.

Stevie,
Where abouts in God's Country are you? I'm in Stirling.

 

Where does the U.S. and Canada play a role, BigIce?
Or does it?
I don't believe Russia rolls-up Germany as easy as you think....not fighting a 1 front war.
No constant bombing, troops in Italy, France and the Middle East.
Germany's navy can blockade Russia's supply route from the US.

This is, if the U.S. is not involved.