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The books mentioned by Michael are both written authors on the Allied side. We know that victors write (and more often than not, falsify) history.

We will never know if an invasion could have succeeded or not. It is one thing to defend Britain at the extreme range of German fighter range, and another to attack an invasion fleet close to the shore where fighter defenses can be easily concentrated. And we all know from history that the fleets would have been irrelevant in the invasion, battleships are large slow targets (remember Prince of Wales).

Prince of Wales was operating completely without air cover in the open Pacific. Unless the RAF were destroyed to a plane, you simply wouldn't see that kind of situation with a British surface fleet operating in its home waters, attempting to repulse a German seaborne invasion. And you can bet the Royal Navy would throw everything afloat at the beachhead. Heck, if even a single destroyer got in gun range of the supply lines across the channel, it would wreak havoc; the Germans were planning on ferrying their tanks across the channel in what were basically open barges. And remember the RN wasn't just battleships -- it had a fair number of PT boats and Subs, too. The German U-boats were very effective, but the German Navy's own sub-hunting capabilities were quite limited and small boats and subs could operate against a massed invasion fleet quite effectively at night, when any advantage from a hypothetical German air superiority virtually nullified.

Personally, I think the strongest evidence that Sea Lion would have failed miserably is the actual history of Amphibious Operations in WWII. The Allies' initial attempts at amphibious

operations were far from resounding successes, and mostly succeeded only due to overwhelming advantage in numbers, and/or the fact that opposition was light or nonexistent. It was only after the hard lessons of Guadalcanal, Tarawa, North Africa, Dieppe, etc. that the Allies really got their act together and figured out how to do it right. Normandy wasn't perfect, but you can clearly see the lessons learned in how it was executed, and it went off far better as a result.

The Germans in 1941 would have been attempting their first ever major amphibious operation. And they would have been doing so without LSTs, Higgins Boats, a large naval armada bombardment, and all the other fun toys and tactics the allies figured out leading up to 1944. To be sure, the British coastal defenses of 1941 were not anywhere near as developed as the Germans' of 1944, but the Germans were planning on forcing those beaches with virtually no purpose-built military amphibious landing craft, and how many Naval gunships? Setting aside my previous statements about the RN, the fact that the Germans had an extremely limited surface fleet certainly would have been a factor -- no naval gunfire for shore bombardment....

Even accounting for famous German ingenuity, I don't give them a very high chance of success.

Cheers,

YD

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An invasion of the UK would not have gotten intact across the English Channel, RAF or no RAF.

While I don't claim to have made any real semi scientific study of the ability of Germany to succesfully invade the UK, I don't think the above statement is really objective :D

If there was no RAF, the whole british navy around the channel would face serious problems.

Although there is a large chance Michael is right about the Germans having no chance to defeat Britain, I'm not convinced.

The problem with those books is that nobody, well at least not me, will ever bother to check the references. Like German intelligence could be wrong, so could the British have been. Let's not forget the issue about Himmler. If there was reason to let the public believe that there was never a chance that Germany could have taken down the UK, I guess it is possible history was 'changed' a little.

Anyway, my sources are no different so bottom line is I don't know anything for sure but that the tea sippers beat the kraut eaters. :)

In my opinion it was stupid to change the targets from airfields to cities. Airfields tend to be quite large so I don't see how it was impossible to bomb airfields while it was possible to bomb towns, during the bad winter weather.

The fact that something didn't happen doesn't mean it couldn't have happened; if focus of the luftwaffe was kept on the disruption of british fighter command new tactics and strategy could have been formulated, which could have changed history.

Imagine the morale boost the British fighter pilots must have had at the moment. How glad some should be given the fact that dictators tend to be narcissistic (thanks spelling check :)) maniacs that know it all and hence regularly shoot their own feet.

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If there was no RAF, the whole british navy around the channel would face serious problems.

Why? The RN would only need to come out after dark when the Luftwaffe was useless. As stated by another poster, the RN had plenty of destroyers and smaller attack craft on hand, and those would be capable of handling the barges the German troops were being hauled in.

All this and more was thoroughly hashed out in the soc.history.war.world-war-ii newsgroup two or three years ago. A google search should turn it up.

Michael

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My take on it is that there was a significant enough lobby in Britain wanting peace that if the Germans had managed to strip the RAF out of the skies long enough to start sinking Royal Navy and merchants with ease (with its own surface fleet w/air cover) an armistice might have been possible. The single biggest thing that unified and galvanized British public opinion against Germany was its bombing of civilian areas. So once that started the chances of Germany leveraging the "peace at any cost" and "sympathizers" factions within the British government went right out the window.

The reason this didn't happen was there was a degree of German strategic planning and focus that was clearly absent. But it *could* have existed if the will was there. As opposed to something like an amphibious assault on Britain in 1940... there was no way that could have happened. The physical capacity was absolutely not there, so a will to invade would not have made a difference.

Oh, and don't even get me started on the bungling of Dunkirk :D

Steve

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Yes. While an invasion of the British Isles in 1940 or 1941 would have had no chance, I do think that if the Germans focused on blockading the British Isles (such campaign necessarily including atritting both the RN and RAF), AND combined this with a more astute diplomatic strategy to (a) keep the US out of the war and (B) put political pressure on the British government to come to some sort of negotiated truce, I think the war could have ended in 1941 on terms very favorable to the Germans.

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...if the Germans had managed to strip the RAF out of the skies long enough to start sinking Royal Navy and merchants with ease (with its own surface fleet w/air cover)...

There are a couple of problems with that hypothesis. One is that most of the "surface fleet" was either on the the bottom of the sea (remember Norway?), in the dockyards getting repaired (Norway again), or still under construction or working up and not ready to go to sea. The other thing is that at this date the Luftwaffe was not too good at finding and attacking ships at sea. They eventually got good at it, but it wasn't something that Herman et al had put any emphasis on before or during the first year of the war.

Michael

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Until the idiot ordered an attack on the Soviet Union :D

Yeah, that really did the pooch and put the cork in the bottle. Hitler had some degree of insight into his enemies, at least his European ones, but not as much as he thought he did. And that flawed insight did him in. Plus, he was completely wrong about the US. Nearly everything he thought was wrong about this country was what actually gave it strength. I've often wondered what he would have made of it if he had actually ever come here and spent time just traveling around and seeing how people lived. But then, he was probably too locked into his own ideology to learn much.

Michael

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The books mentioned by Michael are both written authors on the Allied side. We know that victors write (and more often than not, falsify) history.

The old chestnut about victors writing the history might have been true in the ancient world - but there are a *huge* number of German books written on the WWII. Many of which we recognize now pretty clearly glossed over certain issues...

And I'm sure that there have been far more books written in the US about Vietnam than by the VN themselves.

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The old chestnut about victors writing the history might have been true in the ancient world - but there are a *huge* number of German books written on the WWII. Many of which we recognize now pretty clearly glossed over certain issues...

And I'm sure that there have been far more books written in the US about Vietnam than by the VN themselves.

Don't forget a lot of books on WWII reference to B.H. Liddell-Hart's works, and a large chunk of his post WWII work came from interviewing German Generals just after the War.

As a side comment, if there was ever a litmus test for being a WWII Grog, it's knowing who Liddell-Hart is.

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The old chestnut about victors writing the history might have been true in the ancient world - but there are a *huge* number of German books written on the WWII. Many of which we recognize now pretty clearly glossed over certain issues...

Yet, all the reference here are from the Allied side. What if scenarios cannot be answered in history and is futile to debate them. It is foolish to reach conclusions on events that were not even seriously tried/considered.

Victors writing the history is even more true today. In the ancient world the enemies records were simply destroyed, today they are buried under propaganda. Remember the WMDs in Iraq.

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Don't forget a lot of books on WWII reference to B.H. Liddell-Hart's works, and a large chunk of his post WWII work came from interviewing German Generals just after the War.

As a side comment, if there was ever a litmus test for being a WWII Grog, it's knowing who Liddell-Hart is.

His history of WW2 is the best book on the subject IMHO.

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Speaking of Big Cat Envy, though . . . if Tigers and Panthers made up only a fraction of the German armor in Normandy, yet the Allies lost plenty of tanks, then the humble Pz. IV must be (at least somewhat) more capable than it is given credit for. When playing as the Germans, sure, it would be cool to have a couple Tigers or Panthers at my disposal, but when defending, between all the Panzerfausts and Panzerschrecks and PaK 40s and even PaK 38s, I think I'll have enough to put up a good anti-armor showing. :D

I think it's a little misleading to attribute the allied tank losses to the quality of German armour.

At least, Anthony Beeovor in "D-Day: The Battle for Normandy" states somewehre that the overwhelming majority of allied tank losses was not due to German tanks but to 88mm Flak guns that became a major problem especially for the British near Caen.

Best regards,

Sargon70

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"The Allies' initial attempts at amphibious operations were far from resounding successes"

ANY initial attempt by the Allies at anything were far from successes. This is no argument.

My reading is that the air war over Britain was understood and planned for by the UK as far back as 1936. This is why money was put into development and production of the Spitfire and Hurricane and the training of the Air Reserve when very little else was fully funded.

As for amphibious ops - the Brits have always had some practice with the form, from the receiving end (Norse, Viking, Saxon, etc) and in attack (the Napoleonic Wars). As late as the 1980's the lesson was again learned when the Atlantic Conveyor was sunk in the Falklands with most of the heavy lift troop helicopters on board. The difficulty of the terrain meant that most of the subsequent major troop movements were carried out by landing craft.

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We will never know if an invasion could have succeeded or not. It is one thing to defend Britain at the extreme range of German fighter range, and another to attack an invasion fleet close to the shore where fighter defenses can be easily concentrated. And we all know from history that the fleets would have been irrelevant in the invasion, battleships are large slow targets (remember Prince of Wales).

The RN was a formidable force and would certainly have sortied out in strength into the channel. Oh, and in 1940, the Germans didnt have a torpedo bombing squadron or anti-ship bombs in any great numbers, if at all.

All it would have taken is for one or two cruisers even to get amoungst the German flotilla and the invasion was over. Then, I dont think they could have tried it again for a long while.

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All it would have taken is for one or two cruisers even to get amongst the German flotilla and the invasion was over. Then, I dont think they could have tried it again for a long while.

Yep. Trying to fight with BBs in the Channel would have been problematic, but there is really no reason for the RN to even bother trying that. There were sufficient DDs, CLs, and CAs within easy steaming of the whole Channel coast.

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As long as we are tossing out what ifs and speculation .... If Hitler decided to wait a year and plan the invasion of the Soviet Union for 1942 instead of 1941, then would he have invaded in 1942 anyway even if Japan still attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and Germany declared war on the US as they did in support of Japan shortly after that attack.

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