Have an old copy of Erskine Childer’s 1903 book “Riddle of the Sands” kicking around; imagine hauling the German invasion army across the Channel in barges loaded with cavalry horses.

That’s all from me. If you still think it’s a goer, take it to soc.history.what-if and see how long you last.

Thanks for clarifying some of the details regarding the French Navy in WWII. I had forgotten that the French ships were scuttled in Toulon, not destroyed by the Germans. However, as others have pointed out, this was after the Americans had landed in North Africa and after the German advance towards Cairo had been reversed. The French scuttled the fleet b/c they were trapped in harbor and could not escape due to the Germans. If they had not delayed as long, they could have escaped and those ships could have played a role in the war.

2). The Germans did not have to conquer Britain directly to force the UK govt to surrender. A successful U-Boat campaign may well have starved Britain into surrendering. Indeed in the winter of 40-41 & 42-43, the U-Boats came close, particularly on the second occasion to doing just that. Also a successful German conquest of the Middle East, taking first the Suez Canal and then Iraq & Iran, where Britain’s oil came from, would have probably forced the British to terms. Rommel may well have done this had he been given a tenth of the force that was committed to the invasion of Russia.

3) The French did surrender rather quickly in 1940. Moreever unlike all the other nations the Nazis conquered, excepting Denmark, France did not just surrender militarily and send a govt-in-Exile to Britain, it surrendered politically as well. Vichy France was the legal and constitutional sucessor to the Third Republic. DeGaulle and his followers were deserters.
Also the Vichy govt collaborated far more enthusastically with the Nazis in turning over Jews for the Death Camps then any other govt in Western Europe including Fascist Italy.

This last point should be remembered in the next 20 to 50 years as Western Europe decides whether to resist or surrender to the onslaught of Militant Islam. So far, the picture is not a very encourging one. At the current rate, I believe Sir Bernard Lewis’ statement that Western Europe will be Islamic by 2100 is likely to be correct.

1. The Luftwaffe didn’t sink a lot of ships.
But they were kinda busy trying to destroy the
RAF and bomb London. I’ll accept that they
didn’t the same expertise as the Japanese in
aerial attack against warships, so the way I
see it is that they would have needed to first
get air supremacy, second mount a prolonged
air/sea campaign to grind down the RN, and
only then attempt an invasion. The plan they
had was inadequate and never got past the
first step; but an alternative, and more
patient, could have achieved a landing – though
I still doubt their ability to move enough
supplies for success.

2. The idea that one destroyer would stop an
invasion is ludicrous. The Germans had some
excellent big ships (Bismarck, Scharnhorst, etc)
which would have made mincemeat of any small
force

Dunkerque was knocked out for a year or more, which is what the RN needed, given that it had 5 more battleships on the way.

I take your point that we now know that the balance of opinion inside the MN was overwhelmingly to scuttle if ever there were orders from Paris to take up the fight on Germany’s behalf [see Martin Thomas ‘After Mers-el-Kebir: The Armed Neutrality of the Vichy French Navy, 1940-43’ in English Historical Review, Vol. 112, No. 447 (Jun., 1997) , pp. 643-670].

But that was not clear in London in June 1940, and Churchill and Pound were in no mood to leave intact the only weapon that could conceivably have made Sealion possible. Read Churchill’s papers, and this becomes clear. More here:
http://www.open2.net/historyandthearts/history/one_transcript_page4.html

[Yes, I know it’s Michael Portillo. But he didn’t write the script.]

‘Most current military analysts do not believe that Operation Sealion would have succeeded if undertaken. The main difficulty was the lack of German naval assets in comparison to those of the Royal Navy. In addition, the losses in men and material suffered by the German airborne troops over the Low Countries in May during the Battle of the Netherlands, could not be replaced in time for the planned operation.’

Also: ‘The transports to be used (in operation sealion) would (have been) Rhine barges as the Germans had almost no specialised landing craft. This would have limited the amount of artillery and tanks that could be transported.’

If I get what you’re saying, basically the wargaming showed that Germany didn’t have the resources to do their own version of DDay?

Mers El Kebir was botched militarily; the only ships of consequence at MEK were Dunkerque, Strasbourg, and the six French super-destroyers. Dunkerque was damaged, but eventually managed to make it to Toulon. Strasbourg and five of the super-destroyers escaped without damage. The ships destroyed and heavily damaged included obsolete French dreadnoughts that wouldn’t have affected the course of the war in any case.

Moreover, my point stands; there is no evidence that the French would have gone over to the Germans. If they didn’t go after Mers El Kebir (and they didn’t) then they just plain weren’t going to join the Axis.

Finally, the point about Toulon was to contradict the earlier assertion that the Germans sank the French fleet, which is completely inaccurate. The Germans were trying to capture the French fleet when the French sailors scuttled it.

For example, the Supreme Court of the United States
gave the Bush junta enough legitimacy to seize power; and, as most Americans looked to the Court for legal justification, we agreed to accept the coup as a fait accompli.

‘In wargames conducted at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in 1974, which assumed the Luftwaffe has not yet won air supremacy, the Germans were able to establish a beachhead in England by using a minefield screen in the English Channel to protect the initial assault. However, the German ground forces were delayed at the “Stop Lines” (e.g. the GHQ Line), a layered series of defensive positions that had been built, each a combination of British Home Guard troops and physical barriers. At the same time the regular troops of the British Army were forming up. After only a few days, the Royal Navy was able to reach the Channel from Scapa Flow where they cut off supplies to German troops in England and prevented further reinforcement. Isolated and facing regular troops with armour and artillery the invasion force was forced to surrender.

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 may have been replaced as Prime Minister by Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax, who was believed to be in favour of peace negotiations with Germany rather than face a civilian bloodbath on British soil.’

This is the key point: people invariably consider just the military side of the equation. The fact is that neither the US nor the UK could possibly have been conquered purely militarily. The real threat always came from quislings and fifth columnists (many of them in the government).

When I think of Europe, I think “land of no guns.” Maybe this is wrong, but I remember one of the biggest shocks that British troops had when they came to the US was that when they went into the countryside, colonists were almost universally armed and would take potshots at them (taking an ungentlemanly aim at the officers!).

One can talk about an Iraqi “fighting spirit,” but I imagine it would have been greatly diminished had the Coalition effectively secured all the munitions dumps in the first days of looting. (of course, the Coalition would have had to control the borders as well)

All I’m saying is a lot of options may have been closed off to a French Resistance in the first days, if the Germans did a good job nailing down the ammo. Don’t forget, guerilla warfare was harder back in those days, too—bombs were harder to make, harder to hide and deploy, and did less damage.

I can see where armed resistance is a very path-dependent thing, and less about toughness or national character than it is about opportunity. And hell, it’s not always the winning option. Look at Montreal and Quebec. The French lost that war, and the place has been English longer than it was ever French. Not that you’d know by walking around. So, really, who won the war?