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Last night I watched Hitler's Britain, available on Hulu. It's a documentary of the alternate history of what may have happened if the Germans had won the Battle of Britain in 1940. It's based on left over documents which describe Germany's and England's plan of operations once occupation occurred. The first half describes the plans for Germany's neutralization of the RAF and securing of the coast around the Strait of Dover, and its push into southern Britain and London. The second half gets really interesting where the British auxileries are discussed. These were small covert groups of British citizens, scattered in hundreds of towns, who were given the task of disrupting German activities while behind enemy lines.[html][/html]
For some reason Hitler's planners discounted the Royal Navy when making their invasion plans. It is debatable if the Germans could have sustained an invasion even if they had defeated the RAF.This kind of sounds like the abortive plans Hitler came up with of deporting all the Jews instead of slaughtering them. Deportation was deemed unworkable and so they came up with extermination at Wannsee. I have no doubt that in the event of a successful invasion British resistance would have been even more pathetic than was French resistance. Mainly because the Brits would not have had the advantage of a close means of support that the French did. As it was, the Germans did very well at suppressing the French Macquis.
I have no doubt that in the event of a successful invasion British resistance would have been even more pathetic than was French resistance. Mainly because the Brits would not have had the advantage of a close means of support that the French did. As it was, the Germans did very well at suppressing the French Macquis.
Well the Brits did have the only pre-occupation resistance network in place, so they had that going for them.
Resistance predicates that they will be defeated. Any British version of the Maquis would have suffered gravely because of the inability of receiving any practical large scale support such as was enjoyed by the French and rest of occupied Europe. Add to that the fact that the Gestapo and SS were very good at fighting the resistance. The only reason the resistance fared as well as it did in occupied Europe is because the Germans could not devote their full attention to stamping it out; they did have to fight a war at the same time after all.
Well, yes naturally any resistance forces presupposes that one side has a bad hand. I think the British recognized their dire situation if it came to calling the auxiliaries into action; they said the life expectancy of the unit members after being called into action was something like 14 days. They compensated for this by sheer numbers; they had something like 500 of these units scattered about. Had the French employed a similar pre-occupation strategy, they may have fared better. Obviously we'll never know.
Hmmm…. Just supposing…If this had transpired, how would the American Atlantic fleet have been different in composition -- and how would the Pacific fleet have suffered?No doubt the British would have pushed their fleet into exile in Canada if the British Isles had fallen (or would have scuttled anything that was in threat of falling into German hands). A combined British exile fleet and American Atlantic fleet would have looked markedly different than what was present in 1942 - for one, American carriers would have been much more prevalent in the Atlantic. Sure, U-Boats would have been a threat, but so were Japanese submarines.Could make for an interesting "counter-factual" historical exercise!
I don't necessarily think that British retention of their fleet would have been that big a factor. It would have been easy for the Germans to close off the Channel with minefields while maintaining a clear zone inside it for resupply. This would have nullified Britain's fleet advantage except for perhaps landing raiding parties. The western approaches could have been easily mined as well making the approach of an invasion force from the sea difficult. The Atlantic would have protected Nazi Britain as well as it protected America for over 150 years. The loss of Britain would have made Germany's eventual defeat a much more difficult perhaps even unattainable objective.
