@Flashman:
Britain and France were also planning to send large contingents to Finland to fight the Soviets.
Interesting to speculate what might have happened if this had been ongoing when Barbarossa commenced.
Actually, it’s quite interesting - the French (in particular) were very anti-soviet. The main reason for ‘assisting Finland’ however was to get hold of the Swedish iron ore mines that were supplying the Germans. Both Norway and Sweden were aware of this and were anti any allied forces coming through their territory to ‘assist Finland’.
This led to the French proposing a Royal Navy led assault on the Caucasus (to distract Russia) via the Black Sea!!! Which was clearly barmy. The UK had no intention of doing this. At all.
However - the entire debacle of Norway’s invasion was down to that iron ore, as well as the fact that while the British and French were still debating things the Germans simply landed in Norway to ‘guarantee her neutrality’ (and the ore). Just like the benelux countries - the scandys were so obsessed with preserving their neutrality in the face of the blundering ‘great powers’ that as Churchill (while 1st Lord of the Admiralty) commented ‘It is simply TOO LATE to emphasise neutrality neutrality neutrality and then cry for help once the Germans have invaded.’
I suspect that the germans (in the eventuality of war between the allies) would have sat out… watched, prepared, built up and then conquered the weary victors of such a war. After all - the germans were not bargaining on their lightning victory in France - it surprised everybody. In winter 1940, faced with the ‘greatest army in the world’ (as the French army was widely toted to be) I reckon the Germans would have relished the distraction/destruction of their enemies through such in fighting. Added to this - Hitler felt that he was taking a massive gamble - not having wanted a european war until 1943 when he imagined Germany would be ready for such an undertaking…
