What if

@aequitas:

It is interesting that you say Germany did not have the resources and Infrastructure.
How again did they came to Norway again??

9 500 Germans come to Norway in a surprise attack riding on the deck of Destroyers, and 500 airborne as follow up forces. 9 500 men in the first wave was what the Germans actually had the resources to do in 1940. This was enough against Norway 1940 because we had Quisling to open the gate. Of course we will never know, but I hardly doubt Churchill would surrendered England to 9 500 Huns. If AH had choosen to attack UK and not Norway, since he only had ships for one invasion. After the attack on Norway, most of the German navy was sunk. Of course AH could launch an airborne attack, like the one on Crete, dropping like 500 paratroops in every wave. Good enough for Crete, but if that should work for UK, he would need an English Quisling to open the gate, or else every Hun that landed would just be another POW.

edit. And most importent, UK is an island, Norway is not. Norway had backstabbing Sweden as neigbour, leting the Huns use their railway to support the attack on Norway, and even our Danish brothers let the Huns use their airfields to support the Bombing campaign on Norway, so we faced like 3 fronts, or even 4 fronts if we count Quisling and his 5 columns of officer traitors. It was like a civil war, in many battles there were Norwegians on both sides. UK would not have that problem. UK is an island that has not been invaded since 1066. It is a reason AH never even tried to invade it, he was not a fool. He was many sinister things, but not a fool

Oh Student and Otto would have rocked the Show in England :-D

@aequitas:

Oh Student and Otto would have rocked the Show in England :-D

I think you mean Franz Six, he was supposed to rule UK after a successful invasion.

After reading a bit more on the theme Sea Lion, I dont belive it would have been doable. The Royal Navy would be stronger than a combined fleet of Germany, Italy, Russia and captured French ships. And the UK fighter production sky rocketed in 1940. But most important, Germany would not get selv propelled landing crafts before the summer of 1941, before that they had to use towed barges. And even if Germany had the resources, UK had plans to use poison gas and burning water, if their island were in fact attacked. Search Petroleum war, the Brits had plans to soak the channel with petroleum and set it afire, burning water. And even if they didn’t, the defenses of the English coast was stronger than that of Normandy 1944, and we know how much power the Allies had to use knocking down that. So basically, I dont think Sea Lion was doable. Neither did AH and his generals.

After searching the web a bit about any Sea Lion possibilities, I’ve mainly found two opinions, neither of which favors German chances. Some say it couldn’t have been pulled off in the first place, others that the Germans might have landed in Southern England but could not have supplied their landing force adequately and would have been defeated. And that’s a very crude summary of numerous articles that exist on the topic. It also seems rather obvious that allowing the BEF to escape from Dunkirk was a critical mistake if Sea Lion was really intended: after the invasion, the Germans would have had to fight the same troops they had failed to annihilate when they had the opportunity.

A much better option for Germany, and one that could also have worked in the real war, would have been to step up the battle of the Atlantic, notably the U-boat campaign. Britain was heavily dependent on American imports at the time, and cutting that life line could have forced them into negotiations.

Oh, on a side note:

@Narvik:

UK is an island that has not been invaded since 1066.

British national pride typically ignores what happened in 1688. But maybe we’d better not derail the thread.

@Narvik:

@aequitas:

Oh Student and Otto would have rocked the Show in England :-D

I think you mean Franz Six, he was supposed to rule UK after a successful invasion.

Nah i meant Otto Skorzeny and Karl Student dough :-)

I think we have to lay down the perimeter for an SL.

Starting Year 1941/42
France defeated? Yes
Political situation is ? Russia stays out US stays out
With DAK and N.Africa campagne

Additional Points??

It’s unlikely that Germany could have succesfully invaded and occupied Britain in the period shortly after they effectively allowed the British army to escape from Dunkirk. Had they managed to capture most or all of the British army, things might have been a little different.

But as others say, Germany didn’t really have an invasion fleet ready for such a purpose. They would have required complete control of the skies, and somehow been able to clear most or all of the British fleet from the channel for a period of at least a week or so.

Another big question, how does the relationship with the Soviet Union develop if peace prevails in the East? The exchange of food and materials. Would Germany have been able to convince Stalin to swing his army south to the Middle East or even India to threaten British interests there?

The best Germany could hope for in a war that doesn’t include an eastern front is a prolonged stalemate where the political situation in Britain/USA changes to governments more willing to compromise. There is a good chance Churchill might have been toppled had operation Dynamo failed. But an all out axis victory was always out of the question, imho. They needed either to quickly knock the Soviet Union out and grab all its resources, or have a prolonged stalemate where the west tires of war.

@Herr:

Oh, on a side note:

@Narvik:

UK is an island that has not been invaded since 1066.

British national pride typically ignores what happened in 1688. But maybe we’d better not derail the thread.

LOL, I guess you are from the Netherlands. Then 1688 it is. UK was an island that had not been invaded since 1688.

And it should be noted that the 1688 Dutch “invasion” of England wasn’t an invasion in a conventional military sense.  It was actually a kind of coup d’etat, with backing from English Parliamentarians; it involved 15,000 mercenary troops on the Dutch side, but it wasn’t a militarily opposed invasion and it was virtually bloodless.  As far as I know, the last militarily opposed invasion of England was the Norman Conquest of 1066.  Ironically, it crossed the Channel in the opposite direction of 1944’s Operation Overlord.

Yes, that’s the conventional point of view. But William III brought his fleet and army for a reason, and when they landed, it was by no means a foregone conclusion that it wouldn’t turn into an all-out war. It’s very unlikely of course that the whole enterprise would have been started without firm support in England itself, but there was definitely an element of military force on the invader’s side.

Anyway, I’d better leave it there…. sorry for bringing it up, it has nothing to do with the topic at hand.

@Herr:

It’s very unlikely of course that the whole enterprise would have been started without firm support in England itself,

I think you are on to something here, man. If you want to amphibious assault a developed and industrialized country that is defended by an organized military force, then you need to expect some support in that country. That was true with William III in 1688, he would not have invaded UK without support from John Churchill. This was true with the Normandy landings in 1944, the Allied would not have been successful without support from the French population. It was true with the Allied landings in Italy, that invasion could not be done without support from the Italian population and the Italian king. The surprise attack on Norway in 1940 would probably not have been started by AH without firm support from Quisling and his men. Any amphibious assaults on places with a total hostile population would probably look like the Gallippoly landings in 1915. Look at the US landings on the Pacific islands, like Tarawa, Paulau, Okinava, Iwo Jima etc;, they had to use a landing force with the same size as that used in Normandy, and that was because they had no support by locals at this islands. Now, could AH expect any support by locals in UK if he did pull the Sea Lion ? I dont think so, and that why it was never done

Idk that the French did all that much to help. A High ranking German officer when interrogated after the war was asked " How concerned were you with the French resistance ? "  His Reply was " what resistance ? "

The resistance was more Hollywood than reality. I’ll try and dig up the article. It was surprising to me.

@Narvik:

@Herr:

It’s very unlikely of course that the whole enterprise would have been started without firm support in England itself,

I think you are on to something here, man. If you want to amphibious assault a developed and industrialized country that is defended by an organized military force, then you need to expect some support in that country.
{snip}
Now, could AH expect any support by locals in UK if he did pull the Sea Lion ? I dont think so, and that why it was never done

There was a group of proto-Quisling wanna-bes called the British Union of Fascists (BUF). The difference between Norway and the UK was that after the war really started going in 1940, the UK government squashed the BUF like a BUG (“In May 1940, the BUF was banned outright by the government and (BUF leader) Mosley, along with 740 other fascists, was interned for much of the Second World War.” - Wikipedia). So, by the time France surrendered, the BUF was no longer a going concern and could not have been used to help the Wehrmacht fight the Brits.

-Midnight_Reaper