Steve 41oo wrote:Churchill said after the war that the convoy battles of the of the Atlantic were the one thing that came closest to Britain loosing the war. Had Britain been forced to make a peace with Hitler, would America launch an invasion fleet from the eastern seaboard of the US to liberate nazi europe? I dont think so. Nor would I blame them. Of course I dont know but I suspect this was in Hitlers mind when he declared war on the US, knowing the ball would then be in his court to offer a peace deal when the time was right, and that in the meantime it would take a year or so to wind up the US war machine in Britain. If[/i] and I must confess to being no particular fan of counter factual history, Hitler had succeeded, I believe the Americans would have recognised the geopolitical reality, and concentrate on Japan. The world would be a very different place.
Roosevelt was certainly interested in intervening in Europe, but he was an apt student of
realpolitik, and knew he could do nothing if the Germans did not either declare war on the United States, or provide a
casus belli with submarine warfare. I think it might have been possible for Hitler to have invaded England, but his only prospect of success would have been in the latter half of 1940, when England was reeling, and had no credible force to oppose the Germans. He wasn't ready, he hadn't planned that far, and i believe that he took counsel of his desires rather than of reality. He pretty well had the French pegged when he decided they would fold, but he was badly wrong about the English, and as it turned out, the Norwegians weren't terribly charmed about their uninvited guests, either. At the time he was invading Norway was the time when an invasion of England had its best prospect of success, and even then, it was probably too late. Hitler was an idiot. He little understood principled people (a truly foreign race to him), and he little understood that he could not motivate people to surrender through fear.
One of his biggest failings, though, was complete ignorance of naval affairs, and a concomitant fear of the Royal Navy, and a feigned contempt for naval matters. It was sheer insanity to have first-class ships of the caliber of
Bismarck,
Scharnhorst,
Gneisenau,
Tirpitz,
Prinz Eugen,
Admiral Hipper and
Blücher, and to think to use them as commerce raiders. Frankly, the Royal Navy had no battleships or battle cruisers which could match the first four named ships, and even by the end of the war, had no cruisers to match the last three ships mentioned. Worse still, Hitler threw away those resources.
Bismarck was, or course, famously lost in the failed attempt to "break out" and operate as a commerce raider in the Atlantic, after sinking
Hood--a relentless hunt for revenge by the Royal Navy was guaranteed.
Sharnhorst was sunk when attacking convoys to Murmansk.
Gneisenau and
Prinz Eugen were used to shell the Russians along the Baltic coast late in the war, after largely providing target practice for Allied bombers. Even more idiotic, they were both used to ferry refugees out of the path of the Soviet troops. Using them in those two roles is rather like firing up the Maserati to run down to the corner for a pack of smokes.
The Germans also had a first-class destroyer, probably second only to the Japanese
Kagero class destroyers which went into service in 1940. These were (both the German and the Japanese destroyers) superior to anything the Americans or the English had; in fact, the English ought to have been embarrassed by just what pieces of crap their destroyers were. Nevertheless, the Royal Navy sailed out to interfere with the invasion of Norway, and the Kriegsmarine suffered irreparable losses, especially when their destroyers courageously sacrificed themselves to protect the operation to take and hold Narvik in the teeth of the English.
Hitler was, as i have so often said, an idiot. His naval idiocy particularly suited the situation vis-a-vis England.