My views on this topic can be found in my e-book ‘Other Roads:
Alternate Outcomes of the Second World War’ It is available for purchase on
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Australian readers can access it through: http://www.amazon.com.au/Other-Roads-Alternate-Outcomes-Second-ebook/dp/B00J44F2L0/ref=sr_1_25?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1395342887&sr=1-25
2 comments:
I've always been dubious of counterfactuals where having no Churchill leads to a German invasion. Recent thinking has it that Sealion was mainly intended to distract from the buildup to Operation Barbarossa; Russia was always the Nazi's obsession, and one that would inevitably have ended with their destruction sooner or later (probably later) whether Britain was involved or not. And then there would be nothing to prevent Soviet forces "liberating" Western Europe and rolling all the way to the English Channel.
Actually, that would be an interesting scenario to read...
I agree. The plans for Operation Sealion were half-hearted at best. Armistice with Britain would have been a more feasible way to remove Britain from the war. However, researching for this posting I came to realise, despite what people think, that Halifax would not have signed one. By mid-1938 he would never trust the Germans again. People need to remember that even the arch-appeaser Chamberlain still went to war in 1939. An Anglo-German armistice would have only happened a) with someone other than the candidates for PM that were around in 1940 b) none of the 338,000 troops who escaped from Dunkirk got away. Eden and Halifax would have fought on but loss of so many troops to the Germans at Dunkirk would have been hard to counteract; the most immediate impact would have been in North Africa.
The scenario of the Red Army liberating western Europe came up in the Radio 4 programme 'What If?' broadcast in 2004 discussing what if D-Day had failed. As you say the Soviets probably would have won still though it would have taken them longer and they might not have reached the Channel, because as in Yugoslavia local resistance may have booted out the Germans first, but certainly all of Germany would have been Soviet controlled.
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