Another Military History "What-if?" For You

Speaking of the Free French and Free Polish, there are a few thousand armed Frenchmen and Polish in England. How do you think they are going to respond to the British government selling out allies and giving their territory away to the Nazis?

 

I'd say bits of what others have said would be true. Short version-

1. Germany is granted hegemony over non-Vichy France, Benelux, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Poland, Czech, Romania, Hungary, and Yugoslavia. Italy gets to keep Libya, Ethiopia. Vichy controls French Africa, Vietnam, the French holdings.

2. Free to ignore his West, Hitler is able to mount a massive "Barbarossa" that would hit Moscow well before winter set in and probably past Gorkiy. Leningrad would fall, Stalingrad by the next year. Stalin ousted or assassinated or just plain broken?....Germany gets Western Russia, gives Vladivostok to its Japanese ally, and Stalin or a successor keeps some Siberian enclave ....so that Hitler has a "buffer" for what would be mulled as "some future war with Japan".

3. With total German victory, Japan would see its Chinese ambitions ...and need for resources...fed by Germany. America's oil embargo wouldn't have the sting it did....as the Nazis would be able to ship oil across the Trans-Siberian Railroad to Vladivostok or with no British Navy to worry about, out of the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean and through to Japan. A much safer world for Japanese goals and no need to attack America so that Indonesia oil fields could be seized..

4. In the US....a British peace treaty would be an embarrassment to FDR and inventionists/anti-fascists....a boost to Lindbergh and the rest of the isolationists...and even some "legitimacy" to the Bundists and the small contingent of American Nazi sympathizers.

Likely though, acting through proxies, the US and UK could engage in the kind of "guerrilla support" that we saw in the Cold War.....helping Norwegian, French, Yugoslav, Russian Resistance fighters.

This would be dangerous for the British (might even stop them) since once Hitler finished with the Soviets.....he could always swing back and launch "Sealion" or just a massive bombing campaign if the British were seen "undermining the Reich's security".

5. Eventually, another war would come. The first one might be between the Germans and Japanese. (the aforementioned "Soviet buffer state" coming into play or Japanese eyes on India, which Germany would covet themselves.

Or in a build-up over supporting resistance fighters...another war with the UK but with America also jumping in.

At that point, all bets are off. Though America would likely have kept going with its atomic bomb program...without the impetus of being at war (as we were)...."Trinity" might have been delayed to 1946, 1947, even later. The German rocket program would be fully developed, with the addition of jet bombers.....the so-called "New York Bomber" and multi-stage ICBMs capable of hitting the US. Plus enough jets to make any US or UK air penetration dubious.

Oh, or even....sub-launched ballistic missiles. Yes, the Germans had early plans for a U-boat that could launch a towed (sealed against water) V-2 rocket.

The "winner" would be the first one with a nuke. Either the US, vaporizing Berlin, Frankfort, Munich and the collapse of German internal security leading to massive revolt. Or the Germans (despite weak support for a nuclear program)....and the destruction of New York and/or DC.

America might sign a peace treaty after that, which would be effective surrender. If we nuked Germany first, the Reich would collapse and likely get broken up into separate states (as the USSR was in the 90s).

It'd be a mess...that's for sure. No "1950s prosperity" in the US and technological development would be delayed by a decade. Remember, a lot of the things that we take for granted today....got their start from World War-II's push on technology. Jets, antibiotics, nuclear power (not just weapons), computers, etc. And economically, America's great post-War prosperity was based a lot on being the only major nation-state with an untouched and huge industrial base.

Plus social changes. Feminism rise came from "Rosie the Riveter". Integration got its start with military integration after WW-2, due to the logistical demands of keeping white and black soldiers separated. Anti-Semitism was an ACCEPTED part of even American culture...until the footage of the Holocaust came back home.

And of course...no Israel. Which meant that even even Egypt and Iraq and Palestine broke from the British (Lebanon and Syria from the French).....they had no "shared enemy". And Zionism would have had little "moral high ground" to take without general public knowledge of the Holocaust (something the Nazis would have covered up). Which means likely no Arab League or later OPEC.... and Germany, the US, and Britain could probably play them off one another to jockey for oil franchises.

In fact, fearful of Japanese or German expansionism....you might not have seen Indian nationalism....given an independent India would come under the "influence" if not outright invasion of Japan or even Germany. So the "British Empire" might have survived much later than it did.

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Likely they'd leave and start forming Resistance cells back home. But unless they got UK and/or American support...they'd be easily crushed or marginalized.

 

Taxcutter says:
You keep trying to impose a 2014 viewpoint on a scenario based on a June 1940 viewpoint.

Allied victory did not look possible, much less inevitable in June 1940.

Check your 20/20 hindsight.

 

Neither were the Germans victorious.

 

They were looking pretty good in June 1940.

It gives you a lot of respect for the leadership of Churchill. Most nations throughout most of history would have taken the offer.

 

The French government survived. They still all of their assets in their colonies. And the British were nowhere near being defeated.