How the Soviets Really Won WWII :)

[Wezil]

What's a few years between friends?

[Patroklos]

If Britain had fallen, the Allies still would have won WWII. It just would have taken longer.

I doubt it. We probably would have ended up with a defeated USSR and a bitter peace sort of thing. Japan gets owned no matter what.

In case some of you didn't know, half the invasion force for Torch came straight from Norfolk (VA) to Africa, so Torch may have been able to be pulled off without Britain. It would have required a significant diversion of warships from the Pacific theatre to compensate for the lack of RN support though.

[Kuciwalker]

In case some of you didn't know, half the invasion force for Torch came straight from Norfolk (VA) to Africa

That must have really sucked.

[Patroklos]

The book I read about it, "Army at Dawn," said the transit was mostly uneventful. About two weeks with no U-boat attacks except one near Gibralter that only caused minor damage.

[BeBMan]

So the US would have invaded fortress Europe from 4000 miles away with no significant stopover points? WTF?

Britain is not the only possible stopover point. Could have used Free French holdings in Africa as staging ground for a Torch op, like Dakar. From there to Marocco doesn't seem so hard.

[KrazyHorse]

I doubt it. We probably would have ended up with a defeated USSR and a bitter peace sort of thing. Japan gets owned no matter what.

In case some of you didn't know, half the invasion force for Torch came straight from Norfolk (VA) to Africa, so Torch may have been able to be pulled off without Britain. It would have required a significant diversion of warships from the Pacific theatre to compensate for the lack of RN support though.

In addition to direct support of the invasion fleet, the RN and RAF also reduced drastically the logistic support available to the Axis forces in North Africa, and the threat posed by British troops east of Tunisia stopped the Axis from reinforcing the Vichy troops in French North Africa.

If British North African and Middle Eastern power had been dismantled in 1941-1942 due to a lack of support from (hypothetically occupied) Britain then the bulk of Axis troops in North Africa would have been available to repel the invasion. And again, with Gibraltar in the hands of Germany, you're not sending an invasion fleet into the Med without some serious problems.

[KrazyHorse]

Britain is not the only possible stopover point. Could have used Free French holdings in Africa as staging ground for a Torch op, like Dakar. From there to Marocco doesn't seem so hard.

Look, they could have landed in South Africa and walked overland to Cairo too. But you're starting to posit some fairly circuitous routes. If Britain gets knocked out early there will be far less political will in the US to even come into it at all. All of a sudden WWII in Europe looks like a battle between two totalitarian states. Nobody really cared/knew that much about the Holocaust at the time. Japan probably still attacks the US and Germany might still declare war, but there wouldn't be as much pressure for the US to help out in Europe; instead, the Atlantic becomes no man's land while the US kicks the **** out of the Japanese.

[Kuciwalker]

And so we conclude that my original claim was, indeed, correct

[KrazyHorse]

What original claim? That the big 3 were the important ones?

That revelation is astounding.

[chequita guevara]

Nope

[Kuciwalker]

What original claim? That the big 3 were the important ones?

More precisely, that they alone were sufficient.

That revelation is astounding.

And amusingly controversial.

[KrazyHorse]

Yes, but look at who it's being denied by.

Britain was key due to

a) its contributions early in the war, which mainly consisted of refusing to move off of some fairly important real estate (Britain itself, Gibraltar and North Africa/the Middle East)

b) the RN

c) its role as a spur to keep the US interested in defeating Germany

The US and USSR were quite simply the Allied powerhouses, both for industrial production as well as manpower.

[Patroklos]

I would imagine that in the case of a British defeat and occupation (as opposed to willing surrender), the first order of buisness would be to invade and liberate Britain, then move on to the continent.

[BeBMan]

Look, they could have landed in South Africa and walked overland to Cairo too. But you're starting to posit some fairly circuitous routes. If Britain gets knocked out early there will be far less political will in the US to even come into it at all. All of a sudden WWII in Europe looks like a battle between two totalitarian states. Nobody really cared/knew that much about the Holocaust at the time. Japan probably still attacks the US and Germany might still declare war, but there wouldn't be as much pressure for the US to help out in Europe; instead, the Atlantic becomes no man's land while the US kicks the **** out of the Japanese.

Maybe, I'm not saying it's a sure thing. But like French colonies, UK colonies could have simply refused to give up when the homeland got knocked out, UK could have set up an exile gov like de Gaulle's somewhere which would try to generate support in the US. Axis forces would then hardly be able to control all those (edit: African) areas even if North Africa was lost (not to mention colonies elsewhere). I mean the Afrikakorps was rather unwanted, often under-resourced and mostly another (like the Balkan campaign) reaction to Italian failures (which had a hard time defeating even Ethiopia in the 1930ies).

The political situation is certainly very hard then for the US, but also the question would still have been just to do nothing and face an even stronger totalitarian adversary later once Ger and Sov had slugged it out or come in and restore some balance again. Outside demands from commonwealth states etc for the US to "do something" would be even stronger one could assume, whether it was possible then to sell things to the US public is another question. Maybe they would have waited to see how things play out. But just waiting it out would also have been a quite risky thing with a huge, hostile and possibly technologically advanced 'superpower' at the other side of the ocean.

[KrazyHorse]

No doubt the overseas possessions of the UK would not have surrendered. Subsaharan British Africa, India, etc. would have continued to be held by the British. And the RN (whatever was left of it after hypothetically failing to stop the invasion) would have sailed to Canada/the US. But North Africa would have been gone without a steady stream of supplies. The RN could not continue to operate in the Med, which becomes an Axis lake.

It was hard enough for Roosevelt to push the US into war with Germany as it was. What happens when Americans are presented with a fait accompli, no friends on the ground in the area and 4000 miles of open ocean between them and the problem?