Wich was the worst nation in the war?

[dead parrot]

Agree that what Britain did for Europe/democracies is a little underappreciated...

There were quite a lot of people within Britain--including the government--that were inclined to make peace with Hitler, weren't there, in 1940 after Dunkirk? Hitler certainly wouldn't have minded.

This would not have lead to Britain becoming a superpower though, I don't think, because the Empire was close to bankrupt at the end of the thirties anyway...

I imagine Europe + Russia would end up as a single totalarian block, either Stalinist or Fascist, with England perched impotently on the edge and the US increasingly isolationist and turned away from the Rest of the World--until, presumambly, the Japanese attacked, which they wouldn't if Russia won in Europe.

It would have been a scary world if the Battle of Britain hadn't been fought and won.

[plan_D]

If Britain had of joined Germany they would have become great allies. The British Empire was still a force to be reckoned with and being Allied with Germany would have negated any threat from Japan to Burma and India which was British terrority.

I think the combined efforts of Germany, Britain and Japan could have crushed the Soviet Union. We will never know though, will we.

America would have had no choice but to stay out, it couldn't have waged an effective war over the Atlantic and it's Navy wouldn't have been much help as it would have had the three most powerful Navies in the world against it. IJN, RN and Kriegsmarine would have easily ruled the oceans.

[dead parrot]

Would Britain have actively joined Germany, or would it have stood on the sidelines, like, say, Spain ended up doing?

I still see the continent a single totalitarian bloc, with Britain more or less independent, protected by the navy but impotent otherwise. Certainly I don't see her fighting the Soviet Union alongside Hitler, though if certain politicians had had their way, it could have happened.

Either way, I agree America would have been out of it, and would be hardly likely to unilaterally declare war against Soviet Europe/Nazi Europe and then project enough force to win it. It would be a Cold War, but without any democracies in Western Europe...

[Lightning Guy]

Great Britain allying with Hitler is the craziest 'What if' I have heard on this site. Churchill, afterall, did coin the phrase, "You can always take one with you."

[plan_D]

Churchill wasn't in power in 1939 though, LG. Any What If is crazy, but there were people in Britain willing to join Hitler. 400,000 Black Shirts, for a start.

[dead parrot]

It would certainly be very unlikely, but not inconceivable.

Unfortunately, there was a lot of symphathy in Britain for Germany, especially amongst certain clueless nobility. There was a sense that Germans were ethnic/cultural cousins, and that they had been very hard done by by the Versailles treaty. This group sort of represented a kind of old-fashioned, Jerry's-not-a-bad-bloke, all-that-mess-at-the-end-of-the-Great-War-was-a-bit-unsporting, eh old boy, yes, rather kind of out-of-date thinking. They had no clue about Fascism and what dangers it posed. In many ways, Churchill had to drag the country into the war over some fairly serious opposition.

Of course, once it did got started, people rallied around Churchill and got on with it, as it were.

Weird historical footnote: PG Wodehouse, quintessential Englander, broadcast German propaganda from Holland (I think) during the war.

[plan_D]

Just one thing, the Jerry isn't a bad bloke continued through World War 2 and into to the present day. Germany and Britain have always respected one another, and we are race cousins. But war is war.

[dead parrot]

Yes, absolutely. I didn't want to imply that it was necessary for the British to start hating Germans to fight the war--just that in some quarters sympathy for the country blinded people to the dangers of its government.

[Maestro]

Originally Posted by Lightning Guy

Great Britain allying with Hitler is the craziest 'What if' I have heard on this site. Churchill, afterall, did coin the phrase, "You can always take one with you."

Yeah, we're lucky that Churchill got elected before/during WW II. Because what I heard in my "History of the 20th century" course was that his predecessor was a kind of "pacifist" (here, we call them "un hosse sans couilles" or "a guts-less man", translated in English).

I always liked Churchill. This man was a true warrior.

[plan_D]

I wouldn't say he was a true warrior. He was a good speaker, but he messed up a lot of things for Britain, not only in World War 2 but in World War 1 as well. Gallipolli (1915) was Churchills mistake.

He was much better than Neville Chamberlain, the pacifist who let the war get into 1940 when it could have been ended in 1939.

[the lancaster kicks ass]

but he learnt from Gallipolli............................

[Lightning Guy]

My point in citing Churchill is that he was representative of the majority of people in Great Britain. A further thing I wonder about is, if the British had been such pacifist that they sued for peace with Germany, would they have been agressive enough to openly engage in war?

[dead parrot]

Originally Posted by Lightning Guy

(snip) A further thing I wonder about is, if the British had been such pacifist that they sued for peace with Germany, would they have been agressive enough to openly engage in war?

Re-thinking it, my point about the pro-German lobby is perhaps moot. I reckon LG's observation is dead on. Pacifists (not pro-Germans) would have forced the peace, and they surely wouldn't want to then go invading Russia or anything like that...

[plan_D]

A lot of people were pro-German in Britain. Add them to the pacifists and you've got a lot of people willing to hold off war with Germany. If any form of treaty, maybe a mutual protection act, was signed with Germany. Britain would have proudly fought by Germanys side.

Britain could have waged open war against the Germans. The BEF was nothing near the full Army at the time, and the German Western Wall was nothing capable of stopping the British Army (in full strength) in 1939.
If Britain, as they had in Norway, attacked Germany itself in 1939. Of course making sure the BEF was properly supplied and equipped, World War 2 could have been a few weeks long.

[Maestro]

Originally Posted by plan_D

A lot of people were pro-German in Britain. Add them to the pacifists and you've got a lot of people willing to hold off war with Germany. If any form of treaty, maybe a mutual protection act, was signed with Germany. Britain would have proudly fought by Germanys side.

A lot of poeples were Pro-German ANYWHERE !

I heard about some brown-shirts in Québec in 1939 and of a Waffen SS Division in Alberta.

I also heard about peoples in US willing to join Germany.

And (as everyone knows) French that "sold" Jewish or RAF/RCAF/USAAF ejected pilots to Germans.

However, I'm glad that they were only minorities.