"Operation Sea Lion - Shorten the war?" Topic

What was it Gimli said:
Certainty of death. Small chance of success. What are we waiting for?

Normally Hitler would go for such a foolhardy idea.

It recently occurred to me that if Hitler had actually launched the operation, it very well could have shortened the war.

By that I mean, there was no way in heck he could have won and it would have been a disaster in the end. Even if it started out well. Between the Royal Navy & likely the US Navy joining in, they would never have been able to supply them & likely not been able to pull out.

Of course, if the USN went to Europe in 1940 – how would that have changed Pearl Harbor?

Just a thought…

Would the US have intervened without the stimulus of Pearl harbour?

I don't see any possibiliy of the USN joining in – there's nothing in it for the States at this time.

I can't see why the USN would have joined in? The Royal Navy was quite capable of obliterating the supply lines of any invasion force all on its own.

The Germans would have (probably) lost half a dozen divisions, small change compared to their losses on the Eastern Front, but obviously a setback. Hard to see how it would have significantly shortened the war through.

I don't think America would have joined the war (officially) till Pearl Harbor either, the Pacifist sentiment was, I believe, very strong in the States at the time.

I would hate to call the result if a final Seelöwe plan was agreed, and implemented ----though not a lot of people thought Ukraine would survive…!

Indeed, the second World War would have been over in about two hours at most.
Ended by british fisherman sinking an armada of improvised rag tag tugboat dragged barges with their fishing nets and a couple of whalers with their harpoons and a hunting rifle or pistol here and there, who happen to be returning home from Greenland.

After Stalin had heard about it, he would have peed his pants laughing and would have been in Berlin within a week with the complete unprepared Soviet army.
Personally.
The Germans would not have offered any resistance and had greeted him as a liberator, because they would have been glad to be freed from this embarrassment.
No matter by whom.

About three month later continental Europe would have been communist, beside Switzerland of course.
Because, no matter what, you need a place for Cold War Spy vs. Spy games.
And international banking with the system enemy.

Great Britain would offer fierce resistance of course.
Because well, it's Great Britain!
Stalin would have had agreed to this gladly, because it is always a good idea to have a scapegoat and an enemy at the gates on hand.
A naval blockade every now and then, that's enough.

Oh, and the USA would be fine with that too.
They can annoy the Sovs from time to time with their support for Great Britain and continental Europe is paciefied the first time in known history.
Firmly in the grip of Stalin's iron fist.
Everything's fine.

The fall of France – and the possibility that Britain would be defeated – were the real stimuli for American mobilization in 1940-41. But that was done in the name of "hemispheric defense," essentially a strengthened Monroe Doctrine. It was explicitly intended to prevent fascist penetration of the Americas. Implicit in the plan was the assumption that the British might not hold on.

Roosevelt favored intervention; Congress did not. And it hardly mattered, because the state of unreadiness in all the American armed services in 1941 was so significant that the country could not have played a decisive role at that point, anyway. The US wasn't really ready for decisive operations on a grand scale until 1943-44: we could invade Guadalcanal or Vichy colonies, but the masses of trained, ready and effective air, naval and land power didn't yet exist. So even if the US had wanted to help Britain, it's not as if it was prepared to.

No need, or chance, of an American intervention. But that even Hitler realized that had more hope of winning a war against the USSR than successfully invading the UK tells you all you need to know.
The consequences on Germany if they had persisted with Sea Lion are doubtful; they had still defeated France after all. Germany would perhaps have been less successful in any other future campaigns, having lost the aura on invincibility.

There were joint plans between the US and GB for the naval survivors ( Ships ) to sail to the US. The US had no reason to declare war.

I'm not so sure of a British victory, especially if the Channel was heavily mined, and those numerous U-Boats and S-Boats were deployed to defend an invasion corridor.

A lot of troops could have been airdropped and resupplied by air too.

The British Army was pretty much armed with pitchforks and broomsticks after the debacle of Dunkirk, so……

Clearly, the fight would have been very brisk indeed.

I suspect the British may/might have prevailed, but we will never know for sure.

I don't think it was feasible: there's no way a landing could have been made (let alone sustained) in the face of an undefeated fleet. The airborne forces that were available were simply too small, and the airlift capability to sustain them or expand an airhead simply wasn't there. Crete represents about the outer limit of what German airborne forces could accomplish, and the force they took on was what – one or two divisions worth of troops, disorganized and lacking heavy equipment after leaving Greece? There were many times that number in England, not all of them disarmed.

More to the point, even if the Germans could secure and reinforce, they had no heavy lift capability, meaning no tanks, no artillery, and no trucks for logistics. The only way to conquer England was over the beaches- and as St Vincent said a century and a half before, "I do not say they cannot come. I only say they cannot come by sea."

No way would the US enter the war, too many pacifists in Washington, that's why everyone thinks that Roosevelt knew about Hawaii and to make sure the Carriers weren't there. What was there were older Battleships. He knew we would never enter the war, unless the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor. Then we received another miracle when Hitler declared war on the US. this made the European campaign the primary theater of operations.

The British would have toasted the Germans with Slow moving transports, then those that made it how would they be resupplied by air. The Germans would have to win the Battle of Britian in the air for any hope of being able to pull this off.

It makes me think of Napoleon's thoughts of invading England but the English victory at the Battle of Trafalgar and prior to this when he was all of the French Admiral to engage the British Fleet with the help of the Spanish fleet.

Just who is this "everyone" buying into that ancient conspiracy theory, vonBlucher?

And who defines people who thought we'd already been suckered into one war in defense of foreign empire as pacifists? They fought willingly enough once they were convinced it was our fight.

Actually, I think that the Germans had a reasonable chance for success in Sea Lion in the summer of 1940. Just look to Norway to see what would have happened to the British Navy if it had dared to intervene in English Channel. I don't think Sea Lion was a guarantee of course and Hitler had every reason not squander his strategic advantage with such a gamble. The odds are I think close to 50/50 if he goes for it.

What effect would German airpower have had on the Royal Navy. Would they need to have won the "Battle of Britain" to interdict passage down the North Sea?

Markus Brutus:

"Actually, I think that the Germans had a reasonable chance for success in Sea Lion in the summer of 1940. Just look to Norway to see what would have happened to the British Navy if it had dared to intervene in English Channel. I don't think Sea Lion was a guarantee of course and Hitler had every reason not squander his strategic advantage with such a gamble. The odds are I think close to 50/50 if he goes for it."

Let's look at Norway then. Norway (and Dunkirk and Crete) demonstrated that, the German Airforce couldn't fully interdict RN surface ships doing whatever was needed in desperate circumstances. By the end of the Norway campaign the Germans had only a handful of destroyers left v 50 RN fleet destroyers kept back specifically for anti-invasion duties. Of their initially small number of heavier ships: Blucher was sunk off Oslow; Konigsburg by FAA dive bombers off Bergen and Karlsruhe by HMS Truant off Kristiansund. Scharnhorst was so badly damaged by HMS Acasta that repairs took until December 1940. Gneisenaw was also topedoed, by the submarine HMS Clyde soon after leaving Trondheim and needed repairs until November 1940. Lutzow hit by coastal batteries and a torpedo from HMS Spearfish then bombed so repairs took until 1941.

The only German heavy ships available in late 1940 were, Admiral Scheer and Hipper v how many RN cruisers and capital ships?

No landing craft, no landing ships, no prior practice and a distinct lack of broad, shallow angled, sandy beaches along the English South East coast.

If the Germans had tried to invade, I can only see one possible outcome. As mentioned above, it would could only lead to be the loss of those troops committed at sea – a few divisions – five or ten maybe? But politically that would be a hell of a blow for Hitler's prestige and whether his regime would survive and go on to invade Russia seems questionable.

This has been done to death. Sealion was a complete non starter, a single flotilla of destroyers would have sunk,the invasion barges. The barges were so primitive, enough the wake of a fast destroyer would have sunk those barges.

Sidley
That was kind of the point of the original question.
Had they tried, it would likely have failed miserably.
How would that have changed things?

I was not asking what would have happened had they won.
Which was never going to happen.

There's a video on YouTube about a Sealion game sponsored by Paddy Griffith and featuring actual officers from the period (e.g. Adolph Galland, who was a fighter pilot in BoB and later commanded the German fighter force). Definitely worth a look.

YouTube link

My favorite part was at the end, when they took the Germans down to the beaches they were planning to land on. The Germans had no idea that many of these were like the white cliffs of Dover – a small beach with massive cliffs overlooking them. So you could land but not go anywhere. The Germans were properly appalled.

The problem with the Griffith scenario was the bit where the Germans surrendered after 3 days. Not gonna happen.

Apart from Stukas the Luftwaffe had negligible anti-shipping capability in 1940. The shipping they would have been attacking would not be capitals but, as Sidley points out, destroyers manoeuvring at 30 knots among the invasion barges and sinking them without even needing to open fire. Very hard targets to hit, and that's if they still had ant Stukas left.

Overall Germany would have lost a negligible force compared to what they routinely lost in Russia.

The Stukas weren't very good at attacking ships in 1940. The first part of BoB was attacks on coastal convoys that yielded little result. And those were against slow-moving freighters and such.

It's remarkable the strategic impact an inferior German fleet, and the threat of invasion, exerted on British decision making in two world wars. They were arguably more concerned about the possibility of invasion in WWI (and certainly accounted it a realistic possibility for a much longer time) than in WWII.

The Home Guard was not stood down until late 1944 IIRC.