@Gargantua:
I agree the battle for Moscow was critical. But I believe the battle for Britain was far more important.
Had the axis won over Britain, and either starved/surrendered her out, or subsequently conquered it. The axis would have had total domination over all of Europe, with no need to keep anything in check, and the subsequent battle of Moscow would have been a decisive axis victory.
German air power would have been entirely thrown at the Reds, and I think it would have been enough…
Good post, and I agree.
In 1940, Britain produced more military aircraft than Germany. Had London fallen, that problem would have been solved. The aircraft factories were for the most part on the British isles themselves, not scattered about the empire.
In addition, Hitler had needed to keep large numbers of soldiers tied up against the threat of a British Invasion, including half a million men in Norway alone. Taking Britain out of the picture would have eliminated that threat. With Britain out of the war, there would have been no nation to whom the United States could send Lend Lease shipments. That would have solved another of Germany’s problems, because even while the U.S. was still technically neutral, it was flooding Britain with truly staggering numbers of aircraft , to be used in the destruction of Germany’s cities. Taking Britain–or at least its home islands–out of the equation would have nipped that strategic threat in the bud.
Below is a partial list of reasons why Hitler invaded the Soviet Union:
- He knew that in a long war, Britain and a technically neutral U.S. could greatly out produce Germany. He hoped that access to Soviet manpower, natural resources, and industrial potential would even the odds; allowing Germany to defend itself against Allied terror raids.
- He knew that the Soviet Union would invade Germany once Stalin had decided Germany had been sufficiently weakened by the Western democracies. He wanted to get that war out of the way early, before the Soviets were ready, and before the weight of the U.S. army had been brought to bear.
The fall of Britain would have taken both those reasons for going to war against the Soviet Union off the table. Germany wouldn’t have needed Soviet industrial capacity and manpower to survive an air war; having just won the air war when it took Britain. Nor would a Soviet invasion have been inevitable, because Germany would have been too strong to seem like a tempting target. Hitler might have been able to get out of fighting the Soviet Union altogether. The war would have been all but over, except for disputes over who got to control Britain’s empire. It’s possible that Churchill–or his political successors–would have been open to negotiating a peace treaty at that point; rather than risking still more imperial possessions in yet more war with Germany.